This project would digitize the 1931 edition of the Yale Library Gazette and make it available as a web page. Published on completion of the Sterling Memorial Library, this issue of the Gazette describes and interprets the inscriptions, images, and other symbols in and around the building. The Library currently makes little or no information about the history of the Sterling Memorial Library available, either online or in paper format. Only a few copies of the 1931 Gazette remain, and they are difficult to locate and in rather poor shape -- the pages of the Reference desk copy, for exqmple, are yellowing and growing brittle, and the pages and cover are starting to detach from the spine.
This project would quickly and efficiently accomplish the task of presenting existing information about Sterling. It would highlight the historical importance of the building and, by extension, the Yale Library. It would complement nicely the renovations web site maintained by Scott Bennett. In addition to preserving a document of historic value, the use of OCR technology would make the gazette available in a new way. The text, which was written in narrative form and has only a sketchy table of contents and no index, would be searchable.
The value of the Gazette online would be readily apparent to staff at public service desks in Sterling, who frequently encounter both casual visitors and prospective students and their families seeking information about Sterling. For students and others accessing the library's web pages remotely, a much more informative and impressive picture of the library's physical resources would appear. Finally, librarians and other library staff would benefit from a connection with the history of Sterling, where so many of us spend our days.
The project could be completed within three months. A student would scan the document and build the web page. Librarians would proof and correct the OCR scanning job and transfer the document to the library's web server.
Support needed: $600