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NEWS FROM THE FIELDC&RL News, November 2007Vol. 68, No. 10 by David Free Columbia University Libraries opens human rights archive The Center for Human Rights Documentation and Research (CHRDR) at Columbia University Libraries, along with the Center for Research Libraries Global Resources Network, the University of Texas Libraries, and the Center for the Study of Human Rights, hosted a public conference October 4–6, 2007, entitled “Human Rights Archives and Documentation: Meeting the Needs of Research, Teaching, Advocacy and Social Justice.” The conference provided a forum for discussion of issues related to the creation, archiving, access, and use of human rights documentation. The conference also marked the formal opening of Columbia’s human rights archives for public access. CHRDR is the official repository for the archives of Amnesty International USA, Human Rights Watch, Committee of Concerned Scientists, and other major international human rights organizations and supports the community of teachers, researchers, and law and social justice advocates working in the multidisciplinary sphere of human rights. Visit CHRDR’s Web site at www.columbia.edu/library/humanrights to learn more about the center’s activities, archives, and research resources. The entire proceedings of the conference, including video of each presentation, will appear on the site in the near future. New features from WorldCat.org OCLC recently added enhanced social functions to WorldCat.org in order to increase networking between library users around the world. A new social bookmark option lets users add library-owned items to bookmarks at popular sites, such as Digg, del.icio.us, Facebook, Yahoo!, and Google. Enhanced citation management tools allow users to generate citations for their personalized lists of WorldCat-cataloged items in one of five common citation styles: APA, Chicago, Harvard, MLA, or Turabian. Users also can export lists in their preferred citation style. Exported citations can be saved locally in HTML, Rich Text or RIS format, and are compatible with Endnote bibliographic software or the RefWorks research management Web tool. 3D scanner may save vanishing languages from extinction Fragile field recordings of American Indian speech and song gathered in the early 1900s may be saved for future generations through breakthrough technology supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). IMLS is funding the research and development of a 3D optical scanner through a $507,233 interagency agreement with the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The project will preserve and increase access to Native American sound collections at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, along with other collections across the country. “The 2,700 wax cylinder recordings held by the Hearst museum are jewels in a treasure trove of early recordings that we hope will be rescued,” IMLS Director Anne-Imelda Radice said. “Saving the delicate recordings literally may keep alive some of these Native American languages.” Nationwide, there are approximately 20,000 Native American fieldwork recordings on fragile wax cylinders, the earliest method of recording and reproducing sound. Other rare recordings, including speeches of historical figures and a wide range of field recordings of folk music, linguistic, cultural, and anthropological materials, would also benefit from the technology. The new 3D system builds on a 2D system also developed by the Berkeley Lab called IRENE (Image, Reconstruct, Erase Noise, Etc.), which gathers digital sound from grooved discs (flat recordings such as traditional 78 rpm shellac disc records) by illuminating the record surface with a narrow beam of light. The flat bottoms of the groove—and the spaces between tracks—appear white, while the sloped sides of the groove, scratches, and dirt appear black. The computer turns this information into a digital sound file and corrects areas where scratches, breaks or wear have made the groove wider or narrower than normal. IRENE then “plays” the file with a virtual needle without damaging or destroying the original media. The technology was adapted from methods used to build radiation detectors for high-energy physics experiments.
Library Assessment Conference call for proposals The Association of Research Libraries, the University of Virginia Library, the University of Washington Libraries, and the Conference Planning Committee recently announced the call for proposals for the second Library Assessment Conference: Building Effective, Sustainable, Practical Assessment, to be held in Seattle, Washington, August 4–6, 2008. The conference goal is to support and nurture the library assessment community through a mix of invited speakers, contributed papers and posters, workshops, and engaging discussion. Presentations for papers, posters, and panel discussions are sought in all areas of library assessment, including digital libraries, teaching and learning, methods and tools, return on investment, and usability. The planning committee is especially interested in contributions that show how assessment results have been used to improve library services and add value to the user community. Complete details on the conference, along with submission information, is available on the conference Web site at www.libraryassessment.org/. The deadline for proposals is February 1, 2008.
