Colonial North American Project at Harvard University

Harvard University has embarked on a remarkable multi-year project to digitize and make freely available all 17th and 18th century archival records and publications from all its campus repositories relating to life in colonial North America. This ambitious enterprise is called the Colonial North Amercian Project at Harvard University.

In addition to the collection itself, there are also a series of thematic essays which provide deeper insight into the contents of this digital library and archives.

It appears that the public interface is powered by the Omeka open source software.

Digital Library Federation DLF Forum meeting in Vancouver, BC, Canada, October 02015

The Digital Library Federation is holdings its DLF Forum in Vancouver, BC, Canada from October 26 to 28, 02015. The call for paper proposals is open until June 22, 02015 and the program will be announced in August. This is the first time the meeting has been held outside the United States.

Denmark presents digitized cultural heritage to the world

According to this BBC News story, Denmark has opened its digitized cultural heritage of over two million images and other types of content to the world. The site is called arkivdk. The content comes from over 500 Danish archives. There appears to be no English language interface as yet.

Royal Society of Canada expert panel on future of archives and libraries releases its report

The Royal Society of Canada’s Expert Panel on The Future Now: Canada’s Libraries, Archives, and Public Memory is now available at: https://rsc-src.ca/en/expert-panels/rsc-reports/future-now-canadas-libraries-archives-and-public-memory

A free copy of the full report is downloadable at the  bottom of the page.

Source: ARCAN-L mailing list, 020141113

UBC Library digitizes historic BC newspapers

According to this Canadiana.ca update, UBC Library has completed the digitization of 24 historic BC newspapers dating between 1865 and 1924. You can search these through the Canadiana Discovery Portal, a Google-like search engine that currently has its own failings, not the least of which is the ability to isolate a set of records such those valuable newspapers.

As the update states, "There are 8862 issues in total and over 45,000 pages. Here are the names of the newspapers:

Abbotsford Post
Alberni Advocate
Atlin Claim
Bella Coola Courier
Boundary Creek Times
British Columbia Record
Cariboo Sentinel (Barkerville)
Cumberland News
Daily Building Record (Vancouver)
Daily Ledger (Ladysmith)
Grand Forks Sun
Hedley Gazette
Hot Springs News (Ainsworth)
Kootenay Mail (Revelstoke)
Ledge (Greenwood)
Ledge (Nakusp, New Denver, Fernie)
Massett Leader
Miner (Nelson)
Mining Review (Sandon)
Moyie Leader
Nelson Economist
Phoenix Pioneer
Prospector (Fort Steele)
Tribune (Nelson)"

In the Canadiana Discovery Portal Search "Everything" option list, you can change the search option to Titles. There's a catalogue record for the newspaper itself and then individual records for each issue which will take you to UBC's British Columbia Historic Newspapers site. Congratulations UBC on making these invaluable resources freely available.

The Keepers Registry for e-journals in beta release

From the announcement on DIGITAL-PRESERVATION@JISCMAIL.AC.UK (02011 10 04):

EDINA and the ISSN International Centre are pleased to announce the Beta release of the Keepers Registry, the e-journals preservation registry service. The Keepers Registry is available online at http://thekeepers.org.
 The Keepers Registry renames and replaces the PEPRS Beta service which was launched in April 2011.  The Keepers Registry is the product of JISC-funded project activity and provides freely available means to discover which e-journals are being preserved by the leading archival organisations.  The metadata from an additional agency, HathiTrust, has been included in this release of the Keepers Registry, as well as new functionality to support browsing by journal title and publisher.
 The PEPRS project was initially funded as a two-year project to scope, design and build a prototype, during which user requirements were gathered from librarians and preservation agencies. The present funding, until July 2012, is geared towards implementation of a service-quality system. Suitable developments from the PEPRS project activity will be implemented into the Keepers Registry.
 The work of the PEPRS project and the launch of the Beta release of the Keepers Registry will be discussed at the annual meeting of the Directors of the ISSN National Centres to be held in Sarajevo, Bosnia Herzegovina, from 5th - 7th October 2011.
 The idea for the registry was mooted in various reports since 2003 and the findings of a JISC-commissioned report carried out by the University of Loughborough and Rightscom and published in 2008. Further background information on the project and details of relevant reports are available on the PEPRS project website at http://edina.ac.uk/projects/peprs/index.html The six archiving agencies which have been participating in the project and have made metadata available to the PEPRS Beta service include:
 - British Library
- CLOCKSS Archive
- e-Depot at the Konjinklijke Bibliotheek
- Global LOCKSS Network
- HathiTrust
- Portico
 It is planned to extend the scope of the service by including metadata from other archiving agencies. Additional functionality will also be added to the service throughout 2011 and 2012 and details of this are set out in the FAQ section on the service.
 A programme to test new functionality is being developed and the project team would welcome offers from users to assist in the testing process.
 If you would like to get involved please contact us at edina@ed.ac.uk.

