DIVA team blog

It is interesting to think that just 94 years ago, on this day in 1920, women were finally granted the right to vote.  As such, the anniversary of this date is sometimes celebrated as Women's Rights Day.  Check out this video, made in 1972, that documents the celebration.  The women seen here are honoring the occasion by engaging in a "teach in," at which they provide an outlet for broader cultural, civil, and female-oriented groups to publicize their roles and actions in society.  It is interesting to note that many of the panel and discussion group topics emphasized in the video, such as female sexuality and equal rights amendments, are still important issues for both women specifically and society as a whole today.  Check out the video to get an interesting perspective on the progress of the Women's Movement.

Alcatraz --one of the most iconic symbols in San Francisco's history, eternally popularized through both fiction and fact.  Despite the popular media depictions and fantastical tales stemming from the island's intriguing past, many people are unaware of its unique history within the context of the Native American community.  During the late 1960s and early 1970s the island and former prison facility was home to a group of resilient Native Americans attempting to gain indefinite ownership rights to the land.  Native American Alcatraz Proclamation and Occupation and Ownership of Alcatraz Island are unique videos hosted on DIVA that document the motives, claims, and intentions for the natives' occupation of the island and their hopes for negotiations with the Federal government.  Take a look at these additional videos that discuss the sentiments of the Native Americans and their thoughts on the occupation movement to gain insight into the hardship of the occupation and the personal toll it took on the activists.  The aftermath of the occupation and its ensuing influence and legacy are also discussed in this film created for the 20th Anniversary of the occupation and this film on the consequential progression of Native American communities after the event.  Check out the Occupation of Alcatraz Collection in the San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive to learn more!

The Golden Gate Bridge has long stood as a local, national, an international symbol, but how much do you really know about it?  DIVA hosts numerous resources on the creation and history of the bridge, which recently celebrated the 77th Anniversary of its opening in 1937, as well as its impact on different communities and peoples.  Check out this 1962 documentary discussing the construction of the bridge and the enormous difficulties it encountered along the way, complete with archival footage and narration by the people involved in its creation.  You can also take a look at this video commemorating the bridge's 50th Anniversary that discusses its journey to becoming an international symbol and how it affected and continues to affect so many diverse people.  Don't forget to check out the SF Bay Area Television Archive for more videos and iconic images of the bridge, such as this one from the Henri Leleu Collection and this one from the Robert Cherny Collection.

Interested in ethnicity, culture, race, or heritage? The College of Ethnic Studies collection provides a variety of resources sure to intrigue all types of audiences.  Explore the collection and view insightful materials such as interviews with former SFSU protesters and professors and panels on the various characters and sentiments associated with the 1968 strike itself, including this discussion about the effects of the strike on education, or this resource on the related activism of Native American groups during the strike period.  The collection also includes numerous panels with topics ranging from ethnic studies development and pedagogy, colonialism and self-determination, race and culture, and the preservation of diverse communities and heritage.  Make sure to explore the collection for more interesting and insightful resources.

Interested in the culture and history of the San Francisco Bay Area?  Check out the KPIX San Francisco Pageant Series in the San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive!  Browse through our collection of riveting videos that document some of the most significant local and national events and characters from around the SF Bay Area.  If you're interested in architecture take a look at this video on the creation of the famous Hearst Castle in San Simeon or this video of railroad tycoon and politician Leland P. Stanford's doomed mansion.  This video on San Francisco's original Chinatown is intriguing for those wishing to learn about the history and culture of this early local community, while this film on the anomaly that is the Winchester Mystery House and its creator is sure to be interesting for all.

The Poetry Center Digital Archive hosted on DIVA features a variety of audio files containing readings from gifted poets in the San Francisco area and beyond.  The 1950s collection is especially popular, as it includes many audio recordings of poets who rose to prominence during the 1950s "San Francisco Renaissance."  The collection includes work from a diverse array of poets and literary styles but also features work by more familiar names, such as Langston Hughes and Allen Ginsberg.  Check out the collection to discover and remember some influential and innovative poetry.

San Francisco has long been known as a nesting ground for many diverse peoples.  A large portion of its past and current population are Japanese Americans, and DIVA hosts a variety of resources that document their presence and influence here in San Francisco.  The Bay Area Television Archive and Japanese American Collection, specifically, hold many videos representative of this distinct culture, including dancing and art pieces.  The CSU World Image Archive also provides images of various cultural items, such as a wedding kimono and decorative ceramics, and the Edward B. Kaufmann Collection documents local sights like the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park.  For more political and historical resources take a look at the Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907 or head back to the television archive.  The Gentlemen's Agreement collection includes media related to the 1906 school segregation of local Japanese by the SF Board of Education.  The collection includes material from both U.S. and Japanese parties, such as this statement from the Imperial Japanese Embassy in reaction to the segregation.  The television archive additionally has multiple videos documenting the community's involvement in WWII as well as an award winning report about the effects of the war on local Japanese Americans.

