Boomer Sooner

Because of the fact that OU is going to be playing in the Big XII Championship and may play for the national title, I thought I would do a posting related to Sooner Football. The Western History Collection at OU has a cool digital photography collection related to OU football. The images are of the stadium, the teams for each year, shots during games, cheerleaders, and other things. I really like the photos of Owen Field because they show the progression of it being built. One of the images from the construction is below:

Stadium

Most of the images are really old. I only saw a few newer ones. But I like old photographs and I think that this collection gives you a good idea about OU football before today and how different things were. So, if you love OU football, like I do, check out these photos. They are pretty neat.

Trees

Because I did my digital collection project on the trees on OU’s campus. I thought I would look around and see what else was out there related to trees. The Academy of Natural Sciences had a small digital collection of drawings of the trees of Philadelphia. The collection is called Philadelphia Trees and Botanical Art in the Late 18th and Early 19th Centuries. The images are all sketches and paintings. They are very detailed and seem very accurate. I really like this collection because they give a lot of information about each image in the collection. They give you information about the artist and they give good information about the tree being depicted as well. My favorite trees are oak trees and willow trees. Below is an image from the collection of an oak leaf.

Oak

Canadian Museum of Civilization

The Canadian Museum of Civilization is a really great website that I found. There is a ton of stuff there relating to all kinds of different things. They describe their permanent exhibits, have many online exhibits, include educational stuff for kids, and they also have a movie schedule. The online collections are really great though and there are many different ones to browse through. They are divided into categories such as Culture, Arts and Crafts, Histories, etc. Each on of the categories has several online collections that you can browse through. One of the exhibits is about Egypt and even has a virtual tour. What is also nice is that each of the online exhibits are very different from each other. They topics are very different but also the structures of all of the exhibits are unique as well.

Mysteries of Egypt

Chinese Paper Gods

The digital collection Chinese Paper Godsat Columbia University is a really cool collection. The images that they have in the collection are so vibrant and beautiful. Each images has information about what you are seeing, both historically and characteristically. There are 231 items in the collection. You can browse through them by using the index or you can click through the categories. They are divided into two categories, Ceremonial and Display, and then each of these categories has sub-categories. You can choose a catagory and then see many more images within it. There is also a more detailed description of where the collection came from and who donated it. The following is one of the items from the digital collection:

Zhong Kui. Image from the Chinese Paper Gods collection.

All of the items in the collection have this same vibrancy and color. I really suggest that you browse through them to see all of the different items. I also think that the website is very well organized. It is very simple to navigate and has a very pleasing appearance.

What does “Digital” mean?

I found this page from George Mason Universityand thought it was very helpful. I think that we tend to throw out words all of the time when we only have a small idea or a generalized idea about what it really means. So I like to Google words just to see what different explanations I can find so that I have a more complete understanding for the work or concept. This page describes what “digital” really means and it also talks about digital audio. There is a section at the end that describes the difference between a bit and a byte and they also explain what all of the different files types that there are. We all use these files so often that I think it is a good idea to understand what each one is. I like this page because I think it is all described in an easy to understand way.

Image from GMU

Class Digital Collections

I have been looking through some of the digital collections being built in the class. There are a lot of really neat ideas and the images that everyone is posting are very nice. My favorites are probably the Appalachian pottery collection that Sara posted and Catherine’s pictures from Ghost Ranch. I think that the pottery that Sara features on her page is so awesome! I am glad she put this together because not many people would get a chance to see some of the unique art that is out there. Catherine’s pictures are really nice too. I love photography and even considered majoring in photography. I take my camera with me everywhere and take a ton of pictures. I think that the pictures that Catherine took are very good. I also like how she used both black and white and color pictures for her collection. It has been really fun putting my collection together and I hope that everyone else in the class enjoyed it as much as I did.

Do You Love Food?

If you love cooking and trying new recipes, you will love Tastespotting. This is a website that is a huge collection of recipes that come from other websites, personal blogs, personal websites, etc. What is really great about the site is that all of the recipes are first shown as a picture of the dish. So, when you go to the site, you see all of these amazing images. Then, if you click on the image you want to learn more about, you are directed to the site where it is originally from. At the original site, you can get the recipe, see more pictures, and even look at other recipes. Also, from the Tastespotting home page you can switch your view to see drinks instead of food. You should really check it out. It is sooo cool! Below is one of the recipes for today (11/18/2008).

Recipe from Tastespotting.com

Adobe Digital Kids Club

The Adobe Digital Kids Club is a portion of the Adobe website that has a ton of information for kids and teachers about using digital photography and digital video. There are activities that are suggested to teachers that they can do with their kids to teach them how to use digital equipment and how they can utilize digital media. There are even collections on the site that you can browse through. The page is called Showcases and Galleries and has some neat stuff that kids have put together with the help of their teachers. One of the collections is called Katrina Stories and it is a collection of video testimonials about Katrina and its effect on the child making the video. I am glad to see that there is some focus on digital media in classrooms. Digital media has become a normal part of our lives and I think that the sooner you learn about it and get to create things with it the better.

History of Science Title Page Digitization Project

I just noticed that the History of Science Collection has begun digitizing the title pages of many of the books in the collection. So far 8,300 books have had their title pages digitized. You can search the title pages by date range or century and you can also do a regular title search or an advanced search. I thought it was neat that they were doing this and that you could have the opportunity to look at the cover of the book before going to the History of Science Collection. It can be difficult to make time to visit the collection so it is nice to be able to see what the item looks like before going. The digitized title page collection can be found at the following site:

http://digital.libraries.ou.edu/histsci/

Also, librarians here at Bizzell Library wrote an article about the process:

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a904204105~db=all~jumptype=rss

Sanborn Maps

I really love reading and using maps and looking at old maps. The Sanborn maps are some of the most interesting city maps I have ever used. The Sanborn maps are city maps that show the growth of a city and development within the city. They are mostly used for fire insurance. You can use the maps to see when your home was built or see new roads and neighborhoods. OU libraries has full access to these maps for the state of Oklahoma so you can access them for free through the OU library catalog. Just click on the electronic access link in the catalog record to access the Sanborn website. Every once in a while I just like to get in there and look at the maps and when I moved into the rental I am in now I used the maps to see how old the home was. Once you access the website, you can choose the city or town in Oklahoma that you want to look at. Not every town is listed but there is quite a bit there. Then, you just select one of the available years. Once you have the maps open, you can zoom in and out to get a better view of the map. Also, most of the maps have a list of all of the streets so that you can find things easier. You can also download the image you want or print it out. Even if you do not need to find the age of your home or business, I still suggest looking at them just for the fun of it!