Imaging Services Blog

Harvard Library’s new page-turner accesses DRS-stored images, and technical metadata about the images, via the International Image Interoperability Framework API.

Once you know the IIIF recipe, you can also use the API to quickly find information about images in DRS. [ I wish the API would return the image sampling rate (aka, dpi), but that nugget isn’t part of the IIIF specification. Don’t get me started. ]

You can, however,  get the pixel dimensions of images stored in DRS, quick and easy.

Here are two recipes:

• Referencing a DRS image ID
   http://ids.lib.harvard.edu/ids/iiif/<DRS ID>/info.json
• Referencing a VIA record ID
   http://ids.lib.harvard.edu/ids/iiif/via:<VIA record ID>

Example: http://ids.lib.harvard.edu/ids/iiif/11869105/info.json
Example: http://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/via:olvwork279002

Is there a collection of historic stereoscopic images (not aerial) of the Harvard campus, at Harvard? I have found a few dozen examples in the Cambridge Historical Society, NYPL, and BPL collections, but not the trove that must exist. VIA, Archives, and other online searches have been minimally fruitful. Any help greatly appreciated!

“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.” – Marcus Aurelius

Photographers used to manipulate and stage their photographs to make them more acceptable as art, now they are told that to do so is forbidden.

Harper’s looks at photojournalism.

Where do you stand on staging, Photoshop, and the existence of truth?

Harvard University has launched a project to digitize almost half a million items from its 17th and 18th century archives – the largest digitizing effort the university has ever undertaken. The letters, journals, documents and drawings tell the story not only of the nation’s oldest institution of higher learning, but also the history of our nation.

Source: Vast digitizing project will put Harvard’s colonial archives online

http://www.nypl.org/blog/2016/01/05/share-public-domain-collections

“We are awash in a sea of information, but how do historians sift through the mountain of data? In the future, computer programs will be unreadable, and therefore worthless, to historians.”

Listen to the NPR story.

A work in progress but an effort worth tracking.

Pretty impressive development:
http://www.kurzweilai.net/golden-window-wavelength-range-for-optimal-deep-brain-near-infrared-imaging-determined?utm_source=KurzweilAI+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=23bc84c6eb-UA-946742-1&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_6de721fb33-23bc84c6eb-282199609

Title of the article seems a bit off, but the range of applications of this tech, the scalability, and low cost mentioned all make this interesting and something to watch for!

Just wanted to post links to the CNA website and Gazette article in case people missed it.

Colonial North American Project website:

http://colonialnorthamerican.library.harvard.edu/

Gazette article:

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2015/11/a-digital-portrait-of-colonial-life/