The San Francisco State University Museum Collection is now on DIVA!  This vast collection, now available to see and study in its entirety, includes artifacts primarily from three influential ancient civilizations - Egypt, Greece, and Rome.  Browse the collection and discover the colorful and decorative ushabti figurines in the Sutro and California Academy of Sciences collections.  Take a look at the Bourne Collection to view examples of ancient Roman pottery, or check out the Lindgren Coin Collection to compare ancient Greek and Roman Coins.  Many of the collections include exquisite jewelry, amulets, art, and decorative items demonstrative of the unique cultural and religious beliefs of these civilizations.  Don't miss the famous mummy and sarcophagi in the Sutro Collection!  Stop by and view the collection in person, located on the fifth floor of the Humanities Building at SFSU.

108 years ago, on the morning of April 18th, a great earthquake occurred along the San Andreas Fault with an epicenter near the city of San Francisco.  The damage was only increased by the uncontrollable fires that were ignited during the quake, seen here, which burned for over three days.  The city was left in a catastrophic state with irreparable structures, environmental hazards, displacement, and devastating death tolls.  Fortunately, for the benefit of history, the disaster was one of the first to be recorded in photographs, some of which can be seen in the CSU World Image Archive on DIVA.  DIVA's San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive also hosts a riveting documentary, Disaster at Dawn, that tells the complete story of the event through personal narratives, photos, and film archives.  The strife and hardship encountered during the aftermath of the 1906 earthquake, however, soon paled in comparison to the hope and dedication seen in the citizens of San Francisco as they said goodbye to the city they knew and worked toward welcoming the remarkable metropolis we see today.

A new collection has recently been made available on DIVA! The Earth - A Work in Progress collection, created by SFSU geology professor Raymond Pestrong, includes a diverse array of photo collections documenting local, national, and international sites of geological interest.  Many of the collections contain images of extraordinary geological features, like this Hoodoo formation in the Negev, Devil's Postpile near Mammoth Lakes, sandstone domes in Jordan, and Half Dome in Yosemite.  The photos, taken throughout the 1960s-1980s, additionally allow for a comparison to the modern state of many unique sites.  For example, take a look at this tidewater glacier in Alaska that already shows signs of glacial retreat, or shrinking.  Some of the collections also demonstrate how different processes affect and create geological features, as seen in this photo of weathering pits in Yosemite.  Earth - A Work in Progress contains six sub-collections for your enjoyment, including the San Francisco Tidelands Collection of photos from local SF Bay Area sites.

Cesar Chavez Day is familiar to most people residing in California, but how much do you really know about the man and the movement that gave us this holiday?  DIVA hosts an abundance of material on Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers, mainly in the Cesar Chavez Collection of the San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive.  Take a look at the collection to see videos like this one that include diverse opinions and issues with agricultural labor that Chavez sought to change.  Don't miss this interview with Chavez filmed during the early stages of his movement that details the history and goals of the UFW, a union that Chavez created in order to attain better working conditions for farm workers.  Today we remember Chavez and his feats accomplished through hard work and nonviolent protests by honoring him with a special holiday; take a look at this video to see how Chavez was remembered and honored after his death.

The San Francisco Bay Area has had a long history of activism.  Whether social, political, cultural, or otherwise, the citizens of the Bay Area have repeatedly demonstrated their passion and willingness to stand up and stand out for their beliefs.  The San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive, hosted on DIVA, includes a wide variety of videos that document this passion. For example, take a look at these videos covering everything from the Free Speech Movement and the Vietnam War to racial tension and commercial development.

San Francisco is known for being home to some of the most unique and famous buildings in the country.  However, it is additionally valuable just for the sheer number of diverse architectural styles created by and for its eclectic inhabitants.  DIVA provides numerous resources that allow you to discover some of these architectural gems, starting with this documentary journey through the evolution of San Francisco's diverse neighborhoods and buildings.  The Humanities and Matthew Evans Resource Room and Max Kirkeberg collections are additional resources that capture the architectural spirit of the city through photographs, such as this one of the James L. Flood Mansion or this one of a Market St. building in the Castro district.  Check back soon for updates and additions to these collections!

