The 'Loyalty Oath' controversy was the McCarthy-era communist witch-hunt that took place on the Berkeley campus in the late 1940's. It began when "hundreds of University employees refused to sign a special anti-communist oath mandated by the Regents."Dozens of tenured faculty and staff were fired and the ensuing protests eventually spread to every campus and garnered international attention.The California Supreme Court struck down the 'loyalty oath' in 1952 and all the the terminated employees were reinstated.The collection includes 3,500 pages of searchable text, 20 images and 15 audio clipsThe book on the subject is The California Loyalty Oath Controversy by...
The Hands of Google
Asher Moses has a piece in the Sydney Morning Herald, Book scans reveal Google's handiwork, which introduces us to a new, undiscovered component of the digitization process; the hand scan."Digital bookworms reading titles like the 1855 issue of The Gentleman's Magazine and Plato's The Trial and Death of Socrates have been surprised to find large chunks of some pages blocked by manicured paws clad in pink finger condoms." Rob Shilkin, Google's Australia spokesman, tells us that "in the time since we initially began our scanning, we've vastly improved our scanning technology so that a random finger is automatically brought to...
Digitization and the Bookseller
BooksnapWelcome to the next disruptive technology for the book trade.The force of commerce and the march of technology are soon to meet again at the booksellers door. The door might not be open for long but if entered correctly it might become a new source of revenue for the bookseller.Once Google's romance with the libraries is over do you think Google will stop looking for other sources of information to feed the machine?I would guess within 5 years or so Google will have cycled through the library trade and determined who they will be playing with and they will know...
Libraries Resist Google. Is the Tide Turning?
“Scanning the great libraries is a wonderful idea, but if only one corporation controls access to this digital collection, we’ll have handed too much control to a private entity,” Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive and the Open Content Alliance said.Amen.“There are two opposed pathways being mapped out...One is shaped by commercial concerns, the other by a commitment to openness, and which one will win is not clear.” Paul Duguid, an adjunct professor at the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley.Vote For Openness!Book scanning stations at the Internet Archive.Quotes and image above from Katie Hafner's piece...
A Step Closer to a World Digital Library
"Libraries are inherently islands of freedom and antidotes to fanaticism" - James H. Billington, Librarian of CongressThe prototype for the World Digital Library was unveiled yesterday to a group of reporters in Paris.The Library, expected to launch in 2008, is an online initiative created by the U.S. Library of Congress, the U.N. cultural body UNESCO and 5 international partner libraries; Egypt's Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the National Library of Egypt, the National Library of Brazil, the National Library of Russia and the Russian State Library"The international digital library will be free and multilingual, with contributions from around the world, including rare books,...