It's Official - Softalk Magazine Collection Now Available at the Internet Archive

Timlynn Babitsky — Thu, 28 May 2015 18:39:02 +0000

On April 20, 2015 all 48 of the best that we could find issues of Softalk magazine were brought to the Internet Archive Regional Scanning Center in Fort Wayne Indiana for ingestion into the Internet Archive via The Softalk Apple Project. It was an amazing afternoon!

Following the offical hand-off to Facility Coordinator, Jeff Sharpe, and check in by Archivist Jye Afamasaga, Jeff gave us a tour of the facility and walked us through the workflow for preparing the Softalk arcchive to be ingested into the Internet Archive. We then had a chance to personally scan Softalk Vol 1, issues 1 and 2 with the help of "super scanner" LaDonna Hartmann. And finished up our visit with an excellent tour through the many areas in the Allen County Public library in which the Midwest Regional Scanning Center is housed and where stacks and stacks of books, periodicals, pamphlets, magazines, videos, CDs, micro fiches, and so much more are waiting to be ingested into the Internet Archive.

All 48 issues of Softalk magazine are now available for on-line viewing via your browser (actually often better than a downloaded PDF) and, of course, downloadable full-issue PDFs. The official home of the STAP Collection is here.

Now, WE NEED YOUR CROWDCHECK HELP: Before we can give final approval of this initial scan (and pay the invoice for this amazing job), we need to ensure that everything is as we hoped. So here's what you can do to help:

Create an Archive.org user account so you can leave comments.
Pick an issue and leave a comment saying something like: "I'm crowdchecking this issue."
Then using the on-line browser viewer or a PDF, go through the issue from cover to cover and give it a basic "looks good" level check. I don't know what gotchas there might be, but whatever we can do to double-check our scanners' great work, the better.
When you finish your cover-to-cover quick check, edit your first note (if editable) otherwise leave a 2nd short note giving your "A-OK" or notes of any issues we should investigate.

Thank you for whatever help you can provide for this. check-in phase of the project... "Serious fun" ahead once we get to the FactMiners social games part of the project

Softalk Apple Project Partners with Internet Archive to Accelerate Magazine Digitization and FactMiners R&D

Jim Salmons — Sat, 14 Feb 2015 18:09:59 +0000

The Softalk Apple Project and FactMiners.org are very pleased to announce our partnership with the Internet Archive which will dramatically accelerate the digitization, preservation, and public access to an archival-quality digital collection of the full 48-issue run of the Apple edition of Softalk magazine. By dramatically collapsing the pre-research activity of creating the core/source digital archive at The Softalk Apple Project, we will be able to shift considerable resources and move up the schedule to concentrate on the applied R&D initiatives of FactMiners.org's museum informatics mission.

While The Softalk Apple Project is partnering with the Internet Archive as a Contributing Library, the Digitizing Sponsors – meaning the "financial partner" paying for the IA scanning center fees – are project founders, Jim Salmons and Timlynn Babitsky.

"Jim and I are funding this scanning project as one of our 'Pay It Forward' actions in celebration of our 25th wedding anniversary this Valentine's Day, and as a way to kick-off the second year of our post-cancer Bonus Rounds." said Timlynn Babitsky, co-founder and Head Archivist of The Softalk Apple Project, "We're going to turn this project into a super-'serious-fun' experience by taking the magazines to the Midwest Regional Scanning Center to document and participate in the actual scanning process. And we'll be doing this as a stop along our way to DPLAFest, the conclave of folks coming together to celebrate and envision the future of the Digital Public Library of America."

"The acceleration and quality improvements that will result from this partnership with the Internet Archive are certainly significant." said Jim Salmons, co-founder of both projects and tech lead of FactMiners.org, "However, the thing that excites me most is how this partnership clears the way for us to dig into the innovative applied museum informatics research and development agenda we are pursuing at FactMiners. I look forward to detailing our increased R&D activity in the weeks ahead. In the meantime, I know that Timlynn and I are going to have an incredibly fun time going to the Internet Archive Scanning Center to meet Jeff Sharpe and his staff, then on to DPLAFest. Considering what Timlynn and I have been through in these last few years, I am just so happy to even have a 25th wedding anniversary much less have a chance to be working with Timlynn on such exciting Citizen Science and History projects."

For Citizen Science/History projects with a similar need, we encourage you to visit the Internet Archive Scanning Services page, then contact Robert Miller, Global Director of Books and prepare to have a REALLY good technical and distribution partner that will help you achieve your wildest project dreams and then reach for more.

Happy-Healthy Vibes to All, and Happy-Healthy 25th Anniversary to Us (Jim & Timlynn) :D :D

P.S. We promise to "crank it up to 11" for the second year of our Bonus Round! Look out Reaper, not done yet!!!
J&T

The Softalk Apple Project - Scanning

It's Official - Softalk Magazine Collection Now Available at the Internet Archive

Softalk Apple Project Partners with Internet Archive to Accelerate Magazine Digitization and FactMiners R&D