Digital Collections – New and Old
Posted: March 24, 2022 Filed under: Digital Collections, Images, Photographic Archives, Primary Sources, University of Louisville Libraries, Web Site | Tags: Digital Collections 2 CommentsThe University of Louisville Libraries Digital Collections is moving to a new platform, Samvera Hyku, an open-source repository framework. It will allow for greater configurability, including an improved image viewer. The open-source software allows the University of Louisville Libraries to contribute technical development rather than licensing funds, ultimately saving money while developing our skills and promoting broader, more equitable access to digital content.
However, in the short term, situations beyond our control relating to the aging server and out-of-date software require us to limit access to the full set of materials on the old platform, at https://digital.library.louisville.edu, to on-campus and UofL logins only. If you are on either campus, the URL should work as it always has. If you are off-campus and are a student, employee, alumnus, or retiree with an active UofL address, simply go to https://echo.louisville.edu/login and log in, then either select Digital Collections from the confirmation page, or replace the “digital.library.louisville.edu” string with “digital-library-louisville-edu.echo.louisville.edu”.
Meanwhile, the beta version of Digital Collections on the Hyku platform can be explored and shared by anyone and everyone, on or off campus, at https://hyku.library.louisville.edu/.
Only about 20% of the content has been added to the Hyku version. We are still testing code for upload of multiple-page items (books, catalogs, newspapers, postcard folios, baseball cards, recto/verso images, atlases, photo series…), but not even every single-page item has been uploaded yet. If you don’t see something you used to be able to access yet, don’t worry – it will get there!
Once everything has been migrated to Hyku, the old server will be completely shut down and the https://digital.library.louisville.edu address will transfer to Hyku. We do not recommend saving the URLs of items you’re interested in reviewing; instead, please make note of the Item Number, as that will be the best way for you and our staff to identify both the digital and physical items.
If you have questions about functionality, please let us know, so that we can not only help you, but also write up an explanation for others.
New Peer-Reviewed Journal in ThinkIR
Posted: February 20, 2017 Filed under: Archives & Special Collections, Collections, Databases, Kornhauser Health Sciences Library, People, Services, Technology, University of Louisville, University of Louisville Libraries, Web Site Leave a commentBy Rachel Howard
Most peer-reviewed academic journals are subscription-based: some require high fees from academic libraries and their institutions, while others charge authors directly if they want to make their content freely available to other scholars and researchers through open access. The University of Louisville recently launched its own open access, peer-reviewed journal, The Journal of Respiratory Infections, using ThinkIR, the University of Louisville’s institutional repository in University Libraries.
Released on January 30, the new journal is one of several open access journals planned for hosting in ThinkIR that will serve the needs of scholars and researchers worldwide regardless of their means and without toll barriers.
Left to right: Rachel Howard, Sarah Frankel, and Jessica Petrey of University Libraries; Dr. Julio Ramirez, Dr. Bill Mattingly, Kimberley Buckner, and Matt Grassman of Division of Infectious Diseases.
Doctors in UofL’s Division of Infectious Diseases approached their Clinical Librarian, Kornhauser Library’s Jessica Petrey, last year about their idea to publish two open access journals: one focused on respiratory infections and the other on refugee and global health. They had thought through the aims and scope of these journals, and identified who within the division and the field they wanted to be involved, but they needed the Libraries’ help with hosting it and providing digital preservation of journal content – a prerequisite to getting it listed in PubMed.
Jessica put them in touch with Rachel Howard, Digital Initiatives Librarian, whose work involves digital preservation as well as open access. As a result of the work of Rachel, Sarah Frankel, the Libraries’ Open Access and Repository Coordinator, Dwayne K. Buttler, the Evelyn G. Schneider Endowed Chair for Scholarly Communication at UofL, and the Scholarly Communication and Data Management Work Group, the Libraries developed policies, procedures, and agreements to support the Division of Infectious Diseases as a pilot project for a new phase of repository development. Jessica expanded her support of the Division by serving as copy editor of the journal.
On January 30, 2017, the Division of Infectious Diseases celebrated the launch of Journal of Respiratory Infections Volume 1, Issue 1, with a party at MedCenterOne. Petrey, Howard, and Frankel were in attendance, where they were warmly thanked by Division of Infectious Diseases Chief Dr. Julio Ramirez.
Women’s History Month: Library Resources
Posted: March 4, 2015 Filed under: Collections, Databases | Tags: Digital Collections, Women's History Month Leave a commentMarch marks Women’s History Month. As noted last week regarding African American History Month, the University of Louisville Libraries provides access to a host of sources for learning about women’s history, particularly from a local perspective.
Explore the Guide to Women’s Manuscript Collections in the University Archives & Records Center (UARC) to start researching women’s lives in Louisville through history. The Women’s and Gender Studies research guide links to primary and secondary sources on this topic.
