Digital Collections News

Digital Collections is offering two hands-on workshops on ScreenFlow, a Mac-only tool that allows you to capture video of what you do on your computer screen.

Session 1: Thursday, Nov. 19th, 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM.

Session 2: Friday, Nov. 20th, 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM.

Both workshops will be held in the Digital Collections Training Lab, main library, second floor, east tower.

To sign up for one of these workshop sessions, please e-mail Julie Rudder at: j-rudder@northwestern.edu

Adobe recently launched Photoshop.com, which provides digital photo uploading, editing and sharing capabilities online. What sets it apart from other sites such as Flickr and Picasa is the ability to easily backup your photos on your desktop computer, laptop or external hard drive.

It's surprising just how fast you can create an account, upload, edit and share your photos in Photoshop.com. Even better, if you already have a collection of online photo albums at sites such as Facebook, you can easily add these albums directly into your Photoshop.com library. If you are familiar with Adobe Elements 7 and Adobe Premiere Elements 7, the capabilities here will look and feel familiar.

Photoshop.com has also developed a mobile iPhone Application for working on your photo albums on the go. This is available for free download through the iTunes store.

Check out Photoshop.com, and you can either take a "Test Drive" of the site, or create an account. There are two different types of accounts. First, there is the free "basic" account, which offers all of the capabilities on Photoshop.com with 2 GB of space for your photos. Then there is the upgraded basic account, which offers more memory for the price of about $1/GB annually (starting at 20 GB for $19.99 and capping at 500 GB for $499.99).

Screen shot of the home page after you login to Photoshop.com.

The following is from ARTstor updates.

ARTstor has released a new feature to Instructor-level users that streamlines the process of exporting images and descriptive data from ARTstor. You may now export image groups to Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 in just a few clicks. When viewing an image group, look for the Export to PowerPoint icon ( ) in the utility bar or click Tools > Export to PowerPoint. The resulting PowerPoint file will include:

* A title slide displaying the name of the image group.
* Individual slides for each image in the group, in the order in which they appear in the image group.
* ARTstor descriptive data for each image, appearing in the notes field of each slide.
* Embedded hyperlinks in each image that will launch the ARTstor Image Viewer when clicked in presentation mode (requires web access).

ARTstor has instituted certain export limits during the Beta period and will be evaluating the performance of this new feature over the fall semester. For more information, visit ARTstor Help (http://help.artstor.org/wiki/index.php/Presenting#Export_to_PowerPoint_.28Beta.29) or contact User Services at userservices@artstor.org

Northwestern University Library recently launched the public access interface for its book digitization initiative, The Mounting Books Project. NORTHWESTERN BOOKS allows you to read and explore entire books online. The digitized books are linked from the library's online catalog, NUCat. You may also access the site directly to search the full text by keyword.

Currently, there are over 167 books available online. If you are a faculty member who would like to request that an entire book be digitized, please contact digitalcollections@northwestern.edu for more information. Each book goes through a screening process to make sure it is a good fit for the digitized collection. The copyright status, size and condition of the book are evaluated for each request.

Repository Architect, Steve DiDomenico and Kirtas Production Specialist, Paul Clough presented Northwestern Books at a recent event of the Scholarly Resources and Technology Series.

NORTHWESTERN BOOKS is now in beta release and will officially launch at the end of June. More about the project history and scope (from http://digital.library.northwestern.edu/books/about.html)

Northwestern University Library (NUL) uses a Kirtas automated book scanner and the services of external vendors to reformat brittle books, digitize special collections, and fulfill targeted patron digitization requests. Prior to 2007, however, the Library lacked a mechanism for making digital book facsimiles available online. In fall 2007, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded NUL a one-year grant to develop software to gather page scans, apply book structure, prepare OCR and JPEG2000 derivatives, generate technical and preservation metadata, submit these book objects to a Fedora repository, and present a public book viewer with both page turning and search capabilities. The public book viewing site, Northwestern Books (books.northwestern.edu), became available in beta preview on April 6, 2009. The software developed through the Mellon-funded Mounting Books project will be available for download as open source on June 1, 2009.

