Maritime History Donation at UH Mānoa Library

Unboxing…

For what are probably obvious reasons, (we are in the center of a big blue continent), various departments and programs at the University of Hawaiʻi have a strong interest in Maritime History, Naval Science and Nautical Archaeology.

Consequently, I was very excited when NOAA Maritime Heritage Coordinator Hans Van Tilburg contacted me about donating over 400 volumes from his personal research library to UH Mānoa.

The diverse collection includes material ranging from broad historical examinations of sea power to technical manuals and catalogs describing early 20th century ship construction.  (A complete lists of titles added to our collections are linked at the end of this post.)

1914 catalog for "Forged Steel Water-tube Boilers" from The Babcock and Wilcox Company.

1914 catalog for “Forged Steel Water-tube Boilers” from The Babcock and Wilcox Company.

My favorite volume may be this 1914 catalog for “Forged Steel Water-tube Boilers” from the Babcock and Wilcox Company.  Just look at that logo. (Click image to see full size.)  Steam makes the world go round…

Reminiscent of the iconic Sherwin Williams Logo, it conveys the same unabashed drive for monopolistic dominance that characterized the rise of the modern corporation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  The copy and graphics between the covers demonstrate the same unabashed faith American corporate values.

This title is a window into a way of thinking about capitalism that you certainly won’t find in any public ad copy today.  It communicates a distinct utopian emotional aesthetic that is difficult to find in secondary sources discussing the period.

The donated texts contain many other works that can provide that kind of unique insight, and that is why this collection is so exciting.

The collection is being split between the Hamilton Library and the Center for Research in World History at the University of Hawaiʻi, as some of the volumes are already held at Hamilton Library.  The two links below contain a complete list of the texts that will be added to the two libraries.

In related news, the annual MAAHI Symposium is coming up on President’s Day Weekend, 2/18 – 2/19, and is being held at UH Mānoa.  Click the link above for a detailed program and registration info.

Volumes added to Hamilton Library: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1WpWRGcsAE46YCgAwNNNJYQ0KUi4RRiD3FW9C3dp9Da8/edit?usp=sharing

Volumes added to the Center for Research in World History: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lPyAhiBPCp5lgtQXpqBOgM8q6AjLcPVvHALAYr5W0MU/edit?usp=sharing

 

Open Workshops Schedule and Registration for Spring 2017

This Spring I will be offering expanded versions of the text-mining and digital mapping workshops I’ve offered in the past.  These 8 sessions are part of the Library’s Open Workshop series, which includes a wide variety of interesting and useful topics, from introductions to project management software, to hands-on experience creating meaningful infographics.

The text-mining series will focus on Python and meet on Tuesday afternoons in March.

The mapping workshops will focus on R and meet on Tuesday afternoons in April.

The link below contains a more detailed description of my sessions, as well as those taught by my colleagues.  If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me, beales@hawaii.edu, and if I cannot answer your questions, I will put you in touch with the faculty members who are running the workshop you are interested in.

http://uhmlibrary.libcal.com/calendar/openworkshops/?cid=5881&t=d&d=0000-00-00&cal%5B%5D=5881

Don’t wait to register!  Seats are already filling up!  We look forward to seeing you in the Library!

(Three exclamation points in a row…  Prepare for punctuation police!)

The Badian Collection at Alexander Library

When Rutgers Professor Ernst Badian passed in 2011, he left a significant personal numismatic collection to the University.  His collection is a teaching collection and in order to increase access to the collection, the approximately 1258 coins are being photographed and added to the RUCore Fedora Repository hosted at Alexander Library.

http://coins.libraries.rutgers.edu/romancoins/

I originally started working on this project because the coins were being photographed from 7 angles, instead of the traditional 2 angles of obverse and reverse.  You can see an example of the 7 angles here.  https://rucore.libraries.rutgers.edu/rutgers-lib/41098/JPEG/play/#size:800,bgcolor:000000,start:1

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Alexander Library Historical Photography Database

The Alexander Library at Rutgers University has an extensive historical photography collection, but intellectual property policies at the University level are preventing library archivists from adding these to the RUCore System that makes resources available to the public.

In order to make accessing the images simpler for University departments/clients who have received clearance  to use the images, the University Archives needed an in-house database that uses a simple browser interface.  The link below is a proof of concept that provides both simple and advanced facet searches.

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Kite Photography

I recently had a discussion with some other photographers regarding my experiments with kite photography, and they asked me re-post some of the old notes regarding my low-budget KAP rigs.   So here they are.

As always, tons of great advice and discussions are available here.  http://arch.ced.berkeley.edu/kap/discuss/

I built two different budget rigs.  The first one I put together with a 3″ diameter 2-hole pipe strap.  You can get these at any hardware or plumbing supply store and they are less than $2. It only shoots straight down.

The second rig was built from a slice of 4″ PVC pipe after I took a look at these rigs built by Hamish.  With this system you have the option of shooting anywhere from 90 to 180 degrees, but you must adjust it on the ground.

 

Here are some photos I’ve taken with the two rigs.

If you are looking for a good shutter release to wire to a camera, using RC or timed controls, I recommend this one, it has worked well for several years.  http://www.dpcav.com/xcart/ShutterBug-Pro.html  Thanks for looking!

Teaching at Rutgers

I’ve taught college classes in photography before, but after joining the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers I branched out to teach other subjects that, at their best, are also an interesting blend of the arts and sciences.

I’ve advised student groups on their Information, Technology and Informatics (ITI) capstone projects and I’m also teaching E-Commerce and Web Design classes for the department.   In addition to the ITI program courses I’m also teaching Public Speaking for the Department of Communication, which is one of the core courses for the College Avenue general education program.

 

 

Hamilton Library Flood Recovery Video

Back in 2010, I was the University Photographer for the University of Hawaii.  The Hamilton Library at the University of Hawaii, Manoa was finishing up a long recovery operation that began after a flood and mudslide in 2004.  We did a short video about the recovery process for the University magazine Malamalama.  I’ve sent the link to so many people in the library community over the last few years, and I’ve finally decided to link the article and video here as well.

http://www.hawaii.edu/malamalama/2010/07/hamilton/

Creative Writing Classes at the Library!

Several years ago I taught several fantasy/sci-fi creative writing classes at ASSETS Middle School in Honolulu.  Now that I’m back in NJ,  I’ve decided to begin offering the writing workshops at a few NJ public libraries starting this spring.

This image is all over the web, and I don't know who created it, but it is a great visual tool and basis for a graphic organizer.

There were two classes I really loved to teach.  The first was a broad literature review based upon the Hero’s Journey narrative structure that Joseph Campbell used to demonstrate the common themes in human mythology.   We read/watched selections of everything from The Hobbit to Princess Mononoke.  (We also read some actual mythology.)  Students then used their understanding of the story structure to write their own hero’s journey, and we all had a lot of fun using our imaginations.

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NLP and HP

A while ago I was doing a mockup of an HP Lovecraft full text index for a MLIS class.  After the  brainstorming and initial design process I decided I was just building another version one of the many Lovecraft repositories already available online.

However, I’m bringing the project back to the todo list after learning some more about the Stanford NLP Link Parser and Carnegie Mellon Parser   And the text analysis possibilities of R and Python.   It would certainly be interesting to experiment with the fantastic proper nouns and eloquent sentences.  Just imagine the opening sentence of “Call of the Cthululu” being processed by the link software…  (It turns out it does a great job.)

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of the infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.”

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