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Archive for the ‘History’ Category

The Leon Levy Foundation: Helping Organizations to Collect, Conserve, and Digitize Archival Collections

Tuesday, October 13th, 2009

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 »

Online Video Archive from The Institute of Politics at Harvard University

Tuesday, October 13th, 2009

Back in 2006, ResourceShelf posted an item about Harvard University and the John F. Kennedy School of Government making available to the public a video archive of lectures and presentations from the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum.

Some three years later, the archive is still online and now home to over 1300 events, exclusive Q&A sessions, and student produced pieces on politics, policy, culture, and academic life. However, it has a new URL. You can now find the archive here. It’s keyword searchable and you can limit your search to a specific year (1978-Present). Also, if you want to see all of the video available from a certain year, leave the search box empty, select a year and then then enter (or the “go” button next to the search box).

For example, here’s a speech by Rev. Desmond Tutu (1986) and an address by Representative John Lewis (D-GA) from 2008.

They also do a nice job of keeping the database up to date. Here’s anaddress by Newt Gingrich from last week (October 8th).

Source: Harvard University Institute of Politics

Posted in Archives and Special Collections, Government Documents and Political Information, History, Multimedia Search, Resources, Resources for Educators | No Comments »

University of Pittsburgh: Online Library Showcases Jewish History

Friday, October 9th, 2009

From the Article:

A new online library, launched last week, allows Pitt students and members of the public to listen to audio from more than 500 interviews with Jewish people from the Pittsburgh area and throughout the United States.

The online library, sponsored by the Pittsburgh Section of the National Council of Jewish Women and Pitt’s Archives Service Center, showcases the stories of people who immigrated to the United States from Eastern Europe. The interviews cover a wide range of topics, including carpentry, community service, the Holocaust and Hillman Library.

“There’s a very extensive guide to this project,” Rush Miller, Hillman librarian and director of the University Library System, said. “You can search by keywords, or if you’re interested in politics you can go in and search by those topics.”

“You can actually go straight into the material that you’re interested in,” he said.

Notable interviewees include former actor and Pitt graduate Richard Rauh, Holocaust survivor Steven Fenves and Pittsburgh’s first Jewish chief of police Mayer DeRoy.

Access the Online Library: Pittsburgh and Beyond: The Experience of the Jewish Community

Keyword search the collection or browse by:
+ Interview
+ Name Index
+ Geographic Index
+ Subject

Source: The Pitt News

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

Online Searchable Collection: World War I Posters

Thursday, October 8th, 2009

This online collection of digitized World War I posters comes from the Prints & Photographs Division at the Library of Congress.

From the Home Page:

During World War I, the impact of the poster as a means of communication was greater than at any other time during history. The ability of posters to inspire, inform, and persuade combined with vibrant design trends in many of the participating countries to produce thousands of interesting visual works. The Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division makes available online approximately 1,900 posters created between 1914 and 1920. Most relate directly to the war, but some German posters date from the post-war period and illustrate events such as the rise of Bolshevism and Communism, the 1919 General Assembly election and various plebiscites.

The majority of the posters were printed in the United States. Posters from Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, and Russia are included as well. The posters range in style from anonymous broadsides (predominantly text) to graphically vibrant works by well-known designers. The Library acquired these posters through gift, purchase, and exchange or transfer from other government institutions, and continues to add to the collection.

Information about obtaining copies is available through the “How to Order” link near the top of each catalog record.

The home page also contains rights info, background and scope of the collection, related resources, and a bibliography

To access the collection, search the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog subset of World War I posters.
All entries have catalog records and most have images available online.

