Found History

Dan Cohen and I have been brewing a proposal for an edited book entitled Hacking the Academy. Let’s write it together, starting at THATCamp. And let’s do it in one week. Can an algorithm edit a journal? Can a library exist without books? Can students build and manage their own learning management platforms? Can a [...]

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This one made the rounds of Twitter earlier today thanks to Jo Guldi. This month Wired Magazine tells a cautionary tale for those following the progress of Google Books. Entitled “Google’s Abandoned Library of 700 Million Titles,” the article reminds readers of Google’s 2001 acquisition of a Usenet archive of more than 700 million articles [...]

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For the past few years, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has undertaken a series of public-private digitization partnerships, especially with a company called Footnote.com. These partnerships provide NARA with free digitization services, and visitors to NARA’s reading rooms with access to the products, but allow Footnote.com and NARA’s other private partners to charge [...]

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Originally published in the journal Archival Science, the Smithsonian Institution Libraries has just released under open access terms a report of the Institution’s experience with Flickr Commons. Written by Martin Kalfatovic, Effie Kapsalis, Katherine Spiess, Anne Van Camp, and Mike Edson, the report recounts what the authors deem a mostly successful experiment with Web 2.0, [...]

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Via Mashable, yet another timeline service: Timetoast. Many readers will have seen this already, but Robert Darton’s February piece in The New York Review of Books is the most readable discussion I have seen of the Google Books settlement. Fresh + New(er), the Powerhouse Museum’s always interesting blog, describes that museum’s recent open house for [...]

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Creative Commons has released a statistical analysis of the licensing choices of Flickr users. My summary: most people are happy to provide open access, but they don’t want you messing with their stuff. Some commentators lament the fact that so few Flickr users allow derivative works or commercial use of their materials. But for me [...]

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The American Association of State and Local History (AASLH) provides cultural heritage professionals with some relevant information on surviving the economic downturn. JISC provides advice on choosing (or not choosing) a Creative Commons license. Missed it at the launch? Didn’t see the point? Don’t know where to start? Ars Technica has a nice reintroduction and [...]

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