Digital Ad Collections

Ad* Access

Ad*Access features more than 7,000 U.S. and Canadian print advertisements, in both black and white and in colour, dated between 1911 and 1955. Organized into five main categories (Beauty and Hygiene, Radio, Television, Transportation, and World War II), the database can also be explored in other ways: by browsing (e.g., Company, Product, Subject); keyword searching (the 15 indexed fields include Artist’s Name, Headline, Radio Programs, and Testimonials); or pre-set searching (e.g., Children in Illustration, Comics in Illustration, and Contests). Images may be downloaded in JPG or PDF format and copyright and citation information is provided. This resource should appeal to anyone interested in North American advertising, popular culture, and war history and propaganda.

Library Applications of New Technologies

Some of you have asked that we show more ways libraries are using new technologies.   On June 20 2011 The Atlantic  published What Big Media Can Learn From the New York Public Library.   Alexis Madrigal  explored NYPL's innovative online projects and concluded  “I'm convinced the NYPL is succeeding online because of desire. …. Second, the library sees its users as collaborators in improving the collections the library already has.”  Read the article to find how this all came about -- but let me  highlight a few things they are doing.

Biblion is a storytelling app which presents a slice of the library's 1939-1940 World Fair Collection in a format that pushes the traditional boundaries of the e-publication.  In general this has received good reviews.

 

What's On the Menu

Because of the problems scanning the idosyncratic scripts NYPL has crowdsourced  the transcription of their collection of beautiful digitized menus. "We're transcribing our historical restaurant menus, dish by dish, so that they can be searched by what people were eating back in the day. It's a big job so we need your help!"  The user interface is easy to navigate and gives you to all sorts of information on the food and its preparation.  It links to  HathiTrust  which gives you full text access to recipes from old cookbooks and to Epicurious to help you update the recipe for your own use.  

 

 

 

"Green Turtle Soup.—Many housewives imagine that green turtle is too expensive, and too difficult to prepare for household use, and for these reasons it is seldom met with in private families, except in tin cans. Even this is not always made from turtle."

 

Find the Future:  The Game

Jane McGonigal, author of Reality is Broken:  Why games make us better and how they can change the world , organized an augmented reality game to commemorate the New York Public Library's centennial celebration. On May 20th, 500 gamers spent the night  in the main branch of the library on 42nd Street to complete 100 "quests". This free game can now be played by anyone across the city and the world using smartphones or computers.

Check out the NYPL Labs for more projects and preview NYPL's new catalogue  developed by Toronto's own BiblioCommons.