Update: Happy April Fools Day!

Amherst College Archives and Special Collections is very excited to announce our newest product: the Tickle-Me-Melvil (Dewey) doll! Now you can have your very own squeezable, huggable version of this library icon!

Give your Tickle-Me-Melvil a good squeeze and he’ll say one of the following playful phrases:

Click to view slideshow.

Melvil Dewey created his famous Dewey Decimal Classification System here in the Amherst College library and we’re proud to honor his legacy today with this one-of-a-kind doll. You can too – order yours today!

When it comes to studying the history of the book, the study of bookbinding presents a unique set of challenges to scholars. While today we might be tempted think of a book as an all-in-one package, whether we buy it in a bookstore or download it to an e-reader, historically the process of creating a book from conception, to publishing, to binding has been anything but neat and tidy. Prior to the mechanization of printing in the early nineteenth century, books were often bound years, even decades, after publication. Some books were bound by binders associated with publishing companies, some were “bespoke” by wealthy patrons according to their personal specifications, and others were shipped as unfolded, uncut sheets to be bound in distant countries. Since a book can be bound and rebound any number of times in its life, associating a bookbinding with a particular place, time, and bindery is at best a game of educated guesswork. Even so, bindings have a lot to tell us about the history of the book, and the FSU Special Collections & Archives rare books collections contain many notable examples of bookbinding materials and techniques.

Materials

The most common coverings for books through the nineteenth century were those made out of animal skins, either leather or vellum.¹ One of the oldest leather bindings in our collection is on a fifteenth century Italian manuscript (fig. 1), believed to be in its original binding. Although much of the leather has worn with time, a pattern of knot-work stamps worked in blind around a filleted central panel is still visible. A manuscript like this would have taken considerable time and labor to produce, and its binding reflects its preciousness.

Leather was the material of choice for monastic and university libraries, but books owned by private (i.e. wealthy) collectors were often covered in embroidered fabrics or velvet. It is difficult to determine just how widespread the use of fabric bindings was because so many of them were not made to withstand the test of the time as well as their leather counterparts.² The embroidered binding in fig. 2 is believed to date from the eighteenth century, and it covers a 1547 Italian printed book on the lives of the Saints (Vite de Santi Padri). It is precisely these types of devotional works that were often given special coverings by their owners.

On the other end of the spectrum, increased book production after the Renaissance led to a shortage of binding materials, and cheaper methods of binding came into use to meet growing demands. By the eighteenth century, simple paper wrappings had become a common cover for inexpensive pamphlets and small-format books, such as the almanac in fig. 3.³ This copy of the 1767 Almanach des Muses, a serial of French poetry published annually from the mid-eighteenth to the early nineteenth century, is comprised of seven quires with untrimmed edges sewn together and wrapped in decorated paper, which is glued to the first and last pages of the volume. The use of blue paper was often characteristic of French paper bindings.³  Unlike modern day book jackets, these paper coverings bear no relation to the text within. Since these bindings were not designed for longevity, they often do not survive intact or are removed when the books are rebound and the pages are trimmed.

—

The FSU Special Collections & Archives rare book collections run the gamut from medieval manuscripts bound in tooled leather with gilt edges to untrimmed almanacs wrapped in publishers’ scraps. Their value, form, and function may vary, but they all contribute to the same history. Prior to the mechanization of book production in the early 1800s, each book was constructed by hand, and, as such, each can be thought of as a miniature work of art, just waiting to be discovered.

Katherine Hoarn is a graduate assistant in Special Collections & Archives. She is working on her Master of Library and Information Science degree at Florida State University.

Notes

1. D. Pearson, English bookbinding styles 1450-1800, London, 2005, p. 20-21

2. P. Needham, Twelve centuries of bookbindings 400-1600, New York, 1979, p. 107.

3. M. Lock, Bookbinding materials and techniques 1700-1920, Toronto, 2003, p. 48.

The National Archives’ Strategic Plan includes the bold initiative to digitize our analog records and make them available for online public access.