Source: Library of Congress

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

Digitization: Yale Library Gets Grant to Create Virtual Gallery of Islamic Manuscripts

Thursday, October 8th, 2009

From the Announcement:

Yale University Library and the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) have received a joint grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) in the United Kingdom to create a virtual gallery of Islamic manuscripts.
[Snip]
Manuscript catalogues and dictionaries, most of which exist only in print, are important sources for locating individual manuscripts and manuscript collections. Drawing on the expertise of faculty, librarians and information specialists in both Britain and the United States, the project will scan approximately 20,000 pages in Arabic, Persian and Western scripts and will make them available in a sophisticated searchable repository. Yale and SOAS will also digitize and index historical manuscripts from their collections that highlight the contribution to world knowledge made by Islamic philosophers, physicians and scientists. The Gallery will also serve as a model for other special collections and libraries with manuscript and reference material holdings.

Ann Okerson, Yale’s Associate University Librarian for Collections and International Programs and principal investigator on the project, noted, “Our success in this very competitive grant process is a tribute to the significant efforts of Yale’s and SOAS’s expert technical managers and curatorial leaders.”

Source: Yale University

Posted in Archives and Special Collections, Arts and Humanities, History | No Comments »

Just in Time for the Major League Playoffs and World Series: Baseball Resources at the Library of Congress Web Guide

Tuesday, October 6th, 2009

Access the Baseball Resources at the Library of Congress Web Guide

From the Introduction:

Baseball Resources at the Library of Congress is a [new] guide [released on September 25, 2009] to baseball resources available on the Library’s Web site and in its physical collections. The breadth and depth of materials highlighted will appeal to baseball researchers, while casual and diehard fans alike will find many digitized items documenting the history of baseball to fuel their passion for the game.

The guide is divided into four major sections: Library of Congress Online Resources, which presents baseball materials freely available on the Library’s Web site; Conducting Baseball Research at the Library, for researchers interested in locating baseball materials off-site through the Library’s online catalog and on-site through the Library’s subscription databases and divisional holdings; External Resources, a gateway to other baseball Web sites; and Bibliography, a selected bibliography of print resources about baseball for adults and younger readers.

This Web Guide was compiled by Peter Armenti, Digital Reference Specialist.

Access the Baseball Resources at the Library of Congress Web Guide

See Also:
Topics in Chronicling America – Baseball’s Modern World Series
The information and sample article links [in this guide] provide access to a sampling of articles from historic newspapers that can be found in the Chronicling America: American Historic Newspapers digital collection [online, at no charge]. Use the Suggested Search Terms and Dates to explore this topic further in Chronicling America.

Source: Library of Congress

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

Online Databases from the Schoenberg Center for Electronic Text and Image (SCETI)

Monday, October 5th, 2009

From the Web Site Home Page:

Over 12,000 images from various collections of rare books, manuscripts, papyri, photographs and sheet music are available for your viewing. Each collection has its own web site that is unrestricted in the interests of knowledge and learning.

You can learn more about each collection by beginning with this page.

Each “about” page also contains a direct link to that specific collection. 17 collections are listed.

Direct links to to the search interfaces for some of the collections are also available (via a drop down menu on the home page).

Source: SCETI (from the University of Pennsylvania Libraries)

Posted in Archives and Special Collections, Arts and Humanities, Databases, Directories, and Guides, Digital Repositories, Digitization Projects, History, Info Management and Retrieval, Resources, Resources for Educators | No Comments »

Middle East Images in the Prints and Photographs Division: Subject Overview

Saturday, October 3rd, 2009

From the Introduction:

The Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (P&P) has numerous varied and unique collections of Middle East images. This visual material includes photographic prints, negatives, albums, book illustrations, posters, architectural drawings, and cartoons. The majority of images were created between 1840 and 1970, although some earlier and later materials are also available.

The images portray a broad geographic area from Algiers in North Africa to Samarqand in present-day Uzbekistan. The collections are particularly strong in coverage of Turkey, Israel, the West Bank (the Palestinian territories), Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, and Central Asia. Many images of Iran, Iraq, and North Africa, including Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya, can be found along with some images of Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf states such as Kuwait and Bahrain.

[Snip]

The Middle East visual materials came to P&P through copyright deposit, gift, and purchase, and today total about 75,000 items. [Our Emphasis] As of 2009, most of these have images or descriptive information available in the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC) Researchers can view original materials, including pictures not yet digitized, in the P&P Reading Room. We recommend that patrons first search PPOC and consult a librarian before coming on site to do research.

