Tag Archives: archives

Why Researching Our Ancestors Has The Power To Change Lives | Fast Company

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Back in 2010, when Dana Saxon decided that she wanted to trace her family’s lineage, her expectations were low. “I thought, for people who survived slavery, there’d be little public information,” she says. What happened next “blew her mind”–and led to the creation of Ancestors Unknown, an international nonprofit that is bringing the past to the most impressionable among us: young students.

Saxon discovered that public archives had not completely ignored the existence of the enslaved, who legally were considered the same as property. While putting together the puzzle of her family’s past, she had an epiphany: “There were so many ancestors waiting to be discovered, waiting to be appreciated for what they did to help get us to where we are today,” she says. Knowing that most school curriculums do not include the names and contributions of people from the African Diaspora, she “wanted to find a way to help young people place themselves and their ancestors in the larger context of history.”

READ MORE: Why Researching Our Ancestors Has The Power To Change Lives | Fast Company | Business + Innovation

The Mission of Ancestors Unknown… “To inspire the personal and academic success of students throughout the world by introducing them to their unknown ancestors.”

Sony Crams 3,700 Blu-Rays’ Worth of Storage in a Single Cassette Tape | Gizmodo

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Sony just unveiled tape that holds a whopping 148 GB per square inch, meaning a cassette could hold 185 TB of data. Prepare for the mixtape to end all mix tapes. Read more: Sony Crams 3,700 Blu-Rays’ Worth of Storage in a Single Cassette Tape  | Gizmodo

jim golden animates vintage devices for ‘relics of technology’ | designboom

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portland-based photographer jim golden delivers a hearty dose of nostalgia in his series ‘relics of technology’, comprising animated gifs and still life images. geometrically placed in a palette of vintage tones, the documented objects are society’s ‘technological’ media devices from the past, brought to life in a collection of moving images

See all the images: jim golden animates vintage devices for relics of technology | designboom

This Scientist Uses The New York Times Archive To Eerily, Accurately Predict The Future | Co.Exist

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The New York Times might be a widely respected chronicler of past events, but can we use it to divine the future? Kira Radinsky, a 27-year-old Israeli computer prodigy dubbed the “web prophet” says yes.

Radinsky, who appeared this year on MIT’s prestigious list of top 35 inventors under the age of 35 (previous winners include the likes of Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin), and who started university at the age of 15 and received her Ph.D. in computer science at 26, has developed a unique system which she claims has already predicted the first cholera epidemic in Cuba in many decades, many of the riots that started the Arab Spring, and other important world events.

The complex computer algorithms she wrote collect immense volumes of electronic data–most notably several decades of New York Times archives but also anything from Twitter feeds to Wikipedia entries–and processes it to extract little-known cause and effect patterns that can be used to predict future events.

Red more: This Scientist Uses The New York Times Archive To Eerily, Accurately Predict The Future | Co.Exist

Library of Congress Reports 75% of Silent Films Lost Forever | Mashable

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A conclusive study by the Library of Congress reports that only 1,575 of the nearly 11,000 films produced during the silent era still exist in their complete form. The study was commissioned by the National Film Preservation Board and written by historian and archivist David Pierce.

It’s not just obscure films of little interest that are lost: Lon Chaney’s London After Midnight – directed by Freaks auteur Tod Browning — is mostly gone (although it can be reconstructed scene for scene using still photographs), 20 Clara Bow films, The Patriot, directed by Ernst Lubitsch, the adaptation of Edna Ferber’s So Big starring Colleen Moore, and many more are just gone forever.

There are myriad reasons for this. Many of these movies were filmed on nitrate, which deteriorates rapidly and is also highly flammable. In 1935, Fox Studios lost its entire film catalog in a fire, hundreds more were lost in a 1967 fire at MGM studios, in 1978, The Eastman House lost 329 nitrate prints of silent films in another fire. Also, many of the studios just did not invest in preserving these films until it was too late for many of them. Before the advent of television and home video, studios just really didn’t see the point in keeping them around for future release. Notable exceptions are the works of D.W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford, who all took it upon themselves to have their films preserved.