Our new digitization strategy outlines the many approaches we will use to achieve this goal, and I am proud share with you the results of some of our recent digitization work.

Recently digitized by staff in the National Archives Still Picture Branch, these stunning color photographs from the Battle of the Bulge were taken by the U.S. Army Signal Corps in St. Vith, Belgium. The photos depict the wreckage in St. Vith in the days after units of the 7th Armored Division liberated the town in January, 1945.

Wreckage in St. Vith, Belgium. National Archives Identifier 16730732

Snowsuited Soldiers Walk through the Snow Covered Streets of St. Vith, Belgium. National Archives Identifier 16730733

American Soldiers Man a Dug-In Mortar Emplacement near St. Vith, Belgium. National Archives Identifier 16730734

M-4 Sherman Tanks Lined up in a Snow Covered Field, near St. Vith, Belgium. National Archives Identifier 16730735

Yanks Trudge through Snow from Humpange,Belgium to St. Vith. National Archives Identifier 16730736

I will be featuring more digitization projects in upcoming blog posts.

More photos from the Battle of the Bulge are featured on Today’s Document Tumblr, and you can read more about “The Bloodiest Battle” in Prologue Magazine.

As a teenager growing up in Buffalo, Sidney Farber witnessed firsthand the power and mystery of a cruel disease. When he was 15, the 1918 flu epidemic hit the city with force, and —despite precautions that included the closing of almost all public spaces— Buffalo eventually lost more than 2,500 citizens to influenza.

As an adult, Farber would go on to dedicate the bulk of his career to battling perhaps the cruelest malady of all: cancer.

Shortly after graduating from Harvard Medical School, Farber started his pathology work at Children’s Hospital in Boston, regularly examining diseased tissue under a microscope. He was so troubled by the number of autopsies he was performing on young leukemia victims that after World War II he set his sights on finding a way to successfully treat pediatric leukemia patients.

At the time, the most effective cancer treatment was surgery or radiation therapy, options which didn’t work for blood cancers like leukemia and lymphoma —so virtually all leukemia patients were dying of the disease, most within a few weeks of diagnosis.

Farber was not deterred. It was well understood that leukemia was caused by immature white blood cells called blasts that arise in the bone marrow and crowd out healthy white blood cells, leaving patients unable to fight disease. He knew that folic acid, an essential vitamin, stimulated the growth and maturation of bone marrow; if he could somehow block folic acid and keep blasts from invading, he believed he could stop leukemia from becoming fatal.

A new drug called aminopterin then being tested had this folic-acid blocking ability. In November 1947, Farber and colleague Louis Diamond, MD, gave aminopterin to 16 children seriously ill with leukemia. Ten of them went into temporary remission, the first time that a drug tested as an anticancer agent had proved effective against the disease.

The results, reported in The New England Journal of Medicine in May 1948, were initially met with skepticism by many in the medical community. Over time, however, as Farber continued seeing positive results, more and more patient families began traveling to his Children’s Cancer Research Foundation clinic (today Dana-Farber Cancer Institute) for treatment.

And so, by the time Farber spoke at the New York Academy of Medicine dais on January 12, 1951 (later broadcast as a WNYC Lecture to the Laity), cancer care had entered the era of chemotherapy —treatment by drugs administered into the bloodstream— thanks in large part to his work. Rather than focus on his own success, however, Farber spends his talk recounting the work of other physician-scientists that have lead up to this point —from the 19^th century cellular work of Louis Pasteur and Sydney Ringer to the fortuitous discovery during World War II that a chemical related to mustard gas used in warfare (nitrogen mustard) could help thwart cancer.

“Our discussion tonight is based upon research – most of it no older than 10 years, and as recent as this moment,” he tells the crowd. “But it is only the breakthrough which has come in these last few years. What has been accomplished is based clearly upon contributions, made through the centuries and from a variety of disciplines, by individuals and institutions scattered over the world.”

