If you check out our new digital collections website, you’ll see a tab on the main menu labeled “Online Exhibits.” We are currently moving our old online exhibits from the platform Omeka Classic to our new platform. This will be happening steadily over the next year. Below are some that we have already refreshed or are brand new:
For those of you interested in the behind the scenes work, some of these new exhibits rely on the web page builder that is used throughout the site, while others employ an exhibit builder. We’re looking at each old exhibit and deciding which options work best for it. For some a linear exhibit works, while for others an A-Z list will help someone discover something new or something that sparks old memories.
For most of our backlog of already transcribed audio and video, we are using a separate AI service, Sonix, to create vtt files that work with our new platform.
For some of our content without transcriptions, we are using the platform’s own AI transcription service. We’ve already taken the news masters from the KTRU archive and ran them through this system. We haven’t cleaned up the transcripts, so please forgive the mistakes. In general the AI has done a good job transcribing the audio, making it more accessible for a larger community. It also took about 10 minutes for it to transcribe around 30-40 news masters.
We hope that you explore our audio and video and will be patient with us while we work to get everything captioned. As a handy reminder you can search all of the audio and video, by selecting the terms under format at the bottom of the homepage.
I wanted to cover some new features that we have in our Digital Collections site. Feel free to give them a test drive.
Search Terms Highlighted in Text
If typed/written text has been enhanced via OCR (optical text recognition) or gone through an AI application that runs HTR (handwritten text recognition), you can then search the text of a document and keywords will show up on the original page. Let’s look at two examples.
You’ll get a list of yearbooks that you can select to see more. I’ve selected the 2010 Campanile. You can see that the phrase “beer bike” is highlighted in the text. You’ll also see it highlighted on a corresponding transcript. Below your first result, there might be more results to explore.
Edwin Lunn diary
While we haven’t run many of our items through the HTR process (It requires the author to have good penmanship, which isn’t always the case.), here is one good example. Be aware that we haven’t cleaned up the AI generated transcript.
If you didn’t know, we already have TXT transcripts for many of our handwritten letters. We are in the process of moving those over to the new system. By relying on this type of transcript, it won’t highlight the words on the actual letter, but you can see the words highlighted on the transcript to the right.
Next time, we’ll look at enhancements to our A/V collections.
Today, we’re going to tackle two other ways you can search the new digital collections website.
Advanced Search
On the home page underneath the big search bar or in the upper right corner of any page, you’ll see the option for Advanced Search.
By clicking on that option, you’ll be brought to a new screen. You can do a keyword, title, or description search. You can also select from many options below to refine the search.
For example, you could search “beer bike,” and then select the collection that you are interested in, like “Rice Images and Documents.” If you are interested in beer bike from the 1990s, you can search the term and select 1990s from the Time Span option. When looking for a topic that is broad, this can really help you narrow your focus.
Browse Categories
At the bottom of the home page, you can search only by categories. For example, you could select the subject “Health and Medicine” and limit your 205 results by time span “1970s,” which will give you two results. You could also expand your results by adding another decade like the “1980s.” Your results will expand or shrink depending on the combinations that you choose. Happy searching!
With our new digital collections website, we tried to provide a variety of options to search it. I’ll highlight two ways to do that.
On the menu at the top, you can select “Explore Collections.” This will take you to an A-Z list of all of the collections on the website. This method works well if you know the name of the collection that you are looking for.
If you don’t know the name of the collection you want, you can also select by themes. If you want material that is not related to the university’s history, select “Special Collections” on the menu. We have grouped our collections thematically ranging from American Civil War to Medical Humanities and much more. We have also highlighted collections that we maintain with stakeholders like the Houston Asian American Archive and the White House Scientist and Science Policy Dynamic Digital Archive.
After selecting a theme, you’ll arrive at a page listing the collections with a bit of information about each one.
Finally, by clicking on a collection, you’ll usually encounter a description of the materials, a short biography or other background information, and ways to access the finding aid/inventory for the collection. Depending on the collection, you might even encounter a blue button that will point you to more information. The Aaron Martin letters have been mapped, so the button redirects you to a StoryMap.
Depending on the size of the collection, you can decide how to sort the items (by title or date). You can also filter by date on the left hand side.
Here’s a look at the University Archives. There are fewer themes, but we’ve tried to select themes that alums, faculty, staff, and more want to find like oral histories, videos, radio broadcasts, yearbooks, and the student newspaper.
Next time, we’ll explore other ways to search the using the search box, advanced search, and the search categories on the home page.
If you haven’t noticed, things have been pretty quiet on the blog. One major reason is that we have been undergoing a massive migration of all of our digital items that have live here to here.
While we have still have work to do, we have moved over 16,000 digitized/digital items into our new Quartex platform.
This week the star wheel copper plate rolling press opened for business. To learn more about its creation, its journey to Woodson, and how it has been used so far, you can read Andrew Bell’s article or you can watch the video below.
New things abound or are in the works with the Woodson right now.
We’re migrating our digital footprint to a new platform. That means all of our materials that currently reside at scholarship.rice.edu will have a new home in May. That means we are building out a new website and moving all of our materials over. We are swimming in spreadsheets.
The new star wheel printing press has also arrived in parts at the Woodson. For info on the press, please see this lovely video for more information. After it is put together, it will live up front near our front door.
As archivists, one of our tasks is reference, not just in-person in the reading room but via email. Over the last several years, we’ve been working with Alison Bashford. She did archival research in the various Huxley collections pre-Covid. While she was finalizing her manuscript, An Intimate History of Evolution: The Story of the Huxley Family, we, more specifically our former processing archivist Gabby Parker, assisted with scanning and reference checking. Amanda Focke assisted in permissions for images for the Huxley papers.
Although this work sometimes flies under the radar, Alison Bashford was kind enough to thank Amanda and Gabby in the acknowledgements. In addition, the gift book Bashford sent will be added to the Huxley rare book collection.
We’re happy that our work could in a small way contribute to greater scholarship.
Verlon Thompson, longtime friend and accompanist to Guy Clark
Last Wednesday, we co-hosted an event with Shawn Parks and Matt Harlan that celebrates the life and musical legacy of Guy Clark. Enjoy these great shots from campus photographer Jeff Fitlow. You can read more about the event from a wonderful write-up by the Houston Press’s Gladys Fuentes.
Matt Harlan, co-planner and performer
George Ensle – The Woodson has his archival collection.
To see more images of the event, check out the Rice News post.
The Woodson staff will be participating in a regional conference this week and will be taking a reading room break next while working on collection management. Our reading room and reference services will resume on May 31st.
What's in Woodson 