This week marks the 49th anniversary of the arrival of the first US troops in Vietnam.  The involvement of the United States in the Vietnam Conflict became one of the most controversial and highly-opposed actions in American history.  DIVA hosts a variety of contemporary sources that document the tension, sentiments, and turmoil of this era so that you can experience it too.  For example, check out these Anti Vietnam War speeches at UC Berkeley or this photo of young protesters.  To see how local San Franciscans felt, take a look at this video of a war protest at SF State and a local protest at Kezar Stadium.

DIVA now supports mobile devices. We have a new layout that seamlessly transitions to tablets and phones. We've also improved the video and audio players with HTML5, bringing most video and and all audio to mobile devices. Finally, we've significantly improved our collections area. Aside from benefiting from all the mobile improvements, collections also feature a cleaner layout with support for sub-collection descriptions and better thumbnails. 

DIVA has integrated with San Francisco State's single sign-on solution, allowing you to use your SFSU email or ID number to login to DIVA or to create a DIVA account. If you already have a DIVA account, first login with your SFSU email or ID. You'll then be brought to a page where you can enter your existing DIVA credentials and login to your files and courses. If you're faculty or staff and do not yet have an account, first login with your SFSU email or ID and then create an account. As usual, students do not need an account to use courses and course materials hosted on DIVA. 

Interested in art and architecture in San Francisco? Browse through our new collections in the Humanities and Matthew Evans Resource Room on DIVA. Developed by current and former faculty members at San Francisco State University, the Robert Cherny, Matthew Evans, and Edward Kaufmann collections contain examples of art and architecture throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.

Check our blog next week for more highlights from our collections.

Browse through our new collection of posters from the San Francisco State College Strike, part of the San Francisco State College Strike Collection on DIVA. The collection contains 54 posters developed by faculty and students in the art department for the strike. For example, check out the following posters: American Flag and Machine, Back to Skool Week, and Relevant Education.

For more information about the San Francisco College Strike, follow this link.

Browse through our collection of more than 1,100 recordings from the San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive on DIVA. The archive features news reports, programs, documentaries, and clips recorded in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Check out this KPIX news report on an exhibition of Japanese American internment in World War II at the California Historical Society in San Francisco. The news report features Edison Uno, former director of the historical society, speaking a press conference for the exhibition. The news report also includes historical photographs of Japanese American internment camps from the exhibition.

For more content on Japanese American internment in World War II, browse through our Japanese American Collection area of the San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive on DIVA.

Check out this KPIX news clip of City Lights Books from the San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive on DIVA. Founded by Lawrence Ferlinghetti in the 1950s, City Lights Books is an independent bookstore in San Francisco. The bookstore regularly organizes book releases, poetry readings, and community events. The clip features founder Lawrence Ferlinghetti organizing copies of Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg in front of the bookstore. Howl and Other Poems is part of the bookstore's Pocket Poet Series, featuring poets from the Beat Generation.

For more information about City Lights Books, follow this link.

Interested in the history of San Francisco? Check out this documentary on the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906, part of the San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive on DIVA. The documentary features archival film and photographs of San Francisco following the earthquake and fire. The documentary also contains interviews with residents of San Francisco on their experiences.

Check our blog next week for more highlights from our collections.

This Sunday is the annual Castro Street Fair in San Francisco. Founded by Harvey Milk in the 1970s, the Castro Street Fair is a community festival featuring arts and crafts, food, and entertainment. Each year more than 50,000 visitors participate in the community celebration at the intersection of Castro and Market Streets. Donations from visitors at the Castro Street Fair support community nonprofit organizations in San Francisco, including the AIDS Emergency Fund, Project Open Hand, and Visual Aid.

Check out this KPIX-TV report on the Castro Street Fair from the 1980s, part of the San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive on DIVA. The KPIX-TV report includes scenes of the crowds at the festival, arts and crafts exhibitors, food vendors, and performers.

Browse through our collection of more than 50 recordings from the Poetry Center Digital Archive on DIVA. The Poetry Center Digital Archive currently features recordings from the 1950s by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Langston Hughes, Allen Ginsberg, and more.

For example, check out this recording by former poet laureate Philip Levine. The recording includes his poems "An Abandoned Factory, Detroit," "Night Thoughts Over a Sick Child," "Green Thumb," and "The Drunkard." His poems focus on the condition of factory workers in Detroit and are founded on his experiences working in auto manufacturing.

For more information on the Poetry Center Digital Archive, follow this link.

