Digital Library Projects headspace

In anticipation for the addition of a large number of textual documents to be added to our online digital archive in the next year, we've added a new image viewer that allows for much more interaction with the digital items. Now a user can zoom in and navigate through an image or document. Here is an example: http://omeka.library.kent.edu/special-collections/items/show/1458 One feature that we are excited to have in place with this new viewer is to provide a slideshow/scroll view of items with multiple pages or images. Thanks to Project Mirador ! Check back for more additions in the coming months.

We have recently scanned around fifteen recent years of our daily student newspaper, the Daily Kent Stater. Check out the new additions here: dks.library.kent.edu/ We have the earliest papers published in 1926-1939 remaining in this project to retroactively digitize the student newspaper, and hope to get these completed in the next few years.

Our friends at the Kent Historical Society have digitized their holdings of the Kent Tribune newspaper, which is a great resource for folks during research on the city of Kent in the early 1900s. Content is hosted by the Ohio History Connection, and can be found here .

Love this so much- Check out DPLA's collections and submit your GIF to their annual contest: https://dp.la/info/gif-it-up/ A great way to get folks engaged with digital collections and have some fun! Check out last year's winners for some inspiration: https://dp.la/info/2015/12/08/meet-the-winners-of-gif-it-up-2015/

This week, we have added a handful of video content into our digital repository from the May 4 Collection. This represents just a small portion of the video collection that is out of copyright that the library is able to share openly, and was transferred from VHS over the last year. Please take some time and give it a look: http://omeka.library.kent.edu/special-collections/kent-state-shootings-digital-archive/ We are looking forward to adding video content from the May 4 Oral History Collection down the road as well, so check back for more updates!

While not a digital projects related thread, I did want to write about something that I have always loved about this campus. I have long been fascinated by Robert Smithson's earthwork on the Kent State campus. Smithson had been a visiting artist on campus just months before the Kent State shootings in May, 1970. My mother remembers attending one of his lectures on campus during that time, and also reflected on the years since the art work was created, saying that it was often a sore subject for the university. Shortly after the shootings, someone spray painted "May 4 Kent" along one of the beams, perhaps then creating a more political piece. There is also some speculation that the site was cleared by university grounds employees who were tired of its presence on campus. There is even a reflection of the immediate disapproval of the work in some articles in the Daily Kent Stater: Like this one , dated February 4, 1970 complaining about the piece, or another insight cla...

Over the winter break, we were busy getting another decade of the student newspaper online, as well as some truly unique audio material from the May 4 Collection. Visit  http://dks.library.kent.edu/  to browse the new decade (1990s). As well, we also have added many unique reel-to-reel  audio  recordings from the May 4 collection to our May 4 Digital Archive. These are quite fascinating- with many live radio broadcasts from the hours, days and weeks after the shootings as well as many public hearings, and I can truly say that it is very easy to get lost in these recordings.  Some of the recently digitized items include previously inaccessible audio recordings of radio call-in forums, a speech by University President Robert I. White the day after the shootings, a press conference with six students who met with President Richard M. Nixon just days after the shootings, the Scranton Commission hearings , and a speech made by Dick Greg...