Published by rwatstein November 23rd, 2008
in China, digital and Library of Congress.
The Library of Congress and the National Library of China have concluded an agreement to cooperate in developing the World Digital Library. The two libraries agreed to provide content to the World Digital Library and to cooperate in such areas as the development and maintenance of the Chinese-language interface, the convening of international working groups to plan and develop the project, and the formation of an advisory committee of leading scholars and curators to recommend important collections about the culture and history of China for inclusion in the World Digital Library.
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Published by rwatstein November 9th, 2008
in Library of Congress and paper.
Paper documents, like all materials age. As paper ages, it decomposes. Decomposed paper can be a problem for libraries. If libraries know why paper decomposes, ways may be found to slow or halt degradation. To speed up the process of aging in order to understand its consequences, scientists often subject paper to accelerated aging. However it is important to know whether and under which condition accelerated aging really simulates natural aging. To find this out, degradation products of naturally aged items need to be determined and compared to those of accelerated aging items.
From 1994 to 2000, the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) and its Institute for Standards Research (ISR) administered a multi-institutional research program designed to develop new accelerated aging test methods that could be used to model the natural aging of any type of printing and writing paper. Consequently, 15 printing and writing papers were custom-made, ranging from 100% cotton to high-lignin, and from acidic to alkaline. The accelerated aging studies addressed the effects of several environmental parameters on the aging of the papers: temperature and relative humidity (RH); light; and nitric oxide (NO2), sulfur dioxide (SO2), and ozone (O3).
However, there was no data from long-term natural aging of the papers that could be compared to the results from the accelerated aging tests to validate the accelerated aging models. Therefore, ASTM/ISR engaged a group of 10 libraries/archives willing to store sets of the 15 custom papers for 100 years, and four research laboratories to conduct periodic testing of the papers. “The Long-Term Natural Aging of Printing and Writing Papers” project began in 2000.
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Published by rwatstein October 12th, 2008
in technology and Library of Congress.
If you had the chance to see Thomas Jefferson’s hand-edited draft of the Declaration of Independence up close and personal, how much do you think you could take away from the experience? Simply viewing the dimly lit rough draft on display at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., could amount to little more than words scrawled on a very old page. To really learn about the document, visitors would have to speak onsite with a guide or independently research the document. The library is working to create a completely different experience, however, by deploying new technologies that enrich the exhibits for both on-site and online visitors, allowing anyone in the world to learn more about many of the treasures displayed at the library.
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Published by rwatstein October 5th, 2008
in books and Library of Congress.
More than 120,000 book lovers gathered last Saturday on the National Mall for the eighth annual National Book Festival, organized and sponsored by the Library of Congress and hosted by Mrs. Laura Bush. Festival-goers were entertained by their favorite authors, illustrators and poets as they celebrated creativity and imagination among the favorite standing-room-only pavilions including Let’s Read America; the Pavilion of States; Children; Teens & Children; Fiction & Mystery; History & Biography; Home & Family; and Poetry. This year the library showcased its efforts to digitize rare documents and books, including a draft of the Declaration of Independence and previewed the World Digital Library, set to debut in 2009.
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The papers of legendary conductor, arranger and broadcaster André Kostelanetz have been donated to the Library of Congress by his estate. Kostelanetz died in 1980. The gift is a veritable treasure trove for students of 20th century music and broadcasting. The archive of Kostelanetz’ personal property, papers, clippings, letters, sound recordings, posters, and photographs spans some 73 crates. It documents in detail the career of one of America’s most remarkable men of music. The gift from Kostelanetz’ estate will complement the gift of scores and parts for many of his arrangements Kostelanetz made to the Library of Congress. His papers will join those of George and Ira Gershwin, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, Lorenz Hart, Frederick Loewe, Alan Jay Lerner, and Irving Berlin, among others in the Library’s collection of material belonging to eminent American musicians.
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Published by rwatstein September 21st, 2008
in Library of Congress and cataloging.
Carla writes: “LC’s Cataloging and Acquisitions homepage contains a myriad of cataloging resources. One great resource that was just posted last week is an FAQ about form/genre headings (PDF file). Who hasn’t struggled occasionally to keep the distinction between subject headings and form/genre headings clear, or to figure out whether an authority record represents a form/genre heading or not?”
