up2date

3 new on-line collections

Thanks to LJ's infoDOCKET :

The New York City Department of Records Launches Database Containing More than 870,000 Digitized Items

"...collection of more than 2.2 million images going back to the mid-1800s, the photographs feature all manner of city oversight — from stately ports and bridges to grisly gangland killings."

Einstein Archives Website

"...a catalog of more than 80,000 Einstein-related documents, and a visual display of 2,000 documents up to the year 1921..."

John Cage Digital Archive

"...Cage fans can celebrate Cage’s centennial curated series of browsable Cage curios; Want to see him play an amplified cacti and plant matter with a feather, review his notes from 1939 or view a 1960 TV performance of “Water Walk”, you can do all that and more on the extensive digital project."

"More Than 10 Million Digitized Newspaper Pages Coming to Europeana"

This could be exciting!

From INFOdocket :

From LIBER:

A group of 17 European partner institutions have joined forces in the “European Newspapers” project and will, over the next 3 years, provide more than 10 million newspaper pages to the EUROPEANA service.

The European Newspapers project (funded under EC’s CIP 2007 – 2013) aims at the aggregation and refinement of newspapers for The European Library and Europeana.

[Clip]

Each library participating in the project will distribute digitized newspapers and full-texts free of any legal restrictions to Europeana. There will be a special focus on newspapers published during the First World War, thus providing a meaningful addition to the resources aggregated by the current Europeana 1914-1918 project.

Additional Details in the Complete Announcement

Book Citation Index for Web of Knowledge

I'm intrigued by the prospect, but not too excited without more details. I saw the news about the additions on the ResourceShelf and then read through the press release. I would want to know :

From where come the "25,000 books in the sciences, social sciences, and arts and humanities."? I do not read a diverse list of scholarly publishers (no De Gruyter? PUF? What scholarly books does ProQuest publish?) All languages? Who selects them? On what criteria? How is the chapter-level data for a monograph (e.g., not collected essays or conference proceedings) analysed? I find the information from Thompson rather vague. And how do the "Links from book and book chapter records to full text" work?

The press release touts that the books included "[date] back to 2005." That's only 5 years of books -- a vast time span for the sciences, but not for the humanities & many social sciences. At this rate, the value for most researchers will not fully be demonstrated for many years to come (especially as only 18% of the books will be in the "arts and humanities," which conversely relies most heavily on the print monograph).

Other comments? Opinions?

“Atlas of Canada Archives, Over 1,000 Historical Maps”

From INFOdocket :

"From GISUser:

 Maps dating back to 1906 are available as scanned digital files, or can be viewed online using a handy web map viewer. Made up of over 1,000 maps, the archive include all five past editions of the Atlas of Canada, 1906 to 1995, the Canadian sector of the International Map of the World, 1956 to 1987, and the first Glacier Atlas of Canada, 1969 to 1972. Topics of maps include maps themed on:  Population, culture, aboriginal peoples, economics, transportation, environment, and historical themes.

Direct to Atlas of Canada Archives (Historical Maps)"

EDS also includes HathiTrust data

Following hard on the heels of OCLC's announcement yesterday, EBSCO makes a similar press release (thanks to INFOdocket for the pointer).

I can't help wondering what this means for precision, when precision is helpful -- sometimes you need an eye-dropper & not a spray bottle.

opinion piece on 'academic' publishers, e.g., Elsevier

From the Guardian, a provacative title indeed "Academic publishers make Murdoch look like a socialist," followed by "Academic publishers charge vast fees to access research paid for by us. Down with the knowledge monopoly racketeers..."

Interview with EBSCO Publishing exec. about H.W.Wilson

From INFOdocket :

New: Interview with Sam Brooks, Senior VP for Sales and Marketing with EBSCO Publishing, About H.W.Wilson

Posted on August 8, 2011 by Gary D. Price

From The Charleston Advisor:

Sam Brooks, Senior VP for Sales and Marketing with EBSCO Publishing is interviewed for his views about EBSCO’s May 2011 acquisition of the H.W. Wilson Company. The interview covers topics such as the future of the H.W. Wilson Company and its various products, the future of the H.W. Wilson brand, plans for integrating the product line into EBSCOhost and general observations about mergers and acquisitions in the information

The interview was conducted by George Machovec1, Managing Editor, The Charleston Advisor

Read the Full Text (PDF)
An HTML Version Is Also Available

OCLC Research Highlights

From INFODocket :

"Direct to OCLC Research Highlights  No. 1

Lorcan Dempsey, Vice President, OCLC Research and Chief Strategist, Writes:

This is the first installment of The OCLC Research Quarterly Highlights, a periodic bulletin about OCLC Research. It will provide highlights of the previous quarter’s research work, including reports from the Innovation Lab, the OCLC Research Library Partnership, and the occasional look at emerging items. The emphasis will be on collecting and summarizing items of significance for your attention, with links to more complete discussions elsewhere on the OCLC Research Web site.

