19th-century books from the British Library on Kindle for free

So screams the headline of Barbara Quint's Information Today Newsbreak of February 25, 02010. The Microsoft-British Library partnership to digitize 19th century books was completed last year and Microsoft "handed over 25 million pages in 65,000 19th-century books". The British Library then struck a deal with Amazon.com to make these works available for free and as print-on-demand paperbacks through the bookseller's Kindle ebook reader. Quint predicts that "Expect to see the digital collection appear elsewhere as well. The Amazon arrangement is nonexclusive."

If you go to the bottom of the Amazon Kindle page you'll see links to Kindle software for the PC and Mac that allows you read Kindle ebooks on those platforms without owning a Kindle reader.

Royal British Columbia Museum joins the sociable world of Facebook

The Royal British Columbia Museum has launched itself into the sociable world of Facebook. A YouTube channel was started in September 2008. Could a blog be next?

A Guide to Distributed Digital Preservation published by the MetaArchive Cooperative

Members of the MetaArchive Cooperative (Atlanta, GA, USA) wrote and published A Guide to Distributed Digital Preservation as "the first of a series of volumes from the Educopia Institute describing successful collaborative strategies and articulating specific new models that may help cultural memory organizations work together for their mutual benefit." The guide is available as a freely available PDF or for purchase as a print publication.

Source: ARCHIVES mailing list, 02010 02 24

Wired Magazine: How Google’s Algorithm Rules the Web by Stephen Levy

From the current issue of Wired Magazine comes this great piece of field research by Stephen Levy, "How Google's Algorithm Rules the Web".

CHIN Digital Heritage Symposium, Feburary 02010, archived

The CHIN (Canadian Heritage Information Network) Digital Heritage Symposium, held February 4 and 5, 02010 at the University of British Columbia's newly renovated Museum of Anthropology (MOA), has been archived and is available to CHIN members through the Professional Exchange. During Museum Month in May the symposium proceedings will become available to the general public.

Source: The CHIN Digital Heritage Symposium: a popular success!, 02010 February 22