C&RL News, June 2009
Vol. 70, No. 6
by David Free
Tibet Mirror online at Columbia
Columbia University Libraries has placed a new digital library of 97 issues of the Tibet Mirror online. The digitized newspapers date from 1933 to 1961, and offer a total of 844 scanned pages drawn from the rich collections of the C. V. Starr East Asian Library. This Tibetan-language newspaper was published from 1925 to 1963 in Kalimpong, India, and chronicles the most dramatic social and political transformation to have occurred in Tibet during a time when vernacular writing was relatively scarce, and a Tibetan media otherwise nonexistent. Columbia’s holdings represent about 30 percent of the paper’s full run.
The digitized newspaper is a cornerstone of the Starr Library’s Tharchin Collection, which features the papers of Gegen Dorje Tharchin (1889–1976), a Tibetan Christian convert and the renowned editor of the Tibet Mirror. The Tharchin Collection, which is being readied for public access this year, was acquired with support from the Columbia University Libraries’ Primary Resources Acquisitions Program. In addition to final and draft publications (in both modern and traditional formats), the collection also includes correspondence; accounts from 1918 to 1924 and later years; receipts and financial statements; an imprint of a seal designed for the “Future Democratic Tibet Government;” Tibetan hymnals and bibles; scattered photographic prints; advertising solicitations; a list of cotton licenses; and a “Certificate for Traders, Muleteers and Porters.”
The collection is publicly available at www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/digital/collections/cul/texts/ldpd_6981643_000/.
Streaming jazz from Alexander Street
Alexander Street Press has launched Jazz Music Library, a new online collection that currently includes more than 18,000 audio tracks featuring more than 3,800 artists in streaming audio. Available to universities and libraries worldwide and the latest release in Alexander Street’s growing suite of Music Online products, Jazz Music Library gives library users, music faculty, and students at subscribing institutions access to a wide variety of jazz recordings.
The collection includes works licensed from dozens of record labels, including Audiophile, Concord Jazz, Contemporary Records, Fantasy, Jazzology, Milestone, Nessa Records, Original Jazz Classics, Pablo, Prestige, and Riverside. Labels being added include Circle Records, GHB, Good Time Jazz, GRP, Impulse, Peak, Solo Art Records, Stretch Records, Verve, and dozens more. Future releases of the collection will include the NPR radio broadcast series of Marian McPartland’s Peabody award-winning Piano Jazz, as well as rarely heard live performances from the Monterey Jazz and Newport Jazz festivals, together with live recordings from famous jazz venues, including the Village Vanguard, the Blue Note, the Apollo, the Jazz Standard, the Black Hawk, the Five Spot, and many others. Most of these recordings are made available here for the first time.
Teaching tools central to Jazz Music Library include playlists that instructors can annotate and share. Playlists can be shared—either within a subscribing institution or with all subscribers—giving users access to music collections they can replicate and add to, including playlists created for use with specific textbooks or for an introductory jazz class. Additional information about Jazz Music Library is available on the Alexander Street Press Web site at www.alexanderstreet.com/products/jazz.htm.
New HathiTrust digital catalog search
The HathiTrust Digital Library, a partnership among some of the nation’s largest academic research libraries, has launched a new digital catalog search that delivers nearly 3 million full-text records through an Internet browser.
“We are committed to providing solutions for archiving, and vital support for research,” said John Wilkin, HathiTrust executive director and associate university librarian at the University of Michigan. “This new service provides access to the collections of the nation’s premier research libraries. It’s another step in building a worldwide, highly accessible 21st-century digital library.”
The HathiTrust Digital Library, launched in October 2008, includes the 12-university consortium known as the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC), the 11 university libraries of the University of California system, and the University of Virginia. HathiTrust is also currently investigating ways to proficiently use large-scale full-text searching, which will provide researchers with a mechanism to search within the works and across the entire repository.
HathiTrust partners began including digital content from Indiana University and the University of California in late April. The addition of digital content from these institutions increases the number of books and journals in the repository by an estimated 500,000 volumes per month. Before adding these materials, content was exclusively from collections at the University of Michigan and the University of Wisconsin.
Catalog records of the HathiTrust Digital Library are also available to local libraries, which can download and incorporate
HathiTrust records into a local catalog. Many institutions, including the University of Chicago and the University of Colorado, have already successfully integrated the content.
For more information visit www.hathitrust.org.
Scholarly Communication 101 Road Show hosts selected
The ACRL Scholarly Communications Committee has selected five sites from 46 applications to host the “Scholarly Communication 101: Starting with the Basics” workshop this summer. Recognizing that scholarly communication issues are central to the work of all academic librarians and all types of institutions, ACRL is underwriting the costs of delivering this proven content by sending expert presenters on the road. The 46 applications represented nearly 150 colleges, universities, consortia, and library networks from more than 30 states, Canada and Puerto Rico.
