Milestones
This activity is now closed. The information on this page is provided for historical purposes only.
Collections in RLG Cultural Materials
RLG Cultural Materials had more than 100 wide-ranging
collections from 35 contributing institutions. Some highlights:
2005
Linda Hall Library: Star Atlases—A
collection of more than 300 star atlases with constellation maps,
including Johann Bayer's Uranometria (1603); Atlas Céleste
(1776), a French edition of John Flamsteed's Atlas Coelestis; and
Kornelius Reissig's Presentation of Constellations in 30 Tables. These
atlases present examples of works from the "golden age" of the
celestial atlas.
Netherlands Economic History Archive
(NEH), International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam:
Red-Haired Barbarians, the Dutch in Japanese Prints, 1800-1865—The
Dutch were the first Westerners allowed to stay and trade in Japan,
subject to very strict regulations. This collection of 40 Japanese
woodblock prints published between 1800 and 1865 depicts Dutch traders
in their allotted settlement in Nagasaki harbor. Now extremely rare,
the prints were sold as souvenirs to Japanese who hoped to catch a
glimpse of these strange "red-haired barbarians." A Russian envoy who
visited Nagasaki in 1804 in a failed attempt to obtain trading rights
was also portrayed, while other prints show Russians, Americans,
French, and English who in 1858 were finally allowed to stay in
Yokohama.
University of Toronto: The Discovery and
Early Development of Insulin—This collection
documents the initial period of the discovery and development of
insulin, 1920-1925, by presenting over 7,000 page images reproducing
original documents ranging from laboratory notebooks and charts,
correspondence, writings, and published papers to photographs, awards,
clippings, scrapbooks, printed ephemera, and artifacts.
University of Cambridge: Papers from the
Macclesfield and Portsmouth Collections: Manuscripts of Isaac Newton
and His Associates—The University of Cambridge
holds a large proportion of the original scientific manuscripts written
by Isaac Newton, and more than 200 folios in Latin and English have
been digitized in this first contribution. Cambridge has held a number
of items since Newton deposited them himself, to fulfill the condition
that copies of the lectures by the holder of the Lucasian chair should
be given to the University. Towards the end of the 19th century the
fifth Earl of Portsmouth gave the University and Library his collection
of Newton's papers, which had passed down in that family for several
generations. (They had come into the family's possession through John
Conduit and his wife Catharine Barton, Newton's niece; their
daughter married the son of the first Earl of Portsmouth, Viscount
Lymington, and Lymington's eldest son became the second Earl of
Portsmouth.) At the end of the 20th century, the Earl of Macclesfield
made a presentation to the Library of more of Newton's
manuscripts—together with a large number of other scientific
papers collected by the Earls of Macclesfield in the 18th century.
University of Pennsylvania: The Edgar Fahs
Smith Memorial Collection in the History of Chemistry: Images of
Scientists, Laboratories, and Apparatus—Selections
from the collection, which is devoted to the history of chemistry,
particularly before 1850. The collection includes items on chemistry,
alchemy, early medicine and pharmacology, dyeing, metallurgy,
mineralogy, and pyrotechnics, chemists, the chemical industry, and
chemical education.
2004
University of Oxford: Art of Ferdinand
Bauer: Selections from the Flora Graeca, Fauna Graeca and Mediterranean
Scenes—Sibthorp and Smith's "Flora Graeca,"
illustrated by Ferdinand Bauer, is considered the most splendid and
expensive Flora ever produced. This selection of 131 images is drawn
from the complete printed "Flora Graeca," from the 966 original
watercolors, from the unpublished "Fauna Graeca" (293 watercolors), and
from 131 "Mediterranean Scenes." It shows the range of Bauer's artistry
and the extraordinary level of detail he succeeded in capturing.
University of Glasgow: Science in Scotland—Based
on the extensive scientific instrument collection at the Hunterian
Museum, University of Glasgow, the records illustrate the work and
lives of many famous Scottish Scientists including Lord Kelvin. This
material is of great interest to a wide cross-section of the scholarly
community seeking information on the innovations in science developed
in Scotland, and their wider impact on the world of science,
engineering, and technology.
Keio University: Keio Historical
Photograph Collection—More than 1,500
photographs documenting buildings, events, and people associated with
Keio University from the mid-19th through the 20th century, including
portraits of founder Fukuzawa Yukichi, the effects of the 1923 Great
Kanto earthquake on the university, and related subjects such as
architectural details, gardens, ceremonies, sports events, and other
campus activities. Keio has contributed the first collection in the
database that takes advantage of RLG's Unicode support for
original-language scripts.
