Virtually There
At the end of summer, 2006, approximately 6,000 images from books held in the History of Science Collections of the University of Oklahoma Library were available on the History of Science Collections image server. Our generous terms of use reflect our mission, as a public research university, in providing resources for teaching, research and publication.
Available images represent a wide variety of rare works in the history of science, including Plato, Aristotle, Euclid, Aristarchos, Archimedes, Hippocrates, Hyginus, Pliny, Ptolemy, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen), Crescenzi, Duns Scotus, Hildegard of Bingen, Sacrobosco, Leonardo da Vinci, Peurbach, and Regiomontanus, in addition to hundreds of images from 16th century and later works by Copernicus, Vesalius, Kepler, Galileo, Boyle, Newton, Cuvier, Darwin, Finley, Flammarion or Curie, to name a few. Here are instructions for finding images currently available on the History of Science Collections image server.
Through a generous IT grant from the College of Arts and Sciences, Melissa L. Rickman has been appointed to produce images useful for teaching as a graduate assistant for the academic year 2006-07. In addition to being a Ph.D. candidate in the History of Science Department, Melissa’s other qualifications for this effort include a Masters in Library and Information Studies, a Masters in the History of Science, as well as previous experience with photography and digitization software. So Melissa combines subject matter expertise and pedagogical experience with a librarian’s understanding of rare books and familiarity with the Collections. Through her efforts this year, we expect to more than double the number of images available on the server, filling the most important gaps of images that would be useful for teaching undergraduate courses in the history of science. Most future entries to this blog, after this introductory post, will be created by Melissa Rickman.
From time to time we will post summaries to this blog of the works that have been digitized and are soon to become available on the server. Expect the images to appear on the server within a few days of being announced on this blog. Therefore, to keep abreast of new images as they are becoming available, subscribe to this blog’s RSS feed or bookmark it for future browsing.
This blog is one step in our process of creating pedagogical and scholarly resources. As such, it reminds me of the camera obscura illustrated by Albrecht Dürer (1535, above). If the lute in Dürer’s illustration corresponds to the actual book held in the History of Science Collections, and the “perspective point” on the right wall represents the eventual use of the images in teaching and research, then our process of digitization is the artist in the center, connecting the dots on the canvas with the measuring screen. In this blog, then, we hope to provide a link between interested users of the images and those who prepare them.
Please send us feedback, along with your suggestions for images that would be useful for teaching, using the Image request form.
KVM
Contact:
Kerry V. Magruder
Librarian, History of Science Collections
University of Oklahoma Libraries
401 W. Brooks, BL 521
Norman, OK 73019
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Monday, July 31, 2006