Sections of the overview include:
+ Subject Overview
+ Search Tips (very useful)
+ Other Places to Look for Middle East Images
+ Bibliography
+ Online Resources

Access the Complete Overview

Access the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC)
Over 1.2 digitized images (and growing) in this database. The database is not limited to only Middle East imagery. It’s very easy to spend a lot of time here. This is a resources to share with library/info center users. It’s also great for educators.

Source: Prints and Photographs Division (P&P), Library of Congress

Posted in Archives and Special Collections, Arts and Humanities, Bibliographies, Webliographies, Databases, Directories, and Guides, Digitization Projects, History, Info Management and Retrieval, Resources, Resources for Educators, Search News | No Comments »

Women of Invention: Women Inventors and Patent Holders: A Recently Published Science Reference Guide from the Library of Congress

Thursday, October 1st, 2009

Access the Research Guide

The guide contains both print and Internet resources. You’ll find:

+ General Works

+ Early Works and Compilations

+ Journal Articles

+ Works About Individual Inventors

+ Selected Internet Resources

Source: Science Reference Section, Science, Technology, and Business Division, Library of Congress

Posted in Bibliographies, Webliographies, History, Resources, Resources for Educators, Science | No Comments »

New From Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam: YouTube Channel

Wednesday, September 30th, 2009

From the Announcement:

Today the Anne Frank House is launching the official Anne Frank Channel on YouTube containing existing and new images about Anne Frank. These include excerpts from interviews with Otto Frank and witnesses like Miep Gies, as well as [our emphasis] previews of the virtual museum of the Anne Frank House, soon to be opened to the public. With the Anne Frank Channel on YouTube, people around the world will be able to explore the life and significance of Anne Frank through unique images.

The channel opens with the only existing film footage of Anne Frank, made during the wedding of her neighbor on 22 July 1941. In another film, Nelson Mandela talks about the strength he derived from Anne Frank’s diary during his imprisonment on Robben Island. The channel will also contain a series of new interviews with people who knew Anne Frank personally.

And there’s more. On YouTube, visitors can follow the development of the virtual museum, which will soon enable people to visit the Anne Frank House online. Visitors can watch the ‘making of’ the online secret annex in 3D. The virtual museum will be launched on 28 April 2010 as part of the 50-year anniversary celebrations of the Anne Frank House museum.

Access the Official Anne Frank YouTube Channel

Source: Anne Frank Museum
Hat Tip: Library Stuff

Posted in History, Multimedia Search, New Websites and Resources, Resources, Resources for Educators, Source File | No Comments »

National Archives and Footnote.com Announce New Digital Holocaust Collection

Tuesday, September 29th, 2009

Access the Collections

From the Story:

Starting today, hundreds of thousands of Holocaust-related documents will be searchable online through an agreement between the National Archives and Records Administration and Footnote.com.

NARA officials said the massive collection of records about looted assets, concentration camp registers and proceedings of the Nuremberg war crime trials will form part of the Web’s largest interactive collection of Holocaust records. The release of the initial 500,000 images of individual documents will make research easier and greatly increase access.

[Snip]

Footnote.com plans to eventually digitize – at no cost to NARA – about one million images of Holocaust-related documents. Users will be able to access the documents for a fee through Footnote.com, but access will be free at NARA research facilities, and the documents will be available on Footnote.com for no charge during October. The company specializes in making digital records from historic documents.

People will also be able to use Footnote.com’s social-networking tool to develop Facebook-like pages to memorialize Holocaust victims. Footnote’s “I Remember” application lets people share photos, comments and stories about victims. Users can create and access the pages through Footnote.com and then share them on Facebook.