University of California, Berkeley:
19th-Century California Sheet Music—A virtual
library of some 2,000 pieces of sheet music published in California
between 1842 and 1900, together with related materials that include an
1872 publisher's catalog, programs, songsheets, advertisements, and
photographs.
Brigham Young University: William Henry
Jackson Photographs and Art Work—This
collection of approximately 1,000 items includes photographic prints,
cabinet cards, and stereoscopic views taken and printed by Jackson, as
well as original oil and watercolor paintings, and sketches. There are
also publicity shots of Jackson and prints acquired for his personal
collection.
Huntington Library, Art Collections, and
Botanical Gardens: The History of Astronomical Observation—Includes
items chosen from the Mt. Wilson collection, the papers of Edwin
Hubble, and the Huntington's rare book collections. These materials
document the history of astronomical observation, from the early
pre-telescopic work of Tycho Brahe in the 16th century, through
Galileo, Johann Bayer, and Johann Doppelmayer, to the 19th- and
20th-century work of Edwin Hubble, George Ellery Hale, and the Mt.
Wilson Observatory.
National Gallery of Canada: Canadian
Souvenir Albums—A collection of more than 50
Canadian souvenir view albums, published from the 1880s through the
1940s, consisting of some 1,700 digitized pages. With antecedents in
the travel narratives, topographical views, and guidebooks that
recorded and illustrated the early periods of European exploration and
settlement of the country, souvenir view albums—with their
distinctive formats, a proliferation of photomechanically reproduced
images, and little or no text—are peculiar to the late 19th
and early 20th centuries. These publications are of great interest to
the historian of Canadian art, architecture, urban development, and
photography.
National Library of Australia: Maps from
the National Library of Australia—A collection
of 2,501 maps depicting the world, the Pacific and Australia from the
16th to the 19th centuries, with an emphasis on tracing the development
of exploration.
University of Chicago: The First American
West: The Ohio River Valley 1750-1820—A
collection of original historical material documenting the land,
peoples, exploration, and transformation of the trans-Appalachian West
from the mid-18th to the early 19th century. Among the sources included
are books, periodicals, newspapers, pamphlets, scientific publications,
broadsides, letters, journals, legal documents, ledgers, and other
financial records, maps, physical artifacts, and pictorial images.
University of Southern California: WPA
Land Use Survey Maps for the City of Los Angeles, 1933-1939—The
Works Progress Administration conducted a land use survey from December
18, 1933 to May 8, 1939 for the city of Los Angeles, Department of City
Planning. It resulted in this series of 345 hand-colored land use
survey maps collected in ten books (averaging 35 maps per book), each
corresponding to a geographic region within the city's boundary.
University of Toronto: Anatomia:
Anatomical Plates from the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library—This
collection features approximately 4,500 full-page plates and other
significant illustrations of human anatomy selected from the Hannah
collection in the history of medicine at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book
Library, University of Toronto. Each illustration has been fully
indexed using medical subject headings (MeSH). The plates can also be
searched or browsed by artist, engraver, lithographer, and printer.
There are 92 individual titles represented, ranging in date from 1522
to 1867.
RLG Cultural Materials' the newest contributor:
University of Florida. Many works in the database are complex objects
(such as the books in Florida's first contributions). Additions since
the beginning of the year:
Huntington Library, Art Collections, and
Botanical Gardens: The Museum Bookstore Map Collection—1,652
maps printed in England and Western Europe ca. 1600-1890. The majority
of maps date from the 18th century and depict the whole or part of
North America.
University of California, Berkeley: Abner
Doble Steam Motor Corporation—Includes
correspondence, reports, patents, drawings, notebooks and photographs
relating to Abner Doble's engineering career and documents his role in
the development of twentieth-century steam technology. Also included
are records of Doble's final project in the early 1950s for the Paxton
Engineering Division of McCulloch Motors Corporation, Los Angeles, to
develop the Paxton Phoenix, a steam car fitted with the Doble Ultimax
engine.
University of California, Berkeley: Zelda Mackay
Collection of
Stereographic Views—Contains 733 mounted
stereographic prints produced from circa 1860 to circa 1900. The
general subject matter of the collection is the North American West
from Alaska to Mexico (excluding Canada) and Colorado to California.
Included among the many California locations are San Francisco,
Yosemite Valley, and Los Angeles, as well as various areas along the
lines of the Central Pacific Railroad. The collection features the work
of several notable photographers, including Carleton E. Watkins,
Eadweard Muybridge, Charles R. Savage, Thomas Houseworth, William Henry
Jackson, Edward and Henry T. Anthony, Edward and Benjamin West Kilburn,
Charles Bierstadt, John J. Reilly, and Isaiah W. Taber.
