<html><head><style type="text/css"><!-- DIV {margin:0px;} --></style></head><body><div style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:12pt;color:#000099;"><table width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"><tbody><tr><td bgcolor="#a4c7ed" valign="top"><table width="100%" style="table-layout:fixed;" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"><tbody><tr><td width="40"> </td><td valign="top" style="overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><table width="100%" style="white-space:normal;" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"><tbody><tr><td height="40"> </td></tr><tr><td><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" size="2" color="#000099" style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12;color:#000099;"><div style="text-align:undefined;"><div>Internet Archive and The Library of Congress (Links for Genealogy)</div>
<div><br>Library of Congress Scans 25,000 Books--Moving from Book Shelf to
Cyberspace<br><br>Art Chimes<br>February 2nd 2009 <br><br>The
Library of Congress is the largest library in the world, <br>housing millions of
books, recordings, photographs, maps <br>and manuscripts. Like many other great
research libraries, <br>the Library of Congress has been moving into the digital
world.<br><br>One way they're doing it is through a scanning project that
<br>has so far put 25,000 books online for anyone to read or
<br>download.<br><br>Doron Weber of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which is
funding <br>the $2 million project, stresses the importance of scanning
<br>complete books to preserve their cultural context.<br><br>"To preserve book
knowledge and book culture means preserving <br>every word of every sentence in
the right sequence of pages <br>in the right edition, within the appropriate
historical, scholarly <br>and bibliographical context. You must respect what you
scan <br>and treat it as an organic whole, not just raw bits of slapdash
<br>data."<br><br>The scanning is being done by the Internet Archive. The San
<br>Francisco-based nonprofit group aims to preserve cultural <br>artifacts such
as musical recordings and Web pages, as well <br>as books, and make them
available online. Brewster Kahle <br>heads the Internet Archive.<br><br>"They're
going faster and faster and faster here at the Library <br>of Congress to bring
the book collection, to digitize those, run <br>them through optical character
recognition, offer them for free <br>on the Internet for anyone to download,
read, bind, do anything <br>they want with," Kahle said.<br><br>The scanning
project is focusing on fragile books that need <br>special handling, American
history, genealogy and some rare <br>books. The books are being scanned in a
large, utilitarian- looking <br>room in the Library of Congress, a block from the
U.S. Capitol <br>building in Washington.<br><br>Ten scanning units, called
scribe stations, have been set up. <br>In each one, a book sits on a V-shaped
cradle. Two high-resolution <br>digital cameras overhead point separately at the
left and right <br>pages of the open book. An operator sits in front, using a
foot <br>pedal to operate a V-shaped glass cover that comes down to <br>flatten
the pages being photographed or goes up so the page <br>can be turned. A pair of
pages is scanned every six seconds.<br><br>Library of Congress staffer Aaron
Chaletzky explained the <br>scanning process and said that the online books are
being <br>used much more than their physical counterparts at the
library.<br><br>"You know, if you build it, they will come," he said. "Well,
we've <br>now digitized these materials. We've put them out there, and a <br>lot
of items that have not literally seen the light of day because <br>they haven't
been checked out in God knows how long, have <br>been downloaded and reviewed on
Internet Archive's Web site <br>dozens of times, and that's really
gratifying."<br><br>The books being digitized in this project are all at least
75 years <br>old and thus out of copyright. So Internet users may read them,
<br>download them, or really do any creative thing they like with
<br>them.<br><br>Deanna Marcum, associate librarian of the Library of Congress,
<br>says the Sloan Foundation project is focusing on fragile books <br>that need
special handling, American history, genealogy and <br>some rare
books.<br><br>"Most importantly, the result of these collections that are rare
<br>and hard to find and sometimes too brittle or too old to serve <br>to the
public, we're now able to make openly available to the <br>public, and we see
this as a great accomplishment, " she said.<br><br>And a cost-effective one - the
Internet Archive is able to do the <br>mass scanning for just 10 cents a
page.<br><br>There are other book scanning projects. Google, for example,
<br>has agreements with great libraries in Europe and Asia, as well <br>as the
United States, to scan books in their collections.<br><br>Charles B. Lowry, of
the Association of Research Libraries, <br>says it's important in the digital
age that the older material <br>remain accessible.<br><br>"I believe we're on
the cusp of a jump from a world of analog print <br>information to a world of
digital networked access to information. <br>Today, almost all information -
even that which ultimately appears <br>in print - is born digital. Yet I think
there remains a need for large-<br>scale efforts to expose existing print
collections so that they do <br>not become invisible."</div>
<br>The scanned books from the Library of Congress are online at <br>the
Internet Archive.<br><br>Source: The Cutting Edge News <br><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=1074&pageid=28&pagename=Sci-Tech">http://www.thecutti ngedgenews. com/index. php?article= 1074&pageid=28&pagename=Sci- Tech</a><br><br>Internet
Archive - Genealogy<br><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.archive.org/details/genealogy">http://www.archive. org/details/ genealogy</a><br><br><b>History of southern Oregon, comprising Jackson, Josephine, Douglas,
Curry and Coos countries, comp. from the most authentic sources</b>, by A.G. Walling<br>http://www.archive.org/details/historyofsouther00wall<br><div> </div>Robyn<br><br><font color="#bf005f" size="2" face="bookman old style, new york, times, serif">Interested in Oregon History? Check out my webpages at<br>coquillevalley.org or genealogytrails.com (Coos & Curry Counties)</font><div><br></div></div></font></td></tr><tr><td height="10"> </td></tr></tbody></table></td><td width="90" align="right" valign="top"><img src="cid:1234371474280@dclient.mail.yahoo.com" width="85" height="113" alt="" border="0"></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr><tr><td height="140" bgcolor="#a4c7ed"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" align="right"><tr><td width="*"> </td><td width="1000" height="140" align="right"><img src="cid:1234371474281@dclient.mail.yahoo.com" width="1000" /></td></tr></table></td></tr></tbody></table></div><br>
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