Welcome back to a new year and a new post here at the Baylor University Libraries Digital Collections blog! We’re excited to be back on campus and look forward to another year of providing you with unique insights into our ever-growing array of digital collections. This week, we’re taking a multimedia look at a pair…
Tag: Baylor University
A Diverse Topic Demands A Diverse Collection: The John Armstrong Collection
This is the final installment in our series of blog posts exploring the digital collections related to the life and legacy of John F. Kennedy. To read the previous posts, click here for part one, here for part two and here for part three. THE BEGINNING of a life-long obsession can often be hard to…
A Double Inspiration: The Tragic and Triumphant Lives of Judge Quentin Corley and Frank G. Coleman
As the work to post the audio of the final years of Dr. George W. Truett’s long career continues apace, I was generating a transcript for his sermon of January 3, 1943 when a story caught my attention. Truett uses a fair number of what I privately call his “modern day parables” to help illustrate…
The [Un]Surprisingly Consistent Vein of Sorrow in the Works of the Armstrong Browning Library’s Women Poets Collection
You could be forgiven for assuming that a collection of 400 works written by 19th century poetesses would encompass a mostly positive worldview. It would even be safe to assume, for example, that the kinds of women who had the educational backgrounds, available leisure time and access to commercial (and private) printers would tend to…
Expectations for the Freshman Class: An Examination of the Annual Catalogue of 1889-1890
Classes roared back into action last week, and the campus of Baylor University is once again full of vitality, excitement, confusion and triumph – and that’s just what’s involved with trying to find a parking space near the library. But seriously, we’re excited to have students back, as it’s their passion for learning that makes…
What We Did On Our Pre-Summer Vacation: News, Updates and Miscellanea from the DPG
If you follow our Facebook page (and if you don’t, we’d love it if you would!), you saw that the DPG took time the past two weeks to participate in our bi-annual “shutdown” period. We instituted this time a couple of years back to allow for recalibration, updating, new machinery installations and more as a…
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…
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…
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…
Loan, Give, Tip: How Your Materials Can Become a Part of Our Collections
One of the most rewarding parts of our work in the DPG is knowing that our efforts will lead to better exposure for Baylor’s unique collections and a better understanding of the world in which we live. The materials housed in Baylor’s special collections provide ample resources for a career’s worth of output, but there…
“So We Can Throw These Out Now, Right?”: What We Learned From Microfilming Newspapers and How It Shapes Our Digitization Strategy
Recently, I attended a workshop for a topic mostly unrelated to my work in digital collections. At introduction time, I gave a nutshell view of what I do by saying my group digitizes Baylor’s special collections and makes them available online. Despite the whole thing taking about 15 seconds and being intentionally generic, I’ve done…
Go With the (Work)Flow: How Things Get Done in the RDC
One thing we’ve learned about digitizing Baylor’s unique collections is the importance of front-end planning for the overall success of a project. It’s the crucial step that separates a “well, that went smoothly” project from a “nightmare of epic proportions” project. The challenge with workflow planning is that it’s the least glamorous part of almost…