Saturday, December 22, 2012

Holmes Goes Electric!

Hat tip to David Warrington to alerting me to the fact that, after years in the making, the Harvard Law School's Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Digital Suite went live last week.  The Harvard Gazette explains:
Library of Congress
On the website, a visitor can move from the erect soldier of 22 to the jurist in his prime at work behind a desk to the elderly Holmes, stooped as he walks beside Supreme Court colleague Louis Brandeis.

In a first for the library, the site aggregates multiple archival holdings into a single, hyperaccessible digital suite that anyone with a computer can search, browse, and tag. (The library uses the word “suite” to mean a collection of collections.) In the new suite, users can search and browse across five manuscript and three visual collections.

“We’re not making anything newly available through this. But the access is so greatly enhanced now. We’re making this convenient,” said Margaret Peachy, curator of digital collections at the library.

The new suite replaces and expands the library’s digital collection on Holmes. It not only aggregates manuscripts and images, but it offers simple and advanced searching, facilitates browsing, and offers links to like-minded searchers.

Who are the expected users? “Anybody with a computer who comes to this site,” said Stephen Chapman, project manager in the library’s digital lab.
More.