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LC’s Cataloging and Acquisitions homepage
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Published by rwatstein September 21st, 2008
in libraries, digital and Library of Congress.
The Organization of American States (OAS) has agreed to join the Library of Congress in developing the World Digital Library, which is scheduled for launch in 2009 in Paris. Under the agreement, the OAS’ Columbus Memorial Library will collaborate on the global library project, whose main objectives include promoting international and intercultural understanding and awareness; providing resources to educators; expanding non-English and non-Western content on the Internet; and contributing to scholarly research.
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Published by rwatstein September 7th, 2008
in web sites and Library of Congress.
August 29 marked the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s devastating impact on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. In commemoration, the Library of Congress has created a website titled Learning from Katrina, which provides insights for better responses to record and artifact damage by hurricanes. Visitors can hear seven interviews with professional conservators who helped salvage collections affected in August 2005.
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Published by rwatstein September 7th, 2008
in Library of Congress and music.
Stevie Wonder was named on Tuesday as the second recipient of the U.S. Library of Congress’s Gershwin Prize for Popular Song after singing for nearly five decades about love, joy and injustices in the world. The Motown icon, who will accept the prize in Washington, DC, on February 23 next year, also agreed to write a piece of music for the Library, joining a group of composers receiving commissions that range from Leonard Bernstein to Paquito D’Rivera.
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The Library of Congress American Memory project and other digital initiatives provide free access through the Internet to the treasures of the Library’s collections that document America’s history, culture, and creativity. Across the country, the archives, cultural institutions, museums, and libraries of many states are collaborating to create similar projects. They provide unprecedented access to materials that document local and regional growth and development as well as a look at the cultures and traditions that have made individual states and communities unique. The following is a compilation of state and regional digital projects and collaborations identified thus far. For each project, the primary institution or institutions overseeing the project are noted. The list will expand as new projects become available.
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The digital collections of the Library of Congress contain a wide variety of material associated with Woodrow Wilson. This resource guide compiles links to digital materials related to Wilson such as manuscripts, broadsides, government documents, images, sheet music, and films that are available throughout the Library of Congress Web site. In addition, it provides links to external Web sites focusing on Wilson and a bibliography containing selected works for both a general audience and younger readers.
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Librarian of Congress James H. Billington and Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein announced today that the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has become a founding partner in the World Digital Library (WDL).
NARA will contribute digital versions of important documents from its collections to the WDL, which will be launched for the international public in early 2009. These documents include the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, the Bill of Rights, the Emancipation Proclamation, Civil War photographs, naturalization and immigration records of famous Americans, and photographs by Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange and Lewis Hine.
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Published by rwatstein July 19th, 2008
in Library of Congress and poetry.
Librarian of Congress James H. Billington announced the appointment of Kay Ryan as the Library’s 16th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry for 2008-2009. Ryan will take up her duties in the fall, opening the Library’s annual literary series Oct. 16 with a reading of her work. She also will be a featured guest at the Library of Congress National Book Festival in the Poetry pavilion Sept. 27 on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Ryan succeeds Charles Simic as Poet Laureate and joins a long line of distinguished poets who have served in the position, including most recently Simic, Donald Hall, Ted Kooser, Louise Glück, Billy Collins, Stanley Kunitz, Robert Pinsky, Robert Hass and Rita Dove.
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The Library of Congress has awarded $300,000 to Middle Tennessee State University to provide access to some of America’s most important historical documents. The grant to MTSU’s Center for Historic Preservation provides an opportunity to work with “one of the world’s greatest resources,” said Dr. Carroll Van West, the center’s director. The grant will allow the center to focus on several aspects of American history that also are key in Tennessee’s past, said Stacey Graham, research professor at the center and project coordinator. Among them are the eras of Andrew Jackson, the Civil War and Reconstruction, the Depression, World War II and the civil rights movement.Graham said folk life, art, music and architecture are other possible topics of study.
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Published by rwatstein May 26th, 2008
in Library of Congress and audiobooks.