However, one reason that doesn’t seem to be popping up in any of the articles about this is the fact that many of these films were intentionally destroyed. The 1917 version of Cleopatra, starring Theda Bara, was not just lost to time, it didn’t just disintegrate. The two remaining copies of the film were set on fire, purposely, along with most of her other films by Fox Studios after the Hays Code went into effect – as they were deemed too risque for the new rules. Though she made more than 40 movies throughout her career, only about three and a half exist today. Which is only slightly better than the fate of her cinematic rival Valeska Surrat, whose entire oeuvre is lost forever.

The first “lost” film was actually one of the films responsible for the introduction of the code in the first place. Convention City — a slightly raunchy comedy starring Joan Blondell, Dick Powell and Mary Astor — was completely destroyed by Warner Brothers after causing a boatload of controversy. There are, of course, rumors that a cut of the film may exist in Britain, but it’s yet to be found.

Not only were many pre-code films destroyed, many of those that weren’t were sealed up in a vault in 1934, and did not see the light of day until the 1950′s during the television era. However, because said pictures were not “up to code,” many were hacked up and re-edited, the original versions lost forever.

Pre-code Hollywood is especially important from a feminist point of view, because it was basically a golden age of female empowerment. Which, quite frankly, is a lot of the reason the government put the kibosh on it. Luckily, people like David Pierce are working to hold onto the ones we do have, and searching for others that may be stored in random old attics throughout the country.

Readworthy: Education & Technology, Librarianship

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Education & Technology

Librarianship

50 year after JFK’s death, new website asks people to share their stories about his legacy | The Washington Post

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There’s no shortage of places for people to share memories of where they were 50 years ago when they found out John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. But a website debuting Monday aims to take the focus from past to future by asking people of all ages — even those who weren’t alive when Kennedy died — to share their thoughts about how he has inspired them.

The website is part of the JFK Library and Museum’s commemoration of the 50th anniversary of JFK’s death, which is Friday. The museum also plans a new exhibit of never-before-displayed items from his three-day state funeral, including the flag that draped his casket and notes written by first lady Jacqueline Kennedy.

Visitors to the “An Idea Lives On” site can explore an interactive video that includes NASA Commander Chris Cassidy, former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, comedian Conan O’Brien, Freedom Rider Charles Person and others talking about Kennedy’s lasting impact.

Read more: 50 year after JFK’s death, new website asks people to share their stories about his legacy | The Washington Post.

Mystery of 18th century music book| This Is Guernsey

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Historians are trying to trace the mysterious author of an 18th century music album that has been discovered in a library archive.

The untitled, leather-bound songbook was found by an archivist sorting through a catalogue of collections in the Watt Library in Greenock, Inverclyde.

The inside cover is signed by a Hugh Cameron and dated 1709 and it also contains poems, a book list and a series of religious writings.

The music, such as A Trumpet Air and Auld Robin Gray, were not written by Cameron but copied from a book of popular Scottish music. Cameron’s book has been described as an early example of a music album – a copy of music that can be performed by the owner at their leisure.

An expert from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland has studied the unusual find and hopes to find out more about the person who wrote it.

Karen McAulay, music librarian at the Conservatoire, said: “A lot of the pieces in the manuscript have been copied out of one particular book.

“There was a publisher in Glasgow called Aird around that time and they published a series of books with fiddle tunes, mainly from Scotland but some from other countries as well, and when you go through this book you find that quite a lot of the tunes are from that one single volume (of the Aird book).

“These days you can quickly copy down with a photocopier or buy an album, but hundreds of years ago what you did was write your favourite tunes out and that’s exactly what this gentleman has done.”

The book is now going on display in the McLean Museum inside the library alongside other items from the archive, such as the Greenock Autograph Book which contains letters from Charles Dickens and Charles Darwin.

