Lesson 8: ArchiveGrid and Camio

ArchiveGrid:  When accessing the required subject of Sitting Bull's autograph card, I found a brief summary of Sitting Bull's life, including the fact that he had been a part of Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show and the manner in which he died.  Both of those things I did not know (not being a native of South Dakota!)  The link also gave a description of the item held, a collection location for the item requested, and even a citation suggestion (which would be helpful for such an unusual item that would not follow rules of book or magazine sources.)  Of course the entire text or a visual of the item were unavailable unless contacting the Cornell University Library.  When clicking on the link for Cornell University Library, it led directly to their webpage which included hours open and contact information.  Both of these would be helpful since the full text and actual items are not available for viewing online.

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For my own topic, I chose "Ernest Hemingway" (not because I'm a huge fan, but I recently read the book "The Paris Wife" by Paula McLain about his first wife Elizabeth Hadley RIchardson.)  Using that broad subject I discovered 636 items in ArchiveGrid regarding Hemingway.  So I narrowed it down to include Hemingway and his wife.  I came across a photo collection and family correspondence from Patrick Hemingway, son of the author, that was housed at Princeton University.  That would be interesting to look through.  I suppose that someone doing a biography would find this information fascinating and very helpful as primary sources for research for a well-researched book.  
I did try putting my own name in just for fun and I'm sure others did as well, however, I didn't find any relatives that I knew!


 In Camio I typed in "Paul Revere" and then narrowed the search to "Paul Revere (BY)" which resulted in a list of items created by Paul Revere.  There were a variety of silver items including a silver sugar urn, a teaspoon, and a teapot.  But the one that interested me the most was the engraved Sons of Liberty bowl.  The inscription was of historical interest for the year it was produced in 1768, long before the American Revolution took place.

I tried to find an artist that is a favorite of mine, but Richard Hook's works were not archived in Camio.  So I chose Vincent Van Gogh as I figured something of his would be in here.  I did find several of his works, including Sunflowers (which is my favorite as any fan of Dr. Who would know!)  I put all of them into my favorites along with some other artists' works that were in there and played with the slideshow and moving things around into categories.  When I tried to compare some of the works, my computer froze and I lost this entire lesson twice.  I am currently frustrated and hoping that this will eventually become a real post on the blogsite!

I imagine that this resource would be great for doing a topical or theme presentation of an artist or of an historical period of time.  As an advocate of visual learning, I think it would be great to use with power points.