Site plan for Centinela Park, Inglewood, 1945

The Ralph D. Cornell archive offers fascinating perspective on land development in southern California.  Cornell was the first landscape architect to open an office in Los Angeles. It was the early 1920’s at the start of a real estate  boom, before most people knew what landscape architecture was. The development activity of that era is amply reflected in the nitrate negative documentation of Cornell’s landscape architecture work. For example, the coverage includes plans for 20 community parks,

  12 residential subdivisions,

General plan of Monte Mar Vista, Los Angeles, 1924

and seven colleges & universities. As such, Cornell’s work became part of the fabric of daily life in many southern California communities. Many of his designs survive in full or in part in public areas such as Cheviot Hills Park and the parkway along Santa Monica Blvd. in Beverly Hills (the fountain specified in the plan, and designed by architect Ralph Carlin Flewelling, is still at the corner of Wilshire Blvd. and Santa Monica Blvd.).

Sketch of Beverly Hills Parkway development, Beverly Hills, 1930

In addition, the nitrate images record the designs of important landscape architects for Montecito estates such as those of Wright S. Ludington (the Lansdowne Hermes, a Roman marble statue now in the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, is visible at the end of a lawn),

Wright Saltus Ludington residence (Lockwood de Forest, landscape architect), view of the Lansdowne Hermes statue at end tree-bordered lawn, Montecito, 1931

George Owen Knapp (Cornell especially liked this garden, which was later destroyed by fire),

George Owen Knapp residence (Charles G. Adams, landscape architect), stairs ascending to fountain framed by eucalyptus trees with mountains in background, Montecito, 1931

John Percival Jefferson (one of the few life-size versions of Frederick William MacMonnies famous Bacchante statue was in the reflecting pool),

John Percival Jefferson residence (Paul Thiene, landscape architect), view towards house from reflection pool with statue of a bacchante by MacMonnies, Montecito, 1931

James Waldron Gillespie,

James Waldron Gillespie residence (Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, landscape architect), view from house towards fountain with pool parterre, Montecito, 1932

and Alfred E. Dieterich,

Alfred E. Dieterich residence (Lockwood de Forest, landscape architect), view of succulent garden with stone path, Montecito, 1931

and the Beverly Hills estate of Harvey Mudd.

Harvey Mudd residence (Edward Huntsman-Trout, landscape architect), sundial terrace, Beverly Hills, 1933

Although Cornell did not consider his work for private clients to be a substantial part of his practice, the nitrate images document a few private commissions such as the lovely gardens of the W. R. Dunsmore Residence which Cornell worked on over a number of years.

W. R. Dunsmore residence, exterior view towards house from driveway, Los Angeles, 1930

Cornell played a role in the ongoing preservation of missions and ranchos as well. A study of his own quite beautiful hand painted design for the reconstruction of the grounds of the San Diego Mission (planned with Arthur B. Benton), which includes stands of “scattered olive… live oaks… pines or eucalypts… sycamores… chaparral… native shrubs” in fields of  “mustard and wild oats… poppies… wild flowers,” makes one want to drive right down to see it.

Reconstruction and development of the grounds of the San Diego Mission, San Diego, 1919

He also designed the grounds of the 1844 adobe ranch house at Rancho Los Cerritos in Long Beach when the house underwent renovation in 1930-1931.

Rancho Los Cerritos, view from the forecourt towards the restored house, wall and gate, Long Beach, 1931

Cornell was an avid photographer and documented his European and California travels with images of architecture and plant species.

Desert and mountains with cactus (Yucca mojavense), shrubs, and yucca in foreground, Devil's Garden, 1927

And he also created lovely photographic images of his family, like this one showing three generations seated on a gentle slope next to a tree and against a backdrop of shrubbery, enjoying the outdoors.

Maude, Ralph and Rosita Cornell, 1933

By Martha Steele, Nitrates Metadata Coordinator

During the presentation, we showed a Google map with photos from our digital library collection geotagged.  You can see this in Google Maps.  This is an example of the kind of new interface and use of our data that will be possible with our new framework.

