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A New Web Guide from The Library of Congress: Poetry of September 11

Friday, November 6th, 2009

This guide was compiled by Peter Armenti, Digital Reference Specialist at LC.

Poetry of September 11 is a guide to print and online poetry about the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The guide is divided into the following sections:

+ Print Publications

+ Online Resources
+++ Selected Individual Poems
+++ Collections of Poetry

+ Finding Additional Poems Through Your Library

See Also: A Complete List of Web Guides

Source: Virtual Services, Digital Reference Section @ Library of Congress

Posted in Arts and Humanities, Databases, Directories, and Guides, Resources | No Comments »

A Very New Searchable Collection of “Open” Images from the Netherland to Reuse, Remix, and Mashup

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

Something very new from Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision and Knowledgeland.

From the Web Site:

Open Images is an open media platform that offers online access to a selection of audiovisual archive material to stimulate creative reuse.

As part of Images for the Future, the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision and Knowledgeland are developing Open Images. [Our emphasis] The aim of this project is to offer online access to a selection of archive material to stimulate creative reuse. Reuse includes remixing of archive footage in new videos. Open Images also supports interlinking with other data sources (like Wikipedia), allowing the easy creation of mashups. Access to the content will be based on the Creative Commons model, which proposes a middle way to rights management, rather than the extremes of the pure public domain or the reservation of all rights. The ‘open’ nature of the project is underscored by adapting open formats and using open source software for its infrastructure. Software resulting from Open Images will also be released under an open source license.

The Media Page

At the present time, 371 films are available. Look for images and audio to be added going forward. The database offers numerous ways to find what you’re looking for.

For example you can search by:
+ Keyword
+ User
+ Source
+ Length
+ Language
+ License.

You can refine results by the same criteria.

An API is also available (Documentation is in Dutch).

Source: Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision and Knowledgeland
Hat Tip: AMIA News Briefs

Posted in Archives and Special Collections, Arts and Humanities, Multimedia Search, Search Tools, Web 2.0 | No Comments »

Fast Facts Compilation: Veterans Day 2009 (November 11th)

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

Once again, the U.S. Census is online with another useful compilation of facts that include direct links to the sources where the facts are found. This time we’re posting a “Fact for Features” about Veterans Day which will take place next Wednesday.

Access the Complete Document

Here is just a small portion of what you’ll find:

+ 23.2 million
The number of military veterans in the United States in 2008. Source: Table 508, Upcoming Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2010

+ 9.2 million
The number of veterans 65 and older in 2008. At the other end of the age spectrum, 1.9 million were younger than 35

+ 5
Number of states with 1 million or more veterans in 2008. These states were California (2.1 million), Florida (1.7 million), Texas (1.7 million), New York (1 million) and Pennsylvania (1 million).

+ 10.4 million
Number of veterans 18 to 64 in the labor force in 2008.

+ 15.8 million
Number of veterans who voted in the 2008 presidential election. Seventy-one percent of veterans cast a ballot, compared with 63 percent of nonveterans.

+ 2.9 million
Number of veterans who received compensation for service-connected disabilities as of 2008. Their compensation totaled $36.2 billion.

Access the Complete Document

Source: U.S. Census

Posted in Fast Facts, Government Documents and Political Information, History, Resources | No Comments »

More Digitization Underway: This Time Footnote.com is Digitizing the U.S. Census from 1790-1930

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009

Footnote.com is once again partnering the National Records and Administration Agency (NARA) to digitize massive amounts of content and then make that material available, often for a fee, available online. Footnote is becoming–and for some has already become–and important resource for historians, genealogists, students, and others.

This time around, Footnote.com, is digitizing all publicly available Census materials from 1790-1930. These dates represent the period when all materials (including names) from a given census have been made publicly available. Through its partnership with NARA, Footnote.com will add more than 9.5 million pages of content when the census database project is complete. We’ve learned that Footnote.com is digitizing all of this material on their own.

