Emma Stanford
emmastanford.bsky.social
Emma Stanford
@emmastanford.bsky.social
280 followers 110 following 72 posts
Your earnest friend in special collections digitization + access. Currently @ Stanford University Libraries, previously Hoover Institution Library & Archives, previously Bodleian Libraries, @e_stanf on Twitter.
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Usually Google Docs can shut up with its suggestions but this time I couldn’t agree more, ORCID
The coolest little #IIIF image tile demo from @latest.allmaps.org: observablehq.com/@allmaps/til... (I zoomed in on the dog because of #branding)
Every time Taylor Swift sings "And the tennis court was covered up with some tentlike thing" I think to myself "It's called the Lung, Taylor" and I'm sharing this in case there are any other Swifties out there who have a complicated relationship with Infinite Jest
(Question prompted by today's very cool session at the David Rumsey Map Center)
Are people really using ChatGPT to answer cataloging questions (e.g., "When was X railroad built so I can date this map")?

Diplomatically: it seems unwise to attribute informational value to ChatGPT responses when we know it can hallucinate and we can't control what sources it uses. 📜
Just now found myself typing "books" into the Library of Congress linked data service and hitting "search" and I'm worried that if I don't get this out in the open right away someone will try to blackmail me with it
Found one, although obviously what I'm really looking for is a high-res image to put on my wall royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
Hot damn this is a good blog post. Looking for a digitized copy of that de la Rue chromolithograph led me to this article, which reproduces some of the photographs themselves: artsandculture.google.com/story/starin...
Wishing everyone safe travels & clear skies as we await #Eclipse2024!

Learn about the history of #eclipse observation by reading this blog post by my colleague @finchinthestacks.bsky.social, featuring images from the Linda Hall Library's collections.

www.lindahall.org/about/news/a... #histSTM 🗃️📜
(This is the medium model and I think it's safe to say my standard-issue 2020 MacBook Pro can't handle it; small worked a lot better)
It's also picking some incredibly poignant lines to repeat
I know OpenAI is evil but I'm running Whisper on my laptop and guys it's just a little buddy trying its best
I'm very optimistic about my profession, I don't know what you mean
I'm teaching some students about digitization and thought it would be fun to estimate how many years it will take to digitize all our collections at our current rate. Apropos of nothing, this manuscript is 1200 years old and these images are 30 years old. digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/783d...
That's a great point. I think a similar experiment now might do better (researchers have taken more images and have more experience tagging--what's that app's name?) but in the current climate we'd probably be told to use AI instead of paying staff. Which might work a little, but not a lot.
I agree. I hope I didn't misrepresent Andrew's argument, but I think the risks of relying on vendors and external partnerships for infrastructure are pretty clear. We need more shared tools for building our own infrastructure and the money to pay in-house experts.
I'm inclined to agree. I took Andrew's point as more "If public institutions aren't given enough funding to build sustainable infrastructure, they'll have to find the money somewhere else, and this is one least-worst way." But I hope the BL attack inspires more public funding of infrastructure.
Incredibly foolish to suppose Taylor Swift doesn't know how apostrophes work, guys

(I am very excited for TTPD; I hope it's a mix of maroon/Vigilante Shit/my tears ricochet/illicit affairs; I can't wait to listen to it and pretend I too am eviscerating the small British men who've done me wrong)
Thank YOU Laura! A wonderful session expertly moderated!
Reposted by Emma Stanford
Ben Albritton discuss the advantage of a multi-institution model for conservation of digital repositories. 'Changing the one-institution model is one key to sustainability and risk mitigation' @blalbritton.bsky.social

#NYSINYD
Reposted by Emma Stanford
Andrew Prescott: 'When you go somewhere like the National Archives, everybody is just taking pictures all day long. You realise that there's a potential there to build a very large resource. [...] But one needs to be able to do it as simply as loading images.'

#NYSINYD
(This sounds amazing but my institution specializes in sensitive 20th- and 21st-century material, so we'd probably have to spend a lot of time chasing violations of our new one-line reading room use agreement, "I WILL NOT POST MY IMAGES ON MANUSCRIPTR")
Folks are ideating a specialist Flickr/Wikimedia-like tool that facilitates easy tagging and description (integrated with institutions' online catalogues?), allows you to search across your own and others' research images, and isn't going to die or become very expensive in a few years' time.
Andrew asks: Have we thought enough about digital disaster management plans? Something more nuanced than "let's shut everything down right away"? Laura says it's not just disaster management, but the management of inevitable digital change.
Folks are ideating a specialist Flickr/Wikimedia-like tool that facilitates easy tagging and description (integrated with institutions' online catalogues?), allows you to search across your own and others' research images, and isn't going to die or become very expensive in a few years' time.
Btw the Bodleian Flickr project is still available to access: www.flickr.com/groups/bodsp...