Thursday, April 15, 2010

Two New Digital Collections in CU Digital Library

The C&MS Digital Resources Cataloging Team is pleased to announce the availability of two new collections in the CU Digital Library.

From Special Collections comes the Historic Hats and Headdresses collection, consisting images of sixty-five leaves of watercolors from the master's thesis of a fine arts student in 1938, as well as accompanying text. The paintings focus on western civilization, from helmets in pharaonic Egypt from roughly the 2nd millennium B.C.E. through top hats from the French romantic period in the 19th century C.E.

Through a partnership between the University Archives and the Conference On World Affairs, streaming audio of selected CWA sessions are also now available, from the conference's start in 1959 through the early 1990s, in the Conference On World Affairs Audio Archive. The Luna collection at present consists of fifteen files finished in time for the 2010 CWA, but will grow as the project continues. Additional audio streams are available at the CWA's website.

Making these collections available was a team effort as always. Recognition is due to Zoya Nazari and Josie Fania, who went to considerable length to provide detailed descriptive metadata for the Hats and Headdresses. Elizabeth Newsom in Special Collections was an invaluable resource with this collection. Digital Resources Cataloging would also like to thank Bruce Montgomery in Archives and Maura Clare and Ramsay Thurber from the CWA for bringing these materials to light, and providing valuable descriptive information about the audio sessions. Many thanks are due, as always, to Holley Long for her work with both collections and the Luna interface.

Please direct questions about the metadata portion of this digitization project to Michael Dulock.