Library archivist Neil Dickson discovered the songbook last month when he was preparing the new display for Inverclyde Council.

He said: “The only reason it was found was because I was cataloguing the records which had previously never been catalogued before. We discovered the songbook and straight away I realised it was something special.

“It’s very unique and I always feel privileged to be doing the job I am and to make discoveries like this, because it’s essentially history that’s been untouched and it’s our job to explore and make it available, and hopefully we can find out more about the book and Hugh Cameron.”

Little else is known about the author and the library hope local people will be interested in the story.

Ms McAulay has researched Mr Cameron but has been unable to pinpoint exactly where he was from.

She said: “My guess is that he was possibly a schoolmaster. I found out that there were several Hugh Camerons who were schoolmasters at that time, one in Perthshire, and it could have been him, but I can’t be sure.

“What I can say is that he wasn’t a Church of Scotland minister because he was not in the minister listings for that time.

“The book is dated 1709 and the handwriting of the signature is very young but the handwriting of the lists of books is more mature so that would have been when the same person was a bit older. It may be something he’s added to over his life or it may be that a relative or someone else also used the book.”

The display is part of a nationwide Explore Your Archive campaign which aims to get people interested in local history.

Mr Dickson said: “Archives are very important, it’s essentially raw history.

“They’re usually the only resources we have for getting a detailed description of people’s life and society from the 17th century onwards.

“By searching through our archives in Inverclyde we’ve found some very, very special items and hopefully they can give people an insight in to the history of the area.”

via Mystery of 18th century music book | This Is Guernsey.

News Links

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Launching Later This Week: New York Public Library’s Shelley-Godwin Digital Archive | InfoDocket
The archive will offer digital versions of romantic texts.

Blogging Startup Medium Opens to All | AllThingsD
Medium, the blogging startup created by Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, announced on Friday that it is now open for all to use. Newcomers are required to sign in with a Twitter account, and can only post from Chrome, Firefox and Safari browsers.

Metadata: Pinterest and Getty Images Announce Partnership | InfoDocket
Getty Images and Pinterest partner to learn more about the images you pin.

Apple CEO: We’ve locked up 94% of education tablet market | CNET
Tim Cook calls the company’s share in the education arena unheard of in most businesses.

Nielsen to add web viewers to future TV ratings, with a little help from Facebook | Engadget
After several months of testing within the industry, Nielsen is finally ready to reveal its efforts to bake mobile viewing habits into its TV ratings system.

Authors face censorship decision to publish in China | Melville House

Kraków joins UNESCO Cities of Literature | thenews.pl

Yandex Buys KinoPoisk, ‘Russia’s IMDb’, To Move Into Film Search And Recommendation | TechCrunch

The Internet Archive Opens Its Historical Software Collection To All | Gizmodo, Internet Archive

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Gamers of a certain age will no doubt scream Oh wow, I remember that! as they click through the Internet Archive’s latest project.

The non-profit organization recently launched the Historical Software Collection, with the mission of making old programs accessible (including plenty of games!) that were originally released for platforms like Atari 2600, Apple II, and Commodore 64.

Software itself isn’t new to the Archive, but it’s spent the past couple of years making these programs playable in-browser. So whether it’s E.T. on Atari 2600 from 1982 or VisiCalc on the Apple II from 1979, there’s no need to download a heap of emulators to try them out.

Archiving video games can present special challenges, as David Gibson at the Library of Congress has explained so well. But the independent Internet Archive claims to have the largest software archive in the world, and it should be interesting to see how the next few years work out for them.

Perhaps one of the greatest challenges they’ll face is copyright. Technically, all of these programs are still covered under copyright law. And I have no doubt that the myriad companies responsible for managing the rights to something like E.T. are figuring out if they should intervene. Hopefully, no one will try to pull these programs. But if they do, it will be just one more example of how desperately broken our current copyright system is. [Internet Archive]

The Internet Archive Opens Its Historical Software Collection To All | Gizmodo