Check out this film on documentary photographer Dorthea Lange, part of the San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive on DIVA. The film contains interviews with Lange on her photography of migrant farm workers for the Farm Security Administration in the 1930s. The film also includes scenes of Lange collaborating with photography curator John Szarkowski to develop a retrospective exhibition of her work at the Museum of Modern Art and reviewing her personal archive of prints and negatives.

Interested in the history of San Francisco? Check out this documentary on the Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915, part of the San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive on DIVA. The exposition celebrated the opening of the Panama Canal and demonstrated the recovery of San Francisco from the earthquake and fire of 1906. The documentary contains archival film of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition and its attractions, including the Palace of Fine Arts, the Tower of Jewels, and the Palace of Machinery. The documentary also includes scenes of the entertainment featured at the exposition, such as parades, automobile races, horse races, and folk arts.

Check out this documentary on the San Francisco Bay, part of the San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive on DIVA. Featuring archival film and photographs, the documentary focuses on the significance of the bay in historical events, including the California Gold Rush, the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, and the development of the Golden Gate Bridge. The documentary also contains interviews with local coast guardsmen, harbor pilots, and fishermen familiar with the San Francisco Bay.

Check our blog next week for more highlights from our collections.

Interested in updates from DIVA throughout the fall semester? Subscribe to our blog feed for regular updates on new features, content, and highlights from our collections. Simply follow this link to the DIVA team blog and click on “subscribe to this blog” on the right side of the page.

Check out this KRON-TV program on photographer Ansel Adams, a San Francisco native famous for his black and white photographs of the American wilderness. The program contains interviews with Adams on the influence of Yosemite National Park on his work and highlights his commitment to wilderness preservation through his involvement in the Sierra Club. The program also includes scenes of Adams photographing landscapes in Yosemite National Park, instructing students in a photography workshop, and working in his photography studio. The KRON-TV program is part of the San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive on DIVA.

Check out this sculpture The Thinker by Auguste Rodin, part of the CSU World Image Archive on DIVA. Originally proposed as part of the composition of his commissioned work The Gates of Hell, Rodin transformed The Thinker into an independent work. Donated to the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, the sculpture is currently on view in the formal courtyard of the museum. The museum’s permanent collection contains other sculptures by Rodin, including The Three Shades and The Kiss.

Check out this KPIX-TV documentary on the transformation of the Haight-Ashbury district in San Francisco and the development of a hippie counterculture movement in the 1960s. The documentary features views of the Haight-Ashbury community, including the Psychedelic Bookshop, Print Mint, and Straight Theater. The KPIX-TV documentary is part of the San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive on DIVA.

With the Summer Olympics finishing this week, check out this sculpture discobolos (discus thrower) on exhibit at the Vatican Museum. The sculpture is a Roman copy of an original Greek sculpture, demonstrating an athlete in motion as he prepares to release his discus throw. Similar copies of the discobolos are on view at the British Museum and the National Museum of Rome. An image of the discobolos is available to view or download through the CSU World Image Archive on DIVA.

Check our blog next week for more highlights from our collections.

Browse through our collection of more than 40,000 images from the CSU World Image Archive on DIVA. The collection is comprised of art history, political and cultural history, anthropology, biology, medicine, and technology images. Images from the collection are available to download for CSU faculty members and students for nonprofit research and instruction purposes.

For example, check out this portrait of Ginevra de Benci by Leonardo da Vinci. The portrait is currently exhibited at the National Gallery of Art and is the only painting by da Vinci on view at an American museum. The CSU World Image Archive also contains other masterpieces by da Vinci, including the paintings Mona Lisa and Virgin and Child with Saint Anne.

Check out this KRON-TV program on an exhibition of Asian art at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in the 1950s. The exhibition explores themes in Asian art and culture through paintings, sculptures, and textiles. The program features scenes of the artworks on view in the exhibition and interviews with the museum's founding director Grace Morley and curator John Humphrey. Within the program, Morley expresses the importance of Asian art, explaining that "it is a record of a people's past, represents their heritage, and also expresses their reaction to the present." The KRON-TV program is part of the San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive on DIVA.

Last Sunday more than 15,000 people participated in the annual AIDS Walk San Francisco. Individuals and teams followed a 10 kilometer route through Golden Gate Park. This year, AIDS Walk participants developed over $2.6 million to benefit the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and HIV/AIDS programs and services throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.

Check out this informative KQED program on the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco. The program explores the reactions and attitudes toward AIDS through interviews with AIDS patients, activists, politicians, and physicians. The program also contains scenes of protests at Civic Center and the Castro, government hearings, and speeches on AIDS. The program is part of the San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive on DIVA.

