[or-roots] The Internet Archive has books, not just old webpages...

[Robyn Greenlund]

Internet Archive and The Library of Congress (Links for Genealogy)

Library of Congress Scans 25,000 Books--Moving from Book Shelf to 
Cyberspace

Art Chimes
February 2nd 2009   

The 
Library of Congress is the largest library in the world, 
housing millions of 
books, recordings, photographs, maps 
and manuscripts. Like many other great 
research libraries, 
the Library of Congress has been moving into the digital 
world.

One way they're doing it is through a scanning project that 
has so far put 25,000 books online for anyone to read or 
download.

Doron Weber of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which is 
funding 
the $2 million project, stresses the importance of scanning 
complete books to preserve their cultural context.

"To preserve book 
knowledge and book culture means preserving 
every word of every sentence in 
the right sequence of pages 
in the right edition, within the appropriate 
historical, scholarly 
and bibliographical context. You must respect what you 
scan 
and treat it as an organic whole, not just raw bits of slapdash 
data."

The scanning is being done by the Internet Archive. The San 
Francisco-based nonprofit group aims to preserve cultural 
artifacts such 
as musical recordings and Web pages, as well 
as books, and make them 
available online. Brewster Kahle 
heads the Internet Archive.

"They're 
going faster and faster and faster here at the Library 
of Congress to bring 
the book collection, to digitize those, run 
them through optical character 
recognition, offer them for free 
on the Internet for anyone to download, 
read, bind, do anything 
they want with," Kahle said.

The scanning 
project is focusing on fragile books that need 
special handling, American 
history, genealogy and some rare 
books. The books are being scanned in a 
large, utilitarian- looking 
room in the Library of Congress, a block from the 
U.S. Capitol 
building in Washington.

Ten scanning units, called 
scribe stations, have been set up. 
In each one, a book sits on a V-shaped 
cradle. Two high-resolution 
digital cameras overhead point separately at the 
left and right 
pages of the open book. An operator sits in front, using a 
foot 
pedal to operate a V-shaped glass cover that comes down to 
flatten 
the pages being photographed or goes up so the page 
can be turned. A pair of 
pages is scanned every six seconds.

Library of Congress staffer Aaron 
Chaletzky explained the 
scanning process and said that the online books are 
being 
used much more than their physical counterparts at the 
library.

"You know, if you build it, they will come," he said. "Well, 
we've 
now digitized these materials. We've put them out there, and a 
lot 
of items that have not literally seen the light of day because 
they haven't 
been checked out in God knows how long, have 
been downloaded and reviewed on 
Internet Archive's Web site 
dozens of times, and that's really 
gratifying."

The books being digitized in this project are all at least 
75 years 
old and thus out of copyright. So Internet users may read them, 
download them, or really do any creative thing they like with 
them.

Deanna Marcum, associate librarian of the Library of Congress, 
says the Sloan Foundation project is focusing on fragile books 
that need 
special handling, American history, genealogy and 
some rare 
books.

"Most importantly, the result of these collections that are rare 
and hard to find and sometimes too brittle or too old to serve 
to the 
public, we're now able to make openly available to the 
public, and we see 
this as a great accomplishment, " she said.

And a cost-effective one - the 
Internet Archive is able to do the 
mass scanning for just 10 cents a 
page.

There are other book scanning projects. Google, for example, 
has agreements with great libraries in Europe and Asia, as well 
as the 
United States, to scan books in their collections.

Charles B. Lowry, of 
the Association of Research Libraries, 
says it's important in the digital 
age that the older material 
remain accessible.

"I believe we're on 
the cusp of a jump from a world of analog print 
information to a world of 
digital networked access to information. 
Today, almost all information - 
even that which ultimately appears 
in print - is born digital. Yet I think 
there remains a need for large-
scale efforts to expose existing print 
collections so that they do 
not become invisible."
The scanned books from the Library of Congress are online at 
the 
Internet Archive.

Source:   The Cutting Edge News 
http://www.thecutti ngedgenews. com/index. php?article= 1074&pageid=28&pagename=Sci- Tech

Internet 
Archive - Genealogy
http://www.archive. org/details/ genealogy

History of southern Oregon, comprising Jackson, Josephine, Douglas,
Curry and Coos countries, comp. from the most authentic sources, by A.G. Walling
http://www.archive.org/details/historyofsouther00wall

 Robyn

Interested in Oregon History? Check out my webpages at
coquillevalley.org or genealogytrails.com (Coos & Curry Counties)



      
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