From LC’s Prints and Photographs Division.
See Also: With Malice Toward None: The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Exhibition
Source: Library of Congress
Archive for March, 2009
LC: Slideshow of Images Of and About Abraham Lincoln
Saturday, March 28th, 2009LC’s Lab Renovation: Increasing Energy Efficiency and Reducing Environmental Impact
Friday, March 27th, 2009The Library of Congress Preservation Research and Testing Division has recently upgraded its 25 year old laboratories. This initiative has allowed the Library to strengthen its scientific research effort in a number of important ways.
Source: Library of Congress
Shazam’s Music Explorer Database=Cool
Friday, March 27th, 2009Shazam is the very popular service for several smartphones and other devices and that will quickly identify a song (artist, track title, etc) from millions of songs in their database. Simply point the phone at a speaker and in about 10 seconds the answer appears.
What often goes unnoticed is Shazam’s searchable music database that contains data about over 8 million tracks. It’s definitely worth a look. You can also take a peak at what tracks are currently being ‘tagged’ by users. Shazam also provides charts of the most popular tracks. Archives are also available. Here’s a look at what the artist page for No Doubt looks like.
Perhaps the ‘coolest’ web site feature is the Music Explorer. It’s a very ’social’.
Music Explorer is powered and updated by the real iDing activities of over 20 million users and provides you with a diversity of tracks or artists you might be interested in, based on the starting point of your journey.
Explorer gives you this as a ‘map’ of related artists, tracks or users based on how many other members have tagged these as well as your original track or artist.
See Also: AllMusic.com
A Glossary of Agricultural Terms, Programs and Laws
Friday, March 27th, 2009A Glossary of Agricultural Terms, Programs and Laws
A product of the Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress at the request of the U.S. House Committee on Agriculture
Source: U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Agriculture
21 Terabytes of New Imagery Added to MS Virtual Earth Database
Friday, March 27th, 2009This post lists what ortho imagery has been added to Virtual Earth, available in many places including Windows Live Maps, in the past month. You’ll find imagery for locations in:
+ Albania
+ Australia
+ Bahamas
+ Belize
+ Bosnia and Herzegovina
+ Botswana
+ Brazil
+ China
+ Cuba
+ France
+ Gabon
+ Greece
+ and Many Other Cities/Countries
If you’ve never seen Virtual Earth imagery, it’s more than worth a look.
Source: Virtual Earth Blog
Database — Trademark Checklist
Thursday, March 26th, 2009The Trademark Checklist is a sample collection of U.S. registered trademarks and service marks in their proper form with their generic terms. The Trademark Checklist serves as a general resource guide for proper trademark usage.
Though the style of a word mark can vary from the style of the logo, word marks are how a trademark should be used correctly in text.
Source: International Trademark Association
See also: Glossary
See also: Acronyms
See also: Brochure — A Guide to Proper Trademark Use for the Media and Trademark Professionals (PDF; 148 KB)
New Webcast from OCLC: “Managing the Collective Collection: Local Challenges, Global Opportunities”
Thursday, March 26th, 2009From the Web Site:
Richard Ovenden, Keeper of Special Collections and Associate Director, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, spoke at OCLC on 16 March 2009.
A recording of his presentation, including video and slides, is now available as a streaming webcast. A separate webcast of the discussion that followed Richard’s presentation is also available, as well as Individual files of audio and slides from the both the presentation and discussion.
Direct to Video, Audio, and Slides
Source: OCLC Research
New Available for the iPhone: Blackboard
Thursday, March 26th, 2009Ed tech developer Blackboard has released a new LMS tool for Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch. The free app, Blackboard Learn for Apple iPhone, allows users to access information in their Blackboard accounts and to receive notices through their iPhones.
The new app is Blackboard’s first entry into iPhone development. It lets users receive alerts about grades, tests, and assignments and access various other kinds of information and resources, such as course materials, rosters, course maps, and other educational tools.
Source: T.H.E. Journal
Article: Impact of Internet on LIS Education & Role of Future Librarians
Thursday, March 26th, 2009Internet is the buzzword for today’s information community. The www is threatening to replace the traditional library system. The only way to survival of the library professionals is to adapt themselves to the new technologies and become cyber- librarian. The information superhighway has imposed a challenge to the existing information professionals to provide information exhaustively and timely. The librarians should keep themselves upto- date every moment with the new developments and to meet the diversified queries of the new generation users. This paper gives a brief idea about the impact of internet on LIS education and its utility in libraries.
Direct to Full Text Paper (12 pages; PDF)
Source: Proceedings Trends and Strategic issues for libraries in global information society, Punjab University, Chandigarh (via dLIST)
New From Pew: Internet Typology: The Mobile Difference
Thursday, March 26th, 2009Cast a glance at any coffee shop, train station or airport boarding gate, and it is easy to see that mobile access to the internet is taking root in our society. Open laptops or furrowed brows staring at palm-sized screens are evidence of how routinely information is exchanged on wireless networks. But the incidence of such activity is only one dimension of this phenomenon. Not everyone has the wherewithal to engage with “always present” connectivity and, while some may love it, others may only dip their toes in the wireless water and not go deeper. Until now, it has not been clear how mobile access interacts with traditional wireline online behavior. Does availability of mobile access crowd out desktop access? Does it draw some users further into digital lifestyles?
Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project
On a Somewhat Related Note: comScore releases First Data on iPhone Users in the U.K. http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=2759
Next Week, Available via Second Life: Join the ‘Libraries of the Future’ debate at the Bodleian Library
Thursday, March 26th, 2009The event take place at the Bodleian Library at Oxford University, UK on April 2nd. If you can’t make it there, you can follow along using Second Life.