Check out this KRON-TV program on the history of Golden Gate Park, part of the San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive on DIVA. Developed in the 1870s, Golden Gate Park encompasses more than 1000 acres extending from the Panhandle to the Pacific Ocean. Between 10 and 15 million visitors come to Golden Gate Park each year to experience its recreation areas and attractions. Over 50 percent of visitors are residents of San Francisco and 25 percent of visitors are residents of the San Francisco Bay Area. The program includes scenes of the De Young Museum, Botanical Garden, Japanese Tea Garden, Conservatory of Flowers, and other attractions. The program also contains historical photographs of Golden Gate Park.

Check our blog next week for more highlights from our collections.

To commemorate Independence Day this week, check out this painting Declaration of Independence by American artist John Trumbull, part of the CSU World Image Archive on DIVA. Declaration of Independence is from a series of paintings by Trumbull that depict historical events from the American Revolution. Commissioned by Congress in 1817, the painting is currently exhibited in the rotunda of the United States Capitol. In the foreground of the painting, political figures Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Roger Sherman, Robert Livingston, and Benjamin Franklin are presenting the Declaration of Independence to Congress. Benjamin Harrison is seated on the left side of the painting and John Hancock is seated next to Charles Thomson on the right side of the painting. The CSU World Image Archive also contains other paintings by Trumbull on view in the United States Capitol, such as General George Washington Resigning his Commission and Surrender of General Cornwallis.

Interested in viewing more content from the San Francisco Pride Celebration and Parade? Browse through our collection of Gay Freedom Day images from the GLBT Historical Society on DIVA. The collection contains over 900 images from Gay Freedom Day, including participants marching in the parade, crowds in front of Civic Center, and figures from the GLBT community. For example, check out this series of images of Harvey Milk participating in the parade, preparing his speech, and speaking at Civic Center.

This weekend is the annual San Francisco Pride Celebration and Parade in support of the GLBT community.  The theme for the San Francisco Pride Celebration and Parade this year is global equality and features over 200 parade contingents, 300 exhibitors, and 20 community organizations. Parade participants follow a route through downtown San Francisco, from the intersection of Market and Beale Streets to Market and 8th Streets.

Check out this KQED News report on the San Francisco Gay Freedom Parade from the 1970s, featuring participants marching in the parade and crowds formed in front of Civic Center. The KQED News report is part of the San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive on DIVA.

Check our blog next week for Highlights from DIVA: San Francisco Pride Parade (Part 2).

Interested in updates from DIVA over the summer? Subscribe to our blog feed for regular updates on new features, content, and highlights from our collections. Simply follow this link to the DIVA team blog and click on “subscribe to this blog” on the right side of the page.

Check out this interesting documentary on the collections of the De Young Museum in Golden Gate Park, part of the San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive on DIVA. The documentary features masterpieces from the museum’s permanent collection by artists such as Thomas Gainsborough, Rembrandt van Rijn, Peter Paul Rubens, Francisco Goya, and Diego Velazquez. The documentary also includes behind the scenes views of the museum, including the installation of exhibitions and conservation of the permanent collection.

Also featured in the documentary is the Avery Brundage collection of Asian art, comprised of over 6000 objects. Originally housed at the De Young Museum, the Avery Brundage collection is currently exhibited at the Asian Art Museum in downtown San Francisco.

Interested in finding out more about the history of the Golden Gate Bridge? Check out this KPIX-TV documentary on the Golden Gate Bridge, part of the San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive on DIVA. The documentary presents a detailed history of the Golden Gate Bridge through interviews with the workers involved in its construction. The documentary also contains original footage of the construction of the bridge from the 1930s.

Last weekend marked the 75th anniversary of the opening of the Golden Gate Bridge. The iconic landmark spans 1.7 miles from the San Francisco peninsula to the Marin headlands. To commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge, the Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District and the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy sponsored the Golden Gate Festival on Sunday. The festival featured entertainment and events on the San Francisco waterfront and at community organizations throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.

Check out this KPIX-TV program on the 50th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge, part of the San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive on DIVA. The program features scenes from the opening of the Golden Gate Bridge, interviews with residents and tourists, and coverage of the festivities.

Check our blog next week for Highlights from DIVA: Golden Gate Bridge (Part 2).

Last Sunday marked the annual Bay to Breakers race in San Francisco. Participants in the 12 kilometer race follow its traditional course from the “bay” at the Embarcadero to the “breakers” of Ocean Beach. The race attracts more than 50,000 participants each year, from trained athletes to spirited amateurs.

