Category: Technology

black and white photograph of Amherst, MA featuring Amherst College, 1800s

Transcribe Us: the Evolution of a Library Transcription Project

When I started my internship with Digital Programs last fall, I was encouraged by my colleagues to find a long term project to work on, to contribute to my professional portfolio and to explore my interests and how they could incorporate or enhance the resources of the library and college. I took some time to…Continue Reading Transcribe Us: the Evolution of a Library Transcription Project

No college is an island: Amherst College chooses Islandora

Behind the letters, images, photographs, and other treasures on display in Amherst College Digital Collections is software. To the public, this software is largely invisible, with our user interface showcasing the discovery and display of the digital objects from Archives and Special Collections. Our underlying software infrastructure requires ongoing maintenance, upkeep, and upgrade as technology…Continue Reading No college is an island: Amherst College chooses Islandora

What is Digital Programs Doing About Born Digital Material?

Throughout the past year or so, the staff of the Digital Programs department have been working regularly with our colleagues in Archives and Special Collections regarding born digital material. We define born digital as material that was created and is stored electronically. Examples can include emails, websites, social media posts, and digital photos, just to…Continue Reading What is Digital Programs Doing About Born Digital Material?

Digitizing Negative Collections – The College Photographers Records Collections

This month the Digital Programs Group began digitizing the College Photographers Records Collection. The collection includes more than 400,000 negatives taken by the official photographers of Amherst college from 1962-2005; A visual history of the college for the second half of the twentieth century. Using negative collections housed in archives tends to be a challenge….Continue Reading Digitizing Negative Collections – The College Photographers Records Collections

Bring your own viewer?

Lately I’ve been focusing on replacing/upgrading our zoomable image viewer in our digital repository.  The current version of the tool lacks a few features which folks have been asking for – one of which is rotation.  In an instance where you have a manuscript that has writing in two directions, being able to rotate the image…Continue Reading Bring your own viewer?

Repositories, repair, and system migrations

Innovation and disposability… Technology innovation is a given in our fast-moving culture of social media and disposable devices, yet innovation isn’t all that drives the technology infrastructure underlying the systems we use everyday. In the library, we us many online resources driven by databases that organize, track, and deliver the content we need, when we…Continue Reading Repositories, repair, and system migrations