Source: GCN

From the Official NARA News Release

Included among the National Archives records available online at Footnote.com are:

+ Concentration camp registers and documents from Dachau, Mauthausen, Auschwitz, and Flossenburg
+ The “Ardelia Hall Collection” of records relating to the Nazi looting of Jewish possessions, including looted art
+ Captured German records including deportation and death lists from concentration camps
+ Nuremberg War Crimes Trial proceedings

The collection also includes nearly 600 interactive personal accounts of those who survived or perished in the Holocaust provided by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. The project incorporates social networking tools that enable visitors to search for names and add photos, comments and stories, share their insights, and create pages to highlight their discoveries. There will be no charge to access and contribute to these personal pages.

The collection is divided into four sections:

1) Stories from the Holocaust (via NARA and US Holocaust Memorial Museum)

Cursor over an image to see that persons name. You can also filter the list by name. Click to read their story.

2) Concentration Camps: Stories, Maps, and Facts

Camps can be selected from a Google Map. “Each page includes a background of the camp, a map, timeline of events, and an account of some of the events.”

3) Looted Valuables: Holocaust Assets Collection

Looted Valuables Information
+ Owner of Property
+ Photograph of items
+ Description of items
+ Item Condition
+ Location of Possessions
++ The collection is searchable.

4) National Archive Holocaust Records

Collections available:
+ Holocaust Era Assets: The Ardelia Hal Collection
+ German War Crime Records
+ Captured German Records
+ Dachau Concentration Camp Entry Registers
+ Flossenburg Concentration Camp Entry Registers
+ Mauthausen Death Books
+ WWII Nuremburg Interrogation Records

++ All of these records are also searchable by name, date, place, or topic
Expect more records being added to the database over time.

Fee and Free:
Access to the “Stories” section of the site will always be free as will pages created using the social media tools. During the month of October, all content on the entire site is free. Then, all of the content (besides the Stories section) will be free at any computer at any NARA facility nationwide and fee-based if you do not use a NARA computer. In five years all of the content will be free on the NARA web site.

Access the Collections

Hat Tip: P.W.

Posted in Archives and Special Collections, Government Documents and Political Information, History, Resources, Social Media | No Comments »

Resource of the Week — National Museum of the American Indian: Collections Search

Monday, September 28th, 2009

Resource of the Week — National Museum of the American Indian: Collections Search
By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor

The National Museum of the American Indian — the 16th Smithsonian Institution museum — which opened on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. in 2004, is the first U.S. national museum dedicated solely to Native Americans. And we think teachers, scholars, librarians and researchers everywhere will be interested in the excellent collection search tool available on the museum’s website.

Welcome to NMAI Collections Search, which includes a representative sample of NMAI’s object and historic photo collections. Each item is accompanied by basic, standardized information. To become familiar with the site, start with one of the Collection Highlight tours or search the website using this page or the tabs at the top.

Our goal is to include as many items as possible, but objects and photos will be added only when NMAI staff have reviewed the accuracy of accompanying information. Items identified as culturally sensitive or which are no longer part of NMAI’s collections will not appear on this website. Please contact NMAI about providing additional information or correcting any errors.

Records for many objects include their original catalog cards, which often date to the early 1900s. These cards may include tribal names and terminology considered unacceptable or offensive today but they have been included to illustrate the information that originally accompanied the objects.

Five different search options are available:

There are different functions available depending upon which search option you’re using, but under all of them are check boxes that allow you to restrict your search to any combination of the following: archaeological Items, ethnographic Items, modern and contemporary arts, photographic collections. Or you can just check “All of the above categories” if you want to cast the widest net possible. Search help is just a click away.

We enjoyed browsing the collection highlights area at the bottom right of the page, which included such categories of interest as beadwork and toys and games.

Bibliographers and catalogers will be interested in the thesaurus:

The following reference lists represent NMAI controlled terminologies in their respective hierarchies. Use these reference lists if you are in doubt about what terms are used or how they should be entered for searches. If you cannot quickly locate a term you may use your browser’s “Find” (”Ctrl” + “F”) option combination to see if a term is listed. When you click on a term in a Reference List, a search is automatically performed across all applicable collections categories.

Even if this is not a subject area of interest to you, the site as a whole is well worth browsing just because it’s so…elegantly done.