Digital Collections includes images and oral histories relating to women, including The Kate Matthews Collection by a pioneering woman photographer from Pewee Valley, and Jean Thomas, The Traipsin’ Woman, Collection documenting Kentucky folk culture.
The University of Louisville’s Hite Institute of Art is now home to the International Honor Quilt. Watch this blog for upcoming news about this resource for women’s history, art, and craft.
Mid-century Louisville
Posted: September 24, 2014 Filed under: Archives & Special Collections, Collections, Images, Louisville, Louisville History, Photographic Archives, Photographs | Tags: Digital Collections Leave a commentThe University of Louisville Libraries’ Digital Collections has a colorful new addition: the Martin F. Schmidt Photos of Louisville, ca. 1956-1966. These 573 color snapshots document buildings in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, in the 1950s and 1960s, before urban renewal and federal highway construction made major changes to the architectural landscape.
609 West Walnut Street, Louisville, Kentucky. Image Number ULPA 1998.09.424 in Martin F. Schmidt Photos of Louisville 1956-1966, University of Louisville Photographic Archives.
The photographer, Martin F. Schmidt (1918-2010), worked in his family’s Coca-Cola bottling business in Louisville before pursuing a degree in library science and applying his interest in local history to positions in the Louisville Free Public Library’s Kentucky Division and the Filson Club (now Filson Historical Society). He also published Kentucky Illustrated: The First Hundred Years (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1992), a selection of prints he collected documenting Kentucky’s first century. Schmidt was also a major supporter of the Kentucky Historical Society in Frankfort, where a library is named in his honor.
The albums he donated to the University of Louisville Photographic Archives (now part of Archives & Special Collections) include churches, schools, offices, and industrial buildings from the Phoenix Hill neighborhood to Portland and from the Central Business District out to the Russell and California neighborhoods. The saturated color images show late nineteenth century architecture with neon signage, painted advertisements (similar to those documented in our Ghost Signs of Louisville digital collection), mid-20th century automobiles, and pedestrians. Many of the buildings depicted have since been razed.
Martin Rosenberger Wallpaper Co., Miller Automatic Sales Company, and Royal Wallpapers, Inc., 525-19 West Market Street, Louisville, Kentucky. Image Number ULPA 1998.09.288 in Martin F. Schmidt Photos of Louisville 1956-1966, University of Louisville Photographic Archives.
Extra! Extra! Read (and type) all about it!
Posted: February 12, 2014 Filed under: Archives & Special Collections, Collections, Louisville, University Archives & Records Center Leave a commentAs announced during African American History Month last year , the University of Louisville Libraries has made its run of the Louisville Leader newspaper freely available online, and seeks the community’s assistance in transcribing the articles for enhanced access.
Articles from fall 1935 have recently been selected for transcription. In addition to local news and announcements, topics currently available for transcription and recently transcribed include nationally and internationally significant events, filtered through a local lens, such as:
- Boxing’s “Brown Bomber,” Joe Louis, defeated Max Baer in New York in late September. Leader editors and readers were in attendance (calls for carpools were published in the weeks leading up to the fight), and New York-based former Louisville Municipal College instructor Earl Brown wrote an exclusive article on the event for the October 5 edition.
- The Mussolini-led Kingdom of Italy encroached on the Haile Selassie-led Ethiopian Empire in what became the Second Italo-Ethiopian War. Leader editors and readers noted parallels between the Fascist regime’s treatment of the African nation and their own treatment in Jim Crow America. They also noted the bias of the mainstream (white) media, singling out editorials by Hearst Newspapers’ Arthur Brisbane and Scripps-Howard columnist Westbrook Pegler.
- The death of Thomas Blue, head of what was then known as the Colored Department of the Louisville Free Public Library, resulted in a Leader obituary heralding his status as the first — and, at that point, only — person of color appointed to head a public library department in the United States.
- In another first, Republican Charles W. Anderson, Jr. was elected to represent the 58th Legislative District (Louisville 11th and 12th wards) in the Kentucky State House of Representatives. He was the first African American legislator elected in the South since Reconstruction.
Thank you to all who have contributed to our Leader project in the past year. More than 4,000 article segments have been transcribed! Please help us keep up the momentum, transcribing these stories and more like them so that future researchers can access them. Learn more about the project. Please note: at this time, the latest version of Firefox (v. 27) does not permit zooming and panning of the article images. We recommend using another browser.
UofL Intramural and Recreational Sports champions, 1962-2012, now online
Posted: January 15, 2014 Filed under: Archives & Special Collections, Collections, Images, Photographs Leave a commentThe office of Intramural & Recreational Sports donated 50 years’ worth of Intramurals champions boards to Archives & Special Collections beginning in 2012, along with funding to have the images stored in archival boxes, scanned, and cataloged. The images, arranged by year, are now available online within the UofL Images collection of University Libraries’ Digital Collections.