Check out this KPIX-TV coverage of the 75th annual Bay to Breakers race, featuring interviews with the participants and scenes from the race. The KPIX-TV report is part of the San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive on DIVA.

Dick Williams, former outfielder, third baseman, and one time manager of the Oakland Athletics, passed away on July 7th, 2011 at the age of 82. The San Francisco Bay Area TV Archive has digitized a KPIX interview with Dick Williams from 1972.

Williams had a long career in Major League Baseball spanning from 1951-1964 as a player and 1967-1988 as a manager of six teams resulting in his induction to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2008. However Bay Area denizens will best remember him for leading the Athletics in two back-to-back World Series championships in 1972 and 1973.

This KPIX interview with Dick Williams from 1972 took place on March 28th, just three days before the first players' strike in Major League history. The strike would wipe out the first thirteen days of the baseball season, but the Athletics would go on to win the World Series against the Cincinnati Reds, 4-3.

Until recently the only way to view the PDFs available in DIVA's Collections was to download the file onto your computer and open it with compatible software. Now we've removed the middle step.

DIVA now utilizes Google Doc's Viewer application from within the browser, allowing you to read PDF files on the website with no additional software. You can try the viewer out on the SFBATV Archive's History of Early Involvement between KPIX & KQED.

How to Use It

Whenever you upload a PDF document to DIVA as the primary content in a bundle DIVA will automatically enable the PDF viewer. There's no additional work required on your part.

Today's DIVA Spotlight is an excerpt from a KPIX-TV special report featuring scenes from a 1978 debate between Harvey Milk and John Briggs.

Here Milk and Briggs clash over issues relating to California Proposition 6, also known as the Briggs Initiative, and the rights of gays and lesbians to teach in classrooms. Briggs states early on that: "I care about this country and I care about the family. And I really, sincerely, honestly and truly believe, from the bottom of my heart, that homosexuality is a real threat to the survival of this country." The segment ends with Milk challenging Briggs veracity: "You know you're lying! You know you're changing the statements around ... just like you shifted the money around in your campaigns ... You talk about morality and I question what is your real motive behind it. What is your real ambition behind this?"

Proposition 6 became the catalyst for the Log Cabin Republicans in 1977 and was opposed by former state Governor Ronald Reagan, then-president Jimmy Carter and former president Gerald Ford. The proposition was defeated on November 7, 1978 with 58.4% of Californian voters opposing it, including a majority of voters in Brigg’s home district.

Harvey Milk Meets John Briggs is part of the San Francisco Bay Area TV Collection and is hosted in DIVA.

DIVA is now home to San Francisco State University's Poetry Center Digital Archive. The Digital Archive currently contains a little over 50 recordings made during the 1950s of readings, with additional recordings from this era and others on the way. The collection is full of highlights, including readings by William Carlos Williams, Langston Hughes, Allen Ginsberg, and Marianne Moore. We highly encourage you to check out the Poetry Center Digital Archive.

We've just completed migrating DIVA and its repository to our new hosting infrastructure. There will probably be a few issues to iron out with precisely how we've configured everything, but we expect DIVA to be getting better and faster. If you experience any issues with the performance, stability, or functionality of DIVA, please let us know at divateam@sfsu.edu. As traffic begins to return, we'll be monitoring the situation and making tweaks to improve things. We appreciate your patience and hope to minimize the inconvenience caused by this move.

DIVA will be down for maintenance from 4pm on Monday, November 22 to noon on Tuesday, November 23.

We're moving DIVA to our new, faster, better hosting environment. We believe that this move will provide several important improvements for DIVA, including better performance and stability. Due to the size of the DIVA repository and the complexity of the move, we'll need to take DIVA down at 4pm on Monday, November 22. Service will resume on or before noon on Tuesday, November 23

We apologize for the inconvenience that this downtime may cause. Please send questions, comments, or concerns about this downtime to divateam@sfsu.edu.

Lately we’ve been busy working on the new Collections area in DIVA.  DIVA Collections streamline your access to large collections of material in DIVA with better organization and more comprehensive metadata on each item. You can already check out one of the collections: the San Francisco Bay Area TV Archive.

http://diva.sfsu.edu/collections/sfbatv

The TV Archive preserves over 4000 hours of newsfilm, documentaries and other programs produced locally in the Bay Area and Northern California between 1939-2005 and is part of SF State Library’s Department of Special Collections. We’ve been working with the TV Archive to bring some important items into DIVA for the public to check out.

