Closeup of part of the Ch scale for the circa 1960 Hemmi 257 chemical slide rule.
Issue 44 gives a glimpse of two classic chemical slide rules found in the Oesper Collections, one dating from 1814 and the other from 1960.
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A circa 1930 American-made “Comptometer”
hand-cranked mechanical calculator.
Issue 43 gives a brief overview of some of the desktop and hand-held calculators used by chemists over the years and currently on display in the hallway outside of the Oesper Collections in Rieveschl Hall.
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The circa 1920 Zeiss butter refractometer recently acquired by the Oesper Collections.
Issue 42 describes a new addition to the museum’s refractometer collection – a circa 1920 Zeiss butter refractometer – and its historical importance as a means for rapidly differentiating between pure butter and margarine.
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The Varian E-4 EPR instrument as it appeared while still in use in Dr. Bobst’s laboratory.
Issue 41 describes a new addition to the instrument collection on the mezzanine of the chemistry-biology library. Dating from the early 1970s, this desktop Varian E-4 Electron Paramagnetic Resonance (EPR) Spectrometer was donated by Dr. Albert Bobst of the UC Chemistry Department.
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By Eira Tansey, Digital Archivist/Records Manager
A constant challenge for digital archivists is identifying potentially sensitive material within born-digital archives. This content may be information that fits a known pattern (for example, a 3-2-4 number that likely indicates the presence of a social security number), or sensitive keywords that indicate the presence of a larger body of sensitive information (for example, the keywords “evaluation” and “candidate” in close proximity to each other may indicate the presence of an evaluation form for a possible job applicant).
Digital archivists use a number of tools to screen for potentially sensitive information. When this information is found, depending on the type of information, institutional policy, legal restrictions, and ethical issues, archivists may redact the information, destroy it, or limit access to it (either by user, or according to a certain period of time). Continue reading
Congratulations to Dr. Nan Niu and his research team!
Recently Dr. Nan Niu traveled to Beijing, China to attend the RE16 conference- Requirements Engineering16 http://re16.org/downloads/RE16%20program.pdf. He took with him high hopes for the requirements engineering research paper he and his team submitted together with Linda Newman, Head of Repositories and Digital Collections and Amy Koshoffer, Science Informationist. For the beginning of this story and more on the models created using Scholar@UC use cases, see the blog entry “Scholar@UC Goes to Class” (https://libapps.libraries.uc.edu/liblog/2016/01/scholaruc-goes-to-class/).
Dr. Niu has made all the research materials supporting this work available through Scholar@UC https://scholar.uc.edu/works/documents/wm117q084. Dr. Niu is making brilliant use of Scholar@UC as a teaching tool, a research subject, data preservation tool and an open data/access model. Again congratulations to Dr. Niu and the whole team!!
By Eira Tansey, Digital Archivist/Records Manager
When archivists first make contact with a large group of records, they often perform some form of appraisal. You might think of appraisal as being the calling card of the much-loved PBS television show Antiques Roadshow, in which average people realize that Great Aunt Milly’s painting is a valued masterpiece – or a total dud.
Unlike appraisers, when archivists appraise something they generally aren’t assigning a monetary value, but seeking to articulate the value of the records and the information they contain. The Society of American Archivists defines (http://www2.archivists.org/glossary/terms/a/appraisal#.V2hA1jXERmM) appraisal as:
Justus von Liebig (1803-1873) posing with his apparatus for combustion analysis.
Issue 40 outlines the history and importance of the chemical technique known as combustion analysis and highlights a reproduction of Liebig’s famous 1831 instrument for this purpose made by the late Dr. Melvyn Usselman of the University of Western Ontario and donated to our museum collections in 2005.
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By Eira Tansey, Digital Archivist/Records Manager
Within the archives profession, “Digital Archivist” is one of the fastest-growing job titles (http://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/provenance/vol31/iss2/5/). The Society of American Archivists offers a Digital Archives Specialist curriculum and certificate (www2.archivists.org/prof-education/das). And library and archives conferences abound on topics of an electronic and digital nature – like Saving The Web (https://www.loc.gov/loc/kluge/news/save-web-2016.html), the Digital Library Federation (https://www.diglib.org/), and the Software Preservation Network Forum (http://www.softwarepreservationnetwork.org/spn-forum/).
So what does a digital archivist do? Every digital archivist’s responsibilities will look slightly different depending on institutional mission, priorities and resources. As the first link indicates, there isn’t even professional consensus whether a digital archivist is one who works with digitization of analog material (like paper documents and manuscripts, rare books, maps, etc), or someone who works with “born-digital” materials. In many institutions, both of those responsibilities may be within the Digital Archivist’s charge. As UC’s Digital Archivist/Records Manager, my responsibilities center on working with born-digital archives, digital preservation, and overseeing UC’s Records Management program. I also work closely with my colleagues in Digital Collections on digitization projects (http://digital.libraries.uc.edu/).
A recently acquired 19th-century Chinese steelyard or so-called “opium balance” with an 11” ivory beam and accompanying “teardrop” storage case
Issue 39 briefly outlines the history and principles underlying traditional single pan or “steelyard” balances and illustrates their evolution using examples from our museum collections.
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