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

Yale University offers open access to digital images of objects from its collections

Yale University announced on May 10, 02011 that it is offering open access to "digital images of objects in its many collections freely available online. 'In a departure from established convention, no license will be required for the transmission of the images, and no limitations will be imposed on their use,' the university said in its statement. 'The result is that scholars, artists, students, and citizens the world over will be able to use these collections for study, publication, teaching, and inspiration.' More than 250,000 images have already been made available in a new online catalog, the university said."

You can access these materials through the university's new search engine with the prosaic name of Cross Collection Discovery, part of its Yale Digital Commons network infrastructure.

Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education, QuickWire, http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/quickwire-yale-u-to-offer-digital-images-of-objects-from-its-collections

Launch of PEPRS e-journals preservation registry service

From the announcement to DIGITAL-PRESERVATION@JISCMAIL.AC.UK on April 28, 02011:

EDINA and the ISSN International Centre are pleased to announce the Beta release of PEPRS, the e-journals preservation registry service. This is the product of JISC-funded project activity, and provides freely available means to discover which e-journals are being preserved by the leading archival organisations - highlighting those e-journals for which no arrangement is on record.

The PEPRS Beta service is available at http://www.peprs.org/

PEPRS is officially recognized by the ISSN Governing Board and officially launched it in Paris, France, on April 28, 02011.

The five archiving agencies that have been participating in the project and have made metadata available to the PEPRS Beta service include:

- British Library
- CLOCKSS Archive
- e-Depot at the Konjinklijke Bibliotheek
- Global LOCKSS Network
- Portico

Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) freely available

From the April 25, 02011 announcement on various mailing lists comes this exciting news from the digital humanities:

The University of Michigan Library announced the opening to the public of 2,231 searchable keyed-text editions of books from Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO). ECCO is an important research database that includes every significant English-language and foreign-language title printed in the United Kingdom during the 18th century, along with thousands of important works from the Americas. ECCO contains more than 32 million pages of text and over 205,000 individual volumes, all fully searchable. ECCO is published by Gale, part of Cengage Learning.

The Text Creation Partnership (TCP) produced the 2,231 keyed texts in collaboration with Gale, which provided page images for keying and is permitting the release of the keyed texts in support of the Library’s commitment to the creation of open access cultural heritage archives. Gale has been a generous partner, according to Maria Bonn, Associate University Librarian for Publishing. “Gale’s support for the TCP’s ECCO project will enhance the research experience for 18th century scholars and students around the world.”

Note that the plain-text version can only be obtained through 18thConnect while the SGML/XML version has to be requested via the ECCO-TCP office. As of April 25, 02011 there is no link to the ECCO-TCP content on the 18thConnect site.

National Portal To Historic Collections from American Heritage and AASLH

Started in 2007, American Heritage and the American Association for State and Local History (AASLH) currently sponsor the National Portal To Historic Collections. According to the About page,

"... the National Portal is a massive, multiyear project to provide information on 4,000 historical sites, including easily searchable online access to digital images and descriptions of millions of artifacts housed in the collections of American museums, historical societies, National Parks, and other institutions across the country.
The objects being added to this national “clearinghouse” include documents, photographs, paintings and artifacts, and run the gamut from military artifacts to artworks to the tools and mementos of everyday life."

Canadiana Discovery Portal opens in beta mode

The Canadiana Discovery Portal has opened in beta mode. The portal is a one-stop search portal through which you can search by keyword for thousands of catalog (metadata) records from contributing institutions across Canada. As yet there is no advanced search facility, just a Google-like search box. The portal is a new service from Canadiana.org. For digitized content such as publicly accessible documents from Early Canadiana Online or photographs from institutions such as the Library and Archives Canada or the Vancouver Public Library, you can view the digitized content with one mouse click.

November/December 02010 issue of D-Lib Magazine is here

From the announcement on various mailing lists on 02010 11 16:

The November/December issue of D-Lib Magazine (http://www.dlib.org/) is now available.

This issue contains four articles, an opinion piece and a conference report. Also in this issue you can find the 'In Brief' column, excerpts from recent press releases, and news of upcoming conferences and other items of interest in 'Clips and Pointers'. This month, D-Lib features WebExhibits courtesy of Michael Douma, WebExhibits Editor.

The articles include:

Taming the Metadata Beast: ILOX

Article by David Massart and Elena Shulman, European Schoolnet (EUN), Belgium; Nick Nicholas, Australian National Data Service (ANDS), Australia; Nigel Ward, eResearch Lab, the University of Queensland, Australia; Frédéric Bergeron, TELUQ, Canada

PDF/A: A Viable Addition to the Preservation Toolkit

Article by Daniel W. Noonan, The Ohio State University Archives; Amy McCrory and Elizabeth L. Black, Ohio State University Libraries

Trends in Large-Scale Subject Repositories

Article by Jessica Adamick and Rebecca Reznik-Zellen, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Federated Content Rights Management for Research and Academic Publications Using the Handle System

Article by Guo Xiaofeng and Li Ying, Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China, and Sam X. Sun, Corporation for National Research Initiatives

University of Chicago Library launches new digitization initiative

According to an announcement on the Archives & Archivists mailing list (02010 11 11),

The University of Chicago Library's Special Collections Research Center has a launched an initiative for the digitization of archives and manuscript collections. The digital images are being made available via the online finding aid for each collection. This will recreate for the online user the experience of a researcher encountering the original materials in the SCRC Reading Room, with documents displayed as they are housed in each folder, and with description of the contents in the form of folder headings.

