From the announcement:

The Library of Congress, the California Digital Library, the University of North Texas Libraries, the Internet Archive and the U.S. Government Printing Office today announced a collaborative project to preserve public United States Government web sites at the end of the current presidential administration ending January 19, 2009. This harvest is intended to document federal agencies’ online archive during the transition of government and to enhance the existing collections of the five partner institutions.

Source: Library of Congress

See Also: Federal Web Harvest Home Page

The Library of Congress Digital Preservation Newsletter for August 2008 has just been released. In this month’s issue:

-A report on the International Copyright Workshop and Report (please note a new URL for the report).

-A report on the July NDIIPP meeting in Washington, D.C.

-A report on the Archiving 2008 meeting in Bern.

-And More!

Source: LC / NDIIPP

From the announcement:

Dr. Anne-Imelda Radice, Director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), announced today that 776 museums, libraries, and archives, representing every state, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Guam have been selected to receive the IMLS Connecting to Collections Bookshelf. The contents of the bookshelf were selected by a blue ribbon panel of conservation experts; it includes an essential set of books, online resources, and a user’s guide that can profoundly affect the ability of small libraries and museums to care for their collections.

Source: IMLS

New from LC:
State Digital Resources: Memory Projects, Online Encyclopedias, Historical & Cultural Materials Collections

Source: Library of Congress

From the article:

Fabled Timbuktu, once the site of the world’s southernmost Islamic university, harbors thousands upon thousands of long-forgotten manuscripts. A dozen academic institutions from around the world are now working frantically to save and evaluate the crumbling documents.

Source: Der Spiegel (English)

From the article:

The British Library is embarking on a major research project into its collection of medieval and Renaissance Royal illuminated manuscripts.

The project, which is being funded by a £265,000 grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and is a collaboration with The Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, will culminate in the first ever exhibition of the collection – at the British Library in 2011-2012.

In 1757, King George II presented approximately 1,950 manuscripts from the royal library to the newly founded British Museum. Since that time, the manuscripts have remained together as a distinct collection labelled ROYAL.

Source: 24 Hour Museum

+ British Library Automates Billing

+ Toronto Public Library Board Announces Appointment of New Chief Librarian

+ Libraries in D.C. Plan Cuts in Hours: Budget Shortfall Would Also Close Kiosks (via Washington Post)

+ OH: Newark Library Plans to Sell It’s VHS Tape Collection (via Newark Advocate)

DigitalPreservationEurope have released their European Quarterly Preservation Digest that provides an overview of the current activities of European funded projects in the area of digital preservation.

Direct to New Issue
PDF.

Source: DCC

From the iwr article:

Nearly £10 million has been awarded to preserve low use journals for those in UK Higher Education. The new initiative, UK Research Reserve (UKRR) aims to improve access to the journal information for researchers as well as better preserve the body of work.

The partnership between the British Library and higher education libraries, led by Imperial College London will see the low-use research journals being stored at the British Library, with the scheme managed between the two institutions. The multi-million pound resource was awarded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) following an initial 18 month pilot scheme.

Source: Information World Review

From the DSpace site:
July 15, 2008

The U.S. National Library of Medicine has recently preformed scalability tests on the DSpace platform, ingesting 1 million items. The test was successful and concluded that DSpace “shows acceptable ingest performance for a million-item archive.” Read NLM white paper, “Testing the Scalability of a DSpace-based Archive” or reveiw the presentation of results from the DLF conference, “Experiment to Investigate the Scalability of a DSpace-based Archive” .

Source: DSpace

From Wired Campus:

Countries should change their laws and policies to encourage digital preservation of copyrighted works, according to a report released today by the Library of Congress. It drafted the report with organizations in Australia, Britain, and the Netherlands.

The report, “International Study on the Impact of Copyright Law on Digital Preservation,” says digital works are ephemeral, and unless they’re preserved shortly after creation they’ll be lost to future generations. The report calls for preserving copyrighted works in accordance with international best practices, migrating works into different formats, and maintaining duplicate copies among preservation institutions and repositories to protect against catastrophic loss.

Direct to Full Text Study
PDF.

Source: LC and Wired Campus

Topics include:
2 pages; PDF.

+ A profile of Digital Preservation Pioneer Fran Berman

+ NDIIPP meeting updates

Source: NDIIPP

From the news release:

Elsevier, a leading publisher of scientific, technical and medical (STM) information, today announced an agreement with Portico, a not-for-profit digital preservation service, to aid ScienceDirect, Elsevier’s online STM platform, in addressing the challenges of eBook preservation. This agreement will ensure that the collection of eBooks on ScienceDirect is protected for the future.
(more…)

The latest edition (vol 7, no 2) of Digital Document Quarterly, an online newsletter from HMG Consulting that offers perspectives on trustworthy information, is now available.

Source: HMG Consulting

From the site:

In the early 1960’s, broadcast journalist Mike Wallace donated 65 recorded interviews made in 1957-58 from his show “The Mike Wallace Interview” to the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas. The bulk of these were 16mm kinescope film recordings, some of the earliest recordings of live television that were possible, and that survive today. Many of these have not been seen for over 50 years, and they represent a unique window into a turbulent time of American, and world history. From Senators to strippers, Ku Klux Klansmen to Nobel Prize winners, Mike Wallace has interviewed them all, and we invite you to view The Mike Wallace Interview .

Source: The School of Information, University of Texas