We are proud to announce the launch of the David Livingstone Spectral Imaging Project, a collaboration with Professor Adrian Wisnicki of Birkbeck, University of London and Indiana University of Pennsylvania. This project is a collaborative, international effort to use spectral imaging technology and digital publishing to make available a series of faded, illegible texts written by Livingstone when stranded without ink or writing paper in Central Africa. Please see the Washington Post article about the project.

Dr. Livingstone, I presume?

You may remember David Livingstone from the famous rumored utterance of Sir Henry Morton Stanley, upon finding Dr. Livingstone after 6 years without contact in Africa.

The 1871 Diary web site includes critical, textual, and historical essays and notes; a detailed project history and archive that chronicles the rediscovery of Livingstone’s original text, including over 60 downloadable documents and files produced in the course of the project; and a set of web pages that provide browsing of the images and the transcribed text, full-text searching, and the simultaneous searching and comparison between the original 1871 Field Diary, the highly revised 1872 Journal created by Livingstone, and a further revised 1874 posthumously published version.

The separate, but intimately related, Spectral Image Archive digitally preserves all the pages of Livingstone’s 1870 and 1871 Field Diaries as high-resolution spectral images with full metadata, thus providing direct access to all the primary Livingstone data on which this critical edition is based. The Archive is “designed to be self-documenting” and “provides data and metadata in a regular and predicable structure.” This is a very significant part of the project in that it provides access to all the raw data for the project under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial license. The raw data to which the public has access totals 655GB.

The UCLA Digital Library Program is the digital publisher of this project. The diary texts are marked up in TEI P5, indexed in Solr for searching, and displayed using XSLT.

Cover of the pamphlet

The Story of Air Conditioning, a fact-filled 16-page pamphlet distributed by the Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Machinery Association sometime between 1940 and 1953, is available for reading at History & Special Collections for the Sciences on the 4th floor of the Biomedical Library. It also is online at: <http://digital2.library.ucla.edu/viewItem.do?ark=21198/zz002b86t4>.

This recent acquisition—the only recorded copy, found by West Sand Lake, New York-based ephemera dealer aGatherin’—uses the characters Tempy (temperature), Drippy (humidity), Stirry (air circulation), and Dusty (cleanliness) to answer the question, “Did you ever wonder why you are so much more comfortable in air conditioned surroundings?” [Italics are theirs.]  The pamphlet is wittily illustrated by John Groth, who was the art editor of Esquire in the 1930s and combat correspondent and artist for the Chicago Sun during World War II.

by Russell A. Johnson

July 23: Raymond Chandler, who saw LA in a new light (and darkness) in the twentieth century. UCLA has an extensive collection of his papers.

July 26: Aldous Huxley, another great author who lived in Los Angeles for over 25 years. UCLA also holds a major collection of his papers.

August 6: Lucille Ball’s 100th birthday. Here’s a great picture of her and Desi. You can also visit the mural in Culver City.

August 24: Count Basie’s birthday. See a fabulous photo of him, Louis Armstrong (birthday July 6) and other African-American entertainers from our Walter Gordon collection.

We have more birthdays coming up in the next few months with more historical photos from UCLA collections to share! Also, check out our Facebook page: we share other photos there as well.

As a graduating library student interested in digital collections and information architecture, I was lucky to connect with the Digital Library Program. Working as their intern for the last two quarters I learned from their adaptive and hands-on approach toward the development and maintenance of digital collections. It is an experience that has proven invaluable especially as I prepare to enter the field as professional and apply all that I learned to the day to day challenges of an evolving information environment.

In the first quarter of the internship I worked with Jennifer Weintraub to research the layout and functionality of exemplary digital map collections. We did this in order to better inform the development of our own web-interface for the historical map digitization project. As of now, the UCLA Digital Library has hundreds of digitized maps but no specific way to view them as a collective whole apart from doing a simple keyword search using the word ‘map’.

