Sep
10
Morton digital collection ONLINE, your input requested
September 10, 2009 | Subscribe to this post
Posted by Elizabeth Hull in Behind the Scenes
Well, we’ve been hinting about it for some time, and now, I’m SO VERY ECSTATIC to say that the Hugh Morton digital collection is finally available on the web! I can barely contain myself.
We’re really excited to make this tool available, not only because we’ve put so much work into it, but because it provides the most direct access to Hugh Morton’s work yet. As of today, there are nearly 1,500 images in the digital collection — while this is A LOT, it’s of course only a small percentage of the Morton collection as a whole. Certain topical areas are more heavily represented than others at this point, simply because we haven’t finished processing the collection yet! We’ll be adding batches of new images regularly over the next year.
Take ‘er for a spin and let us know what you think! (Be sure to play with the 3-D Wall option, which you can activate by clicking on “View in 3D” above the thumbnail images in your search results, and take advantage of our great new image viewer by zooming in and out, clicking and dragging, and expanding and contracting the viewing area). We really do want your input, on ease of use, searchability, appearance, and of course, the images themselves. Tell us if you see something identified incorrectly or incompletely. Tell us what you’d like to see added to the digital collection. Tell us how great (or un-great) we are. You can do this either by leaving comments here on the blog, or by using our online feedback form.
Some of our plans for further developing the digital collection include: adding lots more images; adding a Google map, via which you can browse selected images geographically; and linking together all the Morton access tools (the finding aid, the blog, and the digital collection).
Special thanks go out to David Meincke (our student assistant, intrepid digitizer and gifted metadata-provider) and library staff members Kim Vassiliadis, who did the original design work, and Andy Jackson, who finalized the design and handled the behind-the-scenes computery stuff. They all did great work, and are great to work with. We hope you’ll join us in celebrating this important Morton project milestone.
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6 Comments so far
Links
- ArchivesNext - Blog examining archives and technology
- Biographical Conversations with . . . Hugh Morton - An episode from the UNC TV program featuring a one-on-one conversation with Hugh Morton
- Chapel Hill Memories - Recollections and memorabilia from Chapel Hill native Charly Mann
- Duke Digital Collections - Updates and discussion from staff of the Duke Libraries’ Digital Collections Program
- Field Trip South - Blog of the Southern Folklife Collection (SFC), Wilson Library, featuring SFC, follow SFC holdings, events, sights, sounds, etc.
- Grandfather Mountain - Scenic attraction and nature preserve in Linville, NC owned by Morton from 1952 until his death in 2006
- Morton Biography from Grandfather Mountain website
- NC Collection Photographic Archives
- NC Digital Collections Collaboratory - For Digital Librarians in North Carolina to share experiences, exchange ideas, and develop collaborations.
- NC Miscellany Blog - Blog of the North Carolina Collection, Wilson Library, UNC-CH
- Posterity Project - Blog related to archives, history, civic responsibility, and open access to public records in Tennessee
- Processing the Chew Family Papers - Reports on an NEH-funded project to process the papers of the Chew Family at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
- Southern Short Course in News Photography - America’s longest running photojournalism seminar, of which Morton was a founder
- Southern Sources - Interesting staff finds, curiosities, old favorites, and other cool stuff from Wilson Library’s Southern Historical Collection
- UNC Libraries
- UNC-CH Digital Collections homepage
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[...] Libraries’ request for feedback on the newly-launched Hugh Morton digital collection in [...]
You ought to be ecstatic. It looks fantastic!
Congratulations. I know how hard y’all have worked on it.
I’m so happy for you, Elizabeth!! It looks phenomenal and I love the 3D option! Congrats!
You’ve done an amazing job on this collection! Here’s what I really like:
* clean, aesthetically pleasing design
* good integration of your blog posts into collection homepage
* nice prominently placed rotating highlights — gives a great taste of what’s in the collection
* link to the finding aid
* helpful dynamic ‘browse’ pages
* really slick (and useful!) Cooliris implementation
You can bet we’ll be looking at your site for inspiration during our Digital Collections redesign this fall at Duke…
FYI, we’re aware of some technical issues with the indexing of the collection right now and are attempting to resolve them….
This is fantastic…congratulations, Elizabeth, David, Kim, and Andy. Looking forward to the next installment.