CACAO Project offers some sweet spots for cross-language searches

The European Union's CACAO Project, a two-year project that started in December 02007 and ends in November 02009, developed a cross-language search and retrieval platform so Europeans could search for digital content and bibliographic citations in any EU language and see the results in the language of their search. Three subject portals for public access were also created: Geography, History of Europe and Mathematics. The European Library will adopt the CACAO infrastructure.

Archive of American Television (EmmyTVLegends.org)

Back in August 02009 my local newspaper reported on a story from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences about a new Web site it was launching on September 1, 02009 at the URL TVlegends.org that "will have more than 2,000 hours of interviews, some of them more than three hours long, with luminaries like Burnaby-raised Michael J. Fox and Montreal native William Shatner." Today I went looking for this site only to discover it doesn't exist and the URL is likely EmmyTVLegends.org, otherwise known as the Archive of American Televison. The Web site indeed states that "The Archive has collected hundreds of in-depth video interviews with TV's greatest legends and pioneers -- now available worldwide. The interviews can be watched all the way through, or browsed by person, show, topic or profession. Enjoy the site and be sure to visit often -- new interviews and indexes are added regularly." For anyone in cultural studies this site has to be a dream come true. Congratulations to the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation for making this terrific resource freely available.

ECA 2010: 8th European Conference on Digital Archiving, April 02010

The 8th European Conference on Digital Archiving, abbreviated as ECA 2010, will be held in Geneva between April 28 and 30, 02010. Online registration for the conference is open. One of the speakers at the closing session is Charles Leadbeater, currently known for his book on ideasourcing called We-Think: Mass Innovation, Not Mass Production: The Power of Mass Creativity (02008).

1,000 Year Web Page

The 1,000 Year Web Page looks like a fascinating plan, but, as with any private enterprise on the Internet, it's buyer beware. This is the ultimate in online vanity publishing and at $59 it does seem too good to be true for 1,000 years, especially since the best longevity plan the two men behind the scheme could come up with was a cadre of volunteers. Currently, the company is accepting page reservations only at a cost of $10. Disclosure: I offered to provide them with a critique for a fee of their plan and technical infrastructure but they declined.

Openness and the Future of Higher Education: special issue of IRRODL

The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning published a special issue on Openness and the Future of Higher Education (vol. 10, no. 5, 2009).