Balboa Park Online Collaborative Blog

Recently, I, along with Digitization Assistant Zack Vineyard, have been working with Margaret Dykens, Registrar and Director of the Research Library at San Diego Natural History Museum to image some of their extremely large, fragile maps:

(Geological Map of West-Central Sinai, 1915. click for larger)

We don't have a huge budget, so instead of a medium-format camera for large works, we have an 8' North Light copy stand that can roll around the park and a Canon EOS D5 Mark II 21.1 MP with a 24-105mm f/4 lens. And since the maps are too large to fit in the camera frame and we want to make sure the details on these maps is viewable when zoomed in, we decided to take multiple photographs of the maps, then stitch the images together.

I love it when stuff just works. That explains the success of Apple, Microsoft, and Adobe. You buy their stuff, you boot it or install it, and it just... works. This is true of the Photostitch feature of Adobe's Photoshop package, and a feature I will never, ever not be completely amazed by. I know there are plenty of other products out there, but it was already installed and seems to work...

Thanks to a grant from the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the Museum of Photographic Arts, in conjunction with the Balboa Park Online Collaborative, will develop and pilot an open source module for online contests.

As a project partner, BPOC will provide technical direction, overseeing the module’s development, testing and implementation. As one of twenty cultural institutions belonging to BPOC, the Museum of Photographic Arts has already worked with BPOC’s team to digitize its photography collection and integrate high-tech kiosks into its gallery. 

Development of this module will have a broad impact on cultural institutions across the country that are interested in using online contests to inspire and engage their audiences. As we learned from our Top Dog and Kid's-Eye View of the Park photo contests, the technology behind contests can be quite complex. This solution will offer museums a simple, low-cost solution.

Through this project, BPOC and MoPA will create open source software to facilitate online submission of user-generated content including photographs, videos, written narratives, and...