Listening to the recording of Farber’s lecture, one is reminded how far cancer treatment has come since 1951. At the time, chemotherapy could temporarily slow or stop disease, but Farber notes how the vast majority of patients were still dying. “All anti-cancer effects produced by chemical compounds are temporary in man,” he says, “with effects lasting from weeks to months – and only occasionally for periods as long as six years.”

Farber does offer hope, however, that with patience and hard work these results will continue to improve. “There will be no one V-Day when the cure of cancer will be achieved,” he says. “Progress will be achieved in spurts, with great unevenness and irregularity. . . Anti-cancer compounds are being used in daily practice now, producing effects which would have aroused intense excitement a scant five or seven years ago.”

Today the progress continues, as do the achievements. Survivorship for many cancers is now often measured in decades rather than months, and Farber’s vision has become reality.

We’ve made a group of zoning maps available online. These are frequently consulted by our researchers, so we’ve made them easily available to everyone.

March 1990 zoning map. Reference code PUB-: PD 2100.6.

The maps were published:

• August 2, 1960
• March 14, 1963
• November 1969
• May 1974
• October 1976
• March, 1990
• March, 1993 (and the explanation of the zoning districts on the back)
• January, 1998 (and the explanation of the zoning districts on the back)
• July 10, 2001

Created by the City of Vancouver Planning Department, the maps allow you to see the permitted uses of land over time. These maps are used as a first step for an environmental assessment of a site. They are also useful for those studying the history of urban planning.

Detail from March 1990 zoning map. Reference code PUB-: PD 2100.6.

Two of the maps include text explaining the zoning and its intended use.

Detail from verso of January 1998 map. Reference code PUB-: PD 2100.8-PD 2100.8.2.

Please let us know if you find these maps useful.

This year marks the 74th anniversary of the passing of the Lend Lease Bill, which allowed the sale of arms and material to the Allied Nations during the Second World War, aiding the fight against the Axis Nations until American involvement in the war helped to turn the tide fully. The President as well as like-minded Senators such as Pepper and others, knew that American involvement in the war was inevitable and that American Neutrality would last for only so long. It was to this end that President Roosevelt created the Lend Lease Act to “Further promote the defense of the United States” and it was vigorously promoted by Senator Pepper during 1940 and 1941 leading up to the act’s passage into law on March 11, 1941 with aid lasting until September of 1945. In a press release put out on the third anniversary of the passing of Lend Lease on March 11, 1944, Senator Pepper reflected on the benefits of its passage, which provided some $50 billion dollars in aid to Free France, Great Britain, China and the USSR:

“Secretary of War [Henry L.] Stimson has defined Lend Lease as the “program designed to hasten the day of victory by permitting us to put the weapons of victory into the hands of our allies with a flexibility based on strategic considerations.” All over the globe lend lease material and skills supplied by the United States are slowly but surely bringing the enemy to his knees preparatory to the final blow which will forever free the world from the crushing force of aggression. Everywhere that the Nazis and the Japanese are being defeated in battle, lend lease is playing a vital role.” (Claude Pepper Papers, Series 204D Box 4 Folder 17)

Up to this point, 21,000 aircraft had been furnished to the Allies along with 4,700 tanks and tank destroyers, 100,000 sub machine guns and over one million tons of steel and other metals.  Throughout the year of campaigning for the act, the young senator from Florida worked tirelessly for its eventual passage and routinely spoke at events put on by the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies. During one such speech given on June 28, 1941, just a few months after the act passed, Pepper called attention to the dire need to continue American support for its allies abroad:

“They [isolationists] are those who said there would be no war in Europe, if Roosevelt did not cause it. They are those who denounced Roosevelt when he said, at Chicago, that the aggressors must be quarantined. They are those who refused to repeal the Arms Embargo and incited Hitler to unloose the dragons of war. They are those who opposed the Selective Service Act; those who fought against the Lend Lease Bill; who have thrown every possible obstacle in the path of the President, the Congress, and the people who have thus far made some contribution to the cause of stopping Hitler.” (Claude Pepper Papers, Series 203 Box 8 Folder 4)

This vocal support of Lend Lease as well as the Selective Service Act earned Pepper the dislike of groups such as the Congress of American Mothers, who, fearing that their sons would be called off to fight, gathered in front of the halls of Congress and hung the Senator in effigy. The passing of the Lend Lease Bill is widely regarded as an important piece of legislation with regard to helping shorten the Second World War, which exacted a terrible cost on the world from 1939 to 1945. To learn more about Claude Pepper’s involvement during the War Years and beyond, please visit the Claude Pepper Library online, at our Facebook page or in person from 9 AM-5 PM Monday through Friday.

