According to this ChannelWeb blog entry, Google has started an ambitious project to digitally archive millions of pages of old newspapers. In 2006, Google started working with the New York Times and the Washington Post to index existing digital archives and make them searchable via Google’s search technology. The new effort expands that initiative, with [...]
According to this announcement on the Library and Archives Canada Web site dated 02008 09 02, LAC launched a new online database, Second World War Service Files: Canadian Armed Forces War Dead. Through this online database, researchers can access references to the service files in the Department of National Defence Fonds (RG 24) for the [...]
Update for 02008 09 04: This story from Ars Technica describes how Google changed the licensing requirements retroactively for Google Chrome in response to criticisms that they could lead to potential abuse by the company. Here’s another story from Wired by tech writer Stephen Levy titled “Inside Chrome: The Secret Project to Crush IE and [...]
Mendeley Ltd., a company based in London, England, e-mailed bloggers and other media about its new in-beta service and desktop client software called Mendeley Research Networks. According to the About Us page, “… Mendeley will make your life easier. It’s a combination of desktop software and social network which helps you manage, share and discover [...]
The Library and Archives Canada launched its free name-searchable 1881 Canadian census database with digitized images on August 6, 02008. This is an amazing resource. Previously you could search the 1881 Canadian census by name through the FamilySearch.org site and that site supplied its index which are now linked to the digitized census schedules. You [...]
Cuil.com is a new search engine with an impressive management list, including individuals from Google and AltaVista. Source: DIG_REF mailing list, 02008 07 28 Screenshot of search results from Cuil
The BC 150 Secretariat and the BC Geocaching Association have collaborated with BC Parks in a unique celebration of British Columbia’s 150th anniversary called GeoRush 2008. Those commemorative tokens look really cool! Here’s the BCGA’s page on GeoRush 2008 that describes the locations of the caches with those tokens. Happy hunting everyone.
Update for 02008 07 23: Thanks to my omniscient observers, I’ve learned that Google’s Wikipedia-killer service Knol has gone live with a beta version. It actually reminds me more of About.com than it does Wikipedia. Here’s a screenshot of what it looks like once you log in with your Google account. The “Verify Name” is [...]
Update for 02008 07 21: July 22, 02008 marks the official debut of version 1.0.x of the ICA-AtoM software at the International Council on Archives Congress in Kuala Lumpur, Malayasia. I’ve been spending an average of a couple of hours each day since late April 02008 helping test the software. I’m even more impressed than [...]
Curious about BiblioCommons now that you’ve read about in Library Journal and are as frustrated as I am about the 12-person company’s Web site that consists of a single page with three outdated testimonials? You can run through this Adobe Captivate tour of the Oakville Public Library’s beta test or you can dig right in [...]
From the announcement on DIGLIB (02008 07 15): The July/August 2008 issue of D-Lib Magazine (http://www.dlib.org/) is now available. This issue contains four articles, a project update, two conference reports from JCDL 2008, the ‘In Brief’ column, excerpts from recent press releases, and news of upcoming conferences and other items of interest in ‘Clips and [...]
UMapper calls itself “the first universal web-based map-layering engine” and it’s free for now. Here’s a feature set from its start page: • Create interactive flash maps • Display maps on your website or social network • Export data to Flash ActionScript 3.0 or KML • Explore and interact with our map community • Fulfill [...]
Hope you get my drift pardner. According to this Information Today Newsbreak (02008 07 07), Missouri has launched a free collaborative search portal that integrates millions of historical documents from the state’s local libraries, universities, and cultural institutions in a single web gateway. Powered by Deep Web Technologies’ Explorit Research Accelerator (www.deepwebtech.com), Missouri Digital Heritage [...]
Stumbled across the new release of Mozilla Firefox, aka Firefox 3. Sad to see that the Firebug addon is not yet compatible. But I came across a different fascinating addon called Hyperword from a British company. This amazing addon lets you highlight a word or words on a Web page and then select from a [...]
My latest article for Searcher magazine on document-sharing services, “Hit Me with Your Best Doc”, is the lead cover story for June 02008. It’s not available online, however, but will appear in some of the commercial full-text databases and can also be purchased through ITI-InfoCentral.com, the digital archive of Information Today, Inc. (ITI) publications.
