Are they really haunted? You’ll have to find out for yourself. These are the stories we’ve heard.

Evoking a medieval French castle, the Chateau-style Hotel Vancouver, complete with steep copper roof (now painted green), ornate dormers, and creepy gargoyles, is alleged to be haunted by an elegant “lady in red” who patrols the 14th floor. This fashionable apparition has reportedly been seen walking on an invisible ledge by hotel guests, employees and film crews. It is said that the hotel’s elevator often stops on the 14th floor, and as the elevator door opens on its own, the lady in red is seen gliding through the hallway . . . .

Hotel Vancouver – Archibald & Schofield, 1928-1939. Reference code AM54-S4-: Hot P70

This medieval style, fortress-like landmark is Vancouver ‘s earliest drill hall. Its notable features include two rounded towers complete with battlements, and rusticated stone trim. Three and a half foot thick walls and a parapet made from Gabriola Island limestone rest solidly on a foundation of huge granite blocks. The Hall has always housed Vancouver’s and British Columbia’s senior militia regiment, The British Columbia Regiment – Duke of Connaught’s Own. Various eerie sounds are the most commonly reported evidence of other-worldly residents: footsteps. . . . voices. . . . books falling from shelves. . . . items falling from walls. However, the image of a man has been observed in the Senior NCO’s and Officer’s messes. Little is known of the identity of those who haunt the Drill Hall, but the military personnel who trained here saw action in the Boer War, as well as the First and Second World Wars.

Beatty Street Drill Hall – Dept. of Public Works, 1899-1901. Reference code AM54-S4-: Bu P721

Inside the Beatty Street Drill Hall . . . . perhaps the very hallway where mysterious footsteps are often heard. Art Grice, photographer (used with permission). Reference code AM336-S3-2-: CVA 677-925

Built for industrialist, war hero, and politician General Alexander Duncan McRae, this stately Shaughnessy mansion is believed to be home to as many as seven ghosts. One, an older man in World War I uniform, is thought to be that of the General himself, another may be his wife Blaunche. Three others, known as “the Pranksters,” are thought to be First World War vets who died when Hycroft was a Veteran’s hospital and convalescent home from 1943 to 1960. One more is thought to be the head nurse from that period; while the origins of a mysterious “crying ghost” remain unknown. Reportedly, the ghosts are seldom seen or heard from during weddings or functions hosted by the University Women’s Club, who has owned the mansion since 1962, but they do not seem to like film crews who make frequent use of the property for film shoots. In particular, it is said the ghosts of Hycroft particulary detest hosting science fiction shoots, such as X-Files , or Poltergeist.

Hycroft Mansion – Thomas Hooper, 1908-1912. Leonard Frank photo. Reference code AM54-S4-: Bu P689

This shadowy view of the sumptuous interior at Hycroft Mansion makes clear why science fiction film makers find it such a desirable location for filming. Reference code AM872-: CVA 434-5

When it opened in 1941 as a first-run movie house, the Vogue Theatre, with its sophisticated Art Deco style, was the hottest ticket in town. Designed as well to handle performing arts including concerts and Broadway shows, the Vogue hosted some of the biggest names in the business. The “who’s who” set of Vancouver would regularly fill its nearly 1200 seats to take in the latest in entertainment and cultural events. A 1988 restoration project brought back the theatre’s original splendour and installed a state-of-the-art lighting and sound system. The theatre is said to house at least two ghosts: one that dwells in the basement dressing room and another that lurks in the wing of the left orchestra. Staff often report unexplained noises such as footsteps, but there have also been reports of apparitions of a tall man in a white tuxedo and black bow tie. Allegedly this dapper spectre was even spotted in the aisle by a well-known performer from on stage during the middle of his performance.

