Author: Bill Levay

  • Using open source tools in a newspaper digitization workflow

    Using open source tools in a newspaper digitization workflow

    At the GLBT Historical Society we’re diligently digitizing more than 1,500 issues of the Bay Area Reporter, the San Francisco-based weekly newspaper that’s been serving the LGBT community since 1971. Thanks to a generous grant from the Bob Ross Foundation, we purchased a shiny new scanner that could accommodate newspaper spreads, and we set about…

  • Digital collections workflows at CHS

    Digital collections workflows at CHS

    The California Historical Society recently added four collections of historical photographs to its digital library, including images of Los Angeles at the turn of the 20th century, and photos taken by a 15-year-old Alice Burr of volunteer infantrymen mustering in San Francisco during the Spanish-American War. These collections and more are available at digitallibrary.californiahistoricalsociety.org. Perhaps…

  • If you love these blues: A Mike Bloomfield discography

    If you love these blues: A Mike Bloomfield discography

    I had the great privilege of compiling the discography at the back of the newly-published Michael Bloomfield: The Rise and Fall of an American Guitar Hero, a totally revised and expanded edition of Ed Ward’s 1983 biography of the Chicago-born blues guitarist, from Chicago Review Press. There have been a few nice write-ups of the book,…

  • Visualizing jazz discography

    Visualizing jazz discography

    As jazz music evolved alongside sound recording technology and the record industry, so too did the study and cataloging of sound recordings, or discography. From the early discographies of Charles Delaunay through the work of Brian Rust, Tom Lord, and many others, jazz discographers have published thousands upon thousands of pages of highly structured data…