Reading Time: 3 minutes The Poison Book Project at Winterthur Library is an “ongoing investigation to explore the materiality of Victorian-era publishers’ bindings, with a focus on the identification of potentially toxic pigments used as book cloth colorants.” By using the Arsenical Books Database created by the project, USF Libraries Tampa Special Collections have identified a few books in our own archives that are likely colored with arsenic.
Tag: Museums and Archives
Crowd Sourced Archival Collections in Libraries
Reading Time: 2 minutes The Library of Congress has addressed the challenge of keyword searching manuscript texts by opening its archives to citizen historians and asking for help to make their online collections more accessible by transcribing materials and providing transcription reviews through their program, called By the People!
Digitization and Strange Stipulations in Donation Agreements
Reading Time: 3 minutes A donation agreement can smooth the way for future digitization of a collection or hinder future uses of collection material. With all of the variables possible in donation agreements, it shouldn’t be surprising that some donor stipulations on older collections can take an archive or special collections by surprise.
Digitization in Museums and Libraries: Confusing the Public and the Public Domain
Reading Time: 4 minutes How could a museum claim copyright over the scan of a tapestry from the 1500s? The question can often encounter a lot of debate, and many museums have added to the confusion by claiming rights when they may not have grounds to do so.
IP Issues in Digital Collections & Archives
Reading Time: 3 minutes Digital collections have the exciting ability to shed light upon and provide accessibility to materials that had previously been hidden within locked rooms in the library building. By digitizing and sharing material online, libraries can facilitate advancements in research that were hindered …Continue Reading
Archive Awareness Week
Reading Time: < 1 minute Happy Birthday City of Tampa. For people who like cake, July 15th was another day to indulge without guilt. It’s also a time to remember Tampa’s history and take part in Archive Awareness Week. During the week of July 15 – 21, local archivists …Continue Reading