We'd like to welcome back everyone back for the Fall 2009 semester. The DIVA Team is pleased to announce the much anticipated integration with iLearn, the campus Learning Management System. This integration allows faculty to sync iLearn and DIVA courses, creating an easy way to link to files and documents between those systems.

We offer two ways to bring DIVA files and documents to your iLearn courses: a DIVA Course Block and a Topic Area Link. You can choose from your personal DIVA materials or those from our growing public archive. The integration can be accessed within iLearn and allows faculty to select an individual DIVA course from which to list materials from.

The best way to start is to check login to DIVA and review the appropriate course area you wish to share from to make sure it has all of the files or documents you wish to link to in your iLearn course. Add any necessary files.

Next, login to iLearn. From there, you can choose whether you would like to create a DIVA Course Block, a Topic Area Link, or a combination of both.  The DIVA Course Block is ideal for presenting persistent links to resources to which students may need ongoing access through the duration of the course. The Topic Area Link will allow you to add a direct link to a DIVA resource from within a topic area in your course. 

We've already received feedback from many of you and have a set of updates to improve this integration to be released on 9/16/09. 

Please contact the DIVA Team if you have any questions.

Major changes:

• Search has been re-launched and is faster and better than before. You can search for courses, groups, bundles, web documents, and users. The accuracy and speed are much improved compared to DIVA 1.0. Search will show you all of the items you have access to, so you can use it to search over your private files. DIVA even suggests spelling fixes if you mistype a search and get no results. For example, a search for "arcitecture" (note the misspelling) will suggest a search for "architecture". We'll be improving the search even more in the near future.
• We've moved the Upload option into the top navigation out of the "more" sub-menu. And we've added your quick list into the "more" drop-down menu, so that you can immediately jump into the courses and groups on your quick list from anywhere on DIVA. We'll be pushing some more updates to the top navigation and "more" menu (in particular, some aesthetic improvements) soon.

• DIVA no longer asks for you to re-submit your form data after using the "back" button to return to a course/group to which you've just added content.
• Creating courses with the discipline set to "None" now works correctly (previously gave a 404).
• DIVA now correctly validates the input on the "Describe" step to prevent the creation of bundles with no content.
• Minor permissions issues were fixed.
• Ignore case of username and e-mail address on login and in URLs.
• Clicking outside the "More" menu when it's opened will now close it.
• Items are no longer displayed twice when moving items from "Uncategorized" into a category in the Workspace.

• Added an option for "Switch to editor view" to gain full access to a bundle you have edit permission to. Previously, if you had (for example) disabled the ability for other people to download a bundle, there was no way for you to download the bundle without temporarily re-enabling the download button. Now, you can switch to the editor view to gain complete access to the bundle. This feature is only available on bundles that you have permission to edit.
• Allow direct playback of QuickTime MOV files containing H.264 video and AAC audio through the Flash player.

You can now follow DIVA through "micro-blogging" service Twitter at http://twitter.com/diva_sfsu. Here we'll have highlights of new material to appear in the DIVA Commons, information on new features & bug fixes, and notifications regarding server downtime or maintenance.

Twitter is a free social network based around the concept of "micro-blogging" and is privately owned. Micro-blogging is a form of blogging noted for it's condensed size allowing for greater distribution, including syndication to cell phones over SMS text messages.

It is no required that you have a Twitter account to follow the DIVA Twitter feed. Twitter creates a RSS feed which can be incorporated into your RSS reader of choice. You can find the DIVA Twitter RSS feed here: DIVA Twitter RSS

Now that summer is nearly upon us and the spring semester has ended, we all want to take a long vacation at the beach. We at the DIVA Team won’t be doing that though. We’ll be here. Like we always are. But don’t worry; you don’t have to be here at school to get great DIVA support. We’ve started using a new program so that you can participate in DIVA workshops anytime over the summer. Called Dimdim, it allows anyone with a Flash compatible browser and a broadband Internet connection to participate in our informative workshops from nearly everywhere. You can contribute with text, but Dimdim also supports your mics and webcams if you want to meet "face-to-face".If you’re interested, pack your laptop and some sunscreen, head to the beach and send us an email at divateam@sfsu.edu. We’ll work out a workshop time that’s best for you where we will answer your questions and show you how to use DIVA’s features.

As you may already be aware, DIVA supports closed-captions. Based in open web standards for accessibility, his allows your video content to be viewed by an even wider audience. Thanks to some free tools and tutorials, this process is even easier than it was before. Caption It Yourself is a guide by the Described and Captioned Media Program that provides useful tips and suggestions to help you add captions to your videos.