Vogue Theatre – Kaplan & Sprachman 1940-1941. Vancouver (B.C.). Planning Department photo. Reference code COV-S511-: CVA 780-52

I’m pleased to report that we have an article in the most recent Code4Lib Journal! The article, Thresholds for Discovery: EAD Tag Analysis in ArchiveGrid, and Implications for Discovery Systems is based on an analysis of how EAD (Encoded Archival Description) is used in the ArchiveGrid corpus. We go beyond that to look at EAD-in-use through the lens of discovery — how well is EAD currently meeting our objectives making our finding aids not only more discoverable, but more functional in discovery environments? In many ways, this article is a reaction to the many questions we receive about ArchiveGrid and why we do not provide a variety of indexes or advanced search features — the encoding and the data simply do not, at this point, support this functionality. We hope this paper can serve as the beginning of a discussion about some focussed efforts to improve the current situation.

With more than 120,000 finding aids, we believe this is the largest analysis of EAD done to date, and I’ll immodestly propose that the article is worthy of your attention!

Many thanks to Kathy Wisser and Jackie Dean for sharing their work with us — their earlier study of EAD usage provided an excellent model, and I’m grateful that they were willing to share their early results with us. Their article will be published in the next American Archivist, providing yet another look at EAD. Thanks also to my co authors: Bruce Washburn; the extraordinary developer behind ArchiveGrid and many other wonderful things; and Marc Bron, a PhD candidate in the computer science department at University of Amsterdam, who worked with us as an intern in the spring and did the analysis quite handily along with a number of other projects.

We look forward to your comments on the article, as well as your ideas for how to move forward to better thresholds for discovery.

With sadness we note the passing on October 11th of former WQXR Chief Engineer Zaven “Doc” Masoomian. Doc had visited us here recently and was always available to answer questions about WQXR history. He joined WQXR in May, 1941 as a studio engineer before serving as a B-17 bomber pilot and enduring a German POW camp.* He returned to WQXR after the war and worked tirelessly through till 1986 when, after 44 years at the station, he retired as WQXR’s Chief Engineer.

‘Doc,’ as he was usually known, was involved with many of the station’s major technical milestones. These include the relocation of the FM transmitter from Long Island City to the 54th floor of the Chanin Building at Lexington and 42nd Streets in Manhattan in 1941, and the relocation of WQXR AM and FM from West 57th Street to The New York Times Building at 229 West 43rd Street in 1950. In October, 1952, Doc worked on WQXR’s experiments in binaural broadcasting with the use of both AM and FM stations simultaneously in a concert broadcast to simulate stereo. The AM station broadcast the right channel and the FM station broadcast the left channel. In March, 1956, Doc was involved with the installation and implementation of WQXR-AM’s new 50,000 watt transmitter, a five-fold increase in power. In 1961, Doc helped make WQXR-FM the city’s first station to broadcast in stereo. Four years later, he was a critical part of the team that moved the FM signal to the Empire State Building.

Doc was made WQXR’s Engineering Supervisor in February, 1960 and Chief Engineer on June 1, 1971. On February 8, 1979, the Society of Broadcast Engineers (SBE) awarded Doc a certificate of merit in recognition of his engineering services to the New York Philharmonic and “his advancement of the image of the broadcast engineer.” A year later the membership of the SBE elected Doc to the SBE’s national Board of Directors for a two-year term.

Radio engineers are seldom heard and almost always behind the scenes. But it is what they do that makes possible all that the producers and programmers hope to achieve. Doc was a radio engineering pioneer who helped to make WQXR stand out in the crowd for his willingness to try new things, take risks, and produce technically superior broadcasts. 

*For Doc’s amazing wartime story see: Zaven “Doc” Masoomian – WWII Veteran, Prisoner of War Survivor and Purple Heart Recipient by Charles Masoomian.

Doc in a 1942 flight school photo, courtesy of Charles Masoomian.

Happy Halloween all you rare book lovers! Welcome to another installment in our annual creepy old book series.

