National Archives sign at Kew Gardens Station

National Archives sign at Kew Gardens Station

2011-09-23

African Nova Scotian Diaspora: Selected Government Records of Black Settlement, 1791-1839

The Nova Scotia Archives is pleased to present a significant new online resource features unique documents reflecting the struggles and survival of African Nova Scotians, as the world marks the United Nations' International Year for People of African Descent. It contains over 500 digitized and fully searchable government documents relating to early African Nova Scotian immigration and emigration. Many of the documents are rich in the names and reflect the experiences of Black Refugees who came here at the close of the War of 1812.

You can visit the exhibit at: http://gov.ns.ca/nsarm/virtual/diaspora/


Source: ARCAN-L mailing list, 02011 09 23

2011-09-08

Canadian Feature Film Database at Library and Archives Canada

The Library and Archives Canada has a Canadian Feature Film Database. It appears to have been online since at least May 02010. Here is the blurb from the start page for the database:
The Canadian Feature Film Database is based on the printed Index (Canadian Feature Film Index) begun in 1972.

The Database based on the Index:
  • compiles the principal credits of every Canadian feature film from 1913 to 2009
  • establishes a list of Canadian feature films from published information up to 2009
  • features currently over 4,300 films
Future updates:
addition of post-2009 films is planned for a future iteration of the database

2011-09-06

Day of Digital Archives, October 6, 02011

From the announcement on various mailing lists (2011 09 06) posted by Gretchen Gueguen, Digital Archivist, Digital Curation Services, University of Virginia Library:

The Day of Digital Archives is an initiative to raise awareness of digital archives among both users and managers. On this day, archivists, digital humanists, programmers, or anyone else creating, using, or managing digital archives are asked to devote some of their social media output (i.e. tweets, blog posts, youtube videos, etc.) to describing their work with digital archives. By collectively documenting what we do, we will be answering questions like: What are digital archives? Who uses them? How are they created and managed? Why are they important? This year’s Day of Digital Archives will be held on October 6 and entries will be gathered at the Day of Digital Archives blog.

What is meant by “digital archives” well, primarily archives, repositories, content management systems and other initiatives that collect or manage born-digital material. These initiatives don’t have to primarily collect born-digital materials…in fact they are more likely to only have some born-digital content as part of their mandate. Or, maybe they don’t really have a “mandate” at all…maybe someone will contribute their thoughts about managing their own personal digital content or social media presence. The thread ties the participants together is that they collect, manage, preserve, develop, use, think about or otherwise love born-digital content.

Do you create, manage, or use digital archives? Would you like to participate? Well then, drop me a line at gretchen[.]gueguen[@]gmail[.]com with your contact info and I’ll keep you up to date!

2011-09-01

"Memory failure detected" article, Times Higher Education

The Times Higher Education (THE) published an article online on September 1, 02011 about archiving the Web it called "Memory failure detected". The article is by ZoĆ« Corbyn. The article looks at the various Web archiving research projects and current Web archive systems and facilities.

"Searching for the Stars" (the real ones in the heavens) through Searcher magazine

My most recent article for Searcher magazine, "Searching for the Stars: Cosmic Views and Databases", made the cover of the September 2011 issue as you can see below and is available online (just select the hyperlinked article title in this sentence).
Searcher magazine cover, September 2011