Brand new from the National Agriculture Library.

In 1895, Congress passed a law providing for an annual publication to disseminate the USDA’s resarch developments to scientists and farmers. The first volume published under this law was the Yearbook of the United States Department of Agriculture for 1894, with over 25 articles on such topics as “The grain smuts,” “The improvement of public roads in North Carolina,” and “The crow blackbird and its food.”

With its long publication history, the yearbook provides a convenient way to trace the development of a topic over time. For example, a search on DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) finds the insecticide mentioned in 217 articles from 1943 to 1992. An early article assures that DDT is safe to use if a few simple precautions are taken (see “DDT in the Home”) while later articles begin to mention environmental concerns, as raised by Rachel Carson in Silent Spring (see “Protecting the sportsman’s paradise” and “The Place of insecticides”).

Two Ways to Access the Content:

Browse the volumes - 1894 to 1937 or 1938 to 1992

Search on a topic - Select the yearbook from this list and click the “Go” button to return to the Search page. Then enter your keywords.

Source: National Agriculture Library

From the Announcement:

OCLC is digitizing 242 back issues of the American Archivist—from January 1938 through Fall/Winter 2000. The first batch of 47 issues was dispatched for digitization in April. Four other batches will be sent across the summer. Kate Elgayeva, a recent graduate of Dominican University who is a preservation assistant at the American Theological Library Association in downtown Chicago, will assist SAA with administrative tasks in prepping the batches and with quality control of the digitized material. The goal is to upload all of the content on the American Archivist Online website by this fall so that the entire run of this important body of scholarship would be available electronically for the first time.

Source: Society of American Archivists

From the News Release:

More than $800,000 has been allocated in the federal Budget to the National Library of Australia, the National Film and Sound Archive and the National Archives of Australia to help collect and preserve huge volumes of digital information.

This will also assist in progressing towards the digitisation of our important cultural and historical collections.

The $805,000 will help three of the nation’s leading collecting institutions plan how they can look at digitising their vast collections and ensure that they will be available for use and enjoyment by many generations to come.

Source: NLA

From the Letter to the Editor:

In his May 19 op-ed, “A Book Grab by Google,” Brewster Kahle said that a court settlement involving Google, if approved, “would produce not one but two court-sanctioned monopolies. Google will have permission to bring under its sole control information that has been accessible through public institutions for centuries. In essence, Google will be privatizing our libraries.”

As the steward of one of those libraries, a library that has had some 3 million of its works digitized by Google, let me assure readers that Google will not have a monopoly on the information that we hold. We retain the original copies, we have our own copy of the digital scans and we are free to scan the works again.

See Also: Full Text of the May, 14th Op-Ed by Brewster Kahle titled, “Google Book Grab.”

If approved, the settlement would produce not one but two court-sanctioned monopolies. Google will have permission to bring under its sole control information that has been accessible through public institutions for centuries. In essence, Google will be privatizing our libraries.

Source: Washington Post
Hat Tip: LS

From a Blog Post:

The Library’s Prints & Photographs Division today is offering a new twist on the Library’s Flickr site in The Commons — a clickable list of favorites from the Farm Security Administration and Office of War Information collections, under the heading “FSA/OWI Favorites.”

There will be 10 “most-requested” photos from these Library collections, including the iconic Migrant Mother by Dorothea Lange, four by Walker Evans (here’s Roadside Stand near Birmingham, Alabama) and images by Gordon Parks (Washington, D.C., Government Charwoman) and Marion Wolcott (Jitterbugging in Negro Juke Joint, Saturday evening, outside Clarksdale, Mississippi).

There will also be 14 staff picks for your edification and perusing pleasure, including Chicago, Illinois in the waiting room of the Union Station by Jack Delano, Fiddlin’ Bill Hensley, mountain fiddler, Ashville, North Carolina by Ben Shahn and Soda Jerker, Corpus Christi, Texas by Russell Lee. (The guy is more of an ice-cream flinger, actually, but that wasn’t the job title.)

See Also: Find More Images Via the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog

Source: LC Blog

From an Article:

Much of the skepticism about the Google project has been related to pricing, with libraries and scholars fearing that initially favorable rates might later become prohibitive.