Today. we’ve got the occult,

the morbid,

quite a lot of spirit communication,

a pinch of doom and gloom,

and some pestilence and poisons.

~~~

Still looking for a costume? The past is here to help!

How about as a personified plant? Poppy perhaps, or hemlock? Please, please click on Ms. Hemlock to get a better view of the vomiting mouse and the rabbit in a toga.

Or perhaps you’d like some inspiration from 19th century theater?

Of course, real historical characters are often the creepiest. May I suggest Cotton Mather, Dr. John Dee, Johann Weyer or St. Dunstan (don’t forget your tongs, you never know when temptation might strike!)

~~~

Some of our books are themselves creepy, subject matter aside:

These frankenbooks come to mind. As do the many books that move on their own on the shelves, whether to spit out their own text blocks or to spread their covers and throw their neighboring books on the floor:

Last but not least, I would like to introduce you to the scariest book in our whole collection… a book so creepy that its mere catalog record is enough to raise chills:

Yes, indeed, this is Cotton Mather’s personal copy of Agrippa‘s renowned works on occult philosophy and magic:

Now that is enough to keep me up at night…

The Public Interest Declassification Board will hold a public meeting the morning of Thursday, November 21, 2013.

We will include more details about the agenda, location and time of the meeting, as well as information about how to register to attend in a future blog post.

Please visit the PIDB’s website, http://www.archives.gov/declassification/pidb/, and continue to follow the PIDB’s blog, Transforming Classification, for more information about the PIDB’s activities.

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From the May, 1944 WQXR Program guide:

Roy Harris, who is well known to our audience, is a Westerner by birth and upbringing. He resides in Colorado Springs, where he holds the post of Composer-in-Residence to Colorado College. Rated by such publications as Time, Life and The Christian Science Monitor as “America’s Leading Symphonic Composer,” Harris has written six symphonies and a great deal of choral and chamber music. He has been recently elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Because National Music Week is celebrated this month, we asked Mr. Harris to write about American music and we feel sure his opinions will arouse your interest in contemporary composers.

American Music is here to be reckoned with, lustily growing, and confident.  With the cards scandalously stacked against them, American composers continue to develop in artistic stature and social importance. Americans are becoming aware that our native music is winning a long, tough struggle for recognition. Some are deeply interested; some are belligerent; many are fence sitters, occupied with their own daily problems. The interested ones naturally fall into two classes–naturalized Europeans and native Americans.

Some of our staunchest champions have already had the experience of helping and watching the native culture grow in other lands.  They understand that the stream of musical culture must flow onward with time, that to dam it up at any period brings stagnation. They are consequently eager that the land of their adoption should develop an important native music. Many famous interpreters as well as musicologists and writers indicate the trend in their alertness to serve American music.

But of course, American music could never develop to the point where it is today merely by the support of a small group of naturalized Americans from foreign lands. It had to be recognized and warmly supported by that vast sea of native born and educated Americans who instinctively know and feel, very strongly, that a nation of our magnitude, grandeur and abundance must have a music of our own; that we cannot buy culture; that we must make it, just as we found the ways and means to make America what it is today.

Scores of men of authority are beginning to tell the story we have been waiting for. They will open the channels which lead into the hearts and minds of the American people. They are scattered far and wide in our schools, universities, newspapers, government, commerce and industry. They and their fellow citizens will have the final vote about American music. Gradually, they will supplant those who for professional, commercial or cultural reasons are either consciously or unconsciously opposed to native music.

