One of the kinks in the harried digital evolution for university special collections and archives has been the focus on getting their best stuff processed first. This selective approach to digitization, which of course has its roots in the pervasive financial and human resource constraints faced by most repositories, can have a profound long-term effect on what information finds the public realm. Project REVEAL, which stands for Read and View English & American Literature, by The Harry Ransom Center hopes to change that. For Project REVEAL the entire manuscript collections of 25 of some of the best-known writers from nineteenth and early twentieth century...
Susanna Hesselberg’s Underground Library
Every two years on the coast of Denmark the Sculpture by the Sea exhibition takes place. It is the nations largest outdoor exhibition and for this years incarnation 56 site-specific sculptures graced the Danish coast. Among them was Susanna Hesselberg's homage to her father and books: “When My Father Died It Was Like a Whole Library Had Burned Down” (a reference to Laurie Anderson’s song World Without End). Reminiscent of the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland the library descends deep underground. With the top sealed and only the page ends visible the library is completely inaccessible. The work powerfully portrays the depth of...
A peak at some of the treasures of the Folger Shakespeare Library
Did you know that 82 of the 233 surviving First Folios of Shakespeare's plays live at The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C.? To mark the quadricentennial of his death The Folger is sending a few copies on a tour of America. Jonathan Karl of ABC News was granted exclusive access to the Folger vault, where he got a look at some of the goodies that rarely see the light of day.
Brewster Kahle says ‘Digitize Everything’
[youtube]https://youtu.be/fDGKfVJQRkk[/youtube] What a perfect way to follow up my look at John Palfrey's new book BiblioTech: Why Libraries Matter More Than Ever in the Age of Google then with a short video from EDUCAUSE Review Online of Brewster Kahle talking about the absolute necessity of digitizing everything we can get our hands on. Kahle, the founder of the Internet Archive, has been at the forefront of the digital revolution, especially when it comes to the role of the 'library'. His mantra is simple - take the twin attributes that define the library, preservation and access, and apply it to the online...
BiblioTech: Keeping Hope for Libraries Alive in the Digital Age
John Palfrey's lucid, passionate account of the state of American libraries reminds us both how important public libraries are to a healthy democracy and how close they are to going the way of the dodo bird. We are in the midst of a tectonic societal shift from print to digital and without a concerted effort to transform the library into its 21st century equivalent we just might lose these hubs of democracy for good. The disconnect is huge; survey after survey remind us how important libraries are to their communities while in budget after budget funding for libraries continues to...