The Softalk Apple Project - Museum Informatics

Our Softalk Magazine Preservation Talk at #MCN2014

Jim Salmons — Thu, 04 Dec 2014 23:20:11 +0000

We invite you to view the "Lively Talkin' Slide" Edition of our recent presentation about The Softalk Apple Project and our related FactMiners project at #MCN2014, the premiere museum informatics conference. We again thank the Museum Computer Network Association and PICTION for sponsoring our Emerging Professional scholarship that enabled Jim Salmons and Timlynn Babitsky to attend the conference to learn, network with Kindred Spirits, and make our presentation to the museum informatics community. The opportunity for growth of both our projects was phemonenal and will be a source of enthusiasm for our continued evolution of these grassroots Citizen Science/History projects.

Henry Lowood Joins STAP Advisory Board

Jim Salmons — Thu, 27 Feb 2014 17:25:36 +0000

We are extremely pleased to announce that Henry Lowood, Curator of the History of Technology and Film & Media Collections of Stanford Libraries, has joined the Softalk Apple Project (STAP) Advisory Board.

"As a grassroots community project, Henry's deep and broad knowledge of museum informatics and the requirements for digital collections preservation and management will be invaluable," said Jim Salmons, a founding organizer of the project and tech lead on the FactMiners companion project, "In addition, his personal deep interest and activity in preserving and exploring the evolution of computer games is a big plus as we evolve the FactMiners social-game ecosystem as an innovative way to document and explore cultural heritiage digital collections."

At Stanford, Henry Lowood has been Curator for History of Science & Technology Collections since 1983. He is a lecturer in the Science, Technology and Society Program and the Thinking Matters program at Stanford, and adjunct faculty at San Jose State University, in the School for Library and Information Science.

Since 2000, he has been director of the How They Got Game Project in the Stanford Humanities Laboratory (SHL), a research project focused on the history of computer games and simulations; between 2004 and 2008 he was co-director of the SHL, as well. Among the many initiatives undertaken by the How They Got Game Project, he is curator of The Machinima Archive and the Archiving Virtual Worlds collection hosted by the Internet Archive and led Stanford’s work on the Preserving Virtual Worlds project, funded by the U.S. Library of Congress and the Institute of Museum and Library Services, as well as other funded research. He has published widely in history of science and technology, library and archival studies, and digital game studies. A complete c.v. is available on-line here.

The Softalk Apple Project is a community project dedicated to the preservation, exploration, and extension of the legacy of Softalk magazine. The 48 monthly issues of Softalk are a unique firsthand historical record of the Microcomputer Revolution, in general, focusing specifically on the impact of Apple Computer. For more information, please visit www.SoftalkApple.com.

FactMiners and Softalk Archive to Demo at MW2014 Conference

Jim Salmons — Mon, 03 Feb 2014 18:57:21 +0000

We are extremely pleased to announce that our proposal to do a live demonstration of the FactMiners ecosystem has been accepted by the Program Committee for the Museums and the Web 2014 annual conference to be held April 2-5 in Baltimore, Maryland USA. While the official announcement and on-line program updates have not been made on the conference website, I believe this link will work if you are interested in our proposal: The FactMiners Social-Game Ecosystem: Leveraging Metamodel Subgraphs in Neo4j Graph Databases. [Note: Sometimes this link to the proposal doesn't "take" until the second time you try it. Will update when official announcement and program update is on-line.]

During our 1.5 hour demonstration, in addition to showing prototypes of FactMiners gameplay, we will do some 'on-demand' GraphGist metamodeling of conference attendees' on-line collections to explore the potential for adding a FactMiners Fact Cloud to the resources available to visitors and researchers.

We are very pleased to be selected among the organizations and individuals demonstrating their projects and technologies during the MW2014 demo track in Baltimore this April. This will obviously be a GREAT opportunity to meet prospective Fact Cloud host collaborators. But equally as important, we will take best advantage of an invaluable opportunity for a "flash peer review" by demo attendees that will undoubtedly refine and extend our design and implementation of the FactMiners ecosystem.