Broadly speaking, the symphonic and chamber music audiences of America are really 18th and 19th century European audiences. They come to the concerts as Americans living now, but the minute they enter the front door of the auditorium, they become European romantics in their tastes, understanding and preferences. They turn on their modern American radios and gramophones as modern Americans, but the minute they touch the button, they become 18th and 19th century European romantics This presto change throw-back is easily understood. These people have been conditioned to accept European music as a completely satisfying music culture. They are sincere. Nothing can be done about these people. Only a few will be able to throw off their crystallized prejudices about melody, harmony, rhythm and form–especially form. These people only react to melody which is monotonal and sequentially built of short phrases. Form to them means a mosaic treatment of a short, easily recognizable motif, held together by a series of harmonic relationships. Let us be glad that they have had, and continue to have, enjoyment of music of the past. Certainly we must not grieve that the door of our musical world is closed to most of them. Nobody should listen to music which he dislikes. That is a tortuous, anti-cultural act which brings no one good.

Nor can any good come of trying to appease those who dislike or are indifferent to native music. There is always a deep-seated reason why any conductor, teacher, critic, or executive is opposed to a native culture. The reason may be economic, social, cultural or merely personal; but we may be sure that whenever the reason is altered, the attitude which reflected it will change, and not before.

We must rather go with the mounting tide of our good fortune.

Good American music is in great demand. The demand is far greater than the supply, and each season it grows more so. Conductors, orchestras, choruses and bands, soloists, chamber groups, schools, broadcasters, publishers, are eager and waiting for good American music. The government has appropriated vast sums of money to send our music by radio and records all over the world. Foreign nations are inviting us to send or bring our scores and conduct and lecture. National educational conventions feature native music, materials and techniques, in forums that are crowded to the point of standing. In this season alone, there have been eight new American symphonies launched, to say nothing of the innumerable small pieces featured on broadcasts.

This is not wish-thinking. It is a summation of the facts accomplished. Whenever anyone brings out the shop-worn obsolete query: “Where is our American music?” we may be sure that he is really not interested in the answer. No matter how progressive he may be in other fields, he simply doesn’t know his American music. “Wake up, Mr. Badger. The sun is already high.”

What happens when archives, libraries and museums come together? They build something amazing.

The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is here, and the National Archives is proud to participate as a leading content provider in this exciting online portal and platform.

The DPLA provides a single online access point for anyone, anywhere to search and access digital collections containing America’s cultural, historical and scientific heritage. Following the successful launch in April 2013, DPLA continues to grow, regularly bringing in new partners and content. For the latest news, check out DPLAfest 2013, happening right now in Boston!

This large-scale collaborative effort to create a universal digital public library has united leaders and educators from various government agencies, libraries, archives and museums. Together with several large content providers, such as the New York Public Library, the Smithsonian, and Harvard University, the National Archives is sharing content from our online catalog in the DPLA.

In fact, the National Archives has already contributed 1.9 million digital copies of historical material, including our nation’s founding documents, photos from the Documerica Photography Project of the 1970’s, World War II posters, Mathew Brady Civil War photographs, and a wide variety of documents that define our human and civil rights.

“WPA Library Bookmobile,” National Archives Identifier 195912

The National Archives’ participation in this exciting project marks a new opportunity to share our … [ Read all ]

Join historians John Atkin and Michael Kluckner  in the Space Centre‘s digital Planetarium Star Theatre to look back at Vancouver as you’ve never seen it before. Two “indoor” digital walking tours allow you to experience the changes that have enveloped our city over the last 100 years.

Michael Kluckner’s presentation pays special attention to the Olympic Village and Kerrisdale areas. View of Arbutus Street at 37th Avenue, Reference code AM54-S4-3-: PAN NX

The presentations use a selection of images from our W. J. Moore panorama negatives, which we’ve featured here before.  Remarkably, the Space Centre has used the same high-resolution JPG images that you can download from our online search and projected them to fill the Star Theatre. They are matched with stunning modern panoramas and other audiovisual elements to produce two unique shows.

On October 24, 1993, a plaque was dedicated in Randall Library to commemorate and honor the members of the Order of Isaac Bear, an honorary organization of the University of North Carolina Wilmi

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The National Archives contains many archival gems. To share some of my favorites, I am starting a new feature for the blog, Patent of the Month.

