Some Photographic Equipment 1: Cameras : Notes from from the Oesper Collections, No. 57, July/August 2019

A circa 1948 Kodak Duaflex Camera with flash attachment made by the Eastman Kodak Company of Rochester, NY.

A circa 1948 Kodak Duaflex Camera with flash
attachment made by the Eastman Kodak Company of Rochester, NY.

Though the Oesper Collections do not explicitly collect photographic equipment, a few interesting items have come our way over the years and will be described in this and the succeeding two installments of museum notes.  Click here for issue no. 57.

Click here for all other issues of Notes from the Oesper Collections and to explore the Jensen-Thomas Apparatus Collection.

 

Book of the Month for September 2019

Your UCBA Library’s Book of the Month for September:

Money: 5000 Years of Debt and Power 

by Michel Aglietta 

Money book cover 

As the financial crisis reached its climax in September 2008, the most important figure on the planet was Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke. The whole financial system was collapsing, with little to stop it. When a senator asked Bernanke what would happen if the central bank did not carry out its rescue package, he replied, “If we don’t do this, we may not have an economy on Monday.” 

What saved finance, and the Western economy, was fiscal and monetary stimulus – an influx of money, created ad hoc. It was a strategy that raised questions about the unexamined nature of money itself, an object suddenly revealed as something other than a neutral signifier of value. Through its grip on finance and the debt system, money confers sovereign power on the economy. If confidence in money is not maintained, crises follow. Looking over the last 5,000 years, Michel Aglietta explores the development of money and its close connection to sovereign power. This book employs the tools of anthropology, history and political economy in order to analyse how political structures and monetary systems have transformed one another. We can thus grasp the different eras of monetary regulation and the crises capitalism has endured throughout its history. 

Is it checked out?  Don’t worrywe’ve got you covered: 

The Ascent of Money: a Financial History of the World (DVD)
HG171 .A83 2009 

Bestselling author, economist and historian Niall Ferguson takes a look at how money evolved, from the concept of credit and debt in the Renaissance to the emergence of a global economy and the subprime crisis we face today 

A History of Money (E-Book) 

A History of Money looks at how money as we know it developed through time. Starting with the barter system, the basic function of exchanging goods evolved into a monetary system based on coins made up of precious metals and, from the 1500s onwards, financial systems were established through which money became intertwined with commerce and trade, to settle by the mid-1800s into a stable system based upon Gold. This book presents its closing argument that, since the collapse of the Gold Standard, the global monetary system has undergone constant crisis and evolution continuing into the present day. 

Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money 
HG1710 .P68/ 2015

The notion of a new currency, maintained by the computers of users around the world, has been the butt of many jokes, but that has not stopped it from growing into a technology worth billions of dollars, supported by the hordes of followers who have come to view it as the most important new idea since the creation of the Internet. Believers from Beijing to Buenos Aires see the potential for a financial system free from banks and governments. More than just a tech industry fad, Bitcoin has threatened to decentralize some of society’s most basic institutions. An unusual tale of group invention, Digital Gold charts the rise of the Bitcoin technology through the eyes of the movement’s colorful central characters, including a British anarchist, an Argentinian millionaire, a Chinese entrepreneur, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, and Bitcoin’s elusive creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. Already, Bitcoin has led to untold riches for some, and prison terms for others. 

 

by Christian Boyles

CANCELLED: Got Data?! Join Us for the Data Visualization Showcase Oct. 25

PLEASE NOTE: THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED.

The University of Cincinnati Libraries’ Research & Data Services is calling for virtual submissions that best demonstrate the power of visualization to present complex data.

Event

The Data Visualization Showcase will be held from 1-3 pm on Friday, Oct. 25, 2019 in the Visualization Laboratory (240H Braunstein Hall, Geology-Mathematics-Physics Library). Coffee and refreshments will be served. All are welcome.

Eligibility & Deadlines

Submissions for the showcase are open to all University of Cincinnati affiliates, but must be submitted to AskData@uc.edu by Oct. 11 to be considered for the awards. All submissions will be evaluated by a panel of judges and should follow submission guidelines.

Judging

The showcase will be juried by a panel of interdisciplinary judges scoring each submission on the following four tenants of data visualization: Impact, Storytelling, Technical Aptitude and Creativity. See the rubric for more details.

Continue reading

New Facsimile of the Month

Mozart Magic Flute autograph aria pageA new Facsimile of the Month is now on display in the CCM Library Atrium: a reproduction of the Mozart’s autograph manuscript of Die Zauberflöte [The Magic Flute]. Mozart’s original manuscript is kept in the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz. The facsimile was published by Bärenreiter in 1979 (CCM Library call no.: ML96.5. M69 Z3). You can preview a few pages from the Facsimile of the Month using the action button of the same name on the CCM Library home page.Facsimile of the Month action button

10 year anniversary STRC@Langsam YouTube site

10 years ago on September 1st 2009 the STRC uploaded their first video to YouTube.   The video was of a old book that was sent to UCL’s Conservation and Binding department.  They needed a quick way to show someone in California how the book would be repaired. 10 years later the STRC site has 300 videos, 400,000 views and 367 subscribers.  178 of the videos are UC student projects made at the STRC editing suites and STRC video production room.  Below is a link to the most viewed student project (Tom Cruise on Teaching Composition) with 15,000 views. And also below is a link to the first video added 10 years ago, (Conservation of book) with 7,300 views.