Posted in Archives and Special Collections, Databases, Directories, and Guides, History, Museums & Online Exhibits, Resource of the Week, Resources for Educators, Source File | No Comments »

ATF Transfers Alexander Hamilton Document to National Archives

Friday, September 25th, 2009

ATF Transfers Alexander Hamilton Document to National Archives

(T)he Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) transferred an original 18th century Alexander Hamilton document to the National Archives. The document will become part of the permanent holdings of the National Archives and will be preserved in a locked, temperature and humidity-controlled stack area in its College Park, Md., facility.

The document, dated Dec. 18, 1790, and signed by the nation’s first Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, is a circular letter distributed to the customs agents of the United States. Secretary Hamilton’s letter describes the method for measuring the proof of distilled spirits for taxation.
…
At the end of the American Revolution, the national government owed $37 million dollars in debt, a figure dwarfed by the $114 million owed by the states. At Hamilton’s urging, the federal government assumed responsibility for the debt of the states. One of the first attempts by Congress to reduce the national debt was the Tariff of 1789, which placed duties on the import of distilled spirits among other items. Quickly realizing that these duties were not generating enough revenue, a higher tariff was passed by Congress in 1790. The letter ATF transferred to the National Archives describes how duties from the Tariff of 1790 would be determined.

Source: Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives

Posted in Archives and Special Collections, Government Documents and Political Information, History, Search News | No Comments »

Delaware Public Archives Moves Photo ID Project Online

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009

From the Article:

For three years, libraries around the state have displayed Delaware Public Archives photos in the hopes of identifying John Does. Library patrons have ID’d more than 1,900 people so far, a number the archives hopes will jump now that people can go online to search old photos for classmates, family members and friends.

The Hometown Delaware program is full of photos mostly from the 1930s to 1950s. A small group of the archives’ more than 800,000 pictures are at http://archives.delaware.gov, and categorized into the three counties for easy searching. When people recognize someone, they can click on a link to email the archives with the person’s name.

[Snip]

The online move is targeting a different demographic than the effort at libraries, according to Tom Summers, outreach services manager. The library tour started to reach people who might not have access to a computer or weren’t familiar with the Internet. [Lori] Hatch [information resource specialist] said she hopes some younger visitors who have grown up online might help by identifying family members.

Much More in the Complete Article

Source: Dover Post

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

New: LIFE Magazine Archive Now Available via Google Books

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009

From the Announcement:

I’m excited to announce that starting today, visitors to Google Books will be able to search and browse even more magazines on Google Books. We’ve partnered with Life Inc. to digitize LIFE Magazine’s entire run as a weekly: over 1,860 issues, covering the years from 1936 to 1972.

Browse LIFE Magazine Archive (via Google Books)

You can also “search inside” a specific issue (look for the search box in the left-hand column)

To see all the entire issue on a single page, select the issue you’re interested in, click the “read this magazine” link, and look for the magnifying glasses near the top of the page. Here you can:

+ decrease/increase the size of a page
+ view one page at a time
+ view facing pages
+ view the entire issue (look for the 4 box icon)
+ increase the size of the “all page” view

The blog post also contains other methods to access magazines via Google Books

See Also: LIFE Photography Collection (via Google Images)
This collection went live at the end of March, 2009

Source: Inside Google Books

Posted in Arts and Humanities, Digitization Projects, History, Information Industry, Resources | No Comments »

Free Hispanic Heritage Month Resources from Gale/Cengage

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009

We’ve mentioned several resources to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month on ResourceShelf. You can find the posts here and here.

Now, we’ve just learned that Gale/Cengage is offering at GaleSchools.com several free items to celebrate HHM.

