Footnote.com now part of Ancestry.com

Having grown its database of digitized historical documents over the past four years and based on a successful use-pay model that offered some parts of its database for free, Footnote.com announced on October 21, 02010 that it's been acquired by Ancestry.com as of that date. According to the announcement, "The plan is to continue to run Footnote.com the way we have always run Footnote.com — continuing to do what we believe is best for our customers, our business and our brand." I wonder though how long that will last under Ancestry.com's ownership. The announcement also provided these statistics: "Footnote.com started with only 5 million historical documents and today we have nearly 70 million searchable documents, over 1 million members, nearly 100,000 Footnote Pages, and over half million annotations added."Quite an accomplishment, but let's not forget that some of those records were provided through partnership arrangements with archives such as the National Archives and Records Administration in the United States, who therefore also deserve some credit. I hope that Ancestry.com will honor the agreements that were struck by Footnote.com with organizations such as NARA.

Growing Knowledge: The Evolution of Research exhibition at the British Library

The British Library wants your opinion to count as part of its Growing Knowledge: The Evolution of Research exhibition. The exhibition runs between October 12, 02010 and July 16, 02011. Parts of it are online, including a selection of current Web sites that offer access to various free databases or new ways to organize research and connect to other researchers such as Mendeley. A selection of social networking and collaborative research tools are available. If you want to tweet about the exhibition, the hashtag is #blgk

Royal BC Museum launches new collections database

The Royal BC Museum has launched its new collections database. As of October 12, 2010, you can access new databases for Ethnology, Archaeology and Modern History. Databases that utilize existing search engines and have yet to be transitioned to the new system are the natural history collections and the BC Archives.

DCC / DPC What's New, Issue 30, October 02010

The Digital Curation Centre and the Digital Preservation Coalition have published Issue 30 of What's New for October 02010.

Forvo, a collaborative online pronunciation guide

I was looking for a site that provided an online pronunciation guide to a wide variety of languages. I found it in Forvo. As of October 7, 02010, the site contains "791,131 words 724,689 pronunciations 258 languages." By registering for a free account you can put your own linguistic talents to use.