“This library has every book ever published.” A visit to the British Library.
The post The British Library: The Importance of Legal Deposit appeared first on The Scholarly Kitchen.
“This library has every book ever published.” A visit to the British Library.
The post The British Library: The Importance of Legal Deposit appeared first on The Scholarly Kitchen.
The role of libraries and archives as streaming grows, choice declines, and the death of the red envelopes arrives.
The post Libraries, Archives, Choice and Red Envelopes: The Growth of Streaming, the Decline of Choice, and the Death of the Red Envelope appeared first on The Scholarly Kitchen.
When the University of Michigan was forced to disconnect from the internet last week, it resulted in disruptions to several key services it provides to the broader research community, such as the University of Michigan Press, HathiTrust, and ICPSR. What can we learn from this experience?
The post Shared Infrastructure and the Recent Downtime at the University of Michigan appeared first on The Scholarly Kitchen.
An appeals court has ruled that it is unconstitutional for the government to require deposit of published works in the Library of Congress
The post Appeals Court Rules That Library of Congress Can No Longer Require Deposit of Published Works appeared first on The Scholarly Kitchen.
Studying the way we’ve studied the past is mutual work. Archivists and librarians, and scholars using their collections, have each been producing critical archives scholarship that too often remains within disciplinary and professional siloes.
The post Critical Archives appeared first on The Scholarly Kitchen.
This year, Ithaka S+R is examining the shared infrastructure for scholarly communication and will ultimately make recommendations for its future. This week, we issued a draft of our project report. Please share your comments, suggestions, and other feedback by the end of August.
The post Shared Infrastructure for Scholarly Communication: A Draft Report for Comment appeared first on The Scholarly Kitchen.
Revisiting a post from 2017: Several services aim to gather all publications comprehensively. Who has all the content?
The post Revisiting: Who Has All The Content? appeared first on The Scholarly Kitchen.
Who holds the particular book needed by a reader? What is the balance between the personal library and the institutional collection?
The post Trust and the Personal Library appeared first on The Scholarly Kitchen.
What are the likely impacts of the OSTP’s Nelson Memo on data sharing for researchers and repositories?
The post Guest Post — The Outlook for Data Sharing in Light of the Nelson Memo appeared first on The Scholarly Kitchen.
Continuing our fascination with unique libraries, today we look at an archive in an active salt mine.
The post Deep Storage: An Archive in a Salt Mine appeared first on The Scholarly Kitchen.
The restoration of a glorious portrait raises questions about the scholarly Version of Record.
The post Restoring the Version of Record appeared first on The Scholarly Kitchen.
A look at the NASIG Digital Preservation Policy and a request for comments.
The post Guest Post — Seeking Feedback on a Model Digital Preservation Policy, a Project of the NASIG Digital Preservation Committee appeared first on The Scholarly Kitchen.
Since 1996, the Internet Archive has been capturing the World Wide Web but also doing so much more to preserve our digital world behind the scenes.
The post Celebrating 25 Years of Preserving the Web appeared first on The Scholarly Kitchen.
Curation takes on many forms. Here, the remarkable work that went into the restoration of Mark Rothko’s “Black on Maroon” after it was vandalized.
The post Restoring Rothko appeared first on The Scholarly Kitchen.
Human ancestors that walked the earth left few traces of their passage. Some of their footprints have lithified, or turned to stone, but some survive to this day, unlithified, in soft sediment such as silt. These fragile records of ancient footprints pose a sizable challenge to archaeologists today: how do you preserve the ephemeral? According to new research published in PLOS ONE, the answer may be to “record and digitally rescue” these footprint sites.
The authors explored two methods in this study: digital photogrammetry, where researchers strategically photograph an object in order to derive measurements; and optical laser scanning, where light is used to measure the object’s physical properties. To begin, the authors filled trays with mixtures of sand, cement, and plaster and instructed a participant to walk through these samples. Four wooden 1 cm cubes were then placed beside a select number of footprints and photographs were taken. A laser scanner was then used to measure the same footprints. This simple procedure was also replicated outside of the lab, at a beach in North West England.
In their results, they found that both methods offered similar levels of precision (though, the laser scanner was “slightly more accurate”) and that differences between the two were not statistically significant. These two methods are not, however, without their respective strengths and challenges. Photogrammetry can be an advantage in situations where records need to be taken quickly and inexpensively, as field work can be completing using a camera, tripod, and measuring equipment. This practice is, however, especially subject to human error. Additionally, the accuracy of the images – and consequently the measurements derived from the images – may be compromised by extreme lighting conditions and the depth of the footprint or impression. Alternately, laser scanning is more appropriate in conditions where a high degree of precision is required and footprints are more fragile (and thus unlikely to remain in an “optimal” condition). Laser scanners are, however, more expensive and require a large energy source. The authors advocate that both methods can, and should, be used in tandem to supplement each other.
These digital tools provide an innovative solution to preserving footprint records, especially in cases where traditional on-site, or off-site, preservation is impractical and costly. To learn more about this research and the merits and challenges of digital rescue archaeology, read the full text of the study here.
Image is Figure 6 of the manuscript.
Citation: Bennett MR, Falkingham P, Morse SA, Bates K, Crompton RH (2013) Preserving the Impossible: Conservation of Soft-Sediment Hominin Footprint Sites and Strategies for Three-Dimensional Digital Data Capture. PLoS ONE 8(4): e60755. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0060755