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Internet Archive Blogs A blog from the team at archive.org MenuBlog Announcements archive.org About Events Developers Donate Eyeing the Future: Harkness Eye Institute’s Ophthalmology Journals Preserved at Internet Archive Posted on May 6, 2024 by Caralee Adams When the decision was made to move the Harkness Eye Institute in New York City from its home of nearly 90 years, no one knew what to do with its vast collection of academic journals. Dr. Daniel Casper, Columbia University professor emeritus of ophthalmology, found himself tasked with the job. Dr. Daniel Casper, Columbia University professor emeritus of ophthalmology The Columbia University Irving Medical Center’s Department of Ophthalmology had operated the Institute on Manhattan’s 165 th Street in Washington Heights since 1933. Its stately brick building was possible thanks to a $5 million gift from philanthropist Edward Harkness. In 1922, NY-Presbyterian Hospital announced that the current location would be demolished to create a new cancer center, and the Eye Institute would be relocated to other locations on the Medical Center campus. The move meant emptying the 9-floor Institute, including the John M. Wheeler Library. The collection consisted of a rare book collection; more than 160 ophthalmology journals (7,000 volumes) published in English, French, Japanese, German, and Spanish, dating back to the 1800s; ophthalmic textbooks; and a collection of ophthalmic and medical memorabilia. For many years, the library maintained a small museum with antique ophthalmic instruments and other memorabilia on the first floor of the Eye Institute. In the 1950s the space was converted to clinical use so most of the museum artifacts were placed in storage. With its recent move, the department could accommodate the rare books and memorabilia, but not the large collection of journals and some textbooks—leaving the fate of the remaining items in the air. E. S. Harkness Eye Institute, circa 1933. It was the end of an era for Casper, who has worked at the Institute since 1986 and was a frequent user of the library’s resources. He said he felt somewhat responsible for saving as much of the library contents as possible. The Wheeler Collection really was on the brink of a landfill,” said Casper. He spent his first year of retirement looking for a suitable home for the library contents. Recognizing the unique historic value of many of the journals, he approached the National Library of Medicine, the National Eye Institute, and the American Academy of Ophthalmology Museum, among others, all of whom replied in a similar manner—they had neither the space nor the resources to maintain the collection. Casper had no luck finding a place to rehouse the sizable donation, until he reached out to the Internet Archive. Soon after making contact, an Archive staffer in New York came to take measurements to ship the remaining Wheeler Collection to the Archive. A few days later, a truck arrived and 23 pallets of journals and books were loaded. The items will be safely stored in a physical archive and scanned so the public can have digital access online. The preservation and electronic dissemination of this collection is truly a dream come true,” Casper said, who appreciates that the donation process was seamless, with no charge to the university, and the journals will live on for future generations in a more accessible format. Tracking older print articles that have never been digitized can be time consuming for researchers, and many previous studies are overlooked because they can be difficult to identify and locate, Casper said. With digital access to journals, researchers can avoid reinventing the wheel in their research and build on past scholarly evidence more easily, he said. I did not realize the Internet Archive would take a collection like this,” Casper said. People spent huge amounts of effort putting these works together. It would have been unfortunate to just throw it all away. That would imply the collection is worthless, but it has value.” Casper hopes the digitization of the Wheeler Collection leads to an acceleration of advances in science as researchers will eventually have free, online access to this invaluable collection of knowledge. I’ve become an Internet Archive booster. It saved us,” he said. The Internet Archive is an incredible resource.” Posted in Books Archive , Lending Books | Tagged donation , donations | Leave a reply New Audiobook Anthology Highlights Public Domain Folktales from 1928 Posted on April 29, 2024 by Caralee Adams After Laura Gibbs retired from teaching mythology and folklore at the University of Oklahoma, she wanted to continue sharing her love of storytelling with digital learners everywhere. Following her own passion for making folk stories as accessible to all as possible, she began volunteering with a nonprofit that produces free audio books for the public. Gibbs, who now lives in Austin, devotes one to two hours each day to recording and reviewing audio for LibriVox , a volunteer community of readers who record free public domain audiobooks. Her most recent project involved finding folktales, fairy tales and mythology in the Internet Archive that were recently released into the public domain to compile an anthology, Tales from 1928,” available to read at Internet Archive or listen via LibriVox . Tales of 1928: Listen | Read Gibbs selected short stories from 20 books that were published in 1928, as those works are now in the public domain in the U.S. and can be shared, remixed and reused without copyright restrictions. In curating her collection, she was thoughtful about how to remix the creative works in a package that would appeal to listeners. The variety of folktales and fairy tales in the world is just enormous. So many think it begins and ends with the Brothers Grimm,” said Gibbs, of the German folklorists. My number one goal was to have worldwide coverage—stories not just from Europe, but also from Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, East Asia, and the Americas.” Overall, Gibbs has recorded nine books of African folktales with more than 200 stories available for listening here . Gibbs also wanted stories with accessible language—not too many old fashioned thee” or thou” references. Once she decided on the line up, she invited people to record each story, and was pleased with the response from new and experienced readers to volunteer for the project. In addition to producing the anthology, Gibbs proof listens” to book chapters by other readers before they are shared with the LibriVox community. The work involves careful attention to detail—listening for background noise (a car honking, phone ringing, etc.) or misspoken words. Gibbs flags the noise by marking the exact time, which she then reports back to the readers for re-recording. Gibbs said she’s enjoyed the range of materials she gets to review. It’s fun discovering weird, random stuff in the public domain,” she said. Her proof listening projects are listed here . Bambi: A Life in the Woods: Listen Recently, Gibbs proof listened to the English translation of the 1928 classic, Bambi: A Life in the Woods ,” by Felix Salton, translated by Whittaker Chambers. The book is fantastic, and the reader is the best…she performed all the different voices of the animals and even the individual fawns,” she said. If anybody wants something beautiful and inspiring to listen to, it’s now available at LibriVox and also at the Internet Archive, where LibriVox hosts all its audio files.” Gibbs plans to continue creating audio folktale anthologies by year. She’s already started on works from 1927. She added: For the rest of my life, we are going to have new content entering the public domain, year by year, so I’ll keep going.” For more on Gibbs’s curation of African folk tales see: Library as Laboratory Recap: Curating the African Folktales in the Internet Archive’s Collection | Internet Archive Blogs...