Hot-air balloons that delivered newspapers, hurricane destruction on Brown's campus and portraits of President Abraham Lincoln are among the topics covered on Curio, the new weekly blog launched last Wednesday by Digital Production Services, the University library department tasked with digitizing materials in library collections.
The blog features objects from the library's special collections that are "rare, unusual and intriguing," according to the blog's tagline. This can refer to either the objects' content or to the process used to make them available online.
The first entry titled "Setting up shop in the Lincoln room!" was published Sept. 17. In the post, Digital Production Services photographer Lindsay Elgin recounted her experience documenting a portrait of President Lincoln in the John Hay Library's Lincoln Room. She describes difficulties she encountered during the shoot, such as the location and angle of the painting and how she overcame these obstacles using advanced technology and a little creativity.
One method involved placing her tripod on a table to better reach the painting. "Climbing up on tables is not something I do everyday," Elgin told The Herald. That kind of rarity is exactly what the blog seeks to showcase.
About 10,000 objects are digitized by Digital Production Services every year, said Ann Caldwell, who heads the department. But only objects that particularly stand out to the department's staff - either for their content or for how they have been digitized - are posted.
The department has prioritized promoting a balance between posts pertaining to the digitization process as opposed to those examining particular objects.
These two considerations are reflected in the three posts that have been uploaded so far. Readers can find entries focusing on unusual digitization processes, historically significant documents and timely materials.
In the most recent blog entry, Digital Imaging Specialist Ben Tyler uploaded an image of "Le Ballon Poste: Journal du Siege de Paris," a newspaper that began during the 1870 siege of Paris to keep the flow of news going across siege lines. Tyler discusses the background of the newspaper and the process he used to digitize the fragile paper in his post.
"I was intrigued to find myself digitizing an original edition," he wrote on the blog.
The University has been digitizing items from its collections for about 10 years now, said Robin Ness, the digital production specialist in the department, but Curio aims to bring these items into the spotlight. With the help of its own Twitter account, @BrownCurio, and publicity on Digital Production Services' Facebook page, Curio can display rare items in the library's collections to anyone in the world.
As a Master of Fine Arts student at the Rhode Island School of Design, Elgin said she was unaware of all the items the University owned. Some items the department digitizes are even kept in a vault at the Hay. Now, Curio introduces students and the public to items that "people don't even know exist," Elgin said.
