California Digital Library » jcolman

Announcing the UC Library Reprints Service

jcolman — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 16:46:24 +0000

By Jason Colman, Project Specialist, Mass Digitization

The UC Libraries have digitized hundreds of thousands of public domain books from their collections. Now, in partnership with Hewlett-Packard, many of these books will be made available for purchase as reading copies just in time for holiday shopping. For a reasonable cost, reproductions of works like John Muir’s The Mountains of California can be shipped directly to your doorstep via Amazon.com, whether for research or pleasure reading. Before reprinting, each book is digitally cleaned and enhanced to produce a better reading copy. Approximately 30,000 books are available for purchase now, and more are being added continuously.

You can see the reprints for sale on the UC Library Reprints website, or find them via the “Buy a copy” links in HathiTrust. Visit the CDL Mass Digitization page for more information.

Reading 5 Million Books at Once: Google N-Grams at TEDxBoston

jcolman — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 23:40:02 +0000

Google has digitized millions of books from libraries across the world, including the UC Libraries. While our digitized books are great for traditional reading and research, the corpus also offers a unique opportunity for new kinds of inquiry. For instance: what can we learn about the evolution of culture by analyzing the written record over time on a massive scale? How can we quantify the change of languages over time?

In this great TEDx talk, two Harvard researchers (Jean-Baptiste Michel and Erez Lieberman Aiden) discuss the insights they’ve gleaned from the Google N-gram Viewer. From the creation of a metric for censorship to the orthography of frustration, the presentation introduces ideas that could spark great research in the digital humanities and elsewhere. It’s fun to watch, too.

You can also try out your own N-grams!

HathiTrust – It Just Gets Better

jcolman — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 17:33:07 +0000

HathiTrust full-text search now leverages the richness of bibliographic data, and building and searching collections just got easier! Read on for more details of what this means for researchers.

Full-text Search

The HathiTrust full-text search index now includes bibliographic data, adding value in major ways:

Search results are ranked more usefully. For example, searching for “squirrel habitat” now ranks Abert Squirrel Cover Requirements in Southwestern Ponderosa Pine as the #1 hit, and Management Recommendations for the Northern Goshawk as #16. Before the integration of bibliographic data, the second volume would have ranked higher (even though it is less relevant) because it registers twice as many hits for the search phrase. (See http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/ls?q1=%22squirrel+habitat%22&a=srchls&a=srchls;sz=100;pn=1)
Users can refine results with bibliographic facets, including Subject, Author, Language, Publication Place and Date, and Original Format. Original Location and Viewability are also available (as before). Results update in real-time as facets are added or removed.

The HathiTrust Collection Builder interface and functionality have been improved, making the tool much clearer and easier to use:

Collections are displayed in a cleaner layout, with description and owner information more easily visible.
A new search box narrows and displays results as a query is typed.
Users can now filter collections by featured status, most recently updated, and number of items. They can also choose to show only their own collections. This works in tandem with the new search feature. Try it: http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/mb?

UC Libraries Digitize 3,000,000 Books

jcolman — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 13:00:55 +0000

The Mass Digitization team at CDL is proud to announce that the 3,000,000th volume has been digitized from the collections of the University of California libraries! Reaching this milestone has involved the work of many dedicated people across the UC Libraries. We aren’t stopping at three million – books continue to be digitized at a rapid pace from many of our collections.

To celebrate the occasion, the UC University Librarians have chosen their favorite digitized books. Click on the gallery below to see and enjoy this diverse collection of works in the public domain.

To learn more about finding digitized volumes, visit the “Where to Find Our Books” page. Also, you can see how UC books are being made digital in this video prepared by CDL.

The Story of the Digital Book [Video]

jcolman — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 17:27:50 +0000

Millions of books from the UC Libraries have been digitized, but how? Go behind the scenes to learn about the UC Libraries’ digitization process and see several ways you can use these newly digital books. ”The Story of the Digital Book” explains how our books make their way from the shelf to the screen, the possibilities they bring to users, and how they’re preserved for the long term.

Produced by Jason Colman and Amy Rogers for the CDL Mass Digitization group. Amy interned at CDL this summer as part of her Master’s program at San Jose State University, and we are very grateful for her help!

The video is also available with captioning for the hearing impaired.

Scripps Institution of Oceanography Library Finishes Digitization

jcolman — Thu, 20 May 2010 21:28:09 +0000

Working together with CDL and Google, UCSD has finished digitizing nearly 100,000 volumes from the collections of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Library – the world’s largest oceanographic library. Included are works on marine biology, climate science, ecology, geology, and many other subjects. The collection includes scientific expedition reports from as far back as the 18th century, many of which were previously unavailable in digital form. We’re very excited to have these wonderful materials join our other UC collections in HathiTrust.

The Scripps Library is one of many UC collections that have been digitized recently. Among others, thousands of books from the East Asian library at UCLA, the Science and Engineering library at UCSC, and the great variety of materials at NRLF are going online every month. The Mass Digitization group at CDL continues to coordinate and facilitate this work, and we are constantly surprised by its depth and breadth. You’ll find more information at Google and UCSD, and keep an eye out further updates from CDL on the next UC collections going digital!

The California Sea Lion (Image from UCSD Libraries)