Individual, high-resolution images of each page will be permanently preserved in the Library's digital repository, and can be made available for publication or other research needs. Due to provisions of copyright laws, digitization efforts are currently focused on materials in the public domain, or those for which the University of Chicago holds copyright.

 Among the new content to be available are Soviet and Middle Eastern poster collections, records around the trial of Jefferson Davis for treason, and plantation life records before and after the Civil War.

For links to the content currently online, see this November 11, 02010 entry from the SCRC blog.

Fending off the digital dark ages: The archival storage issue

ComputerWorld published an article by Lamont Wood titled "Fending off the digital dark ages: The archival storage issue". Wood discussed the many complex issues involved with both vendor representatives and practitioners in the archives and library worlds. Overall, I got the impression that the situation is no better, at least in North America, than it was a decade or even two decades ago. In Europe, however, there seems to be a stronger desire and, more importantly, the will to get something done. Some national jurisdictions already have many of the necessary infrastructure and processes in place, and European digital preservation researchers work with national, pan-European and international partners. For example, while the digital preservation aspect is still a work in progress, the National Library of the Netherlands, according to an article on the Library of Congress' Digital Preservation site, has been receiving electronic publications under its legal deposit system since 2003. Are there any cultural institutions in North America that have as lengthy a track record?

Wellcome Library announces huge digitization project on history of medicine and bioscience

The Wellcome Library announced on August 23, 02010 "the launch of an ambitious digitisation project, to provide free, online access to its collections, including archives and papers from Nobel prize-winning scientists Francis Crick, Fred Sanger and Peter Medawar." According to the media release, the "content will include 1400 books on genetics and heredity published between 1850 and 1990, along with important archives including the papers of Francis Crick and his original drawings of the proposed structure of DNA." The theme of the two-year pilot project, budgeted at £3.9 million, is "Modern Genetics and its Foundations."

Changes at Canadiana.org

Canadiana.org announced some significant changes through Issue 2 (August 02010) of its newsletter e-mailed to various mailing lists. Among the changes are:

1. A new version of the Canadiana Discovery Portal can be viewed at http://voyageur.canadiana.ca
2. Canadiana is now ready to receive metadata from all sources into the Canadian Metadata Repository, but you have to e-mail info@canadiana.ca to find out how to do this or to get more information.

Search Amazon.com Books for canadiana

14th European Conference on Digital Libraries, Glasgow, Scotland, September 02010

The 14th European Conference on Digital Libraries, also known as the European Conference on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries (ECDL), has issued its call for participation. ECDL 02010 is organized by the University of Glasgow and is being held in Glasgow, Scotland, UK from September 6 to 10, 02010. There's already a fascinating array of accepted research papers, poster sessions and demonstrations.

July/August 02010 issue of D-Lib Magazine available

Quoting from the announcement on various mailing lists (02010 07 15):

The July/August issue of D-Lib Magazine (http://www.dlib.org/) is now available.

This issue contains four articles, an opinion piece, and a conference report. Also in this issue you can find the 'In Brief' column, excerpts from recent press releases, and news of upcoming conferences and other items of interest in 'Clips and Pointers'. This month, D-Lib features The Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery of Scripps College collection of Japanese woodblock prints.

The articles include:

nature.com OpenSearch: A Case Study in OpenSearch and SRU Integration by Tony Hammond, Nature Publishing Group

Document Management in the Open University of Catalunya (UOC) Classrooms by Albert Cervera, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya

The Benefits of Integrating an Information Literacy Skills Game into Academic Coursework: A Preliminary Evaluation by Karen Markey, Fritz Swanson, Chris Leeder, Brian J. Jennings, Beth St. Jean, Victor Rosenberg, Soo Young Rieh, Robert L. Frost, Loyd Mbabu, and Andrew Calvetti, University of Michigan; Gregory R. Peters, Jr., Cyber Data Solutions LLC, and Geoffrey V. Carter and Averill Packard, Saginaw Valley State University

Semantically Enhancing Collections of Library and Non-Library Content by James E. Powell, Linn Marks Collins and Mark L. B. Martinez, Los Alamos National Laboratory

Jane Austen fans rejoice at new, international digital collection of her fiction manuscripts

A three-year joint project of the University of Oxford and King’s College London, Jane Austen’s Fiction Manuscripts is now thrilling her fans worldwide. According to the Web site Introduction,

The focus of the present digital edition is three-fold: the virtual reunification of this significant collection of fiction manuscripts by means of high-quality digital photographic images; the linking of these images to fully encoded and searchable diplomatic transcriptions; and the creation of as complete a record as possible of the conservation history and current physical state of these frail objects. Through virtual reunification, scholars and interested users are provided for the first time with the opportunity to compare the forms and texts of these dispersed manuscripts – their different physical construction, shifts in handwriting and presentation – to examine passages of erasure and revision, to question editorial readings in the transcriptions, and to make their own new discoveries about Austen’s working practices across her writing career.