The Einstein Digital Collection has found its way into Vassar classrooms!

Earlier this year, we announced the launch of the digital version of our Morris and Adele Bergreen Albert Einstein Collection. While we were excited by the many features of the site, like full-text searching and translated letters, we were ecstatic that many faculty members wanted to use the digital materials in their upcoming courses. In fact, one of the biggest reasons we digitized the collection was to make the materials available to undergraduates and Einstein scholars alike! Three professors – Andrew Bush (Jewish Studies), Jill Schneiderman (Earth Science/STS), and José Perillán (Physics/STS) – have started using Einstein in their current or upcoming courses.

Professor Andrew Bush, one of the founders of the Jewish Studies Program at Vassar, will use the digital materials in JWST 350: Confronting Modernity, in Fall 2015.  The annual topic, “Einstein’s Archive,” will focus on the correspondence, photographs, and manuscripts found in the physical and digital collections on campus, as well as theoretical understandings of the process of archiving.  The transcribed and translated items will enable students to engage in close readings of these materials.

Professor Jill Schneiderman’s Earth Science/STS course, ESCI 111: Science and Justice in the Anthropocene, asks students to choose a scientist to place in conversation with Albert Einstein for their final papers. The goal is to compare Einstein’s commitment to justice to that of the student’s chosen scientist, examining similarities and differences. Using the digitized correspondence between Einstein and Vassar economics professor Otto Nathan (translated from German by our colleagues at Caltech), students gain a better understanding of Einstein as a scientist-activist, and can use this understanding, in turn, when analyzing the works of other prominent scientists.

Assistant professor José Perillán has been exploring the Einstein materials in his courses as well.

His current STS course, “STS 340: Scientific Debate: Great Scientific Controversies in Context,” provides historical context to the significant discoveries – and paradigm shifts – in classical and modern physics. The digital collection, in particular, has helped illustrate the careful attention Einstein paid to his estate and the direction he wished it to take once he passed away – but his “voice” was used posthumously in ways Einstein could not control. The mythological Einstein, Perillán shows, overshadowed the historical Einstein. Future plans include a redevelopment of STS 280: Albert Einstein (the Einstein Seminar), formerly taught by retired professor James Challey in 2011-2012, allowing students to delve more deeply into Einstein’s original works in the collection. The students will have access to all materials because of the translations and transcriptions available on the site. The course will be taught in Spring 2016 and cross-listed with the History and STS departments.

We are so excited to learn more about the use of these materials in Vassar courses! Visit the digital collection at http://einstein.digitallibrary.vassar.edu to search Einstein’s letters, view photos of him and Otto Nathan, and read manuscripts, petitions, and more online.

The Albert Einstein Digital Collection at Vassar College Libraries was made possible by a generous grant from Dr. Georgette Bennett in honor of Dr. Leonard Polonsky CBE.

Wednesday, September 17, 2014 at 12:00 noon The Library Cafe returns to the airwaves with an interview with the media historian Lisa Gitelman, who will discuss her book Paper Knowledge: Toward a Media History of Documents (Duke University Press, 2014). The Library Cafe is a weekly program of table talk with scholars, artists, librarians and publishers about research, ideas, and the formation and circulation of knowledge. It is hosted by librarian Thomas Hill and can be heard each week on Wednesdays from noon to one p.m. on WVKR (91.3FM). Episodes are uploaded for podcast after each episode on the program website at http://library-cafe.org, where you will also find a listing of future guests. This semester’s lineup includes Vassar Professors Barbara Olsen, Peipei Qiu, and Lydia Murdoch, as well as an array of distinguished visiting scholars who write on media, scholarship, and higher education.

We’re celebrating Preservation Week (April 21-27, 2013), and thinking about all the ways you can save – or, much worse, lose – all of the work that you’ve amassed this semester, this year, or perhaps your entire time at Vassar.   Most of the research and personal work that you’ve done is probably in digital form, from the articles you found in JSTOR to the analyses saved in Microsoft Word; you’ve most likely amassed hundreds of photos, maybe a video or two (or fifty), as well as other personal digital objects along the way.

Are your files safe right now?  Will they be safe a year from now?  What about five or ten years in the future?

Each question has its own answer.  As Bill LeFurgy, digital preservation manager at the Library of Congress writes, we need to be better aware of “how much our digital files actually do mean to us,” as he highlights in this blog post.  To tackle this problem, think about short-term and long-term digital preservation goals.

Short term

In the short term (that “now” to “a year from now” question), it is important to know what you have accumulated, what formats your files are, and what is in each file.

TIP: whenever possible, find the best copy of your work, which is usually the original.  For example, if you take a lot of pictures, the original pictures from your camera or phone are usually better than the ones you’ve placed on Facebook (which may have compressed or cropped the originals).

From there, follow the 3-2-1 Rule.

The 3-2-1 Rule

1. Make three copies.
2. Have at least two of the copies on two different types of media (e.g., one copy on a hard drive and one in your Google Drive or VSpace account).
3. Keep one copy in a different location from where you live/work.

Remember, if you’re graduating, make sure that you have copies of any work in Google Drive or VSpace!

Long term

Long-term digital preservation is much more difficult and often involves reformatting, a way of migrating old file formats to new ones without losing or harming the device (e.g., a hard drive) or the information (e.g., your term paper!) along the way.  It is a much larger topic than what we can address here, but please be aware of it!  Before you start any long-term project, make sure that you identify what information you have, decide what is important, and get organized.  For any files that you know you can still read, make copies; then educate yourself about the trade-offs of different types of storage, websites, etc., to help you accomplish digital preservation.  Finally, make sure that you name your files in a way that will help you remember what is contained in them.  These steps will help you decide on a digital preservation strategy as you move forward.

 Expert tips and advice

For more information, visit:

• American Library Association’s Preservation Week
• Library of Congress Digital Archiving website
• Vassar College Digital Library Blog: Digital Archiving and Preservation Information