European Union launches consultation to digitize cultural heritage resources

From the media release on the European Union’s Web site (02005 09 30): “The European Commission today unveiled its strategy to make Europe?s written and audiovisual heritage available on the Internet. Turning Europe?s historic and cultural heritage into digital content will make it usable for European citizens for their studies, work or leisure and will [...]

Digital archiving compliance report from the UK National Archives

Announced on DIGITAL-PRESERVATION@JISCMAIL.AC.UK (02005 09 27): “In conjunction with the UK Data Archive, The National Archives have released a report comparing their preservation practices to the leading internationally recognised standard for digital archives. This provides a model for other organisations to test the compliance of their own systems. Using the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) [...]

Mapping the Confederate Army battle strategy: Hotchkiss Map Collection at the Library of Congress

Announced on various mailing lists (02005 09 26): “The Library of Congress’s Geography and Map Division is pleased to announce the release of a new American Memory collection: ‘The Hotchkiss Map Collection: Confederate Army Maps‘. The Hotchkiss Map Collection contains cartographic items made by Major Jedediah Hotchkiss (1828-1899), a topographic engineer in the Confederate Army. [...]

Future Proof (2002) from the State Records Authority of New South Wales, Australia

Another gloomy newspaper article, this one from Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald (“The Digital Dark Age”, 02005 09 23), referenced a document I hadn’t come across before: Future Proof: Ensuring the Accessibility of Equipment/technology Dependent Records (2002), issued by the State Records Authority of New South Wales.

Sacramento History Online

Beautifully constructed Web site on the transportation and agricultural history in the Sacramento region, Sacramento History Online is a partnership of four cultural resources institution digitize and describe 2,000 items, mainly photographs and documents. You can browse or search. The site includes educational lesson plans, a couple of online games, and two digitized historic agricultural [...]

Old World Traditional Trade Routes Project

The Old World Traditional Trade Routes Project, created in 1999 by Dr T. Matthew Ciolek, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University “supports online research in the field of dromography and provides a public-access electronic archive of geo/chrono-referenced data on land, river and maritime trade routes of Eurasia and Africa during the [...]

Encyclopedia Mythica

Encyclopedia Mythica celebrated its 10th anniversary on June 15, 02005. Congratulations! With over 7,000 articles contributed by the public, this site is among the largest on the subject of worldwide mythology, folklore, and religion. You can get notifed of new articles via RSS, Atom, MSN Alert or KlipFolio.

Framing Canada, A Photographic Memory virtual exhibit from the Library and Archives Canada

A new virtual exhibit from the Library and Archives Canada is Framing Canada, A Photographic Memory. The site is not yet complete. It will feature essays. You can also search the ArchiviaNet photographs database from within Framing Canada.

Gerry McKiernan’s wiki presentation at TICER 2005 available

Gerry McKiernan announced the availability of his presentation to TICER 2005 in the Netherlands: Wikis: Disruptive Technologies for Dynamic Possibilities (Microsoft PowerPoint) Source: WEB4LIB mailing list, 02005 09 19

5S Model/ 5S Language, a unified formal theory for digital libraries

“Streams, Structures, Spaces, Scenarios and Societies (5S), is a unified formal theory for Digital Libraries (DLs). With 5S, digital library abstractions such as digital objects, metadata, collections, services, etc., can be rigorously and usefully described through compositions of basic and higher level mathematical objects. 5SL, an XML realization of the 5S model, is a domain-specific, [...]

Digital Libraries in a Box (dlbox) project

An older but no less significant and potentially useful addition to the panolpy of digital library management solutions, Digital Libraries in a Box (dlbox) was created by Ming Luo beginning in the fall 2002 “as a term project in an independent technical writing class” at Virginia Tech. The site includes lots of documentation and downloadable [...]

The Magic Mirror of Life, an appreciation of the camera obscura

Jack and Beverly Wilgus have a splendid site documenting historical and modern camera obscuras called The Magic Mirror of Life, An Appreciation of the Camera Obscura. Source: PhotoHistory@yahoogroups.com Digest Number 1330, 02005 09 17

Museums and the Web 2006 Conference, New Mexico

The 10th anniversary of the Museums and the Web Conference is being held in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA, between March 22 and 25, 02006. Update for February 28, 02006: Abstracts of papers by the speakers are available online. Several of the papers and demonstration sessions involve distance education and collaborative systems.

New Digital Preservation Coalition Technology Watch on preservation metadata and METS

Announced on DIGITAL-PRESERVATION@JISCMAIL.AC.UK (02005 09 15): “The latest DPC Technology Watch report is now available from the DPC website at: http://www.dpconline.org/graphics/reports/index.html#presmeta The report, authored by Brian Lavoie and Richard Gartner, provides a comprehensive but highly readable update on developments in preservation metadata and METS. The report was also used for a very successful briefing session [...]

