Category Archives: Digital Culture

President Emeritus Stern’s autobiography now online

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In 2001, the library published President Stern’s autobiography, No Problems, Only Challenges.  Thanks to the efforts of the Lowcountry Digital Library team, a digital edition is now available and freely available at http://lowcountrydigital.library.cofc.edu/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT=/CCF&CISOPTR=3874&REC=2.

If you haven’t had a chance to explore the collections available at the Lowcountry Digital Library we encourage you to do so.  The Lowcountry Digital Library digitizes and makes accessible unique local resources, providing access to materials that, in the past, required a fieldtrip or were not available at all. In order to provide a well rounded digital collection, the library works with partner institutions in a collaborative manner.  Participating institutions include:

The Lowcountry Digital Library uploads its 30,000th image!

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John W. White, Project Director of the Lowcountry Digital Library announced that yesterday the Lowcountry Digital Library uploaded its 30,000th image!  According to John, the project, which is just over a year old, includes digitized primary documents, photographs, publications, oral histories, and other resources from 10 different local cultural heritage institutions — most of which are fully transcribed and keyword searchable.

If you haven’t visited in while we encourage you to take another look.  Over 5,000 of these items have been added in just the last six weeks. http://lowcountrydigital.library.cofc.edu

Want to Know More About Our Campus?

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Download the College of Charleston self-guided university campus tour App for the iPhone and iPod touch.  Featuring videos, Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) assistance, photos, and more than 20+ beautiful locations on the historic College of Charleston campus, the tour is directed by students. Titled “College of Charleston Tour,” the App is a free download available at the Apple iTunes app store.

Don’t have an iPhone or iPod Touch? Watch the campus videos.

cinfolit cinema + information literacy

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A great new blog found by Jannette Finch, Librarian at the Lowcountry Graduate Center.

cinfolit available at http://cinfolit.blogspot.com/ compiles popular film scenes, TV shows and YouTube examples to help demonstrate information literacy skills in the classroom.

Posted by Ellie

Twilight in the Classroom!

One way to ask students to create their own criteria for evaluating the reliability of websites is through a clip from the popular film Twilight. We see the main character, Bella Swan, use Google to find a website about the Cold Ones and use the website to come to a conclusion about Edward Cullen. Students are asked questions about the reliability of the site based upon what they see and what other kinds of conclusions Bella can draw outside of vampire.

Here is the clip from YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BGVeLelmQc

Museum of London iPhone App

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Exerpt from: Spectrum > Mobile Learning, Libraries, And Technologies

The museum of London has launched an iPhone application which brings its extensive art and photographic collections alive in advance of the opening of spectacular new galleries next week. The free app, called “StreetMuseum [http://tinyurl.com/36s4bxk] ,” takes users to various sites in London where, via their iPhone screen, historical images of the city appear. Over 200 sites have been selected where users can look through their iPhones and see the past emerge.”

For more information, visit: SmartPlanet > Museum Of The Future: Mobile Augmented Reality by Joe McKendrick


U Kentucky Goes Digital with Thousands of Oral Histories

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By Denise Harrison, Cindy Skalsky – 09/09/09

Since its inception, the University of Kentucky Libraries Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History has amassed nearly 8,000 interviews. These are stories that often focus on Kentucky–its history, politics, authors, military, geography, and more. Interviews include the famous (Martin Luther King Jr., Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Stan Musial, Robert Penn Warren) and the not-so-famous from all walks of Kentucky life. These are not only precious recordings of personal stories that journal many aspects of the state; the recordings are also used by scholarly researchers. Historians, folklorists, anthropologists, linguists, armchair politicians, and horseracing buffs alike have found much to explore in this large, prestigious repository.

For more information, Listen to “Voices from the Collection,” “Voices from the Collection,” an audio introduction to the Nunn Center.

Community Collections

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The Great War Archive (part of the the University of Oxford digitization project The First World War Poetry Digital Archive) includes historical materials related to First World War experiences that have been digitally captured and cataloged by members of the public.  Digital copies of publicly owned artifacts were submitted via the Web between March and June 2008.   The collection includes family photos, diaries, letters, artifacts, and oral histories.  The collection is still growing on The Great War Archive Flickr Group.

If you are interested in how to go about starting a community collection, Stuart D. Lee and Kate Lindsay’s article If You Build It, They Will Scan: Oxford University’s Exploration of Community Collections is a great place to start!

Another great digital collection based on the community collection principle is Flickr’s The Commons. This great picture of Stubby, the American army dog with the rank of sergeant contributed by Nationaal Archief is one of many great photos that can be found and used without copyright restriction.

Stubby the American Army Dog

Appellate Court Overturns Blackboard Patent

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Blackboard’s patent on learning management system technologies has been overturned by the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The court ruled Monday in favor of Desire2Learn and invalidated some claims in patent No. 6,988,138, also known as the “Alcorn patent” or the “138 patent.”

[…] Blackboard made concessions to the open source community, releasing a legally binding pledge that it would never assert its patent claims against an open source developer, among other things. The pledge fell short of the SFLC’s demand for Blackboard to renounce the patent, however, and the move was greeted with a mixture of relief and continued outrage at Blackboard’s unwillingness to drop its suit against Desire2learn and unwillingness to renounce the patent claims.

Glad to see that an appellate court overturned Blackboard’s patent of Learning Management Systems. It will be interesting to see how Blackboard’s patent for “technology used for Internet-based education support systems and methods” is finally resolved.

Read the full Campus Technology article by David Nagel

15 Minutes a Day: How to Photosynth

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Tracy, Jared, Jerry and I have been exploring Photosynth technology, which creates 3-D environments from overlapping photographs.  With a little screen capturing, some Public Domain music from Internet Archive and a bit of video editing we turned it into a little tour for the library.  If your curious how we did it we will be going over the process in an upcoming Thursday@3@Addlestone session.

Curious how we did it? Watch the YouTube video below, read about and download Photosynth for yourself, or watch some other videos: