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Judaica Libraries and Archives on the Web

An excellent link collection:
http://www.amherst.edu/%7Eedstarr/judlibs.html

Homepage of the Heidelberg “Zentralarchiv” (German version)
http://www.uni-heidelberg.de/institute/sonst/aj/index.html

Peter Honigmann’s article “Die Akten des Galuts” on the history of Jewish archives and the inventarisation of Jewish sources in Germany is online:
http://www.uni-heidelberg.de/institute/sonst/aj/B6/galut.htm

More Jewish resources (too small list):
http://www.stub.uni-frankfurt.de/webmania/ljud.htm

One must add “Compact Memory” – digitization of historic Jewish Journals in Germany including the “Mitteilungen des Gesamtarchivs der deutschen Juden” (1909/26):
http://www.compactmemory.rwth-aachen.de/cm2/html

Online texts related to Jewish History
http://jewishhistory.huji.ac.il/links/texts.htm

Databases for academic Jewish studies
http://jewishstudies.virtualave.net/Other_Internet_Resources/Databases/index.shtml

RAMBI – Index of articles on Jewish studies
http://jnul.huji.ac.il/rambi

Scottish Archive Network launches its catalogue

On October 21, the Scottish Archive Network (SCAN) officially launched its online catalogue. SCAN has been gathering, negotiating, and digitizing for four years, and has been online at least since February of this year when I blogged a note about it. Quoting Magnus Magnusson at the launch ceremony: “SCAN, the new Scottish Archive Network, has resolved all my worries about the Internet, restored my faith in human ingenuity and revolutionised my life as a researcher. SCAN is the Web in blazing Technicolor action, fully quality-controlled, fully peer-reviewed, and fully free of numbskull keyboard-bangers.”

Peter Suber in his Open Access News
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html

UK Archives Hub: November Update

* Collections of the Month: Astronomy has been in the news in recent weeks
with one of the most powerful solar flares in years, and a campaign for
‘dark skies’. The Archives Hub includes descriptions for the papers of
leading astronomers, physicists, and mathematicians, and for the records of
instrument makers and observatories:
http://www.archiveshub.ac.uk/nov03.shtml
* Latest additions: New descriptions from the Royal Agricultural College,
Cirencester. Additional descriptions from the Universities of Dundee,
Exeter, Leeds, and Warwick, and the University of Wales Aberystwyth. The
Archives Hub’s 15,000th description is for the National Viewers’ and
Listeners’ Association Collection at the University of Essex:
http://www.archiveshub.ac.uk/news/index.html
* The Tavistock Institute has published its ‘Summative Evaluation of the
Archives Hub’: http://www.archiveshub.ac.uk/news/index.html

Source: ARCHIVES

Berlin Declaration on Open Access

Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities

The Internet has fundamentally changed the practical and economic realities of distributing scientific knowledge and cultural heritage. For the first time ever, the Internet now offers the chance to constitute a global and interactive representation of human knowledge, including cultural heritage and the guarantee of worldwide access.

We, the undersigned, feel obliged to address the challenges of the Internet as an emerging functional medium for distributing knowledge. Obviously, these developments will be able to significantly modify the nature of scientific publishing as well as the existing system of quality assurance.

In accordance with the spirit of the Declaration of the Budapest Open Acess Initiative, the ECHO Charter and the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing, we have drafted the Berlin Declaration to promote the Internet as a functional instrument for a global scientific knowledge base and human reflection and to specify measures which research policy makers, research institutions, funding agencies, libraries, archives and museums need to consider.

Goals

Our mission of disseminating knowledge is only half complete if the information is not made widely and readily available to society. New possibilities of knowledge dissemination not only through the classical form but also and increasingly through the open access paradigm via the Internet have to be supported. We define open access as a comprehensive source of human knowledge and cultural heritage that has been approved by the scientific community.

In order to realize the vision of a global and accessible representation of knowledge, the future Web has to be sustainable, interactive, and transparent. Content and software tools must be openly accessible and compatible.

Definition of an Open Access Contribution

Establishing open access as a worthwhile procedure ideally requires the active commitment of each and every individual producer of scientific knowledge and holder of cultural heritage. Open access contributions include original scientific research results, raw data and metadata, source materials, digital representations of pictorial and graphical materials and scholarly multimedia material.

Open access contributions must satisfy two conditions:

1. The author(s) and right holder(s) of such contributions grant(s) to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship (community standards, will continue to provide the mechanism for enforcement of proper attribution and responsible use of the published work, as they do now), as well as the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal use.

2. A complete version of the work and all supplemental materials, including a copy of the permission as stated above, in an appropriate standard electronic format is deposited (and thus published) in at least one online repository using suitable technical standards (such as the Open Archive definitions) that is supported and maintained by an academic institution, scholarly society, government agency, or other well-established organization that seeks to enable open access, unrestricted distribution, inter operability, and long-term archiving.

See also a few German comments at
http://jurix.jura.uni-sb.de/pipermail/urecht/Week-of-Mon-20031020/001622.html

Full-text
http://www.zim.mpg.de/openaccess-berlin/berlindeclaration.html

Australia: The historian as archival collector

Don Boadle: The historian as archival collector: an Australian local study, in: AARL 34:1 (March 2003)

Online:
http://alia.org.au/publishing/aarl/34.1/full.text/boadle.html

Abstract: Neither archivists nor historians have shown much interest in trying to establish a link between the kinds of writing an historian does and the kind of archival records he or she acquires and preserves. This paper presents an Australian study, focussing on the writing of the local historian Keith Swan (1916-1996) and the collections he created for the Wagga Wagga and District Historical Society and for Charles Sturt University.

Archives and popular culture

Call for Papers

Libraries, Archives, Museums and Popular Culture Area
Joint conference with Popular Culture Association and American Culture
Association
San Antonio Marriott Rivercenter, San Antonio TX 78205
April 7-10, 2004

The Libraries, Archives, Museums and Popular Culture area solicits paper
proposals from librarians, graduate students, library school faculty,
collectors, writers, and other aficionados (yes! including people who use
libraries, archives, and museums, and other information settings!) of
popular culture and information settings of all types!

Also welcome are proposals for slide shows, video presentations, workshop
formats, and panels organized around common themes.

Among previous presentations were a culture study of a small public library,
a report on a one city/one book program, an overview of collection
development for feminist spirituality, and considerations of librarians as
presented in cartoons and movies.

Suggested topics:
– discussion of intellectual freedom issues related to popular culture
resources, including the USA PATRIOT Act
– profiles of popular culture collections
– knowledge management issues
– book clubs and reading groups
– reports of research studies of popular culture & libraries, archives, or
museums
– marketing popular culture materials to library, archives, or museum users
– collection building and popular culture resources
– organization and description of popular culture resources
– new media formats and popular culture in libraries, archives, or museums

For more details, visit the Association’s web site at
http://www.swtexaspca.org

Send a 200-word abstract to the Area Co-Chairs by November 15, 2003.

Also include your complete mailing address, school or other affiliation,
e-mail address, telephone number, and fax number.

Rhonda Harris Taylor
School of Library and Information Studies
401 West Brooks, Room 120
University of Oklahoma
Norman, OK 73019-6032
PHONE (405) 325-3921
FAX (405) 325-7648
e-mail: rtaylor@ou.edu

Janet Brennan Croft
Head of Access Services
Bizzell Library NW104
University of Oklahoma
Norman, OK 73019-6030
PHONE (405) 325-1918
FAX (405) 325-7618
e-mail: jbcroft@ou.edu

Source: H-MUSEUM http://www.h-museum.net

Special collections and the Web

http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue8_10/normore

Studying special collections and the Web: An anlaysis of practice by Lorraine Normore

Many digital library collections are the virtual analogs of special collections in libraries, museums, historical societies and archives today. A field study of people responsible for collection maintenance across a variety of institutions was carried out. It aimed at improving our understanding of issues involved in collection description and access. A second study examined the current state of Web access to materials from the previously studied special collections. Data concerning the availability of online finding aids, externally accessible databases for collection content, digitized images and Web exhibits are presented.