[Paul] Courant [Dean of Libraries, UMich] said that there were multiple protections against that. One is the arbitration process that Google has agreed to. The other, Courant said, is the free market. “There is nothing in the settlement that says these works can’t be scanned again. Someone else can come and scan them,” Courant said. “If the price on this is outrageous,” he said, someone else will want to digitize the collections, and universities would probably be open to the idea.

Others who see positive aspects of the deal are more pessimistic. Barbara Fister, a librarian at Gustavus Adolphus College who has written critically of Google’s role in digitizing books, said that she understands why Michigan sees benefits to the deal. “More people will be able to discover otherwise unsearchable content, orphan works will be given a cot in the Google orphanage, and books that the library couldn’t afford to scan will be digitized,” she said.

But she said there are other issues at play. “The tragedy is that a single and very large corporation has struck a deal with publishers that turns Google into a massive distributor, and though they hold non-exclusive agreements and tell others they’re free to take on the legal risks Google did and reap the rewards, that’s not feasible.

Source: Inside Higher Ed

See Also: University of Michigan first to sign new digitization agreement with Google (Official News Release)

From the Article:

On May 25th, The National Digital Library will open in Banpo-dong, southern Seoul, the first such repository in the world. With more than 380,000 digitalized books and 116 million pieces of digital content, the eight-story 38,014 square-meter-large building is expected to attract both domestic and international attention.

“There are online libraries where people can log on at home or offices to enjoy reading books. There are offline libraries for reading paperback books where online content is just a section. However, I can surely say our library will be the first and the largest ‘physical’ space to deal with online contents only,” Mo Chul-min, director of the library, said.

Source: Korea Times
Hat Tip: LS

From the Article:

Saving the nation’s cultural heritage is an increasingly important matter for government agencies that hold large amounts of material documenting the national record. While saving traditional printed archival materials continues to be important, the exponential growth of digitization projects has created a new set of challenges related to producing and preserving materials in digital format over the long term.

Individual government agencies are digitizing different content, yet they share many of the same technical issues and concerns. So the sharing of information and tools is an idea whose time has come. To that end, the Library of Congress is participating in a new government collaboration, the results of which can be followed on the newly released “Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative” website.

Twelve agencies have come together to develop a common set of digitization practices and guidelines and two working groups have been formed. A still-image working group will establish appropriate guidelines for the scanning of text, maps, photographic prints and negatives. An audiovisual working group will set standards for digitizing audiovisual materials—sound recordings, videos and film. They will post their recommendations on two websites: www.digitizationguidelines.gov/stillimages/ and www.digitizationguidelines.gov/audio-visual/.

Direct to Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Website

Source: Library of Congress Information Bulletin

From the News Release:

The University of Michigan today announced that it has expanded its historic agreement with Google Inc. to create digital copies of millions of U-M library books and journals.

The amended agreement, which strengthens library preservation efforts and increases the public’s access to books, is possible because of Google’s pending settlement with a broad class of authors and publishers. The U-M library is the first in the nation to expand its partnership with Google.

The contract amendment is an important step in ensuring that the university’s vision of broad public access to its print collection becomes a reality.

“Through this amendment we are establishing a solid foundation for future library work and providing the greatest public good for library users,” said Paul N. Courant, U-M librarian and dean of libraries. Courant also is the Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Economics and the Harold T. Shapiro Collegiate Professor in the Ford School of Public Policy.

Source: U of Michigan

See Also: UMich first to sign up under Google Books settlement terms (via News.com)

From the Article:

Google and UM have been working together since 2004 on digitizing the university’s library collection, but the Google Book Search settlement would allow Michigan to offer its books online as part of a subscription, or in some cases for free. The settlement has drawn reported attention from the government as well as library groups worried over the costs associated with access to such a large digital library amassed by a single company.

From the Article:

In a 21st-century version of the age of discovery, teams of computer scientists, conservationists and scholars are fanning out across the globe in a race to digitize crumbling literary treasures.

A digital arms race has been heating up in recent years as companies pour millions into large-scale digitization projects, including Microsoft’s effort to scan 80,000 books at the British Library and IBM’s multimillion-dollar project to create a virtual version of China’s Forbidden City. The Ford Foundation and other organizations are funding a drive to translate and digitize some 700,000 manuscripts in Timbuktu, Mali. The world’s oldest functioning monastery, St. Catherine’s in Egypt, is digitally photographing its collection of roughly 5,000 scrolls and manuscripts, including the Codex Sinaiticus, which dates to 330 A.D. and is thought to be the oldest Bible in the world.