Amherst’s baseball team of 1902, the year of the “Kane controversy.” Dunleavy and Kane (both AC 1904) are seated together in the middle row at far right. [Athletics Collection, box OS-1, folder 8]

Today all American colleges and universities are bound by the rules of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) regarding the amateur status of their athletes. No student-athlete may compete in a sport in which he or she received compensation elsewhere. Prior to the NCAA’s founding in 1906, rules concerning pay-for-play seem to have been adopted and enforced locally, informally, and inconsistently. Amherst’s first encounter with the issue occurred in 1901 and came to a head the following year with the so-called “Kane controversy,” which was partly responsible for Amherst’s withdrawal from the Tri-Collegiate League (Amherst, Wesleyan and Williams, now known as the “Little Three”). Let’s take a look at this controversy.

At the start of the 1902 baseball season, a new set of Tri-Collegiate League rules governing student eligibility — and more importantly, the question of how those rules should be interpreted — had the entire college in confusion and uproar. In April of the previous year, representatives of the three colleges had met in Springfield to discuss professionalism. At that meeting, one player at each of the colleges was identified as having taken money for baseball, and their eligibility was challenged. At Amherst, the player in question was an outstanding left-handed pitcher named John F. Dunleavy (AC 1904). Dunleavy had definite aspirations to play major league ball and had been touted by scouts when he played a season for Malone (N.Y.) in the Northern League.

In the spring of 1902, Amherst’s star sophomore was barred from playing because of his involvement with the Malone team, and he would never play for Amherst again. However, this did not prevent team manager Swift from hiring Dunleavy as a coach. “Dunleavy’s experience as a ball player makes him especially fitted for the position,” the Amherst Student reported on March 1 — while at the same time making him unfitted for playing. And, indeed, Dunleavy’s baseball skills were bona fide: he eventually left Amherst after his junior year and played three major-league seasons with the St. Louis Cardinals, followed by a string of engagements with minor league clubs through at least 1910.

It might be said that the Dunleavy case was one of several that were instrumental in establishing eligibility rules regarding professionalism, at least within the Tri-Collegiate League; and it probably also had an effect on the rules set up nationally by the NCAA after 1906.

The Kane controversy, on the other hand, presented an early case study on how those rules were to be enforced.

Frank Kane (AC 1904) came to Amherst from Maine and established himself as a talented and popular athlete. He served as gymnasium director for his class and was a very effective pitcher. If his entry from the Olio yearbook is a fair indication, he was known among his Amherst classmates for a certain rustic manliness:

“What the newspapers [had] to say about him” was plenty. Controversy started brewing on April 25, 1902, when the Wesleyan members of the Tri-Collegiate League brought charges against Kane for receiving pay for playing baseball for two teams in Maine the previous summer; further, that he played under an assumed name so as to avoid detection; and also that while he had ostensibly worked in an insurance office in Waterville that summer, “eye witnesses” there never saw him actually working in the office, and that therefore there was a strong appearance that he had merely been paid to play baseball.

After examining Kane on these charges, a “Faculty Committee on Eligibility” received “affidavits” from the managers of the two teams he had played for, stating that he had not received any remuneration. It also had a letter from his employer stating that Kane “worked regularly for me as a clerk in my office during the months of July and August.” As to playing under an assumed name, the committee “found that … there was nothing in the constitution on the eligibility rules to debar a man for [this], and further that it had been frequently permitted”! Kane was acquitted of all the charges.