In a historic first in Canada, the Vancouver Public Library and the Library and Archives Canada have partnered to establish a wiki in support of a project called Chinese-Canadians: Profiles from a Community. The wiki is also part of a larger VPL-led initiative on Chinese-Canadian Genealogy. The Library and Archives Canada also released a database [...]
Update for 02008 04 27: I received my beta-invite acknowledgement by e-mail on April 23, 02008 and finally got around to registering and creating my first Twine on electronic records. Since there was already one called Digital Preservation, I was prevented from using those two words. Here’s a screenshot of my Electronic Records Twine. I [...]
The Museum Computer Network and the Museum Software Foundation have collaborated on a new project called the MCN Project Registry at a site called MuseTech Central. The registry, according to an announcement on the DIGLIB list (02008 04 11), is “for sharing information about technology-related projects in the cultural heritage sector. From implementations of digital [...]
Although ResearchTrail.com, the service of a company called ResearchTrail Ltd. founded by Judith Koren, launched its site on March 9, 02008, the promises remain unfulfilled for now. The “Free search tips” are not there and registration is required simply to get an invitation to “preview the ResearchTrail information portal.” There’s also no evidence of the [...]
According to a March 6, 02008 Information Today Newsbreak piece by Erik Arnold published on, Last week, Google announced that it was launching Google Sites to supplement its growing Google Apps product suite (www.google.com/enterprise/apps). Google Sites (www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/users/sites.html) is the integration of JotSpot, a web-based wiki provider that Google purchased more than a year and a half [...]
From the About page of the UK Database of Archives of Non-Governmental Organisations (DANGO): DANGO, the Database of Archives of UK NGOs since 1945, is an online, free-to-access database, enabling researchers to identify NGOs that interest them, and then access both existing and new information about the content, location and accessibility of archival holdings relating [...]
The Institute of Museum and Library Services in the United States unveiled its research report, InterConnections: A National Study of Users and Potential Users of Online Information, on March 6, 02008 at the 9th annual WebWise Conference on Libraries and Museums in the Digital World in Miami, Florida. According to the IMLS media release, IMLS [...]
From the announcement on DIGLIB (02008 02 26) about the Open Access Publishing in European Networks (OAPEN) proposal: The European Commission announced that the proposal from Amsterdam University Press together with five European University Presses within the eContentplus Programme, has been selected for negotiations on funding. The opening of negotiations starts in March 2008. Completion [...]
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer and hundreds of other news sources are reporting on a new deal announced on February 21, 02008 between Google and the Cleveland Clinic, an academic medical center, to test a system to store and share a patient’s medical information with multiple health care providers. According to the news story, “Patient participation is [...]
Heritage Burnaby, an initiative of City of Burnaby, BC, partners engaged in the preservation and interpretation of Burnaby’s past as documented through its recorded history and built heritage, was launched in celebration of Heritage Week 02008. It’s a wonderful new tool for learning more about one of Vancouver City’s next door municipal neighbours.
Came across another document sharing service called Scribd. Based in California, the business was started in 2006 by Trip Adler, Jared Friedman, and Tikhon Bernstam. According to the FAQ: Scribd is a free, web-based, document sharing community and self-publishing platform that enables anyone to easily publish, distribute, share, and discover documents of all kinds. E-books, [...]
My Freebase article was published in the February 02008 issue of Searcher magazine. The article is not online, so I’m as eager as the rest of you to see it in print. It’s listed on the cover in the lower left as “The Freebase Experience.”
Keotag is a tag search engine, a tag generator and a social bookmarks link generator. The latter two are rather limited given that they only support a handful of social tagging and bookmarking sites. As a mouse hover over the site icons doesn’t always pop up a tool tip for each icon, it may help [...]
The alpha version of the DRIVER project’s repositories portal is up and running. DRIVER (Digital Repository Infrastructure Vision for European Research) is a European Union-funded infrastructure to support the preservation of and access to scientific data. DRIVER also supports the principles around Open Access. User support for the DRIVER repositories portal is through the Driver [...]
Here’s a description from the front page of American Social History Online, which is pretty darned impressive: Aquifer American Social History Online – Find and use 19th and 20th century primary resources from unique historical digital collections. search diverse digital content from 40 American Social History research collections find more than 230,000 digitized objects in [...]
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