 

videos STRC

 

Welcome, Melissa Previtera, Health Sciences Library/Winkler Center Academic & Research Services Specialist

On Tuesday, Sept. 3, Melissa Previtera began her position at the University of Cincinnati Libraries as the academic and research services specialist for the Donald C. Harrison Health Sciences Library (HSL) and the Henry R. Winkler Center for the History of the Health Professions (Winkler Center).

Melissa is a familiar face in UC Libraries having worked previously in the HSL/Winkler Center, College of Engineering and Applied Science Library, and most recently at the College of Education, Criminal Justice and Human Services Library. In this new role, she will work closely with HSL and Winkler Center faculty as well as members of the Winkler Center Board, College of Medicine, College of Nursing, College of Pharmacy and Allied Health faculty, researchers, staff and students.

Welcome (back), Melissa!

Most UC Libraries Closed Labor Day, Monday, Sept. 2

labor dayUC Libraries will be closed Monday, September 2 for Labor Day, except for the Donald C. Harrison Health Sciences Library, which will be open 9am-5pm. This closing includes the Walter C. Langsam Library 4th floor space, which will close Sunday, September 1 at 11pm and re-open Tuesday, September 3 at 7:45am.

A complete listing of library hours can be found online at www.libraries.uc.edu/about/hours.html.

Enjoy the long holiday weekend.

A needle in a PDF haystack

One of my research areas is examining the role of recordkeeping and documentation in environmental regulations. A research tactic I frequently use is to sift through hundreds of PDFs at once. Large numbers of PDFs are posted on many environmental regulatory websites, but there isn’t a lot of information about what’s in them or how big they are, or where the juicy stuff is. If this sounds daunting – well, it is! But I’ve come up with a few tricks to help me sort out what is useful and what isn’t.

Step 1: Download

The first thing is figuring out how to download a zillion PDFs at once. For this, I recommend getting a bulk downloader add-on for your browser (here is an example). This will scan through every URL on a page that ends with .pdf, which indicates that the URL is likely a downloadable PDF. A bulk downloader prevents the need from clicking on every single link, which can be a lot when you’re on a page with dozens of PDFs like this one from the Mine Safety and Health Administration.

Step 2: Text Recognition

Once you download all the files you want, I like to place them into a dedicated folder. This is because even though theoretically most government agency PDFs should have optical character recognition (OCR), the actual practice is very inconsistent. OCRed text is critical for PDF searching because it allows you to do a keyword search within a single file or across multiple files at once. Currently, there is not widely-available OCR functionality for cursive or handwriting, just typeface.

Adobe Acrobat has a useful function (under Tools > Text Recognition > In Multiple Files) where you can run the OCR function across everything in a specific folder. This can take a while, but at least there is a progress bar that’ll show you how long it takes – which could be a while, considering that many government environmental regulation records can be a hundred pages for each file. Using the Adobe Acrobat tool also allows you to keep or modify original file names. I like to downsample the files to 600 dpi – it takes longer than the lower dpi measures, but I think it enables better keyword searches later on.

 

 

 

 

 

Step 3: Dig into the PDF files!

There is a free software program called PDF-XChange Viewer, which you can use to do keyword searches over large amounts of PDFs. You can also run a similar search within Adobe Acrobat, but I find that the searching takes far longer and the results are presented less tidily than with PDF-XChange Viewer. Supposedly you can also run batch OCR with this program, but I haven’t tried it.

The example demonstrates how I wanted to find PDFs from coal mine inspection safety reports that mention the word “map.” The results show me that of the dozens of documents I searched in my dedicated folder, there were 187 hits for the word “map” across 14 of the documents. I can get an idea from the left-hand preview pane what the keyword is like in context, and then click on that to see the actual PDF in the right-hand window.

This step helps me pull out the PDFs that I need to analyze more deeply, thus saving me the headache of opening up every single PDF in case it might have something of interest.

Welcome Back!

HSL Updates

September 2019, Vol. 1

On behalf of the faculty, staff and students of the Donald C. Harrison Health Sciences Library (HSL), – welcome back for the 2019-2020 school year.  I would like to share with you some library updates and links that you can easily access for information as it relates to classes being offered in the HSL, hours of operation, new technology, upcoming lectures and collaborative spaces for study and research.

HSL upgrades:

  • Over the summer, the electrical engineers were able to finalize the upgrades of lights on the R, E and G levels of the library
  • New power outlets were installed on the R-Level of the library.
  • At the request of HSGA representatives from last year, the HSL purchased four (4) new ergonomic stand-up tables that are located in the Computer Lab.
  • In mid-September the HSL Circulation Desk students will begin offering scheduled 20-minute walking tours of the HSL Library and Winkler Center.  The tour will include, but is not limited to information on equipment that can be checked out, HSL IT Help Desk services, how to navigate the Computer Lab and information on the HSL’s Electronic Classroom.  Look for more information about the tours in October.

HSL Updates will be posted on a monthly basis to share the HSL Workshop calendar and any other information related to things happening in the HSL.  If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me directly.  As always, we are happy to welcome you into the HSL.

Regards,

Lori E. Harris, Interim Director
Donald C. Harrison Health Sciences Library and
the Henry R. Winkler Center for the History of the Health Professions
Tel:  (513) 558-0315
Fax: (513) 558-2682

Email: harri2li@ucmail.uc.edu
Web:  www.libraries.uc.edu/hsl