First digital initiatives site launched

We are extremely happy to announce the “soft launch” of our first digitization initiative.  Peace and War in the 20th Century is a collaboration between McMaster, Hamilton Public Library and the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum.  The URL for the project is:  http://pw20c.mcmaster.ca/  It’s still under development so any comments would be welcomed!

We’ve chosen drupal for our platform.  Anonymous users can access all of the collections.  Registered users (anybody can register) can access all of the collections, comment on records, vote comments up or down (kinda like digg), use the Curate It! feature (digg like feature), and utilize the account based bookmarking (Bookbag) to save records for later viewing.  It also includes a faceted search feature like Endeca.  The site is also OAI-PMH compliant and has been harvested by U of Michigan and UIUC.

This is our first major digitization effort.  More to come!

McMaster partners with Portico

From the Portico press release

Portico, a not-for-profit digital preservation service, introduced three expansions of its preservation work at its third annual Participants’ Meeting, held during the American Library Association Annual Conference in Anaheim, California. In direct response to preservation concerns expressed by libraries and publishers, Portico is moving beyond e-journal preservation.

• Portico now preserves scholarly e-books.
At ALA, Elsevier, a leading scientific journal, database, and book publisher, announced an agreement to preserve in the Portico archive e-book content available in ScienceDirect. (seehttp://elsevier.com/wps/find/authored_newsitem.careers/companynews05_00960). Portico is in active discussions with several other e-book publishers and will announce additional agreements as these are finalized.

• Portico has also initiated preservation activities for digitized newspapers. Discussions with a number of leading publishers of current and historical digitized newspapers are underway, and we will keep the community apprised as these move ahead.

• Portico also announced a new service to enable libraries to preserve locally created/digitized electronic scholarly materials within the Portico archive. Fifteen institutions have agreed to work with Portico in the introductory phase of this service. These institutions include:

° American University
° Baylor University
° Binghamton University
° Brigham Young University
° California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
° City University of New York
° Colorado State University
° McMaster University
° Middlebury College
° Northwestern University
° Trinity College, Dublin
° University of British Columbia
° University of Notre Dame
° University of Queensland
° Vassar College

Portico expects to open this service to interested libraries in mid-2009.

For more than a decade the scholarly community has expressed concerns about preservation, in particular for e-journals, and Portico’s digital preservation service was launched in late 2005 in direct response to this need. As new preservation needs are brought to Portico’s attention by both libraries and publishers, Portico is working to respond to these needs in ways that allow us to more fully meet our mission to preserve scholarly literature published in electronic form and to ensure that these materials remain accessible to future generations of scholars, researchers, and students. Portico’s new activities will proceed as preservation of the more than 7,700 journals committed to the Portico archive continues.

To obtain additional information about participation in Portico or about these preservation activities see www.portico.org or send an email to participation@portico.org.

Regards,

Ken

Kenneth DiFiore, MLS 
Associate Director of Library Relations, Portico
tel: 609 986-2276
fax: 609 951-0020
email: ken.difiore@portico.org
web: www.portico.org

McMaster: Charter member in newspaper digitization program

(Press release from Readex)

Readex partners with Center for Research Libraries
to create Web-based World Newspaper Archive

Digitization effort will feature thousands of historical newspaper titles published outside the United States

JUNE 26, 2008 (NAPLES, FL) — , a division of NewsBank, and the  (CRL) announced today that they will create the world’s largest, fully searchable digital archive of international newspapers. The World Newspaper Archive will provide students, teachers and scholars unprecedented access to historical newspapers published outside the United States, advancing research and offering new insights across wide-ranging academic disciplines.

“NewsBank offers the greatest combination of expertise and capabilities to provide our members sustainable access to historical news content,” says Bernard F. Reilly, president of the Center for Research Libraries. “By partnering with its Readex division in this cooperative effort, we plan to systematically digitize and deliver over the Web the foreign newspapers held by CRL and other major newspaper repositories.“

This uniquely comprehensive electronic resource will first offer Latin American newspapers published between 1805 and 1922 in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, Venezuela and other countries. Further series will focus on historical newspapers published in Africa, South Asia and other areas. Users will be able to seamlessly cross-search the World Newspaper Archive with , including Early American Newspapers and Hispanic American Newspapers.

“Readex and the Center for Research Libraries share a commitment to provide sustainable online access to primary source research collections,” says David Braden, Readex president. “We are delighted to be working in cooperation with CRL—one of the world’s largest and most important newspaper repositories—to launch this landmark digital project and expand opportunities to discover these primary resources.”

The initial Latin American series will offer approximately 35 titles, encompassing nearly one million pages. Among the newspapers expected to be included are La Prensa (Buenos Aires), O Estado de São Paulo (São Paulo), Mercurio (Santiago), La Prensa (Havana), Diario de Centro America (Guatemala City), Daily Chronicle (Georgetown, Guyana), Mexican Herald (Mexico City), El Peruano (Lima), Port of Spain Gazette (Port of Spain), and theVenezuelan Herald (Caracas).

“International newspapers have long been highly valued by students and researchers in the humanities and social sciences,” says Glenda Pearson, Human Rights Librarian and Head of Newspaper Collections at the University of Washington. “This exciting joint project between CRL and Readex will advance scholarly inquiry, while ensuring worldwide access to these invaluable publications for generations to come.”

Participating members of CRL will enjoy permanent access to the World Newspaper Archive, while all others around the world will be offered access by Readex. Charter CRL participants now include Harvard University; McMaster University; New York Public Library; Princeton University; University of California, Berkeley; University of California, Los Angeles; University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign; University of Texas; University of Washington; and Yale University.

About the The Center for Research Libraries is an international partnership of over 240 universities, colleges and independent research libraries. CRL supports advanced research and learning in the humanities, sciences and social sciences by ensuring the survival and accessibility of source materials vital to those disciplines.

About , a division of For more than 50 years, the Readex name has been synonymous with research in historical materials and government documents. Recognized by librarians, students and scholars for its efforts to transform academic scholarship, Readex offers a wealth of Web-based collections in the humanities and social sciences, including the Archive of Americana and the Foreign Broadcast Information Service Daily Reports.

For more information or to speak with a Readex expert, contact Readex Marketing Manager David Loiterstein by calling 203.421.0152 or emailing dloiterstein@readex.com.