Another way to archive the web

Timo Burkard, Herodotus: A Peer-to-Peer Web Archival System, a master’s thesis submitted to MIT in 2002. [PDF] (Thanks to LIS News.) Distributed users donate unused CPU cycles and disk space to crawl the net and store its contents. Like LOCKSS, it uses duplicate copies to assure persistence. If every node could contribute 100 GB of storage, then (as of May 2002) Burkard estimated that it would take 20,000 nodes to archive the whole net. (PS: A quick Google search suggests that Burkard’s idea has been cited but not implemented. Does anyone know of an implementation? If it was tried and found wanting, does anyone know how it fell short?)
Posted by Peter Suber in the Open Access News
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_10_05_fosblogarchive.html#a106544634435241484

The Fictional World of Archives

The Fictional World of Archives, Art Galleries and Museums is a great website made by the Canadian archivist David Mattison.
Archives, archivists, records managers, secret documents and lost manuscripts have been used as characters, settings and plot devices in many stories, novels, movies and TV shows, as well as jokes and cartoons. The tradition of fictionalizing archives extends back to Graeco-Roman times according to classicist Mary Lefkowitz. Today, archives, archivists and records are so important to fiction that this Web page was written to document as fully as possible their many representations found in popular culture. Inspiration for this Web page came from a 1995 discussion on the ARCHIVES electronic mailing list about fictional archives. Sources include submissions by archivists and others, as well as Arlene Schmuland’s bibliography from her American Archivist article.

UK Government uses service of Internet Archive

The UK Central Government Web Archive is a selective collection of UK Government websites, archived from August 2003, which has been developed by the National Archives of the United Kingdom, using the services of the Internet Archive. […]
A recent study suggested that there are currently approximately 2,500 separate UK Government websites. This project is being undertaken as part of the ongoing development of a web archiving strategy by the National Archives. 51 websites have been carefully chosen as a representative sample of the entire UK Government web domain, and have been selected in accordance with criteria designed to reflect the overall functions of government. A number of departments and agencies were then chosen which are representative of each of these functions. This provides a broad cross-section across UK Central Government.

The websites are harvested at varying intervals, to provide the flexibility to respond to changing circumstances. Initially, 10 websites are harvested every week, and the remaining 41 are harvested every six months.

The Internet Archive will also be supplying copies of the websites collected to the National Archives, for long-term preservation by our Digital Preservation Department.
Source: website Public Record Office

Tabularia – Online Journal from Caen/Normandie

Tabularia. Sources écrites de la Normandie médiévale (Tabularia. Written Sources of Medieval Normandy) is an online journal which is freely accessible on the CRAHM website hosted by the University of Caen network.

Tabularia aims at studying the medieval written sources of Normandy. It was launched in order to give instant access to available information on the topic. This journal also aims at fostering a debate around the proposed dossiers by allowing exchanges to take place between readers and authors. Ultimately, it also devotes much space to the circulation and publication of written documentary sources, whether published or unpublished. The scientific validity of the information content is guaranteed by the presence of an editorial board and by cross-reading of submitted contributions.
Articles are in French or English.

The Toronto DEEDS Project

Documents of Essex England Data Set (DEEDS) was founded in 1975 by Professor Michael Gervers to create a database of information culled from medieval English property exchange documents which would be of interest to social and economic historians. […]
Very few English documents issued before 1300 were securely dated. We are on the verge of developing a revolutionary method for dating the tens of thousands of medieval charters which still exist in English repositories and which have not been fully exploited because of their uncertain chronology.
[…] (website)
The project website contains a few articles in full-text, but the newest article is from 1998. The website does’nt mention the book “Dating undated medieval charters” (2000) [Contents], the papers of a 1999 Budapest conference (reviewed in German by Jürgen Römer, in: Das Mittelalter 7 (2002) H. 1, S. 192-194). See Manfred Thaller’s review in The Medieval Review.

Medieval Seals from the Durham Cathedral Muniments

Durham University Library is offering a fine picture collection of medieval seals. It is highly recommended to consult also the handlist with exhaustive descriptions and lots of pictures!

Sample entry:
3691 n.d.
Bilvelt, Hermann
Description: Oval. Above in an upper canopied niche is Our Lady nimbed and robed, holding a sceptre in her right hand and the child Christ on her left arm. Beneath is St George on horseback spearing the dragon. Below is a shield of arms, a cock.

Size: 73 x 22 mm.
Inscription: S’ HERMANI D’BILEVELT . DECRE … DOCT’ SACRI PALI AP’CI CAR’ AVDITOR’. note
2.1.Arch.Dunelm.18

[with picture and additional information:]
Styled Hermannus de Bilvelt decrettorum doctor praepositus ecclesiae St. Andree Inningen (?) domini Papae capellanus, etc. Bilvelt is probably Bielefeld in Westphalia. The seal is impressed on a facing of red wax deeply sunk in a cup of white wax.