From a Footnote.com Blog Post:

With over 60 million historical records already online, Footnote.com will use the U.S. Census records to tie content together, creating a pathway to discover additional records that previously have been difficult to find.

The Interactive Census Project Home Page offers much more detail and examples. You can also create email alerts when new states are added to the census database. On the lower-left side of the page you can track the progress of each census has been digitized. As you’ll see, the 1860 census is complete and the 1930 census is just about done.

Searching is free, Footnote provides numerous options to refine your search (here’s an example). Accessing the complete record is fee-based either subscribing to the database for a annually or monthly. You can also by individual documents for $2.95. Btw, Footnote.com also sells institutional access to libraries through EBSCO.

Footnote looks at the census project as a “highway” to assist the researcher in finding more information in other databases.

If you’ve been reading ResourceShelf for a while you’ve seen an increasing number of mention their services. Here’s a list of a few of them,

+ In August of 2009. we posted on the release of a joint project with the National Archives (NARA) to digitize holocaust material.

+ In December of 2008, in a partnership with NARA, Footnote released the largest interactive World War II collection online.

+ In March, 2008 we posted about Footnote.com offering an interactive version of the Vietnam Wall.

Our first post about Footnote dates back to January, 2007.

If you run this search using the ResourceShelf database, you’ll be able to see and read all of our Footnote.com posts.

But wait, there’s more. A quick review of the Footnote “press room” offers up even more projects. You can learn about them here.

Posted in Digitization Projects, Genealogy, Geographic, History, Information Industry, Resources, Search News | No Comments »

The Library of Congress Unveils API for Chronicling America Digitized Newspaper Database and Directory

Friday, October 30th, 2009

What follows is a post that might be of special interest to web developers, webmasters, site owners, or anyone who can work with an API (Application Programming Interface), It comes from a digitized collection of more than 1 million historic newspapers and a searchable directory of newspaper info. Even if you are don’t have the technical skills required, it’s possible you know someone who does and with their help you can partner to develop new resources, create mashups, etc. Btw, if you know of people who are able to work with an API, feel free to share this post with them.

First, some background.

We’ve posted about the CA program since the day it launched in March, 2007. The project is a joint effort between the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities to digitize historic American newspapers. In addition to the digitized newspaper database CA also provides Chronicling America directory. It’s both searchable with a powerful interface (a great example of what good metadata can do) and browsable. The directory contains information about most American newspapers published from 1690 to today.

On June 16, 2009, we ran a story about CA reaching a milestone. CA had just hit the one million digitized pages mark. It has grown a lot since then. About five weeks ago we posted an item about CA adding more than 192,000 pages to CA. The media release said the size of the database at that time contained 1,442,000 digitized pages from 171 titles, that were published between 1880 and 1922.

Thanks for the info but what about the API (Application Programming Interface) ?

The following from the “About the Chronicling America API” web page:

Chronicling America provides access to information about historic newspapers and select digitized newspaper pages. To encourage a wide range of potential uses, we designed several different views of the data we provide, all of which are publicly visible. Each uses common Web protocols, and access is not restricted in any way. You do not need to apply for a special key to use them. Together they make up an extensive application programming interface (API) which you can use to explore all of our data in many ways.

The rest of the web page offers technical details about the API.

Programmable Web has also posted about the new API.

Here are a couple of highlights:

Search results are available on the web site appear with terms highlighted. The API does not have access to highlight information, but it does contain thumbnails. Each page has a permalink back to the Library of Congress site, which displays the page in a zoomable, draggable viewer similar to Google Map.

The Library of Congress is focused on making these public domain works widely available. As such, this is an API without any registration or key necessary. That’s pretty wide open.

Among the interesting technical details is that the API can return linked data via RDF. It’s good to see reference sites, especially government ones, support semantic web formats (there are now 20 APIs in our directory with RDF support.)

Sources: Library of Congress, Programmable Web
Hat Tip: Dan C.