RSS media feeds via SHOUTcast Wire on Winamp

The current version (5.1) of Winamp includes a new feaure: SHOUTcast Wire, “the solution for Winamp and Podcast lovers who want a lightning-fast way to discover new feeds, subscribe to favorites, and listen, all without any additional software or websites.”

Digital History book by Daniel J. Cohen and Roy Rosenzweig

George Mason University professors Daniel J. Cohen and Roy Rosenzweig have published a book with University of Pennsylvania Press titled Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web (ISBN 0812219236). The chapter on “Preserving Digital History” is availble through the Web site for the book.

September 02005 issue of D-Lib Magazine is on your digital newsstand

Announced on the DIGLIB mailing list (02005 09 15): “The September 2005 issue of D-Lib Magazine (http://www.dlib.org/) is now available. This issue contains seven articles, the ‘In Brief’ column, excerpts from recent press releases, and news of upcoming conferences and other items of interest in ‘Clips and Pointers’. The Featured Collection for the September issue [...]

Google Blog Search in beta

Google Blog Search is in beta. Very cool, very hip.

OpenCourseWare, free university course materials for all

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Tufts University are offering partial course content in various disciplines through a program called OpenCourseWare. Anyone can view this material for free online. According to MIT OpenCourseWare, “MIT OCW: Is a publication of MIT course materials Does not require any registration Is not a degree-granting or certificate-granting activity Does [...]

KEEP Toolkit for online teaching and learning

“The KEEP Toolkit is a set of web-based tools that help teachers, students and institutions quickly create compact and engaging knowledge representations on the Web. With the KEEP Toolkit you can: select and organize teaching and learning materials. prompt analysis and reflection by using templates. transform materials and reflections into visually appealing and intellectually engaging [...]

Put a little JOLT into your online teaching

“MERLOT is a free and open resource designed primarily for faculty and students of higher education. The MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching (JOLT) is a peer-reviewed, online publication addressing the scholarly use of multimedia resources in education. The objectives of JOLT are to: Enable faculty to use technology effectively in teaching and learning [...]

WERA, Web Archive management tool

“WERA (Web ARchive Access) is an archive viewer application that gives an Internet Archive Wayback Machine-like access to web archive collections as well as the possibility to do full text search and easy navigation between different versions of a web page. WERA is based on, and replaces the NwaToolset. It was built using PHP and [...]

Crime Fiction Canada database, Brock University

The Crime Fiction Canada database, based at Brock University, lets you know search for English language Canadian detective and mystery fiction. The database was created by professors Jeannette Sloniowski and Marilyn Rose.

PANIC, an Australian digital preservation strategy

One of the presentations at the 5th International Web Archiving Workshop in Vienna in September 02005 will be on the Australian PANIC (Preservation webservices Architecture for Newmedia and Interactive Collections) project.

Web Services finder

WSFinder.com, The Wiki for Finding Web Service and Open APIs was mentioned on Matthew Mullenweg’s blog Photo Matt.

Library and Archives Canada does pulp fiction

Tales from the Vault!: Canadian Pulp Fiction, 1940-1952, a virtual exhibit presented by the Library and Archives Canada, highlights Canadian pulp art and fiction held by the institution. A handful of sample issues can be read in full, and there’s a gallery of lurid and humdrum cover art. The site itself is designed as a [...]

Undoing Darwin article in Columbia Journalism Review, September-October 02005

The September-October 02005 issue the Columbia Journalism Review includes an article by Chris Mooney and Matthew C. Nisbet titled “Undoing Darwin” that examines the treatment of the evolution vs intelligent design/creationism “debate” raging across the United States (it’s of Biblical proportions) by journalists. Mooney and Nisbet’s argument is that reporters and editors don’t do enough [...]

colLib: organizing Open Access documents in LIS

Magnus Enger, as part of his University of Troms?, Norway, Masters degree in “Science of documentation”, created colLib, a prototype of a system for organizing and finding documents that are available in Open Access repositories. You are invited to participate in his academic work by helping organize these documents: “colLib is based on the fact [...]

Canadian Posters from the First World War, Archives of Ontario

Kudos to the Archives of Ontario on its excellent virtual exhibit in honor of the Year of the Veteran: Canadian Posters from the First World War. Two other poster collection exhibits linked to the Archives of Ontario exhibt are: Canadian War Poster Collection, Rare Books and Special Collections Division, McGill University Libraries The Poster War: [...]

Open Knowledge Initiative

I had mentioned the Open Knowledge Initiative in a post from 2004 without referencing its Web site. Based at MIT, “The Open Knowledge Initiative develops specifications that describe how the components of an educational software environment communicate with each other and with other enterprise systems. O.K.I. specifications address broad interoperability agreements that allow for adaptation [...]