Smithsonian Libraries

Increased Access for History, Art, and Culture Digitizations — New URLS!

If you’ve seen any of the 1,000+ physical copies of the books scanned through the History, Art, and Culture (HAC) Digitization Project, maybe you noticed a sticker just below the barcode that reads ”ONLINE.”

We do that for the same reasons the Biodiversity Heritage Library puts stickers that read “BHL” on the thousands of items the Libraries has digitized for that collection: to alert staff that the book is available online, thereby increasing access while decreasing the wear and tear on the physical item.

We are now pleased to announce the presence of URLS in SIRIS with direct links to Digitized HAC volumes. The methodology varies slightly between monographs and multi-volume titles, but the end result is the same, links that take you directly to the digitized version of the item without a trip to the stacks.

—Erin Thomas

 

Related articles

• Indian Notes Now Available! (smithsonianlibraries.si.edu)
• Libros en Español? Dígame! (smithsonianlibraries.si.edu)

Personal Digital Collections

An recent article in BusinessWeek (http://buswk.co/h8pnfS) profiled a Japanese company that provides homes with some needed extra space. A recent startup, Bookscan, offers scanning of personal book collections in part for customers to more efficiently use their domestic space. As many know, Japanese homes are generally much smaller than North American homes and one can imagine that the elimination or reduction of a bookshelf can be a very valuable expansion of living area.

In addition to services such as those offered by  Bookscan, major manufacturers have begun introducing increasingly sophisticated consumer scanning technologies (http://bit.ly/ejws44) (an example from ION Audio pictured here). There have even been attempts with personal cameras and other equipment (http://bit.ly/fNqHrt) to scan entire volumes for personal use.

One thing is clear: it has never been easier to create personal digital collections than it is now and that's one reason a Digital Library group was recently formed at the Smithsonian Institution Libraries. In addition to licensing content from commercial publishers and scanning our own books, the SIL is beginning to handle a wide variety of digital materials created outside the professional publishing world. However, the acquisition and management of this type of content in library collections demands forethought and the development of a coherent approach.

Most data management and digital library experts agree that early management intervention of digital material (preferably at the time of creation) is the best way to ensure that the content will survive and be usable even in the short term. And the SIL's new Digital Library group aims to ensure that electronic materials are easily discovered, usable and integrated into the larger Smithsonian digital world. The group plans to meet regularly, relying on the perspective of all SIL staff to recommend work flow and practices for specific situations and material-types. All staff are welcome to attend DL meetings and either contribute their own experience or learn more about the collection and management of this material at SIL.

 

 

 

 

Digital Repository Now Contains 10,000 Items

The Smithsonian Research Online program recently surpassed the mark of 10,000 publications in the Digital Repository. This collection of digital publications by Smithsonian staff represents a broad review of research done by researchers at the Institution. Each year the program (initials, SRO) collects information on nearly 2000 publications by Institution researchers many of whom later contribute their article’s corresponding digital reprint. This milestone was achieved when the paper by Ben Hirsch (STRI) and Jesus Maldonado (NZP), “Familiarity breeds progeny: sociality increases reproductive success in adult male ring-tailed coatis (Nasua nasua)” was deposited to the collection.

The SRO consists of two basic components: a list of publications authored by Smithsonian researchers and affiliates, and a corresponding digital repository which contains the actual article or chapter in electronic form. The data which SRO collects is not only used by Institution administrators for research assessment purposes, but is also re-used by webmasters and other Smithsonian offices for reports, presentations and other public information services.

 These electronic versions of peer-reviewed, scholarly journal articles are therefore made much more widely available to the worldwide research community thanks to indexing and search capabilities provided by the Repository in conjunction with scientific web portals. In addition to finding specific articles authored by Smithsonian scholars, the Digital Repository indexes the full text of each publication, thereby allowing search engines to retrieve these publications based on technical or geographic terms which may not appear in the title of the publication.

Shortly after adding the Hirsch and Maldonado paper, the Repository then added a paper by NMNH paleontologist, Matthew Carrano, “New materials of Masiakasaurus knopfleri Sampson, Carrano, and Forster, 2001, and implications for the morphology of the Noasauridae (Theropoda: Ceratosauria)”. Part of Smithsonian Contributions to Paleobiology, the addition of this item to the Repository ensures that Smithsonian Scholarly Press publications are archived in digital form for long-term public access.

Claude Lévi-Strauss and the Smithsonian

The James Smithson Bicentennial Medal was presented for conveyance to Claude Lévi-Strauss, who has been called the “father of modern anthropology,” on June 24, 2009 when he was 100 years old. The presentation ceremony was held at the office of the Ambassador of France to the U. S., Pierre Vimont.

Representatives of the Smithsonian who attended were Wilton Dillon, Paul Michael Taylor, and Edgardo Krebs. This occasion was especially poignant since Levi-Strauss died on Nov. 3, 2009, just 25 days before his 101st birthday.

Ties between Lévi-Strauss and the Smithsonian are longstanding. A Frenchman, Lévi-Strauss began collaborative work with the Bureau of American Ethnology (the BAE, now the Smithsonian’s Department of Anthropology) in the 1940s. He did field work in South America and contributed to the BAE Handbook of South American Indians. He mentored many Smithsonian scholars. He authored dozens of books and articles, and became internationally known as a public intellectual. Lévi-Strauss himself gave a paper at the James Smithson Bicentennial in 1965 at the invitation of then Secretary S. Dillon Ripley.—Amy E. Levin

Just a few of the classic works by Lévi-Strauss available from the Libraries' catalog:

La voie des masques [French], The way of the masks [English translation]

Du miel aux cendres [French], From honey to ashes [English translation]

Le cru et le cuit [French], The raw and the cooked ; introduction to a science of mythology [English translation]

L'homme nu [French], The naked man [English translation]

Related articles by Zemanta

• The raw, the cooked and Claude Lévi-Strauss (guardian.co.uk)
• Claude Lévi-Strauss, Anthropologist, Dies at 100 (nytimes.com)