Moving on...um...down

The Digital Projects team will be moving from our temporary quarters on the fifth floor of Jackson Library to a new, larger space on the second floor in late spring or early summer. The new digitization lab will add more workspace and will allow for new equipment, including an oversize scanner and more video and audio equipment. It will also reunite the entire Electronic Resources and Information Technology Department (of which Digital Projects is a part) in one space.

Removal of the old shelving units in the former Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives stacks began today and we got a feel for how specious our new home will be:

 

We'll keep you posted as construction progresses.

New digital collections added

The Digital Projects unit announces several new or expanded digital collections that have gone online in the past few weeks:


American Publishers Trade Bindings, Phase II and III
Over 700 new images from the Girls Books in Series, Way and Williams, and Woman's Collections have been added, bringing the total digital collection to 1832 items.

Curry High School Yearbooks
The Curry School provided practical experience for student teachers and served as the neighborhood school for the area surrounding the UNCG campus from 1893-1970. These 22 yearbooks document student life at Curry School through photographs and are also full-text searchable.

Hansen Sheet Music Collection
Nearly 500 pieces of popular sheet music dating from 1846 to 1922 have been added to the 100+ items that were already available in the Hansen Performing Arts Collection. These may currently be browsed by composer and by show title (in most cases) and area also searchable by song title, date, and (in some cases) singer.

World War I Pamphlets Collection
Over 400 pamphlets (many of them book length) on topics ranging from specific military campaigns to civilian contributions and homeland propaganda are now available through our partnership with Lyrasis and the Internet Archive. The pamphlets are full-text searchable and also may be browsed by LC subject heading.

Look for several other new collections coming online within the next few months, including Greensboro City Directories (1884-1963), phase one of the Greensboro Patriot newspaper (1826-1922), a selection of pictorial works and newspapers provided by the Greensboro Historical Museum, and the remaining issues of UNCG's student newspaper, The Carolinian (1931 to present).

Collections to be added in the coming academic year include a collection of materials relating to cellist Bernard Greenhouse; a large collection of physical education pamphlets held by the Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives; a number of scrapbooks that are part of the University Archives; issues of Dead City Radio and other materials related to WUAG, the campus radio station; posters from the Women Veterans Historical Project collection; and additional photos and other material in the University History Collections.

Universal masters donated to Library of Congress

This is really exciting, but I'm curious about the intellectual property issues that aren't discussed in the press release. Copyright issues for sound recordings produced before 1972 are very complicated and the materials are subject to miscellaneous state laws and other factors. Per Cornell's very useful copyright guide, pre-1972 recordings won't indisputably enter the public domain until 2067. It would be really nice if this donation came with intellectual property rights as well, but I have a sneaking suspicion that isn't the case.

We've worked with a lot of sheet music here at UNCG (and we'll be doing more in the next few months) but never much with sound recordings. And the issues surrounding them will probably keep us from doing much in the foreseeable future as well.