Microfilm? Are people still using that?
Are you kidding? Here’s what Bernie Madoff’s liquidation trustee Irving Picard had to say: “I expect these claim statistics will change as we continue to review and evaluate them. For example, we are finding that more than one claim may have been clipped together [and] are being broken apart. We have visibility back to 1983, but think we can go back into the late seventies,” he said, adding that microfilm and microfiche are the principal sources of data that are being examined for that period. (Bold letters were added by me for emphasis. Click here for the full article)
I came across an article from yesterday’s Gainesville (GA) Times that explains, better than anything I’ve read, about the importance of microfilm. It also talks about how digitization makes information easier to use and provides greater access to the information. Read the full article here.
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, by now you’ve heard about newspapers and books getting digitized and made accessible over the Internet or on the new ebook readers. I ran across a blog that illustrates exactly how one teacher is using digitized newspapers as an educational tool. What’s even cooler about it is that this particular teacher uses newspaperarchive.com. It’s nice to see our website being used in this manner!
This month we celebrate American Archives month, and thus, the importance of archives. So . . . what is an archive? Here is one definition: “an archive is a collection of individual publications that are often cataloged or listed and made accessible in some way. Magazines, journals, and newspapers with Web sites sometimes refer to their back issues as an archive.” Here is a much simpler one: “An archive is a repository for records of historical value.”
Actually, I like the second definition better than the first. It defines an archive in a much broader sense. The biggest “thing” with archives is getting them indexed so you can go to one place, one spreadsheet, one database, search for what you’re looking for, and find where it is located. With that accomplished, researchers can actually find what they are looking for.
My position gives me the pleasure of being able to work with, among other things, archivists. The ones I’ve worked with have all been dedicated, devoted, and passionate about what they do. Of course, I’ve found that same dedication and enthusiasm with librarians, historians and genealogists. These are amazing people. They toil away, mostly un-noticed and under-appreciated. These people are the keepers of our history, our heritage. Learn more about what archivists do by going to this link for the Society of American Archivists.
Until July 6, 2009, if you wanted to see any of the Codex Sinaiticus, touted as the world’s oldest Bible (and perhaps the first real book), you would need to travel to the British Library in London, the Monastery of St. Catherine in Sinai, the National Library in Russia, or the Leipzig University Library in Germany. And then you would only see portions of the Codex. No one institute had all the pieces, although the British Library did have the most.
Now, thanks to a 4 year project begun in 2005 and spearheaded by the British Library, anyone with a computer (or access to one at their local public library), and an Internet connection, can see this historic work from the comfort of their home. I took a look at it myself. Here is what I saw:
Would you look at the quality of the calligraphy!? Of course, since I can’t read Greek written in Uncial script I’m not sure what I’m looking at. Then again, I’m not a Bible scholar, either.
But I can certainly appreciate the significance of what we have been presented with. Christian or not, this is a historical book that has been made available to all for the first time in almost 1,600 years. I’ll leave it up to the scholars (Biblical and otherwise) to debate the meaning of what is in this book that is not in the current Bible.
What I do see here is the growing significance of digitization. This project could not have been done using film, primarily because the leaves could not travel, and therefore had to be photographed at four different venues with different equipment! And because it was done digitally, it could all be brought together, and now we all can see it online. No travel involved.
Actually, I hope the British Library, upon completion of the project, took these images and put them on computer output microfilm. Then we have true preservation of these images.
Chronicling America made the news a couple of weeks ago for hitting the one million page mark. This project, started in 2007, is produced by the National Digital Newspaper Program, which in turn is a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Library of Congress, and the states, “to provide enhanced access to United States newspapers published between 1836 and 1922.” This enhanced access will be accomplished through digitizing of “historically significant titles that are aggregated and permanently maintained by the Library of Congress.” This content is made available free of charge on the Chronicling America’s website.
