Most Likely to Own Madonna’s Yearbook

The New Yorker

Seth Poppel is the guy you call if you need access to a famous (or infamous) person’s high-school yearbook, stat.

The Dream Was Universal Access to Knowledge. The Result Was a Fiasco.

Information wants to be free. That observation, first made in 1984, anticipated the internet and the world to come. It cost nothing to digitally reproduce data and words, and so we have them in numbing abundance. Information also wants to be expensive.

My Fathers Death in 7 Gigabytes

WIRED

It was a reasonable death. He was 90 and took the inevitable final turn in late March. “I think this is it,” my brother said from the nursing home. “They brought in the snack cart.”  I went to Baltimore and fished a ginger ale out of a bowl of melting ice and sat by the bed.

Original Garbage-Can Art Found in Sanitation Department Archive!

The New Yorker

Last year, Molly Bloom, a freelance editor, moved into a new apartment, in Flatbush, and quickly befriended a neighbor named Lilly Lam, who mentioned that she designed signs for the Department of Sanitation.

CRASH! BARK! BOOM! The USC Sound Effects Library

For a simple overview of the collection being presented, read Craig Smith’s original blog entry over at the Freesound site.

Ten Thousand Cattle for Our One Thousandth Post

The Library of Congress

It’s hard to believe, but this is the 1000th published post here at Folklife Today! In our not-quite-ten years of existence, our dedicated crew of bloggers at the American Folklife Center and the Veterans History Project has published research articles, guided readers to fabulous collections, cele

New York Public Library Acquires Joan Didion’s Letters, Drafts and Notes

Smithsonian Magazine

The sale comes just two months after the writer’s hurricane lamps, Le Creuset cookware, tortoiseshell eyeglasses and other personal belongings went under the hammer at a historic Stair Galleries auction that raised $1.9 million for charitable causes.

Posters Power!

This is a guest post by Sahar Kazmi, a writer-editor in the Office of the Chief Information Officer. It appears in the January-February issue of the Library of Congress Magazine. Before the internet meme, there were posters.

The Smithsonian Will Restore Hundreds of the World’s Oldest Sound Recordings

Smithsonian Magazine

Until about ten years ago, nobody knew what Alexander Graham Bell sounded like. But a breakthrough came in 2013, when Smithsonian researchers recovered a previously “unplayable” recording of the scientist on a wax-and-cardboard disc.  “Hear my voice,” Bell declared.

Archive of Ernest Hemingway Writings, Photos Opens to the Public for the First Time

Smithsonian Magazine

Ernest Hemingway and his middle son, Patrick, pose with a record 119.5-pound Atlantic sailfish caught off Key West, Florida, in May 1934. Toby and Betty Bruce Collection of Ernest Hemingway, Eberly Family Special Collections Library, Penn State University Libraries / Penn State. All Rights Reserved.

In Thousands of Recordings, Jim Metzner Collected Sounds From Around the World

Smithsonian Magazine

The deep calls of an elephant, sped up so that they can be picked up by the human ear. A Japanese New Year’s song, sung by children living in Hawaii. The shrieks of beached whales in Cape Cod, right before being rescued.

Darwin’s Lost Treasure, Found

The New Yorker

In a dimly lit basement in the Cambridge University Library, a conservator recently removed two reddish-brown, leather-bound notebooks from a moisture-controlled glass display case.

Who Will Save the Food Timeline?

Eater

In the long timeline of human civilization, here’s roughly how things shook out: First, there was fire, water, ice, and salt. Then we started cooking up and chowing down on oysters, scallops, horsemeat, mushrooms, insects, and frogs, in that general chronological order.

The people trying to save scents from extinction

Imagine an old leather-bound book just pulled out from a wooden shelf. Its yellowed pages release dust as they open. Even before you begin to read the book, the unique smell of it fills your nose.

Raiders of the Lost Web

The Atlantic

The web, as it appears at any one moment, is a phantasmagoria. It’s not a place in any reliable sense of the word. It is not a repository. It is not a library. It is a constantly changing patchwork of perpetual nowness. You can't count on the web, okay? It’s unstable. You have to know this.

Introducing “Archives Unbound”

JSTOR Daily

Students ask me the most fascinating questions, and I don’t know how to answer most of them. As an archivist in charge of digital collections, I am regularly invited to classes to speak with students about resources I’ve built to enhance digital discovery.