Blind people across the US fear they may lose access to free audiobooks because of a budget shortfall at the Library of Congress which operates the service. The National Library needs an extra $19.1m (£9.5m) a year to transfer its collection of audiobooks from antiquated tape cassettes to the latest digital format using flash technology. But Congress is expected to grant only $12.5m (£6.25m) a year, which will delay completion of the project until 2013 and could cut the production of new audiobooks.
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The Library of Congress is a bit of a misnomer. Yes, members of Congress use the library for research, but next to them, in the Main Reading Room, are the Americans who elected them. Anyone 18 or older with a Library of Congress library card can use any of the 22 reading rooms and access its 650 miles of bookshelves.
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In a deed of superheroic proportions, an anonymous donor has given the Library of Congress the original artwork by Steve Ditko for Marvel Comics’ “Amazing Fantasy #15″ — the comic book that introduced Spider-Man in August 1962. This unique set of drawings for 24 pages features the story of the origin of Spider-Man along with three other short stories — also written by Stan Lee and drawn by Steve Ditko — for the same issue: “The Bell-Ringer,” “Man in the Mummy Case” and “There Are Martians Among Us”
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If you think that your business is having a tough time coping with the data explosion, then spare a thought for the Library of Congress, which has to find some way of tackling a mind-blowing amount of information. ”The digital revolution is comparable to the one started by Gutenberg more 500 years ago,” said Laura Campbell, the archive’s associate librarian, referring to the first book printed with movable type. In its 208-year history, the library has collected more than 138 million items in 450 languages, ranging from manuscripts to maps and sound recordings, but the Internet era poses a whole new set of challenges. ”We estimate that in the current digital age, the amount of information produced every 15 minutes is equivalent to all the data and information now in the Library of Congress,” explained Campbell, during a keynote. “The library can no longer collect everything.”
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Published by rwatstein April 27th, 2008
in collections and Library of Congress.
Tatiana Fessenko (1915-1995) was a cataloger at the Library of Congress for several decades, retiring in the early 1980s. A native of Kiev with an educational background in Russian language and literature, Ms. Fessenko was particularly interested in the Library’s Yudin Collection, acquired in 1906. It was she who cataloged most of the 18th and early 19th century materials from the 80,000 volume Yudin Collection, in many cases doing extensive bibliographical and biographical detective work to discover the authors of pseudonymous and anonymous works, and the original titles of works originally published in French, German, or English.
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After nearly three years of intensive work, the independent Section 108 Study Group has issued its report and recommendations on exceptions to copyright law to address how libraries, archives and museums deal with copyrighted materials in fulfilling their missions in the digital environment
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Read the full report here
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The digital collections of the Library of Congress contain a wide variety of material associated with John Adams. This resource guide compiles links to digital materials related to Adams such as manuscripts, letters, broadsides, government documents, and images that are available throughout the Library of Congress Web.
John Adams Resource Guide
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Our cultural treasury, preserved by the Library of Congress, is vast and unpredictable. It includes “Casablanca” with Bogie and the only live concert recording of jazzmen Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane. But there’s also Bea Arthur as an alien cantina chanteuse in a legendarily awful “Star Wars” TV special from 1978. And in recent years, Islamic recordings via the al-Jazeera channel. regory Lukow, chief of the library’s Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division, has overseen the centralization of 5.7 million such audio and visual artifacts at a repurposed Cold War-era government bunker in Culpeper. This new National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, in addition to its temperature-controlled vaults, features a specially developed robotic preservation system that will make items available faster to scholars and the public.
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More than 100 local war veterans are sharing their tales of hardship and survival with Paradise High School students this month. The videotaped interviews will go into the database at the Library of Congress as part of the nationwide Veteran’s History Project, preserving history for years to come. Tom Sealy, 88, of Magalia, is one of the veterans sharing his story for the sake of preserving history. The World War II veteran said he fought fires on destroyers at Pearl Harbor, and was the sole survivor when his shipped capsized in the Pacific Ocean. He watched as his fellow crew members were eaten by sharks or passed away mid-conversation. Sealy was a 22-year-old civilian on his way to Wake Island on Dec. 7, 1941 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. He said he volunteered to help in the mist of chaos.