Eye Protector for Chickens

Eye Protector for Chickens, Patent 730918, June 16, 1903. Records of the Patent and Trademark Office. National Archives and Records Administration (Page 2)

Eye Protector for Chickens, Patent 730918, June 16, 1903. Records of the Patent and Trademark Office. National Archives and Records Administration (Page 1)

Eye Protector for Chickens, Patent 730918, June 16, 1903. Records of the Patent and Trademark Office. National Archives and Records Administration (Page 3)… [ Read all ]

Our book The Boundaries of the Literary Archive is all grown up, it has now flown the nest and has been travelling America with Peter K. Steinberg! (@sylviaplathinfo ) Here are some of its holiday pictures!

Crossing the finish line of the Boston Marathon

Bounding somewhere along Eastern Seaboard of the USA

Boundaries of Literary Archives takes Manhattan by storm

From the letterhead of New York City’s Municipal Broadcasting System to the new design today, WNYC has gone through a number of logos. While each logo represents WNYC in a specific period of time one thing remains constant: WNYC is “The Voice of the City.”

The recently published National Recording Preservation Plan from the Library of Congress includes a recommendation to “encourage scientific and technical research leading to the development of new technologies to recover, reformat, and preserve audio recording media”. Although at first sight this passage seems to refer to high-tech projects such as IRENE, there may be other, more modest ways to advance audio preservation technology. Here is an example.

WNYC’s NEH-funded project has made freely available over 700 hours of unique, vintage audio newly dubbed from WNYC discs and tapes housed at the New York City Municipal Archives. The project also accumulated a lot of ancillary information (“technical metadata”) about issues ranging from condition of the original items to what choices were made during the reformatting process. (This is typical for a project of this ilk: technicians and archivists have a tendency to document processes fastidiously.) It is generally standard practice to keep this kind of information within the internal confines of the project. But what if other technicians and archivists could learn from it?

For example, consider stylus size selection, one of the disc-playback procedures most shrouded in mystery. Until the 1950s, with the wide adoption of “microgroove,” disc grooves varied widely in size. It is generally known that groove size grew smaller over time, but the rate varied greatly from company to company. Although the vast majority of styli manufactured today are for the vinyl-era microgroove (still in use today), a handful of specialized vendors manufacture disc styli in a wide range of sizes and shapes, with tips ranging from 0.6 thousands of an inch (mils) to 4.0 mils or more. Since production runs are extremely small, the styli are quite expensive.

What stylus size should today’s transfer technician use to play back vintage discs? Most of the available literature gives broad and often contradictory advice, and even a recent draft document by the scientific-leaning Audio Engineering Society (AES) starts with the vague assertion that “the correct stylus is the best-sounding one”. Although the document does not define what “good sound” means in this case, there is no question that the sound extracted from a disc can change dramatically depending on stylus size and shape. In this example, note how much cleaner the second pass sounds, with a stylus only two ten thousandths of an inch (or 0.2 mils) smaller:

Faced with potentially dozens of choices, transfer technicians use their ears daily to pick one stylus for its “best sound,” and many of them document their choices. What do their choices tell us?

As an example, we ran some simple statistical analyses on a subset of the data from WNYC’s NEH project. First, a bit of background: the discs in this project are variously called “transcription discs,” “lacquers,” or (misleadingly) “acetates”. Their materials and principles are still used in modern vinyl manufacturing. But radio transcription discs are different from commercial shellac “78” discs of the same time period, from their physical size (sixteen inches in diameter, as opposed to ten or twelve) and rotational speed (33.3 RPM, unlike the 78 RPM of commercial discs) to having slightly smaller grooves.

The first figure (click on the figures to see larger versions) shows the overall distribution of stylus sizes for 901 sides of the NEH project. Note that the most popular size was 2.8 mils. This does not conform to most recommendations for transcription discs in the available literature, which suggests using styli from 2.0 to 2.3 mils. Our two main transfer technicians did not arrive at this size with any preconceptions, but rather the bias developed over time: most discs just seemed to “sound better” with a 2.8 mil stylus.

