Library Blogs

Relevance is a complex concept which reflects aspects of a query, a document, and the user as well as contextual factors. Relevance involves many factors such as the user's preferences, task, stage in their information-seeking, domain knowledge, intent, and the context of a particular search. Tom Burton-West, one of the HathiTrust developers, has been working on practical relevance ranking for all the volumes in HathiTrust for a number of years.

Don't miss "Pearls of Wisdom : The Arts of Islam at the University of Michigan," on display October 15th - December 21st at the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology! This exhibition features a number of items from the Special Collections Library, including manuscripts from our Islamic Manuscripts Collection and a couple of magic bowls from our Historic Scientific Instrument Collection.

Meet Laura. She spent her summer doing research in the Special Collections Library, and I was able to talk with her for a few minutes on her last day about her experience.

Here is our list of most popular games during the month of September. Xbox 360 in clearly still more popular than Xbox One, although one of the Xbox One's games did top out the list. FIFA games of every flavor dominate the list with four entries, and I'm sure the newly acquired FIFA 15 will make an appearance next month. That's right: as of yesterday we have FIFA 15.

Nestled in the nearly 800 boxes that comprise the Robert Altman Archive here at the University of Michigan’s Special Collections Library is a treasure trove of materials from his 1980 film Popeye, which featured Robin Williams as the mumbling, spinach eating sailor. Over the last two months since the unexpected passing of Williams, numerous magazines, websites and blogs have paid tribute to the departed comic genius. Chief among them is Eric Spitnagel’s piece for Vanity Fair’s Hollywood entitled Popeye is the Best Movie Robin Williams Ever Made. While many may gasp at Spitnagel’s judgment, his witty and humorous remarks demonstrate the loyalty certain Williams fans feel towards a film that is often maligned rather than rejoiced.

Don't miss the Hispanic Heritage Month digital exhibit on display, October 5 through October 12, in Bert's Study Lounge in the Shapiro Undergraduate Library showcasing images from materials found in the Special Collections Library.

(by Kat Hagedorn, Christina Powell, Lance Stuchell and John Weise) The one constant in digital preservation over the past couple of decades has been change. Digitization standards have changed as equipment has improved and become more affordable, formats have come and gone, and tools have been developed to help with automated format creation and validation. The progress made on this front has been great, but how do we reconcile older content with current digitization and preservation standards?

For anyone interested in marginalized communities and the progress of social movements, the Special Collections Library has a wealth of primary and secondary resources. Examples of institutionalized racism, in particular, can be found throughout the Special Collections Library, and are a reminder that even objects we tend to revere such as rare books cannot escape their historical context.

A new exhibit, "The Life and Death of Gourmet — The Magazine of Good Living," is on display through December first in Special Collections' 7th floor exhibit space

This Wednesday's watermarks feature: hand / glove motifs in papers of manuscripts from the Islamic Manuscripts Collection.