Visits to our web pages typically drop over the weekend, so we were very pleasantly surprised this morning to see traffic for our crowdsourcing site, DIY History, up almost 2000% thanks to an entry on the link-sharing site MetaFilter. Even better than the statistics are the hundreds of newly transcribed pages, including the one belowContinue reading “Welcome, MetaFiltarians!”
Author Archives: Hannah Scates Kettler
UI Libraries launches new crowdsourcing site with manuscript cookbooks and more
Calves head hash, dandelion wine, election cake, and West Indies-dressed turtle are just a few of the recipes from the University of Iowa Libraries’ new Szathmary Culinary Manuscripts and Cookbooks digital collection: http://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/cookbooks. Containing thousands of pages and spanning the 1600s through the 1960s, the handwritten cookbooks document culinary history in America and Europe, andContinue reading “UI Libraries launches new crowdsourcing site with manuscript cookbooks and more”
Crowdsourcing sneak preview
Shhh… we’re quietly rolling out a soft launch for DIY History, our expanded crowdsourcing site that’s replacing the Civil War Diaries & Letters Transcription Project. Please have a look around and try out the new functionality and content as we do some last-minute tweaking, then check back next week for what we hope will be a much louder officialContinue reading “Crowdsourcing sneak preview”
Nile Kinnick Collection now online
Each fall tens of thousands of people cheer their beloved Iowa Hawkeyes in the football stadium that bears the name of Iowa’s only Heisman trophy winner: Nile Kinnick Jr. Standing only 5’8” tall, Kinnick was a giant among men, a champion athlete and scholar who gave his life for his country serving in World WarContinue reading “Nile Kinnick Collection now online”
Historic heat wave
Recent temperatures in the 100s here in Iowa have us cowering in our climate-controlled offices, but a browse through past heat waves documented in the Iowa Digital Library helps to put things in perspective. Worst of these was the summer of 1936, the hottest on record, marking the end of the Dust Bowl years. AContinue reading “Historic heat wave”
A Nancy Drew birthday
University of Iowa alumna Mildred Wirt Benson — journalist, pilot, amateur archaeologist, ghost writer, and the original author of the Nancy Drew mystery series — was born on this day in 1905. To mark the anniversary, we’re featuring a gallery of her book covers, from the iconic to the unintentionally terrifying, on our Iowa Digital LibraryContinue reading “A Nancy Drew birthday”
A frivolous 4th
This week on Twitter, we’ve been featuring 4th of July-related excerpts from the Civil War Diaries and Letters digital collection, as transcribed by our crowdsourcing volunteers. Unfortunately for the soldiers, the holiday typically held business as usual — the fatigue, discomfort, and anxiety of life on the battlefield — mixed in with the occasional historicContinue reading “A frivolous 4th”
Sparkler dance
This and other images of 4th festivities, now featured on the Iowa Digital Library Pinterest site:
Summer artworks from UIMA
Celebrate the solstice with this selection of summery items from the University of Iowa Museum of Art Digital Collection:
Historic Iowa archaeological images now online
The University of Iowa Libraries is pleased to announce the release of the Office of the State Archaeologist Photographs Digital Collection: digital.lib.uiowa.edu/osa. This unique digital collection currently includes over 23,000 original photographs and slides from the State Archeological Repository curated by the Office of the State Archaeologist (OSA), the University of Iowa. Digitization is ongoingContinue reading “Historic Iowa archaeological images now online”