The Bigger Picture: Visual Archives and the Smithsonian
Link Love: 12/16/2011
by Catherine Shteynberg on December 16, 2011

- Cambridge University opens a digital archive of Newton’s personal papers [Effie Kapsalis, SIA].
- Ever wondered what it’s like behind the scenes, designing an exhibition at the Smithsonian? Find out in this intern’s post at the National Museum of American History’s blog.
- The Smithsonian’s Secretary, Wayne Clough, shares his travel journal (and photos) of recent travels to Machu Picchu and the rest of Peru.
- Remember CD-ROMs? The Library of Congress’ digital preservation blog, which has been exploring the preservation of obsolete technologies, looks into why people and organizations are interested in accessing the information from these outdated discs.
- The Smithsonian’s Human Studies Film Archives talks about a recent surprising and delightful find of an avant-garde director Jorge Prelorán's short experimental film, Claudia (Version I) (1972), in their collections. Read more.
- What did the first seismograph look like?
- The very interesting WordSeer project: a text analysis tool that includes visualizations and works on the grammatical structure of text. Still confused about its use? For example, scholars studying concepts of beauty in Shakespeare’s writing may be surprised to find that the writer didn’t use the word “beautiful” in his texts very often. WordSeer would help you find the beautiful synonyms the author did use. Watch more below:
Categories: What Gets Saved
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Thank you for finding WordSeer. I've long been interested in text visualizations.

Glad you enjoyed it Maureen--it seems to me the idea is rich for mining, especially for researchers. How many times have any of us been "stuck" in research before we could find the right keyword? Especially with historic material? It will be interesting to see where it goes!
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