The article also includes a brief list of some of the digitized materials from:

+ The British Library

+ American Memory Project (Library of Congress)

+ The World Digital Library

Source: Wall Street Journal
Hat Tip: @earthintelnet

From a Letter to Sen. Charles Schumer and Sen. Robert Brady (2 pages; PDF)

On behalf of the American Library Association (ALA) and the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), we are writing to express our strong support for a project that will digitize our nation’s historical public domain government works and make these broadly available to the American public. The U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) will soon seek the approval of the Joint Committee on Printing to undertake this important public access project at no cost to the government. We request your strong and immediate support of this initiative.

For over 140 years, the GPO, through the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP), has made government information available at no cost to the public. In order to ensure that there is effective, permanent, no-fee access to these valuable government documents in electronic formats, GPO is working with other entities to digitize the legacy documents collection. This collection of over 2.2 million documents once digitized will vastly improve public access to these historical and cultural resources of our nation and importantly, preserve this deteriorating resource. Many of the volumes in this legacy collection are brittle due to age and publication on acidic paper. It is our understanding that GPO will receive from the awardee of this no-fee contract, the unaltered digitized files that GPO will then preserve and use to create access files within GPO’s Future Digital System
(FDSys).

Source: Association of Research Libraries

From the Announcement:

The full scope of the digitization project encompassed scanning the legacy microfiche collection of nearly 340,000 documents added to ERIC from 1966 to 1992, and reaching out to thousands of individuals and organizations who submitted these documents and hold copyright to them. This massive effort resulted in more than 55 percent of documents released online. This outcome is notable in light of the challenges associated with locating document submitters from up to 40 years ago. ERIC users now have full-text access to nearly 192,000 digitized microfiche documents because copyright holders have granted ERIC permission for digital release, or in other cases, it was determined that the documents are in the public domain. The opportunity remains for copyright holders to help ERIC expand access to their materials. National Archive Publishing Company (NAPC), ERIC’s partner in this major initiative, is still accepting permissions to release documents online. ERIC cannot assume permission, due to the specific language of the original permission forms and the technology available at the time of indexing.

Source: ERIC
Hat Tip: Open Access News (Peter Suber)

Legally Speaking: The Dead Souls of the Google Booksearch Settlement

This short article argues that the proposed settlement of the Authors Guild v. Google lawsuit is a privately negotiated compulsory license primarily designed to monetize millions of orphan works. It will benefit Google and certain authors and publishers, but it is questionable whether the authors of most books in the corpus (the “dead souls” to which the title refers) would agree that the settling authors and publishers will truly represent their interests when setting terms for access to the Book Search corpus.

Several options available for retrieval of full text.

Source: Communications of the ACM, forthcoming (Pamela Samuelson), via SSRN

From the Announcement:

UNESCO and 32 partner institutions have launched the World Digital Library, a website that features unique cultural materials from libraries and archives from around the world, at Paris Headquarters on 21 April.

See This Post from Monday with Links and More Info About the Word Digital Library

Source: UNESCO

The World Digital Library (WDL) is set to go live (officially) tomorrow morning. However, the site appears to already be live (Monday) at: http://www.wdl.org.

From a Post by UNESCO:

UNESCO and 32 partner institutions [including the Library of Congress] will launch the World Digital Library, a web site that features unique cultural materials from libraries and archives from around the world, at UNESCO Headquarters on 21 April. The site will include manuscripts, maps, rare books, films, sound recordings, and prints and photographs. It will provide unrestricted public access, free of charge, to this material.

The WDL can be keyword searched, browsed by using a timeline (1140 items in the library so far) or by:
+ Place
+ Time
+ Topic
+ Type of Item
+ Institution

Keyword search results pages allow the user to narrow by simply clicking on links that narrow the search results by place, topic, time, etc. Results can be viewed in either as a gallery or list.

Some results include a video by a WDL curator. Example.

The World Digital Library site is available in seven languages.

See Also: Learn More via a World Digital Library Fact Sheet from the Library of Congress (2 pages; PDF)

See Also: World Digital Library Preview Video

See Also: Review World Digital Library Partners