The Huntington Library in San Marino, CA is working on a project of huge historical significance. They are working on decoding and digitizing 15,971 telegrams from the Civil War that were found hidden in a wooden foot locker for more than a century. This article from the LA Times details the contents of some of the telegrams, which are a window into the war experiences of the Civil War and include disease, fear, humor, and praise of President Lincoln. The telegrams were found to have come from the Union side, but the correspondence was coded for safety. According to the article, this led the Huntington Library to start “a Decoding the Civil War crowdsourcing campaign that relies on volunteers using cipher charts to unravel secret texts.” These volunteers, named “citizen archivists” continue to work through the ongoing task of deciphering the coded messages.
In addition to decoding the messages, the Huntington is working to digitize the documents to make them available online. The library is working with Zooniverse to put the documents online at the Decoding the Civil War website. Using digitization to preserve these formerly hidden documents is important to ensure they continue to provide a glimpse into this country’s history.
Check out the official site of the project for a glimpse into the decoding process, suggested reading, and links to more resources on the Civil War.
When you think of archives, you may picture dusty boxes or dark closets filled with preserved documents or other media. You maybe don’t think of 90 miles of shelves in climate controlled and “radiation hardened” vaults!
However, that is exactly where the Library of Congress is storing its Audio/Visual collection in Culpeper, Virginia. The storage facility is actually a former nuclear bunker that was built during the Cold War to protect huge amounts of money as well as up to 500 Federal employees. This article from the blog Architect of the Capital details the original goal of the bunker structure, pictures and illustrations of the site, and also the end goal of the Library of Congress to eventually digitize their film and video collection.
Watch this video from the Library of Congress that describes the Packard Campus and the process that the digital files go through to record and preserve them at the facility (it includes robotics!):
Are you feeling like Cinderella because you had to stay home and did not get to go to the Library Technology Conference this year? Me too! I have been hearing how great the keynotes were, so upon further investigation, here are the links that get you a little closer to this year’s action. Brew a cup of tea and take a listen….
Safiya Noble is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Information Studies in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA. She conducts research in socio-cultural informatics; including feminist, historical and political-economic perspectives on computing platforms and software in the public interest. Her research is at the intersection of culture and technology in the design and use of applications on the Internet. http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/84532162
Andromeda Yelton is a librarian and technologist (and former math major and middle school Latin teacher) who is interested in empowering librarians through code. She speaks and writes about coding and learning to code, gender in library technology, conference codes of conduct, ebooks, copyright, technology, and personal branding. http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/84566483
Feeling really ambitious? You can also find the conference breakout session archives in the conference’s digital repository. Just choose a session, and if any materials are available, then click the download button.
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