Standards for Archival Description

David Dillard writes “Standards for Archival Description: A Handbook, from The Society of American Archivists is a full text monograph online that is available at no cost to the reader at the above website. A significant part of the coverage of this book is of interest and value to the general library user in general collections as well as of importance in archival practice. The section covering subject headings would be a prime example of this.”
Via http://www.lisnews.com

US: Permanent Public Access to Government Documents

WASHINGTON, Aug. 12 /U.S. Newswire/ — Archivist of the United States John W. Carlin and United States Public Printer Bruce R. James announced today an agreement whereby the Government Printing Office (GPO) and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) will ensure the documents you see today on GPO Access ( http://www.gpoaccess.gov ), the GPO web site that provides free online public access to more than 250,000 Federal Government titles, will remain available permanently.
“GPO is committed to providing permanent public access to the online versions of the most important Government publications. That is why we are honored that NARA has recognized our commitment to making thisinformation available today and to preserving it for future generations by making us an archival affiliate,” said Public Printer James. Archivist Carlin said “Preserving the essential evidence of our Government’s
work is a serious responsibility and we feel confident that working together with GPO will enable us to ensure that these records will continue to be available for all to use.”

[Yahoo News via Open Access News/SPARC Open Access Newsletter]

Canada: Copyright-Extension

W.J. McLean notified the ARCAN-L mailing list of his provocative article, The Impact of Bill C-36 on the Archival Public Domain, that summarizes the impact of Canada’s Bill C-36 around works by a selected group of author-creators on which copyright will be extended if the bill is passed this fall.

Read more in the Ten Thousand Year Blog.

Excerpt from McLean’s article:

With Bill C-36, Canadian Heritage plans to extend the term of copyright in “works” whose “authors” died between 1930 and 1948. While “work” and “author” in the Copyright Act imply literary efforts for which the author had expected commercial remuneration during his or her lifetime, the Copyright Act, in fact, operates on everything ever committed to paper, for long after the author is dead. Every document, in every archive in Canada, is “protected” by copyright.

Prior to 1998, copyright in unpublished “works” was perpetual. That’s right, forever! Recognizing the impossibility and idiocy of that rule, Parliament changed it in 1998. “Works” whose authors died before 1949 would become public domain at the end of 2003, freeing up millions of archival documents for unfettered use, including translation, publication, and digitization. “Works” whose authors died in or after 1949 will not become public domain until at least the end of 2048.

King family to auction off (Martin Luther King) MLK documents

-citat-
Library Journal Academic Newswire (TM)
The Publishing Report for August 28, 2003
I HAVE A DEAL: KING FAMILY TO AUCTION OFF MLK DOCUMENTS
The archive of U.S. civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is being offered for sale through auction house Sotheby’s for an estimated $30 million. The artifacts, which include a draft of King’s landmark “I Have a Dream” speech, range from 1948 through until his death in 1968. News of the sale comes on the heels of the King family’s failed bid to sell the archive for $20 million to the Library of Congress in 1999. That deal was proposed by Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC), who, after meeting with the King family, introduced legislation that would have funded the purchase (see LJ Academic Newswire 11/2/99). The plan was ultimately abandoned after lawmakers balked at paying such a price for the collection. LC rarely pays for collections and some lawmakers voiced concern over setting such a costly precedent. In addition, scholars questioned what separating the papers from the King Center in Atlanta means for King scholarship. No deadline has been set for the sale, but press reports indicate that the King family is looking for a buyer that would exhibit the materials and keep the collection intact. With a price tag of $30 million, however, it is virtually unfathomable that a research library could afford to take the collection.
-/citat-
Quelle: siehe a_i_d

Can We Save the Present for the Future?

Digital documents last forever – or five years, whichever comes first Jeff Rothenberg (cited p. 740 by Roy Rosenzweig)

It is a repulsive decision of the AHR not to make the forum essay (nor the invitation to an online debate!) free online the great essay by Roy Rosenzweig: Scarcity or Abundance. Preserving the Past in a Digital Era (AHR 108: 2003, 735-762). Scholars should, demands the author, expand the public space of scholarship (with reference to the BOAI in note 66). And: A vigourous public domain is a prerequisite for a healty historical record (p. 762).