Jen got me up to speed quickly on the back-end of things, showing me how the maps were selected for digitization and then ingested into the collection system. I learned that maps demanded their own unique scanning strategies and metadata considerations that have to be considered in the long term.
It was then up to me to choose exemplary digital map collection sites for evaluation and analysis. In my enthusiasm I worried far too much about the creation of a systematic criterion for evaluating those sites rather than what could actually be learned from them quickly, and as a result, I had to renew my approach some way through. Still, we were able to get a core-list of functionality and layout elements that helped to set our expectations in the design of our digital map collection.

Additionally, having been interested in user-centered design, I thought it would be helpful to supplement the evaluation discoveries with what the end-user of the system would ultimately want to accomplish with the digital maps and work that into the interface design. As a result Jen arranged a meeting with the map library staff where we were able to compile a list of frequently asked questions and user-needs for the physical maps. It was our hope that in creating a persona set (a group of artificial but representative users) to guide us, we would be able to translate those user-needs and questions into the design as well.

After we felt we had compiled enough research to begin thinking about the design of the interface, I went forward and created two sets of wireframes (skeletal components of what the webpages will look like) for each of the main aspects of the digital collection: the landing page, the search/browse returns, and the item page. This was perhaps the most time consuming of all the tasks but one of the most enjoyable as there was quite a bit of creativity involved in imagining the layout of an as-of-yet designed interface to a digital collection. Although there was still much to do for this project, including revising a number of the wireframes, it was a really rewarding first quarter of the internship.
At the beginning of the second quarter I hit the ground running. The Digital Library is preparing for future migrations of its collection platform and I was tasked with conserving the interfaces of the older collections that will either be phased out or updated when they change over.

The question of exactly how to do this and to what extent was something that came up in a DLP meeting where we weighed the benefit of saving the actual files of the site, the code, or just the look of the collections. Ultimately we thought that having a record of the look and feel of the site would be the most beneficial and least time and resource intensive as we imagined that the most likely scenario of use would be if people simply wanted a reference for the pathways that visitors used to move through the collection and the discrete elements of the pages that made it possible for comparison to the current version. We realize this is not proper digital preservation of the resources, but it is the easiest solution given our constraints.

I had recently come across a wonderful program called ‘Screenr’ that allowed me to quickly and easily record a walk-through of a website and then share it via a link or save it as an mp4. This worked perfectly for our needs. In conjunction with screen grabs of the individual pages of the sites we are able to view how previous iterations of the DLP collections looked and what patrons were able to do with them. While it is always a matter of what to give up in a project, it’s a good lesson in being flexible and resourceful with available technology.

In my final few weeks I had a chance to go back and update a number of the wireframes I was working on for the digital map collection, providing better detail and highlighting key features and functions wherever possible. I felt that with the improvements I made the documents were now detailed enough to drive a solid conversation about their implementation. As a result, Jen gave me the opportunity to present them fully to the map librarian and staff and receive valuable feedback and suggestions. Reassuringly, they were met with approval and we were able to discuss of how they might integrate with the new content platform and the possibility of increasing their web-functionality with API from other systems like Google Maps. It was a really good conversation that made me feel my contributions might have a lasting effect on the development stage.

The meeting was useful in another way as well. Through general conversations about the map digitization project it became apparent that they needed a usable diagram to illustrate the way all the elements of the project tied together. Jen had mentioned she had done this in a basic way for parts of the overall project but felt there needed to be a single document that easily communicated the workflow to the uninitiated and maybe even helped to spot bottlenecks or other problem areas. This became my final task as an intern and I set out to piece together Jen’s earlier attempts in PowerPoint and transform those into something more comprehensive and polished. It was a challenge to balance detailing individual steps with an immediate impression of the system as a whole but it was surprisingly enjoyable. It took a number of iterations to capture just enough of everything but I think that in it’s final form it will help as a point of reference for anyone involved with the map digitization project in the future.

Taken together, my experiences at the Digital Library Program have genuinely made an impact on my professional growth and career trajectory. The internships allowed me to explore the type of work a librarian interested in digital collections and information architecture might do while getting a chance to actually do it. I think this is unusual for many graduate students so again, I feel lucky to have had this opportunity. And although the activities I participated in were just a sliver of the responsibilities the DLP is tasked with everyday, I’ve found that I feel more confident to meet the responsibilities of a new profession and a new information landscape than ever before.