Posted in Databases, Directories, and Guides, Digitization Projects, History, Info Management and Retrieval, Media | No Comments »

Database — Music — ACE Title Search

Thursday, October 29th, 2009

ACE Title Search
From the FAQ:

ACE is a database of song titles licensed by ASCAP in the United States. For each title, you can find the names of the songwriters and the names, contact persons, addresses and, in most cases, phone numbers of publishers to contact if you want to use the work. For most of the titles, you’ll find some of the artists who have made a commercial recording.

Source: ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers)

Let the Music (and Video) Play! Blinkx Launches Music Video Search Engine

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

From an ITVT Article:

Video search engine company, blinkx, on Tuesday announced blinkx Music, a new service for finding and watching music videos online. According to the company, the service functions as a “single online gateway” that provides access to music videos in every genre, and features a “huge and varied constellation of artists.” blinkx claims to have indexed over 33,000 hours of music video from over 10,000 artists.

According to the company, users can search blinkx Music’s index by artist, album, genre or song, or simply browse the top tunes of the moment.

Access blinkx Music

Posted in Arts and Humanities, Search News, Search Tools | No Comments »

Online Audio Available: The Judaica Sound Archives at Florida Atlantic University

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

From the Blog Post:

Between the early 1990s and 2002, Florida Atlantic University’s Wimberly Library acquired about a thousand recordings of Jewish music. In 2002 that collection became the foundation for the Judaica Music Rescue Project, founded by Nathan Tinanoff, with the goal of creating a central repository for Judaic sound recordings. In 2005 the project was renamed the Judaica Sound Archives, with Mr. Tinanoff as director. It now contains about 58,000 recordings.

The post continues with a joint interview with Q & A style interview with assistant director Maxine Schackman and Nathan Tinanoff.

We learn that 25% of the archives has been digitized and 45% of the digitized material is available online.

Q. How do people gain access to and use the collection online?

A. Because so many of the recordings in the JSA collection are under copyright protection, it was important to develop special software so that researchers, teachers, and students of Judaic music, history, and culture could have wider access than the general public. Digitized music files (both under copyright and in the public domain) on the JSA-RS [the Judaica Sound Archives Research Station] can be heard in their entirety. Record-label scans and album-cover scans are also provided. Music cannot be downloaded from JSA-RS.

Direct Link to the Archives
You can browse (and then listen online) to web accessible content by:
+ Performers
+ Record Labels
+ Album
+ Song List
+ 78-rpm List

See Also: Learn Where You Can Find a Judaica Sound Archive Research Station
There are locations in the US, Canada, and the U.K.

See Also: The Judaica Sound Archives Blog

Source: Wired Campus
Hat Tip: P.W.

Posted in Archives and Special Collections, Arts and Humanities, Databases, Directories, and Guides, History, Resources | No Comments »

Free Digital Edition — A Visual History of the Federal Reserve System 1914-2009

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

A Visual History of the Federal Reserve System 1914-2009 (PDF; 1.1 MB)

The Visual History of the Federal Reserve System portrays in 24 x 36 inches the Fed’s balance sheet from 1914 to present, as well as interest rates, reserve requirements, recessions, chairmen, US presidents, major events, and more. This is the first time this data has ever been compiled and portrayed in a single graphical display.

Dead.tree version available for purchase.

Source: Financial Graph & Art

Posted in Business and Economics, History, Resources for Educators, Source File | No Comments »

Cool! Watch Movies on Your iPhone (Free) National Film Board of Canada Releases iPhone App, 1000 Films Currently Available

Sunday, October 25th, 2009

The National Film Board of Canada, a prestigious and respected filmmaking organization best known for documentaries and animation, has launched their own iPhone/iTouch app. The app is available in the U.S. and is free.

+ Access to over 1000 films*

+ Preload films for up to 24 hours for offline viewing

+ The collection is searchable

+ Browse films by categories

+ Watch movies that others in your area are also viewing

Access the National Film Board of Canada iPhone App (via iTunes)

Here’s a review from CNET.

See Also: Official NFB News Release

* The 1,000 titles is equal to about 1/13 of the complete NFB catalog. Let’s hope that they will be adding new content on a regular basis.

