In a year filled with firsts for the Digital Projects Group, we’re excited to announce another. Two Baylor University faculty members – Dr. Greg Hamerly (Associate Professor, Computer Science) and Dr. William Weaver (Assistant Professor, Great Texts Program – Honors College) – shared the news with this week that they had received a URC grant…
Category: Collections
The Brazos River: Impacting Life in Waco, Scholarship at Baylor
In support of our colleagues at The Texas Collection and their upcoming event, The Brazos River and the Baylor Achives, we’re reposting a link from last year that shows the awesome power of the Brazos River in flood stage from 1908. We encourage you all to attend this excellent event next week, and don’t forget…
A Club for Every Interest: The 1906 “Round-Up”
One of the great joys of my job as Curator of Digital Collections is the opportunity I get to go in-depth with the materials we host as part of the Baylor University Libraries Digital Collections. They are drawn from every special collection library on campus, and they are filled with hidden treasures both revelatory and…
Collection Spotlight: The Keston Digital Archive
Baylor University is a long way from Kirov, Russia and the halls of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, but one digital archive unites these seemingly disparate places through the common bond of The Keston Collection. The Keston Digital Archive currently houses more than 1,800 items related to the subject of religious persecution…
If You Scan Something, Set It Free: The Surprising Places We Find Our Digital Objects Online
For the parents among our readership, you well know that stepping back and letting your child experience life on their own – from their first unaided steps to the day they walk the stage at graduation – is one of the toughest things you have to master. And even though you know it’s part of…
Bonnie and Clyde (and Pat) and The Texas Collection Artifact That Ties Them Together
Frank Jasek, the library’s resident bookbinder and preservationist extraordinaire, wheeled the book truck into my office, his face aglow with mischief. “Have you ever seen one of these before?” he asked, gesturing to a large bound volume measuring about a foot tall by two feet wide. The words “CALABOOSE REGISTER” were stamped on its cover….
“The Path of Good Intentions is a Steep Learning Curve” – An Update from Zada Law
Longtime readers of this blog may remember a post we wrote about a researcher at Middle Tennessee State University named Zada Law and her work to use GIS (Geographic Information System) data and our historic War of the Rebellion Atlas collection to map the Federal defenses of Nashville, Tennessee. Zada sent us an update…
The Rise and Fall of the Soash Empire: A West Texas Hard Luck Story
Everything’s bigger in Texas, the hoary old chestnut reminds us, and no group of people understood the Lone Star State’s geographic expansiveness like the speculators who bought up acres of prime Texas land for pennies on the dollar and hoped to turn a quick profit by selling them to newly arrived immigrants and Yankees looking…
A Century of Daily Baylor History, Now Online: The “Lariat” Digital Collection
If you follow us on Facebook, you’ll recall a few weeks ago that I teased some “big news” was forthcoming. Well, the wait is over, and we’re excited to announce that thanks to the efforts of the Digitization Projects Group, The Texas Collection and the office of Student Publications, the entire run of the Baylor…
Bringing Cartography, Digitization and Texana Together for a Limited Time Via Our Digital Collections [UPDATED]
If you’ve followed our blog for awhile, you may recall a post about the special digitization equipment we utilize here at the Riley Digitization Center, including our large format map scanner, the Cruse CS-285. Well, the “big guy” got a workout this past summer when we digitized a number of rare and interesting maps from…
A Sisyphean* Task, An Unending Passion: “A Life’s Work” and Its Connection to the BGMRP
Back in 2010, a crew of professional documentary filmmakers visited the Digitization Projects Group. They were on a mission: to interview and film the team of professionals working on the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project (BGMRP), a project brought to life through the vision of Baylor University journalism professor Robert Darden. David Licata and his…
Feeding Our Nostalgia: A Sampling of Waco’s Favorite Former Restaurants, Via the BU Libraries Athletics Archive
Although the temperatures outside our offices here on campus don’t reflect it yet, the calendar says we’ve officially entered fall. And with its arrival come the requisite things we love about autumn like changing leaves, cooler days, and a tidal wave of foods flavored with pumpkin and cinnamon. But nothing says “fall” on a university…