Pets in the Archives: Horses and roosters too!

Reading Time: 3 minutes What is a pet? A companion. A friend. A member of the family. They provide so much comfort and enhance our lives on a daily basis. As proud pet moms, the authors of Digital Dialogs would like to celebrate National Pet Day …Continue Reading

Annual Vote for Public Domain Digitization: 2025

Reading Time: < 1 minute It’s that time of the year: Public Domain Digitization! We’ve pulled a list of titles from our collections that will fall into the public domain on January 1, 2025, and now we need your help selecting the 25 items that we will scan to celebrate Public Domain 2025. 

Celebrating the Public Domain through digitization

Reading Time: 3 minutes For six years now, the USF Libraries have celebrated this transition of copyrighted work by digitizing a selection of material from our collections. After a public vote, we added 23 titles across collections including three growing Digital Collection areas:  Florida Studies, Environmental and Natural History, and Sheet Music.

The Spotted Six or The Mystery of Calvert Hathaway

Reading Time: 4 minutes Guest Post by Richard Schmidt, Coordinator of Library Operations and Resident Dime Novel Reviewer   Warning: Spoilers Ahead I will be spoiling several of the plot twists in my review, and while I can’t recommend reading this particular dime novel, you can …Continue Reading

Picasso at USF

Reading Time: 3 minutes If you’ve ever had a tour of Tampa Campus Special Collections, then you have probably seen the mock-up of a Picasso sculpture that never came to be. Originally planned to be erected at USF in the 1970s by the sculptor Carl Nesjar, the sculpture was meant to be over 100 feet tall. Recently, additional material from the USF Archives has been digitized. These items provide another glimpse into the monumental sculpture that, if it had been erected, would have drastically changed the feel of USF’s Tampa campus from what we know it to be today.

Illuminating the Archives through Art

Reading Time: 3 minutes Guest post from Erin Peel, Coordinator, Library Operations: FLENH, on connecting new archival collections from the Florida Ornithological Society with Art classes at USF.

Food Conservation in the Home and Recipes in the Archives

Reading Time: 2 minutes Food is a way to understand a place and a culture. Sharing a meal is a bonding ritual that transcends many cultural boundaries. The recipes of the past can also teach us about history, with useful tips for today’s challenges. That is the case for Blanche Armwood Perkins’ Food Conservation in the Home:  A Collection of War-Time Recipes.