NetLibrary reaches 150,000-title milestone NetLibrary, an OCLC division and platform for digital content in libraries worldwide, achieved a ground-breaking milestone September 20, 2007, when it became the first eContent provider to offer 150,000 full-text eBook and eAudiobook titles to academic, public, special, and school library users. The 150,000th title to go live was ECOhouse: A Design Guide by Sue Roaf, Manuel Fuentes and Stephanie Thomas, published by Elsevier in 2007. College libraries create digital peace studies archive Earlham College, Goshen College, and Manchester College libraries have partnered to create “The Plowshares Digital Archive for Peace Studies,” a repository of primary documents covering the peace and social justice efforts of the colleges and their affiliated religious institutions. The collection contains diaries, minutes of church bodies and organizations, correspondence, pamphlets, newspapers, and periodicals from the 1700s to 20th century, covering the work of the Society of Friends (Quakers), Mennonites, and the Church of the Brethren. The collection currently includes tens of thousands of pages, and with a full compliment of searchable metadata and full text, the interface provides extensive access to the material. Most documents are presented in PDF, which can easily be downloaded. The archive is available online at replica.palni.edu/cdm4/index_keplow.php?CISOROOT=/keplow. The archive is a part of a larger project, “Plowshares: A Peace Studies Collaborative by Earlham, Goshen and Manchester Colleges,” which is funded by the Lilly Endowment. More information on the overall project is available at www.plowsharesproject.org. Boston Library Consortium and Open Content Alliance to provide digitized books The Boston Library Consortium, Inc. (BLC), an association of academic and research libraries located in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island, recently announced a partnership with the Open Content Alliance (OCA) to build a freely accessible library of digital materials. BLC will offer high-resolution, downloadable, reusable files of public domain materials from all 19 member libraries. Collectively, the BLC member libraries provide access to more than 34 million volumes. BLC is the first large-scale consortium to embark on such a self-funded digitization project with OCA. BLC’s digitization efforts will be based in a new scanning center, the Northeast Regional Scanning Center, housed at the Boston Public Library. BLC’s digitized books will be hosted by the Internet Archive and available for indexing by any search engine in accordance with BLC and OCA’s philosophy of open access to digitized content. Brewster Kahle, digital librarian and founder of the Internet Archive, expressed pleasure that “many great libraries are weighing the alternatives and choosing to go open instead of putting public domain material under perpetual restrictions.” For more information, visit BLC online at www.blc.org/index.html and OCA at www.opencontentalliance.org. WGBH opens vault The WGBH Media Library and Archives (MLA) recently launched the Open Vault, a free video resource to enhance classroom lesson plans and students’ independent study. The archive offers access to over 500 streaming video clips and more than 1,000 interview transcripts drawn from WGBH’s award-winning programming created between 1968 and 1993. Topics range from desegregation and busing to the Cold War to interviews with and performances by leading dancers, writers, and poets. The Open Vault includes clips drawn from programs such as New Television Workshop, an experimental video art series that supported the creation and broadcast of experimental works by artists from 1974 to 1993; Say Brother (now Basic Black), an African American public affairs series with programs from 1968 to 1982; War and Peace in the Nuclear Age, a 13-part series that examined the origins and evolution of nuclear competition between the United States and the Soviet Union; and Vietnam, A Television History. Visit openvault.wgbh.org for more information about the Open Vault. Duke University Press launching eBooks Duke University Press has entered a partnership with ebrary to host and deliver a new eBook product, the e-Duke Scholarly Books Collection. The new product is due to be fully released in January 2009, with a pilot program taking place in select libraries during 2008. Using the ebrary platform, Duke will distribute the new collection directly to the academic library community under a perpetual access model. ASERL selects virtual reference partner Association of Southeastern Research Libraries (ASERL) has selected the University of South Carolina School of Library and Information Science (USC/SLIS) to support ASERL’s Ask-A-Librarian Online Chat Reference Service for 2007–08. The program provides more than 100 hours of online chat reference service per week to the students, faculty, and staff at eight ASERL institutions, including College of William & Mary, Mississippi State University, University of Alabama, University of Central Florida, University of Memphis, University of Mississippi, University of North Carolina-Charlotte, and Virginia Commonwealth University. “It is a great opportunity for our students to gain experience with the provision of real-world virtual reference services,” said Feili Tu, USC/SLIS assistant professor and the primary investigator of the project. “In addition, research will be conducted to examine how effectively students provide virtual reference services, as evidenced by application of knowledge and skills learned from the USC/SLIS curriculum.” The project is offered as a paid internship program for master’s level library and information science students. Each semester, several student virtual reference staffers will also be enrolled in the school’s Internship in Library and Information Science course, which gives students opportunities to demonstrate competencies acquired during their programs of study. For more information about ASERL’s Ask-A-Librarian service, visit www.ask-a-librarian.org.
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