History, Digitized (and Abridged)
It’s wonderful to see a bunch of smaller but none-the-less very important getting attention in the NY Times.

However, we read little in the article about the large amount of newspaper digitization coming from sources like ProQuest CSA, NewspaperArchive.com, Thomson Gale, and PaperofRecord. These companies are digitizing papers (full text and full image) from around the world. For example, from the NY Times back to 1881 to the Wall St. Journal back to Vol. 1, No. 1. In fact, the NY Times sells pay-per-view access while many libraries offer the database and its contents at no charge for personal use. Thomson Gale offers the Full Text and Page Images of the Times of London back to 1785. Btw, most of these projects include digitized articles as well as digitized ads.

The Readex division of NewsBank announced in January that their America’s Historical Newspapers (1690-1922) database will be expanding in May.

Complementing three previously launched series, the two new collections—Early American Newspapers, Series 4, 1756-1922 and Early American Newspapers, Series 5, 1777-1922—will expand the coverage of America’s Historical Newspapers by adding more than 200 new titles, including newspapers of unique historical importance, regional weeklies and big-city dailies.

We also don’t read much about the massive amount of digitization of government and genealogical records via national archives, government agencies, and partners. A few recent examples:
+ UK: British army World War One service and pension records go online
+ UK: The National Archives project wins £800,000 grant to digitise UK Cabinet papers 1917 - 197
+ U.S. New Resources Added to Access to Archive Database from NARA
+ Ancestry.com Breaks Barriers in Black Family History Research With Launch of Largest Online Collection of African-American Historical Records

At the beginning of 2007, we posted about a digitization partnership between the National Archives and Records Administration and Footnote. More than 4.5 million pages have been digitized so far are now available at www.footnote.com/nara.

For more on digitization projects, here are some other articles:
To keep this post shorter, all of the URL’s posted below are available here:
+ Brock Reed from Wired Campus points to an article in the Tri-Valley Herald about a bunch of people (students) who page after page, book after book are scanning pages for The Internet Archive / Open Content Alliance.
+ In 2005, we posted a profile of a person who scans books at the University of Toronto (via Wall Street Journal, free).
U of T is part of the OCA.
+ Video Clips Show the “Book Scanning Robot” Being Used at the University of Toronto

More Projects
Also, don’t forget about book digitization from Amazon’s awesome “Search Inside the Book.” Loaded with statistics (reading level, for example), concordance, etc. Some new features too! More info here.
See Also: Librarian and legendary review looks at Amazon’s SITB and Google Books Search.

More Sites, Databases, Collections
+ http://www.icdlbooks.org/
International Children’s Digital Book Library
Full text books in many languages and a very cool search interface.

Remember, book digitization in one form or another has been going strong for 35 years via Project Gutenberg founded my Michael Hart.

1) World eBook Library
More than 400,000 full text books all in PDF. $8.95/year. Includes a large number of PG titles.

2) Impressive!!!
http://shop.ebrary.com
Free remote access to more than 20,000 books. All full text and full image. Pay only to print or copy a page. About 25 cents. No limit on how much you can view.

NetLibrary
Available for free from many libraries. Full text, no limit on how much you can view. Remote access with a library card.
http://www.netlibrary.com.
Also look for Safari Tech Books and Books 24×7.

+ What’s New List: Online Books Page
The Online Books Page
An essential resources. More than 25,000 full text books from various sources. All free. Most public domain material.

+ http://www.openlibrary.org
The OpenBook Library
Cool technology. Reminds me of the “Turning the Pages” technology from NLM and BL. It can be accessed h
http://archive.nlm.nih.gov/proj/ttp.php via NLM and the British Library.

+ http://www.digitalbookindex.org/about.htm
DigitalBookIndex
Over 128,000 titles. Some fee, some free. 128,000 titles about 88,000 free.

+ eBook Locator
http://www.ebooklocator.com

This entry was posted on Monday, March 12th, 2007 at 12:37 am and is filed under Archives and Special Collections, Digital Preservation, Digitization Projects, Libraries and Librarianship, Resources for Educators. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.