We are delighted to share that Special Collections and University Archives has been awarded a National Leadership Grant for Libraries through the Institute for Museum & Library Studies (IMLS), to fund additional development of ePADD, open source software that supports archival processes around the appraisal, ingest, processing, discovery, and delivery of email archives.

The initial public release of ePADD was made available on Github on June 30, 2015, following two years of development funded through the National Historical Publications & Records Commission.

This second phase of development, beginning November 1, 2015, will specifically focus on building out additional functionality that advances the formation of a National Digital Platform, through expanding the program’s scalability, usability, and feature set. Special Collections & University Archives will undertake this work with partners at University of California, Irvine, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Harvard University, and the Metropolitan New York Library Council (METRO). 

More information about ePADD, including links to the software, documentation, community forums, and the mailing list, can be found on the ePADD project website. 

For additional information, please contact the project team at epadd_project@stanford.edu, or follow the project on Twitter at @e_padd.

In January, Stanford launched Digging Deeper: Making Manuscripts, an online learning experience devoted to the technologies involved in creating and interpreting medieval manuscripts. We're off to a roaring start with thousands of enrolled participants across more than 90 countries (and it's not too late to sign up!).  The creation of the course has been a truly collaborative experience: Stanford University faculty and library staff have worked closely with counterparts at Cambridge University, Stanford Academic Technology Specialists, graduate students, and a team from Stanford's Office of the Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning to produce a suite of learning materials that have become much richer than any of us envisaged at the beginning of the process in 2013!

Are Stanford students living in the clouds?  Our recent Chromebook lending pilot at the Terman Engineering Library pointed out some interesting trends that involve the adoption of Google Apps and cloud computing/storage in general.