Posted in Arts and Humanities, Resources, Wireless Web and Search | No Comments »

Washington University: Libraries receive federal grant to digitize pre-war slave lawsuits

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009

Here’s more about a very brief item we posted when IMLS National Leadership Grants at the end of September.

From the Article:

Washington University Libraries received one of the largest grants in the institution’s history, a $376,426 National Leadership Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The money will fund the St. Louis Freedom Suits Legal Encoding Project, which aims to digitize pre-Civil War lawsuits that slaves brought against slaveholders in the St. Louis Circuit Court.

[Snip]

The newly funded Freedom Suits Legal Encoding Project takes the digitalization process a step further. In addition to finishing the scanning of more than 20,000 pages of city directories and court records, the project also seeks to transcribe the documents to enable full-text searches.

[Snip]

The primary novel aspect of this project is to “develop extensions to the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) for encoding legal documents to reflect legal function, genres and roles, and employ these extensions in this collection,” according to a grant announcement.

In other words, this project seeks to develop a computer language for annotating the legal functions of documents. This language would be comparable to HTML, which is used to denote structural semantics for Web pages. Ultimately, this innovation will be integrated into TEI, the existing language, to provide a model for similar archives.

Access the Complete Library

Source: Student Library (Washington University, St. Louis, MO)

Posted in Digitization Projects, History, Libraries and Librarianship | No Comments »

Online Resources: The George Palmer Putnam Collection of Amelia Earhart Papers at Purdue University

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

This Friday (in the U.S.) a new movie opens about the life of aviator, Amelia Earhart.

At Purdue University, the George Palmer Putnam Collection is the world’s largest collection of Amelia Earhart papers, photos, memorabilia and artifacts. Several resources from the collection are available online.

1) Searchable Digital Library (Images, cards, ephemera, newspaper articles, etc.), over 2200 entries

2) Biographical Sketch

3) Map of Second World Flight Attempt, 1937

4) Medals
Note: Some medals require Quicktime to view them.

5) Timeline

6) Learn About the Collection

7) Collection of Web Resources about Amelia Earhart

Select Bibliography

9) Bibliography for Children

10) Amelia Earhart at Purdue (Digitized Materials, Over 400 entries)

Source: Purdue University Libraries, Archives and Special Collections

Posted in Archives and Special Collections, Bibliographies, Webliographies, Chronologies and Timelines, Databases, Directories, and Guides, Geographic, History, Resources, Resources for Educators | No Comments »

American Presidents: Four Recently Updated Resource Guides

Sunday, October 18th, 2009

The Digital Reference Section at the Library of Congress with four new or recently updated research guides about four U.S. presidents. They were created by Kenneth Drexler, a Digital Reference Specialist at LC.

From Each Resource Guide:

… [a] resource guide compiles links to digital materials…such as manuscripts, broadsides, government documents, and images that are available throughout the Library of Congress Web site. In addition, it provides links to external Web sites focusing on [each president] and a bibliography containing selected works for both a general audience and younger readers.

+ Chester Arthur

+ James Buchanan

+ James Garfield

+ Rutherford B. Hayes

Source: Virtual Services, Digital Reference Section, Library of Congress

Posted in Bibliographies, Webliographies, History, Resources | No Comments »

Cool! Revelations from the Russian Archives: Exhibit Publications from the Library of Congress

Friday, October 16th, 2009

From the Web Site:

With the sudden and unexpected collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991, ownership of the huge archival legacy of the entire Soviet period (both of the government of the USSR and of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union), located in large centralized archives in Moscow and Leningrad, passed to the now-independent Russian Federation. Russian archivists turned to American colleagues, including Librarian of Congress James Billington, in early 1992 to request assistance in declassifying and organizing the formerly secret and inaccessible party archives.

