Old Vault Letter, Michelle Godfrey - Feb 27, 2013

Today's letters included:
MSS113-b01f12-06, -b01f12-10 and -b01f17-02.

There were basically no problems with the first two items since the majority of the text was typeset on a standardized legal document for Harris County, Texas.

Transcribing the third item was basically a guessing game. It was not in the best condition being water-stained and the writing was faded or perhaps it was done in pencil. It was definitely a challenge to understand what the columns of numbers were referencing but it appears to be some sort of transaction with Thomas Bagby.

[?] Borrowed of Tho M Bagby 

Sheet music collection Mary Sommerfeld 2/27/2013

Today work on the 5th floor started at row 62 & finished on row 92  (30entries).
Only 2 add ins ( row  1231 & 1232.
A grand total of 32 entries.
There were some notable covers.
First up a very striking patriotic item around WWI

Next a romantic musical interlude.



Finally a as a nod to recent red carpet events a fashion statement. Note the bling.

Sheet Music Collection: SmartScore

I spent all of Tuesday and half of Thursday working on metadata for 14 new items for the collection. This time, the process was much easier since most of the new items were sheet music and not orchestral scores. I also spent a good amount of time on Tuesday creating three different types of derivatives: the first batch to be uploaded to CONTENTdm, the second batch for the full PDFs (items to be attached to the compound objects), and a third batch for SmartScore.

SmartScore is easy to use and very intuitive. My only problem is that I am completely tone-deaf so I do worry about the MIDIs being created for the collection. While I'm not trying to create perfect replicas, I do want the replicas to be at least a close approximation.

One issue I have had with SmartScore is that some scans, due to the condition of the original sheet music piece, do not process completely in the software. In some instances, the software would get stuck on a note, drawing it out in an irritating and unbearable drone. (Think of the BRAAAAM in Inception but not haunting and annoyingly screechy.) When this happens, the other melodies that are being played get drowned out - the MIDI, in my opinion, is completely useless.

After fruitlessly searching for a solution online, I turned to a friend-of-a-friend, and correcting this issue is a set of steps that I have yet to completely work out. The first process involves using SmartScore's image editor to sharpen the notes and (perhaps) make that particular note readable by the software. The second step is to correct the errors on the SmartScore music sheet. Suspected music errors and mismatches in time (which usually occur when the software cannot discern the note or notes) are highlighted in pink. There is a button that one can click on to "correct" the errors by making the software read the sheet music "As written." More often than not, it can make the program get "unstuck" on that note.

Unfortunately, I have several sheet music scores like this. A little under half of the scores do not have workable MIDIs due to the fact that SmartScore is getting stuck on notes. When I return, I am going to take some time to see if I can work out those kinks and make the MIDIs passable for inclusion into the collection.

Another thing I noticed: so far, all of the Drums sections in the orchestral pieces have turned out crappy MIDIs. I have no idea if this is because of the Drum type I am selecting or the software's inability to read the sheet music, as the orchestral pieces are some of the oldest in the collection - one was published in the 1800s! - and there are some pieces in which pages are faded and/or distorted by time and carelessness (e.g., some pages have water stains on them).

Old Vault Lettrs, Michelle Godfrey - Feb. 20, 2013

Today I switched to letters previously transcribed by Elaine from  --b01f12-02, -03, and -04. There were no major problems and only a few minor things to decipher.

One of the letters had a signature that was hard to read. After looking at other parts of the document and doing a little research, I was able to find out it was written by William A. Van Alstyne. There is a small Texas town that was probably named for him.

W A Van Alstyne (seal)

Meeting Minutes, Old Vault Letters - 2/18/2013

Today I looked over the Old Vault letters Michelle had transcribed last week. Didn't add/change much since Michelle got most of it, and I couldn't parse a few of the names, either. Someone was referred to as being a second lieutenant but there was an extra word or abbreviation preceding it, so I spent a few minutes trying to figure out what it might be, to no avail. I did learn that the Confederate Army referred to "third lieutenants," though.

Scanning of the meeting minutes went smoothly. I ended with the completion of 2006.

Of note:  the May 10, 2006 minutes include the username and password for the Cataloger's Desktop, which may or may not still be used. Both are omitted from the blog entry.

Sheet Music Collection: Landing Page and More Beautiful Covers

My time this week was divided between finalizing the PDFs in preparation for (possibly) running the SmartScore software over them next week and scanning more sheet music. I also worked on creating/revising the landing page for the Sheet Music Collection. I tried to be very general about the collection while highlighting a few facts about the collection as a whole. In a few brief paragraphs, I highlighted what kind of sheet music viewers could expect and provided a disclaimer in case there are items in the collection that contain offensive lyrics and/or imagery. Overall, I feel very accomplished this week: I now have 34 items uploaded onto the website (this includes the full PDFs added to each item) and have scanned a little over 30 more items. Next week will probably be all about derivatives, uploading to CONTENTdm, and applying metadata.

And SmartScore!

Now, onto more covers!

Old Vault Letters, Michelle Godfrey - Feb. 13, 2013

Todays letters were from MSS113
-b01f09-02
-b01f11-01
-b01f21-01

No major problems except the usual puzzle of figuring out someone's name. 

