A few updates on recent posts:
Re: Google Book Search-I blogged a few days ago about the inherent danger in having a private company being in charge of digitizing our written heritage then yesterday word came that that the Alfred A. Sloan foundation donated $1 million dollars to the Internet Archive to digitize the holdings of the Boston Public Library, the Getty Research Institute, the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Excellent start.
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Link to article on Sloan grant
Re: The guy who wrote the worlds longest diary which is housed in 80+ boxes in the Special Collections of Washington State University. I recently spoke to the head of special collections to see when that diary might be processed and available for viewing. Her response was “after I retire”. The problem is she is not that old. Point is that many special collections in university libraries throughout this country are spread so thin that it is an impossible task to properly process the material that is acquired. So, unless someone donates the funds to specifically process that diary it is going to sit in those boxes for a long time. You can make the argument that this issue is connected to the one above in that the digitization initiative that has begun is for material that has made it to the “stacks” not for the material that libraries are unable to process and sits in some storage area. Will we have a have a hidden written heritage as well?
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One of my blog related tasks is reading the headlines of book related press releases. It is one of my primary book amusements. Here are some recent headlines for your enjoyment:
Unique Diet Plan Peels Off Pounds and Allows Alcoholic Beverages
and my favorite of the week-