The enormous posters documenting fun aspects of student life had long been displayed along the walls of three Belknap Campus gyms, where alumni reportedly stopped by when on campus to point out their champions photos to children or grandchildren, but the renovations of two of those spaces, plus the sleek, glass-walled design of the new Student Recreation Center (opened in October 2013), meant these “memory lanes” would have to find a new home. One of the functions of Archives & Special Collections (ASC) is to serve as the memory of the university, so this partnership was the perfect solution. Intramural & Recreational Sports plans to provide access to the collection via a kiosk in the new Recreation Center.
The sports range from trends (Wallyball tournaments in the 1990s give way to Fantasy Football) to timeless classics (running and swimming); from individual achievements (bodybuilding) to team efforts (basketball, baseball, soccer); from indoor recreation (such as billiards) to outdoor fun (a springtime Putt Putt Golf excursion). Hairstyles and athletic wear also went through many changes during the five decades the posters were produced, but the individual and school pride and teambuilding instilled by the activities shows through across the board(s).
Derby season
Posted: May 2, 2013 Filed under: Archives & Special Collections, Collections, People, Photographs | Tags: Digital Collections, Kentucky Derby, Louisville Leader 1 Comment
Louisville has been the proud host of the Kentucky Derby for the past 139 years. A Louisville Leader newspaper article (“Derby Visitors Feted As Hospitality Reigns“) from May 14, 1938 reports,
“Not only is Louisville famous for its annual event at Churchill Downs but it has also become famous for its many social courtesies extended those who visit at Derby time.”
The University of Louisville Libraries’ collections include visual and written documentation of Derby races and parties. Travel back in time to Derbies past through these images freely available in our Digital Collections.
UofL’s proud basketball history–online!
Posted: April 5, 2013 Filed under: Archives & Special Collections, Collections, University Archives & Records Center | Tags: basketball, Digital Collections, University of Louisville Cardinals, yearbooks Leave a comment
Most Card fans know that the University of Louisville has a history of winning basketball teams–we are no strangers to championships. And we are no strangers to Wichita State: in February 1963, the University of Louisville Board of Trustees voted to join the Missouri Valley Conference, which then as now included the Wichita State Shockers.
50 years and three (soon to be four) conferences later, the University of Louisville Cardinals return to the NCAA Final Four men’s basketball tournament for the 10th time on Saturday night, facing their former conference rival.
Photos from the University of Louisville Yearbooks show past meetups between the teams, such as these from the 1966-1967 season, featuring Louisville greats Wes Unseld (#31) and Alfred “Butch” Beard (#14).
The University of Louisville’s women’s basketball team dates back to 1909 when the dean of Arts and Sciences, John L. Patterson, heeded the request of a handful interested in forming a team.
Check out our digitized U of L Yearbooks and Selected U of L images to find more women’s and men’s basketball history.
GO CARDS!
Help make Louisville African-American history more accessible
Posted: February 12, 2013 Filed under: Archives & Special Collections, Collections, Louisville, Louisville History, University Archives & Records Center 1 Comment
It’s African American History month, and UofL Libraries is pleased to announce the addition of a new online resource and a new participatory opportunity relating to local African American history.
The Louisville Leader Collection features all extant issues of an African American community newspaper covering local, national,
and international news published in Louisville, Kentucky from 1917-1950. The building which housed original copies of the paper was badly damaged by a fire, and the remaining issues, loaned by Kentucky State University and the widow of the publisher, were microfilmed by the University of Louisville, with the digital files created from that microfilm.
The long and winding road the texts have taken toward digital representation has made them less than ideal candidates for optical character recognition (OCR), which has difficulty transcribing faded, torn, or misaligned texts, even when they are readable to the human eye. We are therefore soliciting the public’s help to make these articles easier to search and discover by transcribing them. The transcriptions created through this “crowdsourcing” initiative will then be added to the digital collection, improving its accessibility.
Day of Digital Archives 2012
Posted: October 12, 2012 Filed under: Art Library, Collections | Tags: Archives month, baseball cards, Bridwell Art Library, Digital Collections, Leonard Brecher Leave a comment
Joe Tinker of the Chicago Nationals.
October is Archives Month, and this October 12 is the Day of Digital Archives.
Kentucky has chosen a sports theme this year, and since it’s also baseball playoff season, so our Leonard Brecher Tobacco & Chewing Gum Card Collection is an apt digital collection to highlight.
These baseball cards housed in the Margaret M. Bridwell Art Library at the University of Louisville date back about 100 years, when advertising tobacco to young people was not yet considered objectionable, and the Chicago Cubs won games.
Shortstop Joe Tinker (at left) was one-third of the Chicago Cubs double-play lineup memorialized in the 1910 poem “Baseball’s Sad Lexicon,” by Franklin Pierce Adams. Images of his teammates Johnny Evers and Frank Chance are also available in the digital collection.
You can read the poem and the feats that inspired it in another digital archive, the Library of Congress’ American Memory website Baseball Cards 1887-1914 collection.
University of Louisville Libraries News 