The first and third documents was fairly short but they contained a few names that were hard to read. 

The second letter was rather amusing because it was written in 1852 by the first governor of Texas, J. Pinckney Henderson.  He requested a favor from Thomas Bagby to help him handle a matter with the Wesylan Banner newspaper.  Pinckney had been trying to cancel the paper and wrote, “Please pay up what I owe and request them to cease sending it to me …” .  He seemed a bit frustrated with the whole matter and apparently just really didn't like owing money to anyone.

Old Vault Letters & Scanning - 2/11/2013

Today I returned to doing some work on Old Vault Letters: MSS113-b01f12-02, -03, and -04.

These letters summarized: long-winded legalese without enough punctuation to cover all of them. However, all-in-all very legible with an understandable context.

This word appeared twice within a couple of lines of the first letter, and I think it's "assigns." It stumped me for a while before I recalled the sometime-habit of our various letter writers to make a double S look like a p (like so).

A few names/abbreviations are a little off, and I'm not sure what this annotation at the end of a dollar amount means (presumably it indicates no amount under a penny):

The second letter is largely a form (which did confirm to me the use of "assigns" in the first), so pretty easy to parse. Not sure what to do with this notation, however:

... part [_V] of ...

It's used multiple times with no change depending on which "part" is being referred to and was added by hand each time. Towards the bottom of the first page/beginning of the second, it started to look more like the word was "party," with the y added in as an afterthought (the full phrase being something like "said part[y?] of the second part").

The third letter/form differed slightly in that "of Texas" was printed but "The State" had to be printed in. I wonder what necessitated that. County is still printed below, so it wasn't meant for flexibility in "The State of" versus, say, "The County of." Texas was still new to being a state in the Union at the time this was written-- were some clerks very forward thinking and left room for "The State" and "The Republic"? It would seem so.

The State of Texas, County of Harris

Scanning: wasted some minor effort before I realized the scan setting for MeetingMinutes had been overwritten to scan photos to a different location; doh. Besides that, though, smooth sailing. Even one of the poorly-printed Minutes OCR'd pretty well! :) I'm back in Aug 2006 now. Also polished up a few more tags for consistency.

Feb. 6, 2013 Sheet Music collection, Mary Sommerfeld

Time to catch up on what I have done over the last few weeks on the 5th floor.

Wednesday Jan. 23, 2013
Started on drawer 2 excel file. Begin at row 2 finished at row 19 (18 entries). Add-ins began at row 1209 and went to row 1218 (10 entries). A grand total of 28 entries.
I also inserted three columns for barcodes, and call number subfields.

Wednesday Jan. 30, 2013
Begin at row 20 finished at row 40 (20 entries). Add-ins began at row 1219 and went to row 1226 (8 entries). A grand total of 28 entries.

Wednesday Fe. 6, 2013
Begin at row 41 finished at row 61 (20 entries). Add-ins began at row 1227 and went to row 1231 (5 entries). A grand total of 25 entries. 

And now for a few unique covers:
Marketing tricks started early. Same song revamped cover art

 

 

Even in the past there was a choice of music platforms:

 

 

A catchy piece of art won't hurt sales:

 

One last thing. What do librarians do when not at a library? They go to book signings!

 



 



Old Vault Letters, Michelle Godfrey-February 6, 2013

Today I got to continue with the Old Vault Letters collection and worked on the same set Elaine did back in November:  MSS113-

b01f02-02

b01f06-02

b01f09-01

b01f10-01

There was not too much difficulty with this batch even though the letters certainly had a lot of legalese and jargon (enough to make you a little dizzy).

In our second letter, I made a guess that the word “said” got abbreviated to an s and d, written like this -  “s^d” 

 “s^d slave”

I don’t know how to verify that but it makes sense within the context of the letter. 

The condition of the third letter was quite good. The handwriting was straight and crisp and it looked like it had been written recently rather than back in 1836.

The last letter was written in 1839 by Mirabeau Lamar, the President of the Republic of Texas. He was nominating two men to political positions. There was a curious phrase that must be in reference to voting on nominees. One nominee was unanimously confirmed but the other one, Bee, got “laid on the table”.   

Bee laid on the table [?]

Seems like it all worked out for Mr. Bee. A little research revealed that Bernard Elliot Bee later served as the Republic's Secretary of State in 1839. Bee County and the city of Beeville were named in his honor.

Minutes & Photos, 2/4/2013

I did a few more scans of Meeting Minutes and added them to the other blog; 2007 is almost done. One or two pages didn't get treated very well by OCR which slowed me down a little (in one, periods were all translated into underscores, among other errors, for some reason) but no real problems.

I spent the rest of the time recording photo information of various headshots and a few group pictures from the Franklin Beauty School, 1967-1971ish. No real problems for this, either, though one envelope actually contained 4 photos: 3 similar headshots and 1 black-and-white copy of one of them as well as a note that elucidated the reason for the multiple photos. Apparently the subject hadn't liked her original photo and, it seems, wasn't willing to pay for it, presumably leading to retakes.