This really is an accomplishment, and I can truly appreciate the amount of work that has gone, and will continue to go, into this project. Can you imagine being the one who has to decide which pages, out of your entire collection of newspapers on microfilm, are “historically significant”? For example, I know that the Oklahoma History Center has over 12,000 reels of microfilm for their state, and that covers just newspapers published before 1923! If you estimate that each reel of microfilm contains approximately 850 images (pages), that amounts to around 10,200,000 newspaper pages. Each state gets to choose 100,000 pages to be digitized and put on the Chronicling America’s website.
The project provides a grant to each participating state to pay for the digitization. What a fantastic plus this is for the states. Not only are budgets in general being cut, but budgets for this type of project are almost non-existent. To add to the pain, the digitization specifications of the project are very stringent. Now, the really hard part is, you have to decide which 1% of these pages should be digitized because they are historically significant. Oh my!
Check out the website for this project. You will see some great stuff. Kudos to everyone involved in this project, from the Library of Congress, National Endowment for the Humanities, and those folks at the state level who are the ones who have to make it happen.
P.S. Sorry people, I can’t help myself. I just found out that newspaperARCHIVE.com (who I happen to work for) just passed the two million page mark - for the month of June!
In couple of my previous blogs I talked about textbooks going digital, and how comfortable today’s young adult is with getting their “content” in digital format, be it on their computer, PDA, or cellphone. Now we have a university taking the initiative and making digital images from their rare collections available for viewing on your iPhone.
A group of students at Stanford University have a software development company called Terriblyclever Designs. Their first app was the iStanford, which includes a university directory, maps, real-time information about school sports, and a course directory. Cool stuff. Duke University had them take it a step further with their DukeMobile. Read more about the DukeMobile app here
Textbooks on tablet computers. Now digitized images from rare collections on your iPhone. The age of digital content isn’t coming, folks. It’s already here!
In my last blog I talked about school textbooks going digital. Now comes news from the Brigham Young University that their Harold B. Lee Library has purchased three of Amazon’s Kindle for interlibrary loans. It has started, folks.
Read more about this at LibraryJournal.com
On June 8, 2009, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced his latest idea to save money for his money-crunched state: do away with textbooks. “Textbooks are outdated, in my opinion. For so many years, we’ve been trying to teach the kids exactly the same way. Our kids get their information from the internet, downloaded onto their iPods, and in Twitter feeds to their cell phones … Basically, kids are feeling as comfortable with their electronic devices as I was with my pencils and crayons.”
OK, maybe I should’ve seen that one coming. He’s right, of course, about the comfort level of “kids” with electronic devices. And he’s right about students having to “lug around antiquated, heavy, expensive textbooks?” Remember the stack of books you had to carry when you were in school? Not only is a digital device lighter than a textbook, what about the timeliness of the content? Most current science textbooks still list Pluto as a planet. Digital content can be updated constantly.
Even though I work with libraries, historical and genealogical societies to get their historical content digitized so it is: a) totally indexed; b) totally text-searchable; and c) available to more people, I still balk at reading a book on an electronic device, such as Amazon’s Kindle or Sony’s Digital Book. I still like the tactile feel of the book in my hand, turning the pages, leaving my bookmark when I’m done reading for the day.
Kind of like reading a newspaper. I like that ability to visually scan a page (that I am holding in my hands) so I can quickly see which article I want to read. And yet, I do get a lot of my daily news intake from Google News. If there’s something I want to keep my eye on, I set up an “Alert”, which then scans for online articles that contain the content I set up in my alert, and voila! I get an email. I can’t do that with my newspaper.
I gotta tell you a quick story about how great it is to search digitized newspapers. I searched newspaperarchive.com by just my name - no date, no city, just my name. I found an article about my band winning a local talent contest, and that we were headed to the state competition. Because of that article and the triggered memory, I re-connected with two of the members that I haven’t seen in 30 years. The article was dated October 16, 1967!
Governor Schwarzenneger estimates the state will save $400 million by going with digital textbooks. What about the environmental impact of not having to print all those textbooks? Like I said, I guess I should’ve seen this coming. This is just one more way to make “content” king, to save money, to literally lighten the load our schoolchildren must carry. There are pros and cons to any solution. This is one solution I think merits more attention.
I’ll leave you with one last thought: If “pro” is the opposite of “con”, what is the opposite of progress?
