Highlighting the history of scientific thought with the Royal Society of London's Trailblazing

The Royal Society of London has a new Web site called Trailblazing that contains 350 years of digitized content from its Proceedings. To mark is 350th anniversary, the Royal Society is also providing free access to the Royal Society Digital Journal Archive from November 23, 02009 to February 28, 02010.

Reading Tree, books for charity, a Canadian literacy initiative

Reading Tree is a Canadian literacy initiative that collects books for charitable purposes and places them in schools and libraries across British Columbia. This is a great way to preserve books, though they will of course eventually get worn out.

Points of View 19th century photography exhibit, British Library, October 02009-March 02010

The British Library opened a free physical and online exhibit on October 30, 02009 titled "Points of View: Capturing the 19th Century in Photographs." If you register for a free account with the Online Gallery at the British Library you can comment on the photographs and select your favorites. The library will choose the best comments for display in the physical gallery (I wasn't quite clear about exactly where this would happen). A blog for the exhibit that links the past with the present is also available.

OSS Watch, Open Source Software Advisory Service for the UK academic community

OSS Watch, which sounds like the title of a World War II B-movie, is managed through the UK's University of Oxford and is an open source software advisory service whose audience is actually more than just the UK academic community. The service features all kinds of useful information for software developers and others in the IT (information technology) community. Good stuff made possible in large part through funding from JISC, the Joint Information Systems Committee.

The OSS Watch Wiki is here.

The OSS Watch Twitter feed is at http://twitter.com/osswatch.

A number of OSS Watch RSS feeds are also available.

Library and Archives Canada adds digitized microform content

The Library and Archives Canada has started adding digitized microform content (numérisation de microforme) to its Web site. The only way to access the digitized microform is by title. The online experience replicates what you would experience viewing the film in person on microform equipment. Microform refers to microfiche (plastic sheets) or microfilm (plastic rolls on a spool or reel). If you've used their digitized "Black" and "Red" Series of RG-10, Indian Affairs records, or the digitized Canadian census records then you've already experienced the use of digitized microfilm. Curiously, as of November 26, 02009, the day of this post, they only have two sets of records listed and have not included the census records or the digitized RG-10 records.