The countries and their languages grew independently of each other, separated by over two-thousand miles of land and sea. Many people propose that the script for the Ethiopian language Ge’ez, called Fidäl, came much earlier than the current Armenian script, and even more have built theories about how the relationship between the two came to be. One of the most popular theories is based in the countries’ long history of Christianity: Armenia was the very first Christian nation, made official in 301 AD, and Ethiopia quickly became the second in 316 AD.

Around 406 AD, Saint Mesrob Mashtots was tasked with creating a new alphabet for the Kingdom of Armenia. The Armenians sought to distance themselves from the countries and religions that surrounded (and attempted to conquer) them. Many suggest that Mesrob might have encountered Ethiopian Christians while on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and came into possession of one of their religious texts. With a Ge’ez bible as his guide, it isn’t unthinkable that Mesrob adopted some of the characters to fit his unfinished alphabet. Both Armenia and Ethiopia were nations that had faced the same problem Mesrob was sent to address – they were the only Christian nations in their regions for years, and were eager to produce the same sort of religious literature.

Gladzor Gospels (page 34). Armenian Manuscripts Collection, Ms. 1. UCLA Library Special Collections

We are fortunate enough to have the Gladzor Gospels in our collection. The gospels are considered a masterpiece of 14th century illumination; they contain full-page miniatures, elaborately decorated calendars, intricate border art, and portraits of saints incorporated into the body of the text, as shown in the example to the left.

Many of our Ethiopic manuscripts are written and decorated with much stronger, thicker lines, and show the hand of the artists and scribes that created them. As shown in the example below, the text is traditionally done in sections of red and black ink; the embellishments are most often earth-toned. Their charm lies in a certain level of tactility and informality.

Ṣālot ba᾽eneta Ḥemāma Ayena Ṭelā wa-Ayena Wareq, Māhléta Ṣegé, Seyefa Śelāssé, Qeddāsé Māryām (page 1). Ethiopic Manuscripts Collection, No. 8. UCLA Library Special Collections

The Armenians and Ethiopians have a strong history of friendship, although much of it came very long after the creation of their respective alphabets. Two such stories stand out:

In the early 16th century, an Armenian merchant was employed in the court of the Ethiopian queen. He was sent as the Ethiopian ambassador to Portugal on Ethiopia’s first diplomatic mission. Matters became somewhat complicated when Portugal did not believe that he, an Armenian, was in the service of the Ethiopian courts, and became further complicated on his journey back to Ethiopia. More of the story can be read here.

The other takes place more recently, in the early 1920′s. After the Armenian Genocide, Crown Prince Ras Tafari of Ethiopia encountered 40 Armenian orphans in Jerusalem, collectively called Arba Lijoch.  He was so charmed by all of them that he adopted every one and brought them back to Ethiopia. He gave them the best possible musical training, and the 40 Armenian children formed the very first official Ethiopian orchestra. Together they created the Ethiopian Imperial National Anthem, which remained the same until 1974.

We’re happy to be able to present to you important works from both of these countries. No matter the relationship between these countries and their languages, both their scripts and manuscripts are beautifully written, and we encourage you to browse our collections.

By Ashi Diamon

Walter L. Gordon, Jr. & Judge William C. Beverly, Jr.

We also took the occasion to honor Judge William C. Beverly, Jr., who graciously donated the legacy of Mr. Gordon’s many years of collecting historical photographs documenting life in Los Angeles: the Walter L. Gordon, Jr./William C. Beverly, Jr. digital collection. You can find our earlier post about this collection here.

Birthday Cake

Guests were treated to cake and ice cream, Mr. Gordon’s wonderful stories, history and context of the collection by Susan D. Anderson (curator of Collecting Los Angeles), and a slideshow of photographs.

Happy Birthday Slide

Today is Mr. Gordon’s actual birthday.  We hope you will join us in wishing him happiness and good health on his 103rd birthday.

By Claudia Horning (UCLA Library Cataloging & Metadata Center); photos by Octavio Olvera (UCLA Library Special Collections)