The page of free resources is accessible here and includes:

+ Read biographies of significant Hispanic individuals

+ Take a Hispanic culture quiz

+ Follow a timeline of events that helped shape the Hispanic culture

+ Explore Hispanic holidays, musical genres and other topics with information culled from Gale resources

+ Visit other pertinent sites and find suggestions for further readings

Source: Gale/Cengate (via E-Mail)

Posted in Chronologies and Timelines, History, Resources, Resources for Educators, Source File | No Comments »

Newspaper Digitization: Chronicling America Keeps Growing, 192,000 Pages from AZ, OH, PA, WA Added to Collection

Friday, September 18th, 2009

From the Announcement:

On Sept. 17, the National Digital Newspaper Program added more than 192,000 historic newspaper pages to the Chronicling America Web site, hosted by the Library of Congress. The site now provides free and open access to 1,442,000 pages from 171 titles, that were published between 1880 and 1922 in 15 states and the District of Columbia. This most recent update expands date coverage for many titles already represented in the site and includes content from 4 new states–Arizona, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington.

In addition to new content, the site also now includes links to other ways to use the searchable newspapers available in Chronicling America, including:
- links to Topic guides for events and subjects found in Chronicling America,
- links to use of Chronicling America in the LC Flickr photostream,
- and detailed documentation of the Chronicling America API.

Chronicling America passed the one million digitized page mark in June.

Source: National Endowment for the Humanities, Library of Congress

Posted in Digitization Projects, History, Preservation/Conservation | No Comments »

New Addition to American Memory Project: American English Dialect Recordings, Over 100 Hours of Recordings

Friday, September 18th, 2009

From the Announcement:

The Center for Applied Linguistics Collection contains 118 hours of recordings documenting North American English dialects. The recordings include speech samples, linguistic interviews, oral histories, conversations, and excerpts from public speeches.

From the Web Site

The survey’s documentation covers social aspects of English language usage in different regions of the United States. It reveals distinctions in speech related to gender, race, social class, education, age, literacy, ethnic background, and occupational group (including the specialized jargon or vocabulary of various occupations). The oral history interviews are a rich resource on many topics, such as storytelling and family histories; descriptions of holiday celebrations, traditional farming, schools, education, health care, and the uses of traditional medicines; and discussions of race relations, politics, and natural disasters such as floods.

The collection includes recordings from forty-three states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and parts of Canada. They were made from 1941 to 1984, with the bulk being recorded between 1968 and 1982. In some cases, transcriptions made by the collectors are available as part of this web presentation.

Access the American English Dialect Recordings

It’s possible to browse the collection by:
+ Title
+ Name
+ Subject
+ Place

Source: American Memory Project (via Library of Congress)

Posted in Archives and Special Collections, Arts and Humanities, History, New Websites and Resources, Resources for Educators | No Comments »

Online Database: Guests Receive Demo of World Digital Library (WDL) Highlighting Educational Potential of Resource; 11 New Countries Join WDL

Thursday, September 17th, 2009

From the Media Release:

The Library of Congress today [September 15] demonstrated the potential offered by the World Digital Library to enrich the learning of students, both in the classroom and at home, for more than 100 guests in the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building.

“The world’s greatest treasures, once only available through an in-person visit to a national library or museum in their home nations, now are available to anyone in the world with Internet access,” said Librarian of Congress James H. Billington. “And through our joint venture with UNESCO and 49 partner institutions in 32 nations, this information can be obtained in any of seven languages.”

[Snip]

A new WDL display, on the south side of the Jefferson Building’s first floor just beyond the Orientation Gallery, offers two Internet-access computers. From these keyboards, visitors can explore the WDL and its holdings. The exhibition also lets onlookers watch on a screen above one of the keyboards as the WDL is being “surfed.” The World Digital Library features manuscripts, maps, rare books, films, sound recordings, and prints and photographs. It can be accessed at www.wdl.org.

[Snip]

At the time WDL was launched in April, there were 34 partners in 21 nations. Since that time, 11 new partners from eight nations have signed on, giving users of the website access to digital material from 45 partner institutions in 29 countries. Since its launch, the site has been accessed by more than 4.3 million users.

Access the World Digital Library

Source: LC

See Also: ResourceShelf Overview Articles about World Digital Library at Launch (4/2009)
Articles: 1 ||| 2

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