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Published by rwatstein March 29th, 2008
in web sites and Library of Congress.
The rich holdings of the Library of Congress include many items that document the history of baseball and Americans’ fascination with the game. LC has just launched a new Historic Baseball Resources page that features player profiles, historical news and events, collection guides, and presentations. The LC Digital Reference Team will also host a web conference, “Batter Up! Baseball at the Library of Congress,” on April 4 at 2 p.m. Eastern time, through the Online Programming for All Libraries site
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Historic Baseball Resources web site
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Published by rwatstein March 23rd, 2008
in digital and Library of Congress.
The Library of Congress has been preparing for the digital age since the 1960’s, when it used early technology to create and share its bibliographic information in electronic form. In the 1990’s, the library started distributing digitized versions of its treasures to schools and libraries across the United States. Now, there are millions of digitized contents available on the library’s web site for users across the world. Voice of America’s Mohamed Elshinnawi has more.
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Judith M. Dixon, a clinical psychologist by training and a sophisticated techie by avocation, is helping to lead the Library of Congress into the digital age. Dixon, 55, who gave up university teaching 27 years ago to join the library’s National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, is a key player on a team that has been working for the better part of a decade to create a new generation of audiobooks for the library’s more than 700,000 registered blind and disabled users.
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Published by rwatstein February 25th, 2008
in Library of Congress and Flickr.
Museum 2.0 writes. “About a month ago, the Library of Congress put two sets of photographs (about 3000 images total) up on Flickr. Flickr is a photo-sharing site (learn more here). They didn’t put them up the way you or I put up photos of the family hoe-down; they worked with Flickr for about six months as part of Flickr Commons, a hopefully growing initiative to connect public image collections with this hugely popular photo-sharing and tagging site. Plenty have blogged about the initiative, but what I’m most interested in are the results, and what it means for the way we share collections with visitors both online and onsite.”
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Published by rwatstein February 18th, 2008
in digital and Library of Congress.
Illinois State University will be among four sites nationwide to test a pilot program training teachers to use the Library of Congress’ digitized primary sources. The ISU program will be conducted through the Library of Congress’ Midwest Regional Center for Teaching with Primary Sources at the Milner Library.
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A Library of Congress task force has completed its mission to look at the future of cataloging and other forms of bibliographic control and recommend steps on how the library community can continue to provide effective access in a changing technological world. The LC Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control released On the Record (PDF file), its 44-page final report, January 9 after responding to suggestions from a wide range of organizations and individuals who read a draft version issued November 30.
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Read On the Record here
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The Library of Congress may step down from its role as the primary institution for classifying and cataloging library materials, according to a report it released last month. “The Library of Congress does not necessarily want to have the same role in the future that it’s had in the past - implementing cataloging standards,” said Mary Bolin, chairwoman of technical services for University of Nebraska-Lincoln libraries. “They want to move further into a world where they aren’t the only players, where everyone shares and collaborates.” In order to get away from the Library of Congress being the sole arbiter of cataloguing standards, the report urged libraries around the country to share more records with one another, to create more awareness of their special collections and to make greater use of online databases.
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Published by rwatstein January 20th, 2008
in Library of Congress and Flickr.
Flickr has unveiled a new project, dubbed The Commons, which will give Flickr members an opportunity to browse and tag photos from Library of Congress archives. The goal is to create what Flickr likes to call an “organic information system,” in other words, a searchable database of tags that makes it easier for researchers to find images. The pilot project features a small sampling of the Library of Congress’ some 14 million images. For now you’ll find two collections. The first is called “American Memory: Color photographs from the Great Depression” and features color photographs of the Farm Security Administration-Office of War Information Collection including “scenes of rural and small-town life, migrant labor, and the effects of the Great Depression.”
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Published by rwatstein January 20th, 2008
in Library of Congress and history.
The Library of Congress on unveiled three photographic negatives - long mislabeled - of the crowd that gathered at the U.S. Capitol for President Lincoln’s second inauguration on March 4, 1865. “It’s exciting to find additional images related to the Lincoln presidency,” said Carol Johnson, curator of photographs who specializes in 19th-century photography and who played sleuth to match the negatives to the correct event. “It was a wet, rainy day, most people have on long overcoats and hats … You can see some people’s expressions - some who seem to be cheering, one guy raising his hand.” A reader browsing through the Library of Congress’ online Civil War photographic negative collection noticed three glass negatives identified as taken during the administration of President Grant, either at his inauguration or at the Grand Review of the Armies. The reader, from Berthoud, Colo., alerted the Library that the labels appeared incorrect.
