Monthly Archives: February 2008

Locating Primary Sources Online: Exploring Resources Outside OSU for Research Projects

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rotunda.jpgWe have wonderful archival materials the OSU Archives, but we don’t have it all … This list contains some interesting primary source collections outside the walls of the Valley Library.

The Digital Scriptorium is an image database of medieval and renaissance manuscripts that unites scattered resources from many institutions into an international tool for teaching and scholarly research. It bridges the gap between a diverse user community and the limited resources of libraries by means of sample imaging and extensive rather than intensive cataloging.

The Nike Archives: Public museums were founded in part to help societies hold onto their cultural and historical memories, but businesses collect, too. The documents, products, and records a company keeps in its archive help create institutional memories; sometimes those memories are of products that worked, sometimes not. The Nike Archives has over 23,000 pieces of sports memorabilia, nearly every shoe produced. Their goal is to collect at least one of every item Nike has produced. If you’d like to see what is missing, there are still about 50 models missing.

The Women and Gender Project: The Archives for Research on Women and Gender (ARWG) project specializes in acquiring, preserving, arranging, describing, and providing access to primary source materials that document the lives of women, constructions of gender, and expressions of sexual identity in South Texas.

The Carnegie Melon: History of Medicine Library site.

The Web of Healing: This exploration of healing in eighteenth-century Philadelphia was developed and brought to life by a group of graduate students at the University of Pennsylvania’s department of History and Sociology of Science. Initially developed to be used as a teaching tool for undergraduates, this site is designed to serve as a pedagogical and public history resource.

Erosion of a Sea Stack Over 100 Years: The photographs on this site show the demise of Jump-off Joe, a sea stack at Nye Beach, Newport, Oregon.

Coastal Engineering: research, consulting, and teaching, 1946-1997: Full-text book on the Internet Archive.

One Step Closer: OSU as a National Historic District?

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gill-image.jpgFollowing a unanimous vote Friday by the State Advisory Committee on Historic Preservation, Oregon State University may become the first Oregon university to have its own National Historic District. The historic district would encompass 83 buildings and four lawn areas, including the Memorial Union and its quad, Benton Hall, Strand Agricultural Hall, and Gill Coliseum.

According to Vincent Martorello, Facilities Services, “Once we are a district, it will really help us capture the beauty and tradition of this campus and help us preserve the character that you see out across campus as we have new development.”

Corvallis already has roughly 500 properties listed on the national register. These properties are registered individually or as part of the two national historic districts, the Avery-Helm Historic District near downtown and the College Hill West Historic District north of campus.

To read more, please visit the Gazette Times site for Kyle Odegard’s weekend article.

2008 Online Northwest Conference — 22 Feb 2008

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This was an excellent conference with a dynamic keynote speaker and very good individual sessions. A full summary of the program is available online. Take-aways (for me) from keynote and sessions I attended:

KEYNOTE Jared Spool
Why Good Content Must Suck: Designing for the Scent of Information

  • content emits scents; users follow scent of content
  • content “sucks”/”draws” the user toward it
  • scent communication through trigger words (can determine important trigger words by looking at terms used for searching in search engine logs)
  • users don’t mind “clicking” if with every click, they get closer to content (scent gets stronger)
  • when good designs work, we don’t notice them
  • things that prevent scent
    • search engines
    • information/content “below the fold” especially if there is a horizontal line suggesting bottom of screen page
    • navigation panels are “scentless”; often include jargon; often mirror admin organization or “silos”
    • short links don’t emit scent
    • 7-12 words in linkis optimal for success of user; links need trigger words
    • short pages reduce scent and horizontal rule stops scrolling
  • site map = the page where we hide all the scent
  • on A-Z list, scent arranged ‘”randomly”
  • traditional approach to design is to start with home page; should start with “content” and put links in all the places where someone might look for that “content”

Session 1 Worldcat.org: Platform for a New Kind of Library Catalog?
Amy Crawford, OCLC Western

This session would have benefited by having a “user” of worldcat.org or worldcat local.
Presenter described new model for library catalogs: synthesize => specialize => mobillize

Session 2 — Facebook 101: What Librarians Need to Know
Laurie Bridges, OSU Libraries

Great introduction to Facebook:

  • “fan pages” allow you to “push” content/announcements to your “fans”; “groups” are more static
  • users spend more time (20 min/dayis this right?) on Facebook than any other website (which avg less than 5 min/day)
  • advertising may be a cost effective way to reach students and young adults (priced per click or per “thousand views”)

Session 3 — Navigating User Understanding of the OPAC Interface: Case Study from OHSU’s Web Usability Testing
Laura Zeigen, OHSU

Laura provided some background on usability testing; results of the testing of the OPAC interface; and the changes they made at OHSU. Her powerpoint and a list of resources are available, as is this site she referred to in her presentation. It would be useful to have similar compilation for “archives” terminology.

Elizabeth Nielsen

New Collection Highlighting Forest Service History!

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g_williams_seaside.jpgPhotographs, films, and research materials illuminating the history of the U.S. Forest Service and related topics such as the Civilian Conservation Corps, Gifford Pinchot, logging in the Pacific Northwest, and the Smoky the Bear campaign form the core of a recently acquired collection reflecting the work of Forest Service Historian Gerald W. Williams.

Encompassing a wide variety of materials which include oral histories, maps, road signage, and lithographic prints, these papers document over 35 years of historical research by Williams. Nearly half of this collection is made up of photographs (about 24000 images in total) that mostly date from the early 20th century and depict national parks and other natural landscapes in Oregon, Pacific Northwest lumber operations, the U.S. Forest Service, Civilian Conservation Corps camps, and Native Americans. In addition to authoring the official centennial history of the Forest Service, Williams wrote over 75 other publications and conference papers on subjects ranging from the U.S. Army Spruce Production Division to the Native Americans’ use of fire in managing their environment. This collection also reflects Williams’ research of the origins of place names in the McKenzie River region of Oregon.

A graduate of Southern Oregon University, Williams began his career with the Forest Service in 1979 at the Umpqua National Forest. From 1998 to 2005, he served the National Historian for the Forest Service.