When the pandemic prevented students from entering the digitization photography studio, the Digital Programs department decided to pivot to Instagram. Campbell Hannan ‘21 and Emma Candland ’23 took over what was then “@amherstdigcoll” and transformed the small, relatively new inconsistent account into @frostfinds, a vibrant account that posts daily and frequently engages with the Amherst…Continue Reading Retelling Amherst Stories in the Digital Age
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
Our very first digitized scrapbook is now available! Thanks to William Belcher Whitney (1887). It is January of 2020, and this marks the ending of the more than three year Bicentennial digitization project in the library to add college history materials to our digital collection. Though we will continue to add new collections throughout the…Continue Reading Looking back with kindly eyes –
Post by Jessica Dampier, Simmons University MLIS ’19 I have been working in Frost Library as the Digital Programs Graduate Student Intern since fall of 2016. Things have changed a lot in our department over the past three years, and for a variety of reasons the work I was doing when I first got hired…Continue Reading My experience as the Digital Programs Graduate Student Intern
In May, we completed and ingested our largest group of material yet: series 1 of the Amherst College Student & Alumni Publications Collection. This sub-section of the collection contains many of the publications created by Amherst students during their time here at Amherst. Still to come from this collection are the majority of the student…Continue Reading Delving into Student Publications
Guest post by Avery Farmer ’20 For the past eighteen months, I have been working to digitize the Amherst College Photographer Negative Collection 1965-2005. For three hours at a time on a few afternoons each week, I shut myself into a windowless room in the basement of the library, its lights turned off to guarantee…Continue Reading Commencement Here at Amherst
Guest post by Campbell Hannan ’21 In September of 1939, then-President of Amherst, Stanley King opened his convocation address in Johnston Chapel with a somewhat ominous proclamation. “This year we open with Europe at war,” he said. “What effect that war will have on America no man can tell. But that it will affect America…Continue Reading The Introduction of World War II to Amherst College
When I was thinking about what I wanted to write for this post, it occurred to me to talk about my interaction with the collections we have here, outside of my official role as a software developer. In my role here, I’m responsible for the images and metadata getting ingested into our digital asset management…Continue Reading Side Effects
Guest post by Zehra Madhavan ’20 When I started working at Digital Collections as a Student Assistant during the spring semester of my freshman year, my understanding of Amherst College’s history was limited to facts I had read about in pamphlets and bits and pieces of information I had picked up in various lectures and…Continue Reading On Gleaning the College’s History Through Documents
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