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Published by rwatstein January 20th, 2008
in Library of Congress and authors.
One of the world’s largest libraries has reversed a controversial decision to reclassify Scots authors as English. Writers, politicians and academics in Scotland reacted angrily when the Library of Congress in the US first made the proposal. The move would have seen classic novels like “The Thirty Nine Steps” by the Scottish author John Buchan, listed as an English adventure story. Culture Minister Linda Fabiani welcomed the U-turn. “I am delighted that the Library of Congress has listened to our concerns and recognised the distinctive nature of Scottish literature,” she said.
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Published by rwatstein January 12th, 2008
in digital, Library of Congress and Microsoft.
Microsoft will provide the technology that allows visitors to the U.S. Library of Congress (LOC) to first take a virtual tour of historic documents and map out what exhibits they want to see, the two organizations recently announced. The project will include the Myloc.gov Web site, to be launched in April, linked to information kiosks at the LOC’s Thomas Jefferson Building in Washington, D.C. Interactive galleries will allow visitors to the Myloc.gov site to view and sometimes interact with items such as a rough draft of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, the Gutenberg Bible, and a 1507 map that first used the word “America.”
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Published by rwatstein January 12th, 2008
in archives and Library of Congress.
A University of Iowa Web site developed as a resource for journalists covering the 2008 presidential election will be preserved by the U.S. Library of Congress. The library is capturing weekly digitized snapshots of the site — www.uiowa.edu/election — for a collection of online records of the 2008 election. The Library of Congress is developing Web archives as part of the historical record of the country’s national elections, capturing digital information that could otherwise be lost. The library’s previous election Web archives are available at www.loc.gov/webcapture.
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Published by rwatstein January 5th, 2008
in children and Library of Congress.
Jon Scieszka, author of “The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales” and the “Time Warp Trio” series, will get the imprimatur of the Library of Congress today as the first National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. “We think it’s very important to have an evangelist for reading,” said Librarian of Congress James H. Billington. The library’s Center for the Book has teamed up with the Children’s Book Council, a publishing industry trade association, to create the national ambassador program.
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Published by rwatstein December 29th, 2007
in collections and Library of Congress.
From “The Naked City” to “In a Lonely Place” and “Oklahoma!” the Library of Congress is adding 25 more classic American films to its national registry. There are “12 Angry Men” to be heard, “The Strong Man” to be viewed and “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” to be dealt with. Even as Americans fill the movie theaters to see the latest releases, few are aware that up to half the films produced in this country before 1950 — and as much as 90 percent of those made before 1920 — are lost forever,” said Librarian of Congress James H. Billington in announcing the selections.
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Published by rwatstein December 29th, 2007
in collections and Library of Congress.
Todd Harvey spins Louisiana’s historical records. The Library of Congress reference librarian serves as the caretaker of what he simply calls “Louisiana’s treasures,” recordings of the state’s blues, folk and jazz pioneers in the 1930s and 1940s. The samples, now on compact disc, are part of a broader collection known as the Archives of American Song, part of the library’s American Folklife Center Archive.
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Published by rwatstein December 16th, 2007
in collections and Library of Congress.
An exhibition recently open at the Library of Congress in Washington will introduce a new approach and a new collection. Visitors will have access to cutting-edge technology for “Exploring the Early Americas,” an exhibition that features items from the Jay I. Kislak Collection as well as the library’s copy of the first map to use the word “America.” All exhibits will also have extensive online components. For “Exploring the Early Americas,” you can find an online preview at www.loc.gov/exhibits/kislak.
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The opening paragraph of the report, issued recently, is stark: “The future of bibliographic control will be collaborative, decentralized, international in scope, and Web-based. Its realization will occur in cooperation with the private sector, and with the active collaboration of library users. Data will be gathered from multiple sources; change will happen quickly; and bibliographic control will be dynamic, not static. The underlying technology that makes this future possible and necessary—the World Wide Web—is now almost two decades old. Libraries must continue the transition to this future without delay in order to retain their relevance as information providers.”