In the meantime, Kane continued to play ball, and very effectively indeed, as shown in the box score below of the Tri-Collegiate championship game that Williams played under protest. Kane struck out ten Williams batters.

Amherst vs. Williams, May 3, 1902.

This was how formal charges were handled under the Tri-Collegiate rules: investigated and ruled upon by a supposedly unbiased and honorable faculty committee at the defendant’s host institution. Not surprisingly, Wesleyan appealed the committee’s decision. The league scheduled a hearing in Springfield on the evening of May 9, 1902. The arguments essentially came down to circumstantial evidence, not entirely credible testimony, and a strong whiff of insincerity. By the time the parties adjourned at 1 a.m., the vote was 2-1 to declare Kane ineligible. The whole outcome was reported in great detail in a special issue of the Amherst Student of May 12:

Kane’s ouster from Tri-Collegiate play was, according to Amherst administrators, the last straw in what was vaguely referred to as an increasingly strained relationship with Wesleyan and Williams. At a mass meeting of students, faculty and administrators, the college decided to withdraw from the league at the end of the season. This decision not only affected baseball, but all Amherst athletic teams in the following year. Interestingly, Frank Kane was allowed to play on the team for the 1903 season, since the only rules he officially violated were those of the Tri-Collegiate League. A few years later, Amherst would be bound by much more comprehensive NCAA rules regarding pay-for-play.

Jocelyn Grant, one of our Exhibition Assistants, interviews Suzanne Fernando, a Queen’s Baton Bearer in Irvine, Trinity Church at the Hosts and Champions Exhibition.

During one of my visits to the Hosts and Champions Exhibition to record footage for a series of tours that highlight different aspects of the exhibition, I had the delight of meeting Suzanne Fernando. Both Suzanne and her daughter were selected to be Baton Bearers during the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games. Here is what she has to say about the experience. Additional footage has been supplied courtesy of Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games Scotland.

How do you define “the book”?

What functions do books serve?

What are the essential qualities of a book?

How have these characteristics changed over time?

Those are a sample of the questions raised during the Special Collections & Archives instruction sessions for the “Introduction to the History of Text Technology” classes (ENG 3803) and the “What is a Text” class (ENG 4815).  For each class, we pull a variety of relevant materials from the Rare Books Collection, encouraging students to interact with the materials during the class session.  The visit to Special Collections is an opportunity for students to explore in-depth the specific class themes by engaging with the rare and unique materials in Special Collections & Archives.

The concept of the codex (as seen above and left with The Poems of William Shakespeare) dominates initial discussion on the form and function of a book.  But for the “Introduction to the History of Text Technology” class, we’ve placed nineteenth century ledgers alongside Babylonian cuneiform tablets that detail temple transactions from 2350 BCE, illustrating a continuity in the function, if not form of the text (see the FSU Digital Libraryrare booksrare for more information on the Cuneiform Tablet collection).  For the “What is a Text?” class, students’ notions of what constitutes the essential characteristics of a book is challenged by materials from the Special Collections & Archives Artists’ Book Collection.

An artist’s book plays with the form and function of a book.  By reinterpreting the text, images, or the very structure of the codex, an artist’s book pushes at the boundaries of what the essential qualities of a book should be.  According to Johanna Drucker, artist and critic, the artist’s book “interrogates the conceptual or material form of the book as part of its intention, thematic interests, or production activities.”1

Many of the artists books from Special Collections & Archives abandon the structure of the codex entirely (as seen in the artist book, Fam-i-ly: a Book by Rita MacDonald, pictured right and Julie Chen’s A Guide to Higher Learning, pictured below).  Other artists books play with the connection between text, image, and structure, such as in Emily Martin’s More Slices of Pie.

Special Collections & Archives has a rich collection of artists’ books, from a portfolio containing Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland illustrated by Salvador Dali to books created in the last decade that expand our notions of the essential qualities of a book.  Each artist book contained in the collection is unique.  Through the artist’s interpretation of text, image, and structure, the question of how to define a book is given new meaning.