Although measuring grooves was not part of the normal workflow of this project, for this study we measured the grooves of a small random sample of discs covering a range of years before 1960, and found them to be all in the 4 to 5 mil range edge to edge. Since the groove walls are at 90° with each other, basic geometry tells us that a 2.8 mil stylus would be riding quite high in the groove. Is this stylus choice the result of a particularity of our collection? Is it due to our transfer technicians’ preferences? Forgive me if I give the standard reply: “More work needs to be done” comparing our collection to other broadcast collections.

The project’s workflow was such that discs which sounded unsatisfactory with any stylus were set aside by the two main technicians for transfer by another technician with a wider range of styli (and more time!), one of which was chosen blindly. The stylus distribution on these 76 of these “bad shape” sides is quite different (next chart); in this case, 2.0 mil was the most popular size. This could obviously be a case of technician’s bias; but interestingly, there were no significant stylus choice differences between the two main technicians. So a potential conclusion is that, in our collection, discs seemingly in worse shape simply sound better with a 2.0 stylus.

Is there a change in stylus size over time? Not a clear one, according to the next figure, which charts average stylus size per year (bubble size represents number of sides). The discs range from 1935 to 1963; stylus size remains fairly even until a precipitous drop in the late 1950s with the advent of microgroove. This may make sense from a practical standpoint: a radio station would be most concerned with compatibility across its machines and with other studios, so changing recording characteristics may be counterproductive until a new, well-established standard arrives —in this case, microgroove. But of course, this applies only to our collection, at least for now; more work needs to be done.

Just for fun, and as a contrasting comparison, take a look at the next chart, which uses data collected (and generously shared) by the University of California Santa Barbara as part of its collaborative project with the Library of Congress, the National Jukebox Project. The subset of data in this chart includes more than 3200 sides of commercial shellac (“78”) Columbia discs covering the “acoustic era” of disc recording, from 1900 to 1925. In this case, you can see a clear downward trend, which corresponds to what most of the literature suggests for this kind of discs. However, it is interesting to see how gradual the trend is, and how big the difference is in just twenty years’ time.

It is always dangerous to extrapolate statistics too far from their source, but think how useful such data could be to technicians and collection managers. When starting an in-house reformatting lab, this kind of information could help them decide on what sizes of expensive stylus may cover most of their disc holdings. If they know the type of discs and the years of manufacture, they could stock up on certain stylus sizes to safeguard against possible future shortages. And moreover, publishing this data could contribute to a slim body of evidence-based knowledge in audio archiving, at a time when direct training is becoming more difficult in today’s isolated archives.

Here is a practical example. Shortly after running these numbers, I came across a glass-based lacquer disc which was badly peeling —I knew that I would only get one or two passes. Based on the literature, I may have chosen a 2.0 mil stylus, but our data seemed to clearly point that, given one choice, it should be a 2.8 mil. The disc was challenging but the audio ended up sounding satisfactory. Perhaps a 2.0 mil stylus would have also sounded fine, but I somehow felt like I was standing on more solid ground when I made the choice.

There are potentially many other applications for this type of study. Analyzing playback equalization curves, correlations between external symptoms and audio artifacts, elliptical vs. conical styli, stylus size vs. groove size… much of this data is already kept in institutions and vendor projects, and only needs simple analysis. Hopefully, this kind of reporting will be more common in reformatting projects, and even requested by grant-giving institutions.

Numbers cannot replace the wisdom —or ears— of the elders. The aforementioned AES draft document states that “in most cases, the judgement will be made aurally by the engineer who makes the transfer.” Although human ears should almost always be the ultimate arbiter, there is no reason not to help that decision making with some historical perspective, backed by facts. The data is there, waiting to be released and be useful.