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Published by rwatstein November 20th, 2007
in digital and Library of Congress.
The digital download project, launched in October 2006, has evolved well beyond the hopes of its architects. The National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS), Library of Congress, recently expanded the download project’s scope, allowing more patrons to participate in downloading and reading digital talking books and offering those patrons improved services. The project has also shifted its focus from testing the usability of digital audiobooks to now concentrating on optimizing the functionality of the download web site. As the download project improves, so too will the capabilities offered by the download project when it officially launches in late 2008…
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Published by rwatstein November 20th, 2007
in collections and Library of Congress.
Jimmy Hickey, 16, of Longview commemorated Veterans Day by hand-delivering 15 interviews with local World War II veterans to be cataloged in the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Harold Findlay, Hickey’s 84-year-old grandfather and one of his interviewees, accompanied his grandson this weekend to meet the organizers of the Veterans History Project, a nationwide effort to catalogue and commemorate U.S. wars through pictures, personal narratives and correspondence.
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The Law Team, Social Sciences Cataloging Division, has embarked on several projects to reclassify materials in the Law Library of Congress. The first such project is a major effort to reclassify approximately 800,000 “pre class K” titles. Arranged in the Law Library stacks simply by name of country, these titles often have duplicate shelf location numbers and are therefore difficult to retrieve. The Law Library requested that the Law Team focus first on materials from Latin American countries of strategic interest to the United States Congress.
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Published by rwatstein November 12th, 2007
in Library of Congress.
Portals to the World contains selective links providing authoritative, in-depth information about the nations and other areas of the world. They are arranged by country or area with the links for each sorted into a wide range of broad categories. The links were selected by Area Specialists and other Library staff using Library of Congress selection criteria.
Portals to the World website
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Published by rwatstein November 12th, 2007
in books and Library of Congress.
The folks at the Library of Congress (LOC) got a lot of heat on Capitol Hill recently. Much of it centered around the Washington Post story, Materials Missing at Library of Congress, proclaiming that 17% of the material at the LOC is missing.
Matt Raymond over at the Library of Congress blog shares with us the library’s response via an article by Gail Fineberg in the internal LOC newsletter the Gazette titled IG’s NOS Report Prompts Questions and Answers (IG = Inspector General; NOS = Not on Shelf).
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Published by rwatstein November 3rd, 2007
in Library of Congress and censorship.
Librarian of Congress James H. Billington linked the free flow of knowledge to the spread of freedom around the world during a speech Oct. 30 at Wake Forest University’s Fall Convocation in Wait Chapel. In an address titled “The Future of Freedom,” Billington traced the development of freedom in the United States as “our most cherished national ideal” and examined the challenges posed today by short-term thinking as well as the opportunities afforded by new information technologies.
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Published by rwatstein October 27th, 2007
in Library of Congress.
About one-sixth of the books, monographs and bound periodicals at the Library of Congress weren’t where they were supposed to be because of flaws in the systems for shelving and retrieving materials, according to a survey recently made public. Officials at the library say they believe most of the missing materials are misplaced, not stolen or lost.
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Published by rwatstein October 27th, 2007
in digital and Library of Congress.
Xerox Corp. has teamed up with the Library of Congress to develop better ways to store, preserve and access digital images from America’s heritage, including a panorama of San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake, a photograph of Abraham Lincoln taken four days before he was assassinated and a picture of the Wright brothers’ first flight at Kitty Hawk. The trial will include up to 1 million digitized public domain prints, photographs, maps and other content from the library’s collections. Scientists in the Xerox Innovation Group will work with these materials to create an image repository that they will use to develop and test approaches for the management of large image collections.
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Published by rwatstein October 27th, 2007
in digital and Library of Congress.
The Library of Congress recently announced an ambitious plan to digitize a collection of the world’s rare cultural materials — artifacts ranging from a photo collection of a 19th-century Brazilian empress to a crackly recording of the 101-year-old grandson of a slave.
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