As I was writing my last post and remembering the places I visited a few weeks ago, I had an idea.  While we were in Houston we traveled to Galveston, as I had never been there and my boyfriend hasn’t been there for a few years.  He wanted to see the after effects of the hurricane, and I wanted to see the ocean.  As we drove around Galveston looking at the destruction my boyfriend would tell me how things used to be.  Now fast forward to today…I recalled that conversation and thought what a great idea for a digital collection to have a collection before and after photos of Galveston.  This would serve multiple purposes.  To show the world the destruction of the hurricane and how things are different, but also to show how even after the destruction how the people are cleaning up and rebuilding.  In a way having before and after would also preserve images of things that may never be the same.  I think this would be a great idea for not only Galveston, but also other places were devastation occurs.  Just an idea, I would be interested in your thoughts.

I recently visited the San Jacinto Monument and Museum and found it very interesting. After visiting the museum I wondered if they had a website or a digital collection of all the impressive artifacts housed there. I did a search, and low and behold…they did! On their Art & Artifacts page is a link to browse their online databases. The don’t have everything in the museum in the online collection, but some of it is. The monument is impressive, and the observation deck is awesome. This is a neat place to visit and if you are ever in the Houston area I suggest you stop by. Check out the cannon below.

Replica cannon (a) with wooden ramrod (b), swab (c), and copper bucket (d). Identical to c2.a-d.

The Library of Congress has a great page on their site that describes the building of a digital collection. This page explains the technical side of building digital collections. They discuss copyright, metadata, preservation and more. This is a great source to give a better understanding of the process of building a digital collection as well as how the Library of Congress is trying to further expand their digital collections.

I decided to build my digital collection around the photographs I have taken at all the National Parks I have visited.  I love photographs, especially scenic ones or ones that are upclose or from a different angle to give you a new perspective.  I know I must be a nerd because I love visiting National Parks.  Not that there is anything wrong with being a nerd, actually I kind of like it.

I have been planning how I want to organize and tag all of my photographs, as well as which photographs I want to for sure use.  (I probably have at least a thousand, if not more.)  Out of all the parks I have visited I would say the Grand Canyon National Park has the most “take your breath away” quality, but I think the Grand Teton National Park is probably my favorite so far.  Oh, to live in Wyoming or Montana!  Just the thought of that makes this librarian’s heart go pitter-pat.

I previously blogged about two of my favorite digital game collection, but I recently discovered another one.  Big Fish Games is a digital game collection similar to Real Arcade and Pogo.  It has free games online as well as downloadable demos.  The site has a pleasant arrangement and divides the games into different genres (hidden object, puzzle, adventure, etc.) making it easier for users to find just the type of game they are looking for.  Big Fish also offers a game community for users to play games with or against other users.  Big Fish also offers games exclusive to this collection, so users of other gaming collections can still find more games to satisfy their gaming needs.

The university where I work subscribes to a database through NewsBank and we can access The Oklahoman online.  Through this database you can access the previous weeks papers as well as historical papers.  It is a full text electronic edition of the papers, so you can see everything the paper offers not just big stories.  You can search by date, a range of dates or by search topic.  This collection is a valuable resource for our students writing papers on current topics or items related to Oklahoma history.  Many students find it easier to print out the article instead of trying to copy it from a printed version of the newspaper as the quality is better.  The Oklahoman online is also useful for those interested in geneology as they could print off the obituaries of their loved ones.

Here is a link, but I can’t promise it works outside the university. The Oklahoman