In exchange for assistance and advice offered by Americans, including the Library of Congress, the new Russian Commission on Archives offered the Library of Congress the remarkable opportunity to exhibit in Washington original, formerly top-secret, documents from the Communist Party archives. The exhibit, termed “Revelations from the Russian Archives,” was the first of the Library’s exhibits to be put online, in the very early days of the Internet. The exhibit opened in June 1992 with a symposium of Russian and American historians, librarians, and archivists presenting views on the significance of the epochal changes occurring since the then-recent collapse of the USSR and the consequences of these changes for archival documents from the entire Soviet period, 1917-1991.

IIn 1997 the Library published Revelations from the Russian Archives: Documents in English Translation, a compendium of translations of all the documents in the exhibit. This richly illustrated book presents 343 documents on a broad range of subjects with commentary to make their significance clear.

The three publications digitized here were published at the time of the June 1992 exhibit at the Madison Gallery of the Library of Congress’ Madison Building. They detail the items shown in the exhibit and present a summary of the symposium of scholars discussing the documents.

+ Access the Revelations from the Russian Archive

+ Revelations from the Russian Archives: A Report from the Library of Congress (Page Images, View Online) ||| (70 pages; PDF)

+ Revelations from the Russian Archives: a Checklist (Page Images, View Online) ||| (32 pages; PDF)

Source: Library of Congress

Posted in Access to Information, Archives and Special Collections, History | No Comments »

Two New Primary Source Sets for Educators from the Veteran’s History Project

Friday, October 16th, 2009

From an E-Mail Announcement:

Two new primary source sets from the Library of Congress can bring your students face to face with American war veterans. Veterans’ Stories: The Veterans History Project and Veterans’ Stories: Struggles for Participation let veterans tell their stories firsthand through interviews, diaries, photographs, and drawings. All these items were collected by the Veterans History Project, and they’re accompanied by teacher guides and analysis tools that make them easy to use in the classroom.

+ Veterans’ Stories: The Veterans History Project

+ Veterans’ Stories: Struggles for Participation

+ Teachers Guide: Analyzing Oral Histories (1 page; PDF)

Source: Veteran’s History Project, Library of Congress

Posted in History, Resources, Resources for Educators | No Comments »

Available this Friday: Online Database: European Union Bookshop Historical Database (Free)

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

Update (Friday, October 16, 2009)
We’ve been told by an EU spokesperson that new content has now been loaded into the database. The search interface remains the same. More about “what” and “how much” has been added to the database in the articles linked below.

Database Overview:
You can access the database here (left column). Once, you get a feel for what’s available you can created direct links to various interfaces. For example, this link goes directly to the advanced search interface.

Three searching options:
+ By Words

+ Using Identifiers

+ Advanced Search
+ Advanced Search Options
+++ Select Fields to Search
+++ Theme
+++ Language
+++ Format
+++ Publication Year Range
+++ Target Audience
+++ Digital Archive (3 options)
+++ Price
+++ Select only Key Publications

You can also browse content several ways:
+ Just Published
+ Key Publications
+ By Theme
+ By Author

On both the regular and advanced interface make sure to select the “Digital Library” (Archive) box if you want to search the entire range of EU publications.

Also, the database does not allow for a full text search. You can search the publication title, abstract, and table of contents.

Finally, materials are often available in multiple formats. Printed documents are (fee-based) but all PDF’s are free.

While reviewing an article about the EU and digitisation, we came across a bit of info about a new database (free) going live this Friday. Their motto, “All the EU publications in one place.”

From a EurActiv Article:

A new service is set to make the last sixty years of European history available free of charge in its digital EU bookshop. [Our emphasis] The European Commission’s Publications Office has scanned more than 110,000 EU publications including speeches, treaties and publications from the EU institutions, agencies and other bodies dating back to 1952. The initiative was borne out of a saturation of the Publications Office’s PDF-on-demand service wherein users could request publications to be retrieved from the archives and scanned as needed. Total PDF downloads jumped from just 65,000 in 2008 to an expected 230,000 per month for 2009.
More in this News Release from the Publications Office:

Scanning 12 million pages makes more than 110 000 EU publications available free of charge for download in the EU Bookshop Digital Library. It offers all publications ever edited by the Publications Office on behalf of the EU institutions, agencies and other bodies since 1952.

