"To read The Nation is to see the evolution of the American Left." - Timothy Naftali, director of the Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives Currently celebrating its 150th anniversary The Nation is America's oldest weekly magazine. It was where the likes of James Baldwin, Ralph Nader and Hunter S. Thompson published their first work. It is where the leading writers, thinkers and leaders this country has produced have shared their thoughts on the pressing issues of the day, always looking left and always looking looking out for the great majority of us. The comprehensive archive of the contemporary...
Project REVEAL: The Harry Ransom Center takes a huge digital step forward
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...
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...
Poetry is Wanted Here!
We can't let National Poetry Month go by without a taste of some of the poetry goodness that lives within the confines of the Digital Public Library of America. From the postcard above featuring an excerpt from a poem by Alex Caldero proclaiming 'Poetry is wanted here!' to a sampling of dust jackets, to a lunch poem from second graders, poetry is alive and well at DPLA. The First book of poetry [Title-page]. 1811 The pleasures of poetry. (Vol. 2) 1947 Poetry as a means of grace. The poetry of the Bible, a new anthology Poetry Week at Miss Duckett Monroe School Washington,...