For more information about artists’ books, check out this Research Guide here.

1 As cited by Megan L. Benton, “The Book as Art,” in A Companion to the History of the Book, eds. Simon Eliot and Jonathan Rose, Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2007: pg. 505.

Rebecca L. Bramlett is a graduate assistant in the Special Collections & Archives Division.  She is working on her Master of Library and Information Science at Florida State University.

Internet Archive book scanner | Wikimedia Commons

It has been some time since we hosted our Digitization Matters symposium, which led to our report, Shifting Gears. This event and findings from the surveys of archives and special collections in the US and Canada, and  the UK and Ireland have helped to shape our work in the OCLC Research Library Partnership for some time. However, we felt like enough time had gone by, and enough had changed that it was time for us to begin some new discussions in order to frame future work.

We often hear from library colleagues that they continue to experience challenges associated with digitization of collections, so earlier this month we hosted some discussions (via WebEx) to try to get a handle on what some of those challenges are. Prior to the conversations, we asked participants to characterize their digitization challenges, and then did some rough analysis on the responses. Challenges fell into a number of areas.

• Rights issues (copyright, privacy)
• Born Digital, web harvesting
• Issues with digital asset management systems (DAMS) or institutional repositories (IR)
• Storage and preservation
• Metadata: Item-level description vs collection descriptions
• Process management / workflow / shift from projects to programs
• Selection – prioritizing users over curators and funders
• Audio/Visual materials
• Access: are we putting things where scholars can find them?

We opted not to include the first four issues in our initial discussion — copyright, and rights issues in general, are quite complicated (and with a group that includes people from Canada, Europe, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand I’m not sure we could address it well). We have done quite a bit of work on born digital (and are currently investigating some areas related to web harvesting). At least for our first foray, discussions on DAMS and IRs seemed like they could have gone down a very tool-specific path. Likewise with storage and preservation. Even taking these juicy topics off the table, we still found we had plenty to chew on.

Metadata: Item-level description vs collection descriptions

Many of our discussion participants are digitizing archival collections — there is an inherent challenge in digitizing collections at the item or page level when the bulk of the description is at a collection level. People described “resistance” to costly item level description, and a desire to find an “adequate” aggregate description. On the other hand, there was an acknowledgement of the tension between keeping costs down and satisfying users who may have different expectations. A key here may be a more nuanced view of context — for correspondence, an archival approach may be fine. In other circumstances, not. Some institutions are digitizing collections (such as papyri) where the ability to describe the items is not resident in the library. How can we engage scholars to help us with this part of our work?

Process management / workflow / shift from projects to programs

Many institutions are still very much in project mode, looking to transition to programs. For those who have or are working towards digitization programs, there is a struggle to get stakeholders all on the same page: at some institutions, the content owners, metadata production unit, and technical teams seldom if ever come together; here, getting all parties together to establish shared expectations is essential. Some institutions are looking to establish workflows that will more effectively allow them to leverage patron-driven requests, while others are thinking about the implications of contributing content to aggregators like DPLA. One institution has started scanning with student employees — when students have a few minutes here or there, they can sit down at a scanning station and scan for 10-15 minutes — this leads to a steady stream of content.

Selection – prioritizing users over curators and funders

Many institutions are still operating under a model whereby curators or subject librarians feed the selection pool, either through a formal or informal process. Even in these models, it can be difficult to get input from all — there tend to be a small pool of people who engage in the process. At one institution, people who come with a digitization request are also asked to serve as “champions” and are expected to bring something to the project — contributing student hours to enhance metadata, for example. One institutions views selection as coming through three streams — donor initiated, vendor or commercial partner initiated, and initiated by the curatorial group (emphasizing that the three are not mutually exclusive). Another institution is looking at analytics and finding that curator initiated requests generate less online traffic than patron initiated requests. In a similar vein, a third institution is looking at what is being used in the reading room and considering making digitization requests based on that information. Even though people’s survey responses indicated that they would like to move selection more towards directly serving researchers needs, from the discussion I’d observe that few institutions have established models to do so.