Thanks to John Passmore, Nathan Coy and UCSB’s David Seubert for their assistance with this article.

In addition to more than 400 recordings of interviews and music from Africa, Cuba and the United States, the Ivor L. Miller Papers contain over 200 vinyl disk music recordings made and produced predominantly in Cuba and largely unavailable in the United States.

That’s right.  Here in the Archives we have a substantial Cuban record collection.

Ivor Miller, a Hampshire College graduate and an Amherst College Copeland Fellow in 2002, is a cultural historian specializing in the African Diaspora in the Caribbean and the Americas.  His 1995 doctoral dissertation for Northeastern University was a study of the Santería religion in Cuban society and its influences in the United States.  Miller has traveled extensively in West Africa, South America and the Caribbean, particularly in Cuba, where he did research from 1991-2013, conducting interviews, recording video and taking photographs.

In addition to numerous articles in scholarly journals, Dr. Miller’s publications include Ifá Will Mend Our Broken World: Thoughts on Yorùbá Religion and Culture in Africa and the Diaspora with Dr. Wande Abimbola (AIM, 1997), Aerosol Kingdom: Subway Painters of New York City (University Press of Mississippi, 2002), and Voice of the Leopard: African Secret Societies and Cuba (University Press of Mississippi, 2009).

Miller’s publications on Cuban culture often focus on the significance music plays in societal identity and in understanding the cultural relationships of West Africa and its Diasporas in the Americas, especially Cuba.

In his article A Secret Society Goes Public: the Relationship between Abakua and Cuban Popular Culture, Miller writes that “the African linguistic heritage on this side of the Atlantic is today strong enough to support a general theory for the regeneration of African religion and artistic culture in the Americas.  I have also found that early recordings of Cuban music offer another important avenue into the culture and perspectives of Cubans of African descent…These musical texts–recorded and then distributed internationally (in fact often recorded outside of the home country)–can be vital sources for mapping some of the linguistic and historic dimensions of the diaspora.”

Miller, Ivor. “A Secret Society Goes Public: The Relationship Between Abakua and Cuban Popular Culture.” African Studies Review 43.1 (2000): 163.

This collection, containing recordings of both popular artists and lesser-known folk artists, provides representations of numerous Cuban music genres including Danzón, Bolero, Guaracha, Rumba, Jazz, and Son.

Also in this collection are three recordings of the poetry of Nicolás Guillén, known as Cuba’s national poet and celebrator of the multi-racial and multi-ethnic mix that comprises Cuban culture.

For the full list of records in this collection, see Series 5: Cuban LP Record Albums of the Ivor L. Miller Papers finding aid.  While playback of original LPs is restricted for preservation reasons, researchers wishing to listen to the recordings may ask that a CD copy be made.

As a member of the small but mighty ArchiveGrid team, it’s my happy job to bring you a few updated on what has been happening with our sandbox discovery service for archival descriptions. Today I wanted to tell you about some updates to the system architecture and also a bit about how we are trying to understand how users interact with ArchiveGrid.

As Bruce wrote over at the ArchiveGrid blog, we’ve shifted over to the Bootstrap Framework. Bootstrap brings with it “responsive design,” which allows us to accommodate a broader variety of devices including phones and tablets) and added more access points to the MARC records from WorldCat (which accounts for 90% of the ArchiveGrid content).

We introduced more access points because we wanted to allow users more ways to flow to and find other items of interest without having to type in a new search. In order to see if this system change is having any impact, we’re using click trail heat maps; early comparisions of before and after show that there is a change in the system. For more details, head over to the ArchiveGrid blog, where Bruce writes about this topic. We’ll be revisiting this analysis so stay tuned!

In general, if you are interested in the nuts and bolts of building a system optimized for archival discovery, you’ll find the ArchiveGrid blog useful, and I commend it to you. Especially check out the postings categorized under Building ArchiveGrid.