University of Florida: The Eric Eustace
Williams Collection, Selections—Both a
bibliography and a growing library of works by and about Dr. Williams,
the first Prime Minister of the Trinidad and Tobago and often called
the "Father of the Nation." The works provide the researcher with the
raw materials to study how Williams married his academic and political
pursuits and how the character of the man fostered independence
throughout the Caribbean.
University of Florida: Psychological Study
of the Arts—This collection of books explores
literary questions using psychology, often psychoanalytic. Illustrated
works address such questions as, Why does this writer write the way he
or she does? Why do different people read differently—as they
do? How can we understand this character or genre psychologically? The
collection deals with the processes of perception, memory, word
recognition, cognitive development, metaphor, and personal identity in
both the creation and reading of literature.
2003
American Antiquarian Society: William Allen
Collection—Advertisements received by British-born
American manufacturer William Allen for manufacturing equipment from
the 1840s to 1906.
*Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute:
David A. Hanson Collection of the History of Photomechanical
Reproduction—Spans the history of photomechanical
printing from the first heliographic etching in 1826 through the
perfection of three-color printing at the beginning of the 20th
century. This collection of 350 works focuses on all aspects of
photographic images produced in printer's ink.
*New York Academy of Medicine: The William H.
Helfand Collection of Pharmaceutical Trade Cards—274
works comprising trade cards produced in the US and France between 1875
and 1895.
*Smithsonian Institution: Scientific Identity:
Portraits from the Dibner Library of the History of Science and
Technology—More than 1,000 portraits of scientists
and inventors from the 16th through the 20th centuries.
Temple University: Tyler War Posters—A
collection of more than 1,400 World War I and World War II posters
documenting propaganda efforts, mostly by the United States and Great
Britain, to educate and enlist public support for war efforts.
University of California, Berkeley: Selections
from the Henry J. Kaiser Pictorial Collection—Subject-based
collections showing the Kaiser shipyards in Richmond, California during
World War II. These include building materials, including steel,
cement, aluminum, and gypsum; engineering projects all over the world;
and building affordable housing and consumer goods—such as
Kaiser-Frazer cars, Willys Jeeps, and even dishwashers.
University of California, Berkeley:
Paget-Fredericks (Joseph Rous) Dance Collection, ca.
1913-1945—Original drawings, paintings, photographs
and pieces of memorabilia. Includes: Isadora Duncan and other dancers;
decor and costume designs; illustrations, graphic design, drawings,
paintings, juvenilia; printed pictures and clippings, and photographic
prints.
University of Chicago: American Environmental
Photographs, 1891-1936—An overview of important
representative natural landscapes across the nation, which includes
some 4,500 photographs taken at the end of the 19th and the beginning
of the 20th century. Produced by a group of American botanists
generally regarded as one of the most influential in the development of
modern ecological studies.
*Conversion funded by a History of Science and
Technology grant
Updates
2005
After surveying faculty at several institutions, the
Cultural Material Alliance's Instructional Technology Advisory Group
has released its findings. [Link to "/en/page.php?Page_ID=406"] Out
of the Database, Into the Classroom summarizes how faculty
find and use digital images in their teaching. The report will be used
to shape the future development of RLG Cultural Materials.
The Cultural Material Alliance's Description Advisory
Group has issued new [link to "/en/page.php?Page_ID=214"]
Descriptive
Metadata Guidelines for RLG Cultural Materials, a
complete revision from the September 2003 document. Designed to help
contributors to the RLG Cultural Materials database, a broad audience
can also benefit from its clear overview of the daunting concepts and
acronyms in the field of descriptive metadata.
Index Stock Imagery announced its distribution plans
for Trove.net images to all types of commercial and creative clients.
Their agreement with RLG would allow specified types of commercial and
consumer uses of items from collections that contributors have
identified for these
uses. As items are licensed, RLG will share revenue with the
contributor.
2004
Twenty-six people from RLG member institutions attended
the RLG Cultural Materials Forum on January 11, 2004, in conjunction
with ALA in San Diego. The focus of this forum was "reaching
new audiences," including:
—a review of the work of our Instructional Technology
Advisory Group, which has been investigating how digital objects can be
transferred from RLG Cultural Materials into software systems used in
teaching—putting valuable materials and tool kits into the
hands of instructors.
—an update on a new use of the RLG Cultural
Materials aggregated content—an "individual service" being
developed. This new service will reach additional audiences on the open
Web, enable licensed uses of the content, and return revenue to
contributors.
The first activity of the Instructional Technology
advisory group was to develop an interview script. RLG staff has
interviewed 10 faculty at three universities. The discussion focused on
the findings to date. Institutions have so many resources,
publicizing new ones is difficult. Faculty learn to use a couple
different resources and then stick to them. RLG staff was encouraged to
communicate directly with faculty, rather than only communicating with
library staff.