[Clip]

..."

"KU establishes first coalition of institutions practicing open access"

From the KU press release :

"...The university has now taken the lead in forming a coalition with 21 other universities and colleges with established faculty open access policies in North America — such as Harvard University, Stanford University, Duke University and Concordia University in Montreal — to establish the new Coalition of Open Access Policy Institutions.

Known as COAPI, the group will collaborate and share implementation strategies and advocate on a national level for institutions with open access policies."

HathiTrust Enhances Full Text Search & Collection Builder Tool

From INFODocket (although N.B., one still cannot search the entire run of a journal (sigh) :

Four new features are now live for users when conducting research using HathiTrust full text search database and collection builder tool.

The Full-text Search index now includes bibliographic data, which is being used to:

• Improve results ranking

• Allow users to refine results using bibliographic facets

...

In Collection Builder, the display of collections has been improved, and you can now:

• Search collections by title and description

• Filter collections by featured status, most recently updated, those created by the user, and number of items in the collection

Direct to HathiTrust

WorldCat Local adds more content

I'm really not sure about this move to add more and more -- at what point does it become un-searchable w/o algorithms and metadata beyond what we and pbr's provide?

From the OCLC press release :

"WorldCat Local adds access to more databases, collections and publishers

DUBLIN, Ohio, USA, 31 May 2011—WorldCat Local,...  has added more databases and collections from leading publishers and other information providers ...

WorldCat Local offers access to books, journals and databases from a variety of international publishers and information providers; the digital collections of groups like HathiTrust, OAIster and Google Books; open access materials; and the collective resources of libraries worldwide through WorldCat.

With these latest additions, libraries using WorldCat Local can now offer users access to 1,400 databases and collections, and more than 500 million articles.

This month, OCLC added databases and collections to the WorldCat Local central index, including:

• CrossRef, ...
• BioOne, ...
• Emerald Group Publishing, ...
• SA ePublications ...
• BioMed Central, ...
• InfoSci-Books, ...
• LexisNexis Collection 2, LexisNexis Collection 3 and LexisNexis Collection 4, from Cassidy Cataloguing, ...

OCLC added remote access to databases and collections to WorldCat Local from:

• LegalTrac,a comprehensive collection of major legal publications from Gale."

"Elsevier Enriches Online Articles with Google Maps"

From INFODocket :

From Elsevier:

Elsevier announced today that Google Maps functionality is now available in its journals. This new feature enriches online articles on SciVerse ScienceDirect with interactive maps, adapting to the needs of various scientific disciplines to visualize and interact with the author’s geographic data.

... The Google Maps application enriches an article with research data that is visualized on an interactive map. These maps, which will appear in the online article on SciVerse ScienceDirect, are based on KML (geographic annotation) files created by authors.

[Clip]

The Google Maps functionality is initially piloted with seven journals on SciVerse ScienceDirect, in earth sciences, life sciences, and social sciences. Scaling up to all applicable Elsevier journals on SciVerse ScienceDirect is expected to happen later this year.

Read the Complete Announcement

online National Heritage List for England

From INFODocket :

'“England’s Heritage Open to the Masses in New Online Database”

From The London Evening Standard:

Details of England‘s national heritage from protected shipwrecks to listed lamp-posts are being made easily available to the public for the first time with a new online database.

English Heritage today [Monday] launched the National Heritage List for England which it claimed was “a significant milestone towards achieving better understanding and protection for heritage in this country”.

It lists all 400,000 listed buildings, parks, gardens, battlefields, shipwrecks and scheduled monuments. And for the first time, the public will be able to search by postcode, by age or by categories from coal-mines to castles.

The database launch came as English Heritage came as it announced priorities from now until 2015 in the light of a 32 per cent cut in its Government grant.

The Database is Named Portico but IT HAS NOTHING to Do With the Digital Preservation and Electronic Preservation Service From ITHAKA.

Direct to Database'

Google ending newspaper digitization project

From INFODocket :

"Google’s goal to digitize all of the world’s newspapers is ending.

Matt McGee from SEL reports that after approximately 32 months after formally being announced, Google is closing it’s newspaper digitization program.

Search Engine Land also received this statement from Google:

We work closely with newspaper partners on a number of initiatives, and as part of the Google News Archives digitization program we collaborated to make older newspapers accessible and searchable online. These have included publications like the London Advertiser in 1895, L’Ami du Lecteur at the turn of the century, and the Milwaukee Sentinel from 1910 to 1995.