The institutions selected are:
• ACRL Louisiana Chapter, Baton Rouge, Louisiana
• Auraria Library, Denver
• State University of New York at Buffalo Libraries
• University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez, Mayagüez
• Washington University in St. Louis
The “Scholarly Communication 101” workshop focuses on new methods of scholarly publishing and communication, open access and openness as a principle, copyright and intellectual property and economics, providing a foundational understanding for attendees. Led by two expert presenters, this structured interactive overview of the scholarly communication system supports individual or institutional strategic planning and action. Host sites are partnering with other institutions in their area to extend the reach to as diverse an audience as possible.
Learn more about ACRL’s scholarly communication initiatives at www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/issues/scholcomm/scholarlycommunication.cfm.
NYU, Seton Hall preserve Guantanamo Bay papers
New York University’s (NYU) Tamiment Library and Seton Hall University’s Center for Policy and Research have announced a new project to document, preserve, and make accessible the legal records and the human stories of the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp. This documentation initiative will collect records relating to the rules governing enemy combatants, legal strategies, prisoner interrogation, government representation of battlefield capture, recidivism, profiles of detainees, the detainees’ stories, and the global detention system established by the Bush administration. The archive will include lawyers’ records and oral histories, detainee oral histories, Department of Defense Web sites, photographs, videotapes, and electronic records.
The Guantanamo documentation project is codirected by Mark Denbeaux, professor of law at Seton Hall University Law School and director of the Center for Policy and Research; Jonathan Hafetz, adjunct professor of law at Seton Hall; and Michael Nash, director of the Tamiment Library and codirector of the
Frederic Ewen Academic Freedom Center at NYU.
News from EBSCO
EBSCO recently released Dentistry & Oral Sciences Source, a new database containing cover-to-cover indexing and abstracts for 160 journals and dozens of monographs in the areas of dentistry. Dentistry & Oral Sciences Source includes indexing for all dentistry and oral sciences journals commonly purchased by dental schools and other related institutions. Dentistry & Oral Sciences Source includes an unprecedented collection of important full-text journals, as well as dozens of full-text monographs. The collection includes more than 130 journals, including many of the top ranked titles in the discipline.
In addition, EBSCO is developing a new discovery layer to harvest metadata from internal and external sources, creating a centralized pre-indexed service of unprecedented size and speed. EBSCO Discovery Service will provide libraries with a single, simple entry point for research and launch users into the entirety of a library’s collection. The new service is expected by the end of the calendar year. EBSCO Discovery Service will allow for “local” access to the metadata associated with EBSCO Publishing’s databases, e-journals from more than 400 publishers, and additional resources from other partners.
Due to a newly announced partnership with OCLC, local indexing of WorldCat will add rapid access to the metadata for 130 million books, videos, and music CDs. Locally indexed content will also include the wide-ranging news and information resources from NewsBank and the comprehensive digital collections from its Readex division. Alexander Street Press is also participating, allowing access to its historical archive, music, and video collections. Visit www.ebscohost.com for complete details.
University of Tennessee Libraries digitize Civil War journals
The latest addition to the University of Tennessee (UT) Libraries’ digital collections provides an intimate look into the daily life of a Civil War soldier. Three journals kept by Union soldier Henry Pippitt describe life in Company G of the 104th Ohio Volunteer Infantry during the American Civil War.
The Henry Pippitt collection is unusual in that it covers a Civil War regiment’s entire term of service, constituting a history of the 104th Ohio as well as a glimpse into Henry Pippitt's life as a soldier. Pippitt enlisted into the 104th in August 1862 as a private and mustered out in June 1865. During the intervening years, he participated in military campaigns throughout the South. His journals describe battles, troop movements, and camp conditions. He also writes of foraging for food, his unit’s reception in towns that they pass, men wounded, and men taken prisoner.
The diaries are the property of the Cleo Redd Fisher Museum in Loudonville, Ohio, which graciously allowed the UT Libraries to digitize the journals and make them available online. The journals are accessible through UT’s Digital Library Initiatives Web site. Researchers can view images of the original documents at www.dlc.lib.utk.edu/pippitt.
|
ACRL Board of Directors set strategic priorities The ACRL Board of Directors has adopted a set of six strategic priorities designed to continue the association’s forward progress over the next five years. At the recent ACRL 14th National Conference in Seattle, the Board reviewed the Charting Our Future: ACRL Strategic Plan 2020 document, taking into consideration progress to date, member needs, and external factors. As a result, the Board identified six strategic objectives as priorities for 2009–13. |