Kirtas Production Specialist, Paul Clough operates the Kirtas book scanner.

AutoPager is an add-on available for people using Firefox as your web browser. It works well with many major sites like Google, that display multiple pages of search results by automatically loading the next page when you reach the bottom. This could be useful for quickly browsing search results without waiting for the next page to load.

Here's an example of how AutoPager works with Google Image search results. Everything above the gray bar is from the first page of results and everything below the gray bar is the second page of the search results.

Thanks for the tip Brendan!

We have two new staff in Digital Collections that provide new opportunities for you to learn more about using digital resources and media in your teaching and research.

Nicole Finzer joined the department as the Visual Resources Librarian on January 2, 2009. Nicole has a rich background in art image databases and image management. Contact Nicole if you would like to learn more about visual resources, or if you have an image collection that you are interested in digitizing and sharing with the Northwestern Community. Nicole can be reached at n-finzer@northwestern.edu or extension 7-1666.

Amanda Bates joined Digital Collections as our Instruction and User Services Assistant on December 8, 2008. Amanda teaches faculty and graduate students how to digitize and edit media in our 2East Training Lab. Amanda can be reached at a-bates@northwestern.edu or extension 7-1432.

In the spring of 2008, Art History faculty Huey Copeland co-taught a class called Modernism and the Black Metropolis with a faculty member from the University of Chicago. Digital Collections worked with these faculty to digitize over a thousand images for the class that are now available in the Digital Image Library. These images are a rich addition to the collection and can be used by Northwestern students, faculty and staff for study and research.

To find these images, log into DIL using your NetID and password and perform the keyword search "copeland metropolis".

Above image: Mount Royal, 1864, by Robert Scott Duncanson.

Are you interested in learning more using ARTstor for teaching and research?
An ARTstor representative will be on campus Thursday, November 6th and you are invited to attend any of the following sessions:

THURSDAY, November 6th, 2008.

10:00 am -- ARTstor introduction and overview in the 2East Reference Classroom (NUL 2699)

11:00am -- Teaching with ARTstor in the NUL Forum Room

1:00pm -- ARTstor for graduate students in the NUL Forum Room

2:00pm -- ARTstor for undergraduates in the NUL Forum Room

Hope to see you there!

Wow! 3M recently launched a hand held projector and you can plug in your laptop via VGA or use the composite video jack to connect other hand held devices like, digital cameras, iPhone and iPods.

The device uses LED illumination and the VGA resolution is 640 x 480. A popsci.com review states that projected in a well lit room, the images could only be viewed 11 inches wide but that a dark room would work well for moving images. 3M cites the projection range as 5" to 50".

Recent developments in computer technology have increased the portability of digital content. Perhaps now with digital projectors moving toward portability (affordable too - $359!) the insular relationship with digital content will begin to change. Sharing digital content now is fairly dependent on complex classroom configurations or an individual viewing web based content on their own personal computers. Maybe portable projectors could allow digital content to become more of a bridge builder or a catalyst of social and pedagogical interaction? Apparently, the goal is to put this technology inside cell phones! Now I really want an iPhone.

Many people have been having problems streaming media in the past few weeks. The most common problem as of late is a lack of necessary software on the viewer's computer.

If you are on campus, and connected to the Internet via a campus connection, you can watch streamed video through Video Furnace. These streamed videos are indicated by the "On-campus Buildings" parenthetical label on the title's streaming page. In this case, all you need is a web browser and an Internet connection of at least 2mbps.

If you are off campus, or have a slower internet connection, you can watch streamed video and listen to streamed audio with Real Player. These streamed videos are indicated by the "On or Off Campus" parenthetical label on the title's streaming page. In this case, you will need an internet connection of at least 400kbps AND Real Player software. While watching Real files is more convenient in terms of connection speed and connection location, it does require that you download and install the Real Player software yourself. You can download Real Player 10 for free. If you are still having trouble, make sure you have your VPN turned OFF, as the VPN connection can interfere with the streaming process.

For more troubleshooting information regarding streamed media, check out our troubleshooting page.