Users can continue to search digitized newspapers at http://news.google.com/archivesearch, but we don’t plan to introduce any further features or functionality to the Google News Archives and we are no longer accepting new microfilm or digital files for processing.

According to McGee, about 2000 newspapers are currently listed in the newspaper directory.

The SEL article also points to this Boston Phoenix story that begins:

..."

CRL GRN forum

From INFOdocket :

Recently Released: CRL Website Features Global Resources Forum With Reviews, Profiles, and More

Posted on April 18, 2011 by Gary D. Price

...

From a Center for Research Libraries Announcement:

CRL recently opened the Global Resources Forum section on its website. The section offers four main tools to help CRL libraries make informed collection decisions:

• Reviews include information on major primary source databases and collections—such as Times of India, Pravda, and British Records on the Atlantic World—from specialists in the CRL community.
• Profiles of major repositories like Portico and UMI analyze the trustworthiness and sustainability of electronic resources and repositories for the research community.
• Topic Guides to collections and resources in CRL areas of focus, dealing with subjects like water resources and medieval studies.
• Data & Tools has a searchable knowledge-base about print archive initiatives like the Print Archives and Preservation Registry, including archive conditions, holdings, and collection analysis.

The Forum is intended to foster community exchange of information, through analysis, reviews, feedback and comments contributed by individuals at CRL libraries, and discussions in Forum webinars and teleconferences.

Direct to Global Resources Forum

WIPO’s Global Brand Database

From InfoDocket :

From a WIPO [World Intellectual Property Organization] Announcement:

A new on-line tool launched by will make it easier to search over 640,000 records relating to internationally protected trademarks, appellations of origin and armorial bearings, flags and other state emblems as well as the names, abbreviations and emblems of intergovernmental organizations. The Global Brand Database allows free of charge, simultaneous brand-related searches across multiple collections.

...

new Humanities & SS portal from CNRS

from the enssib blog :

Isidore, le portail du CNRS pour les sciences humaines et sociales

Par Anne-Laurence Margérard, le 07 avril 2011

Le CNRS - TGE Adonis vient d’ouvrir le portail ISIDORE qui donne accès à plus d’un million de publications de la recherche scientifique française en sciences humaines et sociales.

Isidore est une plateforme web d'agrégation, de recherche et de diffusion qui offrre un accès unifié à plus d'un million de documents numériques provenant de laboratoires de recherche, de bibliothèques universitaires et de plateformes d'édition électronique. Isidore agrège plus de 850 sources de données différentes de formats variés : entrepôts de données semi structurées (thèses, fonds multimédia, livres), sites Web, blogs et carnets de recherche, flux RSS. Toutes ces données sont par nature structurellement et qualitativement très hétérogènes.

Ce nouvel outil est destiné à la communauté scientifique mais aussi à tout internaute... du moins pour les documents en accès libre...

Lire la suite : Le CNRS lance Isidore, les SHS sur le web, Sylvestre Huet, Libération {science²}, 04 avril 2011

...

"Professors Publish Guide to Copyright Issues of Multimedia Projects"

From the Chronical's Wired Campus :

"...many students fail to understand the legal risks. A new study, titled “Copying Right and Copying Wrong With Web 2.0 Tools in the Teacher Education and Communications Classrooms,” attempts to educate students about both the appropriate and inappropriate ways to use copyrighted materials that are available to mass audiences on the Internet.

..."

BASE (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine)

From the ResourceShelf :

"BASE (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine) Passes 25 Million Records

...

BASE is one of the world’s most voluminous search engines especially for academic open access web resources. BASE is operated by Bielefeld University Library.

As the open access movement grows and prospers, more and more repository servers come into being which use the “Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting” (OAI-PMH) for providing their contents. BASE collects, normalises, and indexes these data.

[Clip]

In comparison to commercial search engines, BASE is charcterised by the following features:

+ Intellectually selected resources [Whatever that's supposed to mean -- SGW]

+ Only document servers that comply with the specific requirements of academic quality and relevance are included

+ A data resources inventory provides transparency in the searches

..."

data visualization software (some free)

Two of the presentations I went to at SALALM showed off some snazzy data visualizations. The suggested applications the presenters recommend :

"Martha Kelehan mentioned a number of resources to help you create data visualizations:
GapMinder
Google Motion Charts
VUE (concept mapping software)

Daniel Schoorl also mentioned a number of ways to visualize data in his presentation on the Statistical Abstract of Latin America
Many Eyes
GeoCommons
Ushahidi
Social Explorer"

Cited from the SALALM blog.

I wonder if there's a way to use some of these for instructional purposes... Ideas?