The EU Bookshop is a valuable information source for citizens, journalists, education professionals, students, librarians, publishers, and anybody interested in Europe, in 50 languages, including the possibility of ordering printed copies.

See Also: Official News Release (PDF)
See Also: Examples of what can be found in EU Bookshop (PDF)
See Also: Frequently Asked Questions about the Publications Office Digital Library and the EU Bookshop

Note: In the FAQ we learn that 5% of the documents are fee-based but that the PDF will always be free.

Access the EU Publications Office

Sources; EU Publications Office, EurActiv

Posted in Government Documents and Political Information, History, Reference Tools, Resources, Search News | No Comments »

Mandela Opens Archives for New Memoir & Related Mandela Web Resources
Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

From the Article:

Nelson Mandela plans to open his personal archives to create a new memoir that will reveal how he preserved his values during the fight against apartheid in South Africa.

British, European and international publishing deals for the memoir by the former South African president were announced Wednesday at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

[Snip]

The [Nelson Mandela F]oundation holds an archive of
diaries, notebooks and calendar jottings that include Mandela’s speeches and musings during his time as an activist, his time in prison on Robben Island and his time in office.

Source: CBC

+ Access the Nelson Mandela Foundation Web Site
+ Anti-Apartheid Movement Archives
+ Mandela Materials (Speeches, lectures, etc.) Database
+ South African Histories
+ Nelson Mandela Bibliography (Searchable)
+ Nelson Mandela Filmography (Searchable)
+ Nelson Mandela Timeline

Posted in Archives and Special Collections, Chronologies and Timelines, Databases, Directories, and Guides, History, Print Publications, Resources | No Comments »

Free! Live Concert Recordings on Your Computer and Now Your iPhone
Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

From the Article:

Wolfgang’s Vault is an online archive containing hundreds of high-quality concert recordings, mostly from big classic-rock artists like The Who and U2, but with a few newer artists, such as The Walkmen, thrown in as well. (Here’s a complete list of performers whose recordings are available on the service.) Last month, Wolfgang released an updated version of its much-lauded free iPhone application, Concert Vault, which gives you access to these amazing shows directly from your iPhone or iPod Touch.

Access Wolfgang’s Vault

Access Concert Vault App for iPhone and iTouch (It’s a Free App)

Source: News.com

See Also: Another Place to Access Free Concerts is the Live Music Archive from the Internet Archive

Posted in Arts and Humanities, Search Tools, Wireless Web and Search | No Comments »

The Leon Levy Foundation: Helping Organizations to Collect, Conserve, and Digitize Archival Collections
Tuesday, October 13th, 2009

From the Article:

The National Park Service found the original deed from 1695 for the homestead in Virginia where George Washington was born and copies of John Peter Zenger’s New-York Weekly Journal from 1735 reporting on his landmark trial affirming freedom of the press. The Center for Jewish History discovered the 1944 document in which Raphael Lemkin coined the term genocide. The Morgan Library turned up a 1913 letter from the sister of Virginia Woolf saying that “Virginia was very much depressed yesterday” and attempted suicide — three decades before she would kill herself.

Those are among the nearly two dozen institutions that have received grants from the Leon Levy Foundation since 2007 to identify, preserve and digitize their archival collections and to make them available online to scholars and to the public.

The foundation’s archives and catalogs program has awarded more than $10.3 million, including two grants this week: $3.5 million to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., to collect and conserve the papers of its present and former scholars, including George F. Kennan, J. Robert Oppenheimer and Albert Einstein; and [our emphasis] $2.4 million to the New York Philharmonic, where archivists will digitize 1.3 million pages, including a 1909 Mahler score for his First Symphony originally marked up by the composer and further annotated 50 years later by Leonard Bernstein.

Much Much More in the Complete Article

Source: NY Times

See Also: Learn More via the Leon Levy Foundation Web Site

Posted in Archives and Special Collections, Arts and Humanities, Digitization Projects, History, Preservation/Conservation | No Comments »

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