1881 Lawrence High School football team
1881 Lawrence High School football team from Lawrence Public Library

 

April was a dark and gloomy month weather-wise.  Maybe that accounts for there only being three contributors this month.  The Boston Public Library added 1873 items to the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee collection, bringing that collection up to over 5,000 items.  Boston College re-harvested over 80 items.  Lawrence Public Library contributed many small collections and one large one.  The latter is the Lawrence High School Athletic Department collection of over 130 team photographs.  You can see a very solemn 1881 football team on the left.  Maybe it’s because they appear to have been forced to pose in their long underwear and watch caps.  And that football looks more like a basketball.  How things have changed…

 

 

 

 

Boston College

1 new collection; 84 new items re-harvested

Boston Public Library

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901). Prints and Drawings – 9 items added to existing collection
Press Photography from the Brearley Collection – 753 items added to existing collection
Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee – 1873 items added to existing collection

Lawrence Public Library

A.W. Stearns – 1 item
Americanization Poster – 1 item
Antebellum Citations – 5 items
Civil War Women, Summer Institute 2008 – 3 items
Donovan Park – 1 item
Franklin Associates – 22 items
Lawrence High School Athletic Department – 132 items
Lawrence High School Classes – 2 items
Lawrence State Armory – 1 item
Lawrence, Mass. Board of Health, Records – 10 items
Lawrence, Mass. Engineering Department – 7 items
Lawrence, Mass. Flood of 1936 – 76 items
Lawrence, Mass. Glass Plate Negatives – 14 items
Lawrence, Mass. Textile Strike of 1912 – 13 items
Leonard Bernstein Poster – 2 items
Massachusetts Mayors’ Club – 1 item
New Deal Seminar, April 2008 – 3 items
Religion in Massachusetts Seminar, May 2008 – 12 items
Revolutionary War, Summer Institute 2008 – 1 item
Schenk Family – 1 item
Southern Slavery Seminar, November 2008 – 7 items

We’re very excited to present our newest promotion effort: Bookmarks!
We have two styles of bookmark designed to raise awareness about our wonderfully rich online resources. The Digital Commonwealth exists to advance the dissemination of collections from Massachusetts to a wider audience through shared resources and a single website. These bookmarks are a fun way to let libraries and other cultural institutions raise awareness about this resource with users.

Bookmark Design 1
Bookmark Design 1, front and back
Bookmark Design 2
Bookmark Design 2, front and back

If you’d like to share these with your users, we will send you stacks of bookmarks in either or both of the two designs. Please contact the Outreach Committee at outreach@digitalcommonwealth.org  with your preferences.

Recently, Digital Repository Developer Steven Anderson and Web Services Developer Eben English presented at the Open Repositories 2014 conference in Helsinki and at the Northeast Fedora Users Group (NEFUG) meeting in Boston.

Open Repositories is an annual international conference that brings together people and institutions responsible for the development, implementation, and management of digital repositories to share information and strategies for long-term preservation and access. Steven’s presentation was entitled “When Metadata Collides: Lessons on Combining Records from Multiple Repository Systems.” It summarizes the practical challenges involved in combining diverse descriptions, authorities, and technologies into the shared Digital Commonwealth repository and highlights the imaginative ways Steven and Eben have addressed them with the help of the Digital Projects department. Watch the seven-minute presentation online. Move the slider to the 52 minute mark to start with Steven’s talk. (Editor’s note: the previous link has had intermittent connection issues. Please continue to try the link until it resolves correctly.)

During the NEFUG meeting, Eben and Steven gave a presentation titled “digital_commonwealth_presentation” during the Hydra session. Steven presented on slides, that can be viewed here, and Eben gave a 10 minute demonstrations of teh actual portal. Steven also gave a lightening talk (aka “Dork Short”) about metadata combination challenges.