Item of the Week: Oil Spill Remediation from Hidden Water

Posted on February 8, 2012 by Anna Neatrour

The item of the week is a photo documenting Oil Spill Remediation in Red Butte Creek. This photo comes from Hidden Water, a recently added collection to the Western Waters Digital Library. “Hidden Water unveils surface water systems on the east side of Salt Lake Valley, both culinary and irrigation. The web site follows the seven major streams of the Wasatch Front, plus minor ones, and tracks that water from headwaters to the Jordan River and then Great Salt Lake. It intermixes contemporary photographs with historical photographs from several archives showing earlier uses and diversions of water.”

Visit hiddenwater.org for interactive maps and galleries for different drainage systems.

Western Waters Research Guides and updated collections page

Posted on February 7, 2012 by Anna Neatrour

We’ve added a new section of Research Guides demonstrating how to use the Western Waters Digital Library for different topics. We currently have guides for maps, the Colorado River basin, and the Columbia River basin. We’ll be adding additional guides in the future.

The collections list has also been updated with the many new collections we’ve added recently.

Items of the Week: Mason-Walsh-Atkinson-Kier Saftey Newsletters, Grand Coulee Dam historic documents

Posted on January 31, 2012 by Anna Neatrour

One of the fun things about the Western Waters Digital Library is the variety of interesting historical documents you can find. The M.W.A.K Columbian Newsletter from Mason-Walsh-Atkinson-Kier CO was sent to residents of the area and workers on the Grand Coulee Dam Construction project.

The newsletters are full of useful tips like “Do not stand behind concrete buckets when being lifted!” and “Never look at the brilliant light from a welding arc!” The M.W.A.K. scoops column give you an overview of humor and riddles from 1937. These documents come from Washington State University’s Frank Arthur Banks Papers, 1913-1957. The Western Waters Digital Library has other historic newsletters from different organizations for you to browse as well.

Items of the Week: Dworshak Dam Diversion Tunnel Photographs

Posted on January 19, 2012 by Anna Neatrour

The Dworshak Dam Collection was recently added to the Western Waters Digital Library. Here we have several photos documenting work on the diversion tunnel for the dam.

This collection contains “Digitized photographs and documents pertaining to the planning, development and construction of the Dworshak Dam, featuring documents and photographs detailing both the legislative and physical development of the dam.”

The Dworshak Dam collection comes from the University of Idaho Library.

In addition to the Dworshak Dam, you can search the Western Waters Digital Library for information on Dam Construction, the Hoover Dam, Flaming Gorge Dam, the Grand Coulee Dam, and much more!

Western Waters Digital Library Item of the Week: Map of the Northern Pacific Railroad and Connections

Posted on January 10, 2012 by Anna Neatrour

This week’s highlighted items are maps of the Northern Pacific Railroad. The maps come to the Western Waters Digital Library from the Early Washington Maps Collection from Washington State University. From the 1871 map description, “The railroad held huge land grants, extending up to fifty miles to either side of the prospective tracks, and as such it was in the business of trying to sell the land to future settlers, prospectors, miners, or whomever would buy.”

The Western Waters Digital Library provides access to a variety of railroad maps. You can search WWDL for maps from the Northern Pacific Railroad, the Union Pacific Railroad, and more!

Latest harvest for Western Waters Digital Library is live

Posted on January 5, 2012 by Anna Neatrour

The index for the Western Waters Digital Library is updated on a monthly basis. The latest index contains several new collections:

Papers from The Oregon Water Conference 2011: Evaluating and Managing Water Resources in a Climate of Uncertainty:

http://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/xmlui/handle/1957/22232

Water Publications from the UNLV Digital Commons:

http://digitalcommons.library.unlv.edu/water_pubs/

Two collections from the University of Idaho,

Columbia River Basin

Project: Dam Construction in the Pacific Northwest:

http://www.lib.uidaho.edu/digital/crbp/

and the Dworshak Dam collection:

http://contentdm.lib.uidaho.edu/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=%2Fdworshak

Search all of these collections and more in the Western Waters Digital Library.

Western Waters Digital Library Item of the Week: This is the truth about the Central Arizona Project

Posted on December 21, 2011 by Anna Neatrour

This is the truth about the Central Arizona Project : you can check it yourself.

Our item of the week is an interesting example of mid-century graphic design, as well as a document that showcases how water rights issues frequently get acrimonious. This document from Arizona State University’s Special collections department was created by the Central Arizona Project Association to counter claims produced by “southern California propagandists.” You can search the Western Waters Digital Library for other items related to the Central Arizona Project.

Western Waters Digital Library Item of the Week: Contractor’s Christmas Display

Posted on December 15, 2011 by Anna Neatrour

As part of our WWDL news blog, we are going to feature selected items from the many collections in the Western Waters Digital Library. This week’s item is a photo from the Grand Coulee Dam site, “Contractor’s Christmas Display,” which comes to the Western Waters Digital Library from Washington State University’s Frank Arthur Banks Collection. The Frank Arthur Banks Collection contains “project histories of several Bureau of Reclamation projects directed by Banks, ephemeral engineering publications connected with the Grand Coulee Project, printed items of restricted circulation such as engineering reports, and Banks’ correspondence, notes and papers re: private consultation projects, notably the Bhakra Dam in India.”

You can search the Western Waters Digital Library for more historic photos by choosing “image” under type on the advanced search page.

Changes in Western Waters Digital Library Search Results

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Anna Neatrour

Recently we changed some settings for search results and individual records in the Western Waters Digital Library. Before when users would search and look at a typical set of search results like this search for documents related to the Colorado River Basin, after selecting a search result users would be directed to view the item at the contributing institution directly without being able to view the metadata associated with the item.

In order to improve search engine indexing for the Western Waters Digital Library and provide greater context to users showing how searching the Western Waters Digital Library results in access to aggregated content from a variety of different digital libraries, we’ve added an additional record level view for all items on the site that looks like this:
Upper Gunnison-Uncompahgre Basin phase I, feasibility study : final report

The new record view clearly labels where users click through to view the original item, as well as the digital repository hosting the item. By exposing more of the metadata associated with items of interest in the Western Waters Digital Library, users will also be able to see valuable information that may help them refine their searches.

Western Waters Digital Library Search Tips

Posted on November 22, 2011 by Anna Neatrour

Have you used the Western Waters Digital Library Advanced Search?

The advanced search allows you to target specific digital repositories to search from, as well as giving you the ability to search by more specific fields such as subject and description. The ability to limit by type is also very handy, since you can specify text if you wish to limit your search to find documents such as Colorado River Compact resolutions or by image if you wish to find interesting photos like this one of Memorial Day Exercises at the Hoover Dam.