There were questions about whether the interview results
varied based on the state of adoption of courseware such as WebCT,
MDID, or Blackboard—or the level of support offered to
faculty. Another area of interest was the NISO work to standardize
searching across resources. While that effort is largely geared toward
citations, perhaps VRA, Getty, the OAI community, and other
stakeholders could be involved to broaden the scope to include images
and other content, so that we don't develop stand-alone silos of Luna
Insight content, RLG content, ARTstor content, etc. Faculty want
one-stop shopping. Every time they are confronted with a new interface,
it is an additional barrier to potentially useful information.
As regards exporting, the importance of remaining
neutral was emphasized. We need to be able to export to many
applications and many institutions use home-grown systems; CSV and XML
exports should accommodate all. When asked about the preferred format
for delivering high-resolution images, there was a resounding DON'T
give them TIFFs! Everyone agreed that faculty still don't trust their
connectivity and prefer to have everything they need for a presentation
on their own computers.
The presentation on the individual service gave an
overview of the new effort, devised to meet member goals: reaching new
audiences, expanding awareness of their institutions and their special
collections, and exploring new sources of revenue. The new service will
consist of a lesser version of the Cultural Materials content (simple
keyword searching of brief text records linked to watermarked,
lower-resolution images). Higher quality versions will be available for
licensed use. The content will also be made available directly from
image stockhouses for editorial and commercial use. The licensing
revenue will be shared with the contributor.
The stockhouses believe that the licensing
interest will come primarily from the editorial sector (textbooks and
magazines in particular), but that the highest license fees would come
from the advertising companies, though interest in our historical
content is likely to be much lower there. There was some discussion
about the relationship between this activity and reproduction services
at the institutions. The stockhouses will only be offering digital
images, so any requests for photo-reproductions could be served by the
institution. Some members want RLG to take as much as possible of the
reproduction and licensing burden from them.
Others have a healthy service they expect to continue.
It is believed that most of the interest that the individual service
will bring will be new business, not compete with existing business.
Most of the big publishing houses go directly to the stockhouses for
all their needs. Those that already have direct relationships with an
institution can continue to work in that way.
Articles about use in the
classroom
Please note: Archived versions of RLG Focus are available from the OCLC Corporate Library Collection in the OCLC Digital Archive. Choose the preferred index and browse from here.
- "Highlights
in the History of Science and Technology in RLG Cultural Materials"
RLG Focus 75 (August 2005)
- "Investigating
Pictorialism in RLG Cultural Materials"
RLG Focus 72 (February 2005)
- "Exploring
the Early History of Photography Using RLG’s Eureka®
and Digital Resources"
RLG Focus 67 (April 2004)
- "Out
of the Database, into the Classroom: Findings from the Instructional
Technology Advisory Group"
RLG Focus 67 (April 2004)
- "RLG Forms Advisory Group for Instructional
Technology"
RLG Focus 63 (August 2003)
- "A Richer View: The Added Value of
Cross-Institutional Searching in RLG Cultural Materials"
RLG Focus 59 (December 2002)
- "Discover the Riches within RLG Cultural
Materials"
RLG Focus 54 (February 2002)
- "Scenes from a Database: RLG Cultural
Materials in Use"
RLG Focus 53 (December 2001)
Articles featuring
particular collections
Please note: Archived versions of RLG Focus are available from the OCLC Corporate Library Collection in the OCLC Digital Archive. Choose the preferred index and browse from here.
- "Red-Haired
Barbarians Invade RLG Cultural Materials"
RLG Focus 77 (December 2005)
- "RLG
Cultural Materials Comes Alive with the Sound of Sheet Music"
RLG Focus 73 (April 2005)
- "Keio
Contributes its Historical Photograph Collection to RLG Cultural
Materials"
RLG Focus 71 (December 2004)
- "A Brief History of the Korzenik Collection
of Art Education Books and Ephemera, Accessible through RLG Cultural
Materials"
RLG Focus 64 (October 2003)
- "RLG Cultural Materials Provides First
Online Access to Margaret Mead Papers at the Library of Congress"
RLG Focus 62 (June 2003)
- "Rare Book Collections Enhance Content of
RLG Cultural Materials"
RLG Focus 57 (August 2002)
Articles about service
developments
Please note: Archived versions of RLG Focus are available from the OCLC Corporate Library Collection in the OCLC Digital Archive. Choose the preferred index and browse from here.
Archived versions of RLG News are available from here.
- "Expanding Access, Setting Standards"
RLG News 54 (Spring 2002)
- "RLG Cultural Materials Service Coming
Together" (pdf)
RLG News No. 52, Spring 2001
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