Check it out if you're interested in the best practices for captioning your video and ideas of where to get started.

http://www.dcmp.org/ciy/

To add captions to any video, either when uploading the file or modifing an old file, use the Add Content area in the Edit bundle area. After uploading the Timed Text XML file, use the file's Purpose dropdown to select Caption file. When you go back to viewing your file in DIVA you will now have the ability to toggle on and off captions.

If you haven’t already noticed, the new DIVA 2.0 release updated the way your My DIVA page works. In this blog, I’m going to quickly talk about some of the features that you now have available to you.

Overview:

The Overview tab is similar to the My DIVA page from the DIVA’s original release. From here you can use the Tool bar to Upload files, and create New courses or groups.  The New DIVA web document tool has been moved here to accommodate changes we made to DIVA web documents. In addition, you now have access to the totally new Blog post tool.  Quick List lets you access your active courses and groups, while any courses you Archive will be present only in the Workspace. Totally new to the Overview page are the Recent Activity feed which lets you know how other DIVA users are using your files and My Blog which shows your most recent DIVA blog entry.

Workspace:

The Workspace area is totally new and replaces the original DIVA’s file manager. Here you can organize any files you’ve uploaded into DIVA by category and access all of your files, DIVA web documents, and Courses, including courses you’ve archived. There is also a Tool bar to help you create new categories, upload files, create new courses or groups, and work on new DIVA web documents and slideshows.

Public View:

Public View is a preview of what your My DIVA page looks like to visitors. You can specify blog entries specifically for this page.

Settings:

This is where you access your account settings and edit your contact info as well as different profile fields that will show up on the Public View of your My DIVA page.

That’s a quick rundown of all the features that are now part of the My DIVA page. In future editions of Feature Spotlight I’ll go over some of the new features like Course Archiving and Blog posting in depth.

We're proud to introduce you to DIVA 2.0. As you may have noticed, things look quite different. (And we're still finishing up a few rough edges here and there.) DIVA 2.0 marks a major step forward for DIVA, with new features, a refined workflow, and a simpler, cleaner interface. We're going to do a series of posts on our blog here to introduce you to some of the great new features and improvements that DIVA 2.0 delivers. First up: blogging.

DIVA 2.0 gives you your own blog. To write a blog, choose the "New blog post" link from your "My DIVA" page. Give your post a title and a body, and then choose where you want it to show up. You can show your blog posts on your "My DIVA" page and/or in any of your courses or groups. You can use this feature to write announcements, highlight updates, and more. You can even accept comments and trackbacks on your posts (of course, you can also disable these options).

DIVA 1.0's podcasting feature is integrated with DIVA 2.0's blogs. To create a podcast, first upload an MP3 using the "Upload" option from your My DIVA page or from under the More menu in the top navigation. Once you've uploaded and described your MP3, start a new blog post as above. Just after the post's body, there's a section for adding an enclosure. When you choose an MP3 file as an enclosure, you're creating a podcast. As before, you can post these podcasts to your courses. In the near future, we'll be refining the "create a podcast" workflow and adding support for video casting (vodcasting).

Update (Feb. 13): Basic groups functionality is back. We have a handful of more bugs to fix, and then we'll start to focus on introducing you to all of the new features that this hard-won upgrade has brought. We really appreciate your patience and your feedback, and thank you for sticking with us during these rather difficult times. Please continue to let us know if you experience any problems or feel we haven't completely addressed an issue that you reported: divateam@sfsu.edu.

Update (Feb. 11): We've fixed some permission issues people were reporting with their courses. Let us know if you're not able to access files, or if your students are having any trouble accessing files in your courses.

You may have noticed we've had a hard time with this DIVA 2.0 launch. From the false start in January, to the present slew of technical difficulties... It hasn't been our brightest moment. We're dragging ourselves out of the lurch and truly appreciate your patience and understanding.

DIVA 2.0 is a massive update. We worked very hard on it, and we think it will show when everything is fully operational. But, obviously, things could have and should have gone much smoother. We're working on new policies and procedures to ensure that we don't suffer these kinds of problems again.

In the short term, things are finally coming around. You should find that your courses, web documents, and bundles are back and working again. If DIVA gives you any trouble or you notice any of your courses, web documents, or files missing (don't worry! It's probably just a permissions issue), please contact us by e-mail at divateam@sfsu.edu and we'll get right on it.

Groups and slideshows will reappear soon. Search will follow. We'll have screencasts and new help files shortly.

We'll be updating this blog post to keep you informed.