Project update

This week was all about audio digitization. Jim came across another album, this one focusing on the first 100 years of UT football. On Monday I digitized 4 records, most of which spotlighted the University of Texas Longhorn Band.

Today I worked on about 3 records, all focusing on interviews with football coaches or reenactments of football games. I only have one album left, and that is the new one Jim found this week. I uploaded the files to my iSchool account as well as put them on a flash drive and added them to the computer I typically use so they could be added to the shared file and Jim can access them.

I'm hoping I can work on the films Jim has very soon. Quinn has run tests on the projectors for 16mm and 8mm and hopefully that means we're ever so close to actually viewing these home movies.

Final Project Update

For my final project I'm digitizing different mediums for the UT Heritage Society, which is also part of my Capstone project. For this class, I'm hoping to work more with audio and visual items, and this week we started looking at some of the records my supervisor has in his collections. He bought an Ion USB archival-turntable that we set up and experimented with today. It's fairly basic, and it's main purpose is to make mp3s out of the music you play.

It has a few setbacks: one being that you can't pause a recording should you need to flip the record and another being that it only works with 33.5 and 45 rpm and my supervisor, Jim, has one 78 rpm record from the 1920s. I hope we can find a way to get that record digitized since Jim hasn't heard it before. He said it's a Victrola record with the song "The Eyes of Texas" on it, which is pretty cool.

He also has at least 3 films, all different sizes, and no means of digitizing them. I'm hoping I can utilize some of the iSchool's equipment and allow the Heritage Society to finally see these films that they've had for years. The films are from 1948-1954, which is quite cool, but no one knows what's on them!

Up until now, I've scanned many pages from the alumni magazine as well as some pictures and slides. The digitization class has been very handy in helping me get the best of the photos (the Photoshop tutorial was extremely helpful), and I'm sure it will helpful with these new mediums I'm working with.

Digitization and Art Conservation

For my other class on Thursday, we had a guest speaker come and talk to the class about his job as a paintings conservator. After regaling the class with tales of his schooling, early jobs and the like, he showed some slides to demonstrate the many steps taken to conserve a painting, as well as the steps taken to document such a process. It was impressive to see the drastic changes that are sometimes taken. The slides were from 1987, and to my knowledge he hasn't migrated the pictures past slides.

After a break, the guest showed us a brief slideshow presentation of a more recent problem he had dealt with in his work. Here is where digitization came into play. Upon receiving a painting bought in Monaco, the speaker noted some issues with the aesthetics of the painting itself. He believed it to be a genuine period painting, but certain aspects did not line up. There were 2 saints and a man on the floor. It looked as though the man was kneeling beside some block or alter, and one of the saints was stepping onto the block. The Virgin Mary was above them. With some research he was able to make note of certain items, such as shoes from the period and if the man was actually kneeling or not.

What he needed more help with was the Latin inscribed around the frame. As luck would have it, he was introduced to a graduate in Latin Studies who did a Google search for the terms written and discovered in Google Books a pamphlet from 1902 about the history of a town in Italy, where the painting was done. While the book was in Italian, upon translating it, they saw a description of the painting, which also included measurements, and it fit to a T. What he discovered was that the man was not kneeling, but was an "ill man in bed," which made a major difference.

The digitization of a book from 1902 helped this conservator to understand the painting in a way he never imagined. What started as a search to understand the words around the frame, allowed him to discover what was actually intended to be in the painting, but had changed over time from poor conservation practice. It's interesting how the least likely object can be so helpful!

*Unfortunately, I couldn't find a picture of the painting, or the book which he showed us. If I could remember any of the Latin or Italian phrases I might be able to do a better search. :/

My History of Digitization

I don't 100% remember the first time my family dialed into the Internet super-highway, but I feel as though it was around 1996-7. My first foray into the Web was through AOL chat rooms and pages directed towards kids/teens and helping with homework assignments. After being comfortable with such things, we naturally started branching out, and after hearing that "everything" could be found online, I would do endless searches only to learn that wasn't quite the case yet. I could search for many things and maybe half would come back with good results.

Digitization has really helped that process along. With more learning institutions putting their collections online (like the UT Heritage Society) and with more and more businesses moving online, finding information in other ways is becoming easier. Discovering new things is what piqued my interest in digitization as well it being a way to showcase the past. I realize digitization does not equal preservation, but it does seem like a good way to at least try and help sustain the lifetime of certain objects that might have a personal connection to others. It also allows for people to view items that they would not be able to see in person, and I think that's a cool part of digitization.

I'm hoping to be able to to utilize what I learn here by sharing the information with family members and friends on how to save their heirlooms, photos, etc. When you make preservation a personal case, more people are apt to listen and connect with what is being said. It would also be great to be able to take what is learned here and apply it in a museum setting, which is where I would ideally like to work. So, we shall see what the future holds!