Audio/Visual materials

As with born digital, everyone has A/V materials in their collection, and making them more accessible is a concern. A participant from one institution observed that they see key differences in interest for these formats — for example, filmmakers, not scholars, are the people who will seek out video. If there is a transcript for materials, that may impact demand. A/V projects tend to focus on at-risk materials, since costs are so high. Some institutions are beefing up their reformatting capacities, in anticipation of needing to act on these materials. If you are interested in this area, you will want to track the activities of the  (US based) Federal Agencies Audio-Visual Working Group.

Access: are we putting things where scholars can find them

For many institutions, aggregation is the name of the game, and thinking as a community about aggregating content is key: “Standalone silos don’t help users find our things.” Whether materials are in discovery repositories that are hosted by the institution or elsewhere, discoverability and user experience are concerns. One institution assigns students to search for materials via Google and in repositories. Are collections findable?

Thanks to all who took part in our discussions! I hope we’ll have more to report in the future.

Recent presentation to the Society of North Carolina Archivists on community collaboration and outreach through our collections:

Times Square is an icon, a Hollywood backdrop, the heart of the Big Apple, and One Times Square sits right at its center. The “Times Tower” was built for The New York Times in 1904, and Longacre Square was renamed Times Square in honor of the newspaper. In 1908, the owner of the Times, Adolph Ochs, organized the first New Year’s Eve ball drop. The electric news ticker sign – “The Zipper” – went up in 1928, displaying headlines within a minute of a story breaking. The Times had moved their headquarters one block west by then, but they still maintained ownership of the building.

In this episode of New York: A Portrait in Sound, you’ll hear from the people who kept the sign running each day until closing at midnight each night. The lights of Times Square may shine 24/7 now in the city that never sleeps, but this piece brings us back to a time when even Times Square went to bed.

The New York Times no longer owns the building or the news ticker, but Times Square has remained an exciting hub of the city. More about the history of One Times Square can be discovered through this timeline.

Pedestrians stopped in their tracks by the NYTimes news ticker.

(Hollem, Meyer & MacLaugharie/Library of Congress)

In our 2014 supplemental report, Setting Priorities: An Essential Step in Transforming Declassification, the PIDB advocated for a coordinated, government-wide approach to declassifying information based on those records most sought after and of most historical significance to the public.  To this end, we believe topic-based prioritization is a viable alternative to prioritizing records simply by age and level of difficulty and effort to review.  Prioritization is one component of the overall transformation needed to sustain declassification given the growth of information across government and the dwindling resources available to agencies.

We are looking forward to participating in the upcoming NDC public forum.  This forum will focus on the topic of prioritization for improved declassification.  A member of the PIDB plans to discuss the six recommendations from our Setting Priorities supplemental report and provide comments on next steps in making topic-based prioritization a possibility in government.

The NDC completed the quality assurance review of over 351 million pages of records, commonly referred to as the “backlog,” in February 2014.  We are pleased to know the NDC is using this forum as a way to involve the public and stakeholders to improve its processes now that the “backlog” has been retired.  With this large challenge completed, there is an opportunity to rethink how the NDC and agencies operate and how they may prioritize records for declassification review so that those of most importance to the public are processed first.  We are thankful for the opportunity to begin dialog on this topic and look forward to the NDC public forum.

Please continue to follow our blog, Transforming Classification, to learn more details about our participation in the upcoming NDC public forum.

Continuing with our tours of the Hosts & Champions Exhibition at Trinity Church, Irvine, Jocelyn Grant, one of our Exhibition Assistants, introduces some of the mascots on display.

A family favourite, mascots are now a staple of the Commonwealth Games. Starting from Mac in 1986, Glasgow 2014’s mascot was an adorable thistle that won the hearts of the city during the Games. There are however several mascots that have featured internationally as the Games has travelled across the Commonwealth. Here are a few that are currently housed in the Hosts and Champions Exhibition.