Updates from Digital Consulting and Production Services – October 2017
News
Audiovisual Preservation Initiative
Digital Consulting & Production Services, in partnership with CIT and other Cornell stakeholders, is leading an effort to determine audiovisual preservation needs campus-wide. Cornell University has vast holdings of unique audiovisual assets vital to its mission “to discover, preserve, and disseminate knowledge.” This institutional legacy now faces a very real and growing threat due to audiovisual media degradation and playback obsolescence, which if left unattended, will result in the loss of priceless media assets. Over a period of 15 months, the Audio Video Preservation Group conducted a campus-wide, collection-level survey of Cornell’s unique and/or rare AV items, resulting in the identification of over 220,000 items, and compiled its findings and recommendations into a report.
Read the Audiovisual Preservation Initiative Survey Report.
Service Reminder
Through the Arts & Sciences Teaching Digitization program, Cornell University Library will digitize various material types in support of teaching, for instructors within the College of Arts & Sciences. This service includes metadata creation and online delivery of images, audiovisual, and other visual resources. This is a free service to the College faculty and researcher, and aims to support the teaching mission. For more information, please contact us at dcaps@cornell.edu.
Featured Collections
Cornell Collection of Blaschka Invertebrate Models
Cornell University is one of a handful of academic institutions in the United States with a collection of glass invertebrates created by renowned 19th century glass artists Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka. An earlier collaboration between the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology and Mann Library led to the creation of an online gallery of the Blaschka collection, available for use by scholars and educators. A 2016 Digital Collections in Arts & Sciences Grant awarded to Drew Harvell, Professor of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, and Nelson Hairston, Frank H.T. Rhodes Professor of Environmental Science, has expanded and improved this remarkable online collection.
This collection traces the development of ornithological illustration in the 18th and 19th centuries and highlights the changing techniques — from metal and wood engraving to chromolithography — during that period. These selected illustrations, by renowned ornithologists and artists such as John James Audubon, John Gould, and Joseph Wolf, are part of the Hill Ornithology Collection held by the Division of Rare & Manuscript Collections.
Willard D. Straight worked in Korea as a Reuters correspondent during the Russo-Japanese War in 1904-05, and later as a U.S. diplomat. He took numerous photographs of landscapes, urban scenes, cultural phenomena, historic events, and people. These photographs, as well as the postcards he collected during his time there, offer a rare example of western perspectives on Korea during the early 20th century. The original materials are part of the Willard Dickerman Straight Papers, held by the Division of Rare & Manuscript Collections.
About DCAPS
Cornell University Library, a pioneer in the creation and management of digital resources, has assembled a team of experts to support digital scholarship initiatives for Cornell’s faculty, staff and community partners. Specializing in high-end digitization, metadata customization and creation, and online delivery, the DCAPS staff is recognized worldwide for creating innovative collections in support of instructional and research activities. Whether you are seeking to digitize content for a class, or looking to push the envelope on new modes of scholarly communication, DCAPS is here to help.
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https://dcaps.library.cornell.edu | dcaps@cornell.edu