Historians are dependent on archives. They constitute the basic building blocks of our scholarship. However, Roy Rosenzweig argues in this Forum Essay, in the future, scholars trying to understand our time will likely face a very troubling and indeed ironic prospect: the archival record of our era may be too scarce or too abundant. In either case, the basic scholarly mission of historians will be challenged in fundamental ways. Rosenzweig argues that historians today have a professional and ethical obligation to address this issue now. It is, he insists, at the core of our responsibilities as scholars as much as is the production of scholarship itself. Indeed, he contends that the connections between these twin responsibilities must be remade, because we have allowed them to wither over the years. This can be done, he maintains, by first understanding the complexities of the problem and then devising solutions that include reestablishing connections with potential allies such as archivists. His message is clear: The problem is dire, the need for action immediate. Rosenzweig invites responses to his plea for understanding and action. (Introduction).

A main topic is the question how to preserve the internet. The article is dealing oftly with Brewster Kahle’s Internet Archive.

With the author I regret the divorce of archival concerns of the historical profession, and I also support his statement: historians ignore the future of digital data at their own peril (p. 759).

Open Access to Science and Scholarship

Finally, open access is within reach of scientists and scholars today. They can launch an open-access archive whenever they like, at essentially no cost, and more and more universities and disciplines are doing so. With a bit more planning and investment, scholars can launch an open-access journal. Conventional journals can experiment with open access article by article, to learn the methods and economics of open-access publishing. But scientists needn’t wait for conventional journals to make these experiments, and they needn’t beg them to offer open access. They needn’t wait for markets or legislation. The internet has already given scientists a chance to reclaim control of scientific communication. For the first time since the journal appeared on the scene in 1665, price needn’t be a barrier to access. For the first time since the rise of the commercial publishing of scientific journals, scientific communication can be in the hands of scientists, who answer to one another, rather than corporations, who answer to shareholders. The only question is whether scientists are ready to seize this beautiful opportunity.
If you need a 1,000 word intro to open access, have a look on Peter Suber’s article.

Nuremberg Trials Project

The Harvard Law School Library has launched a new website, the Nuremberg Trials Project, devoted to analysis and digitization of documents relating to the Nuremberg Trials. The site will make available on the web for the first time more than one million pages of documents related to the trials of military and political leaders of Nazi Germany and other accused war criminals before the International Military Tribunal (IMT) and the United States Nuremberg Military Tribunals (NMT). The collection can be found at nuremberg.law.harvard.edu.
More links in Vernica’s weblog “thinking while typing”.

Preserving the Audiovisual Heritage

On behalf of the Coordinating Council of Audiovisual Archive Associations, the Association of Moving Image Archivists is pleased to announce that the 2004 Joint Technical Symposium will take place June 24-26, 2004 in Toronto, Canada, at the Isabel Bader Theater. Preserving the AudioVisual Heritage – Transition and Access is the theme of this 3-day event, which is expected to draw 300-400 attendees from around the world.
Read more in the ica news.

Cooperation among Archives, Libraries and Museums

The four papers of section # 79. Genealogy and Local History at the Berlin IFLA conference are available as PDF on the conference website.
1. Benefits of archives, libraries and museums working together
Archives, bibliothèques et musées : les bénéfices de la coopération
RUTH HEDEGAARD (Vendsyssel Historical Museum and Archives, Hjoerring, Denmark)
2. Cooperation and Change: Archives, Libraries and Museums in the United States
Coopération et changements : les centres d’archives, bibliothèques et musées aux États-Unis
ROBERT MARTIN (The Institute of Museum and Library Services, Washington DC, USA)
3. If we can do it, so can you. The UK North Yorkshire digitisation project
Si nous pouvons le faire, vous le pouvez
ELIZABETH ANNE MELROSE (North Yorkshire Country Library, Northallerton, England)
4. Library innovation is hard work. Lessons from a Norwegian case study
Le travail d’innovation en bibliothèque n’est pas une chose facile: leçons d’une étude de cas norvégienne
BOZENA RASMUSSEN (Gjerdrum Public Library, Gjerdrum, Norway) and TORD HØIVIK (Oslo University College, Oslo, Norway)