From the Web Site:
A debate to raise the current issues facing librarians and data management professionals is being organised by JISC, bringing together an international expert panel to speak at the University of Oxford’s iconic Bodleian Library on 2 April 2009.
In his blog, Professor Peter Murray-Rust, a speaker at this upcoming ‘Libraries of the Future’ debate, expresses serious concern at the apathy he senses amongst university librarians in their failure to engage with the issues that will seriously affect them as we advance into the digital age.
The international panel of speakers comprises:
+ Dr Sarah Thomas, Bodley’s Librarian and Director, Oxford University Library Services
+ Chris Batt OBE, Former Head of Chris Batt Consulting
+ Peter Murray-Rust, Unilever Centre for Molecular Informatics
+ Santiago de la Mora, European Partnerships Lead, Books – Google UK Ltd
+ Robert Darnton, Harvard University Librarian
+ Vincent Gillespie, J.R.R. Tolkien Professor of English Literature and Language
Much More Information Here
Registration for either the live event or via Second Life here.
Source: JISC
New Database: 2008 State of Texas Public Employee Salaries
Thursday, March 26th, 2009From the Home Page:
Look up salaries of State of Texas government workers to see if your tax dollars are being spent wisely. Find the total pay, base, overtime, bonuses and allowances for more than 175,000 public employees.
Source: Houston Chronicle
Will E-Book Anti-Piracy Technology Hurt Readers?
Thursday, March 26th, 2009As the book industry attempts to move from hardbacks to downloads, booksellers and publishers are struggling to prevent readers from pirating eBooks the way some music fans pirate music.
On the front line of that effort is digital rights management technology, or DRM, that is embedded into eBook files. DRM lets the companies control how copies can be made of eBooks and which devices can display them. But some users say DRM also prevents them from reading the eBooks they’ve bought.
Source: National Public Radio (via Teleread)
Google Completes Scanning of 19th Century Public Domain Materials From Oxford U. Libraries
Thursday, March 26th, 2009In 2004, Google began a partnership with Oxford University Library to scan mostly 19th century public domain books from its Bodleian library. Five years on, we’re delighted to announce the end of this phase of our scanning with Oxford, our first European partner. Together, we have digitized and made available on Google Book Search many hundreds of thousands of public domain books from the Bodleian and other Oxford libraries, representing the bulk of their available public domain content.
So, does this mean we are done?
Far from it! With most of Oxford’s 19th century public domain works now digitized and available to users online, we look forward to continuing our partnership with Oxford to digitize more content as it becomes available and work together to bring more books to more people in more languages around the world.
Source: Google Book Search Blog
Peter Brantley joins the Internet Archive
Wednesday, March 25th, 2009I am thrilled to announce that Peter Brantley will be joining the Internet Archive as our newest Director. In this role, he will direct our efforts and help coordinate with partners in building an open library and distributed publishing system.
Congrats Peter!
Source: Open Content Alliance Blog
Canada: AP Mobile Launches International sites for The Canadian Press
Wednesday, March 25th, 2009The Associated Press and The Canadian Press announced today the launch of The Canadian Press Mobile, developed by AP on its award-winning platform that allows smartphone users to easily view, search, save and share multimedia news any time, anywhere. AP teamed up with Canada’s national news agency to introduce two international mobile sites accessible from the Web browser on most Internet-enabled wireless devices, http://news4mobile.ca in English and http://nouvellesmobile.ca in French.
Source: AP
CIA: Updated! 25-Year Program Archive Search
Wednesday, March 25th, 2009The automatic declassification provisions of Executive Order 12958, as amended, require the declassification of nonexempt historically-valuable records 25 years old or older. By 31 December 2006 all agencies were to have completed the review of all hardcopy documents determined to be historically valuable (designated as “permanent” by the agency and the National Archives) and exclusively containing their equities. As the deadline pertains to CIA, it covers the span of relevant documents originally dating from the establishment of the CIA after WWII through 1981.
CIA has deployed an electronic full-text searchable system it has named CREST (the CIA Records Search Tool), which has been operational since 2000 and is located at NARA II in College Park Maryland. On this Agency site, researchers can now use an on-line CREST Finding Aid to research the availability of CIA documents declassified and loaded onto CREST through 2008. Data for the remaining years up to the present (CREST deliveries have been ongoing) will be placed on this site at later dates.
Direct to CREST database search
Note: [CREST] does not contain actual images of the documents as the regular Electronic Reading Room search does. Rather, it contains details on the files to speed FOIA requests
Source: Central Intelligence Agency
February 2009: Top 20 Most Viewed Items on WorldCat.org
Wednesday, March 25th, 2009…top 20 items viewed by WorldCat.org users during the month of February, 2009. They are in no particular order.
Source: OCLC
Roles of public library technology in supporting education, learning highlighted in new issues brief
Wednesday, March 25th, 2009The vast majority of public libraries report that providing education resources and databases for K-12 students is the Internet-based service most critical to the role of the library. In the third of a series of reports related to technology access in U.S. public libraries, the American Library Association (ALA) Office for Research & Statistics (ORS) is highlighting how public library technology supports the educational and learning needs of every person in the community. The issues brief draws from national data published in the Public Library Funding & Technology Access Study.
Direct to Issue Brief: Supporting Learners in Public Libraries (8 pages; PDF)
Source: American Library Association
