Earlier this week UNESCO had a couple of additions to their World Heritage Site list. World Heritage Sites can include natural locations, buildings, monuments, and entire cities, and are believed to be of significant interest for humanity. In 1972, UNESCO created the program, initially know as the Convention Concerning the Protection of World Cultural and Natural Heritage, and it aimed at identifying significant sites, cataloging and conserve them for all our of enjoyment. On occasion this new status can obtain funds from the World Heritage Fund for preservation. As of last year there were a total of 830 designated sites.

This week the Sydney Opera House, built in 1973, and was declared a “great artistic monument accessible to society at large” by UNESCO, and India’s Red Fort Complex, completed in 1648 was said to include “all phases of Indian history from the Mughal period to independence”.

Other sites that to have been previously designated World Heritage Sites include the Iwami Ginzan Silver Mines on Honshu Island, Japan, Richtersveld mountainous desert region in South Africa, and Namibia’s Twyfelfontein. Click here for the complete list.

You can read more about this in the recent BBC article.

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In April, Ireland came up with a very creative way of helping author collect royalties for their world, while simultaneously making their work available to the largest group of people. The Department of Trade and Employment set up a system by which authors gather royalties each time their works are checked out at the library, better yet, this set up doesn’t cost the patron a cent. Some countries have extended this system to include CDs, audio-visual material and works of art.

This set up is formally know as the Public Lending Right (PLR), and its intent is to compensate authors for potential sale losses when their work is made available through public libraries. Currently about 30 countries have Public Lending Rights, including Canada, the UK, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Netherlands, Israel, Australia, New Zealand and all the Scandinavian countries. There is some discussion of expending Public Lending Rights to cover all of the EU. PLR was first implemented in Denmark in 1946, and was followed shortly after by Norway in 1947, then the UK in 1979.

How Public Lending Rights are implemented tends to vary from country to country. The main division seems to be between countries that consider PLR part of copyright law, and those nations which wish to support culture, with a particular emphasis on local authors. Other differences include, whether foreign residing authors are excluded or not, payments often varies, with some countries making payment for each time a book is loaned, while others base the decision solely on whether the library owns the book.

The initiative is not without detractors. Some of the discontent in the EU circles around the issue of whether or not a country is conforming with EU Directives of Lending and Rental Rights while implementing PLR. These directives establish a framework that gives author and other right holders exclusive rights to license or prohibit lending. Along these lines, the PLR International has set up a website with advice for countries with existing PLR, and to council others considering the change.

Here is a paper presented at IFLA in 2002 about the issue, mainly as it concerns the EU.

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Kiva means “unity” in Swahili, but it is also a fascinating new way to help empower people in the developing world. After working in East Africa, two Stanford business students created Kiva.org in 2006, to promote one-on-one relations between lenders in the developed world and new entrepreneurs in the developing world. The site allows people to lend money, interest free, to others starting business. The site not only eliminated high lending fees, but also the usual bureaucracy involved in such transactions.

Kiva works by allowing you to lend as little as $25 through your credit card. This money will be loaned to the project of your choice and after the agreed upon time your loan will be paid back. At this time you can either withdraw your money, or reinvest it. Since internet is not always available, Kiva works with local organizations that help find potential borrowers, and helps direct the loans, or with international organization such as Mercy Corps.

Kiva’s marketing has continued to take advantage of the internet, and partners with giants such as Google, Yahoo, MySpace, Paypal, Starbucks, and YouTube, among others to promote the organization and the work they do. Kiva also sponsors fellows who will commit to spending at least 10 weeks in a host country,while getting to know the culture, and conducting interviews which will then be hosted on the organization’s website.

You can read a blog about the organization, and the projects it helps fund here. Carol Pucci of the Seattle Times also wrote an article about her experience with Kiva in funding a project in Bulgaria.

A similar project is run by Globalgiving.com, who connects donors to recipients.

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This morning the BBC has an article about the first all-female UN peacekeeping troop. The group is comprised of 105 Indian women, who have been based in Liberia for the last 6 months. The group was initially set up as an experiment, and it was gone so well that their mission has been extended to a full year.

The women who make up this troop were selected from all over India and have been trained in drug raids, law enforcement, and crowd control among other things. It is also hoped that their presence will encourage local women to join local law enforcement groups. There is a push to bring more women into law enforcement in hopes to curb down sexual assault and exploitation, as well as helping local women feel safer.

Women in UN peacekeeping troops have been woefully underrepresented. In 2006 women made up only 4% of all peacekeeping troops. The UN currently encourages women to become involved in peacekeeping; here are a few highlighted stories.

Women have been making their mark as soldieries elsewhere around the world. Spain’s arms forces are currently 15% women, the Chinese island of Xisha also host an all women trope. Still it’s really too bad that so many of these articles focus not on the merit and ability of these women, but on their ability to add to the beautiful scenery (Israel recently had the “lovely idea” of having women soldiers pose in their underwear for Maxim magazine in order to boost the country’s image abroad!), or focus on how much these women miss their families (as if any soldier station abroad won’t miss their family).

The Christian Science Monitor has another article on the matter.

Image from Grewal, Shabnam. “All girl UN squad a success”, BBC, June 21, 2007.

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Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in NYC is currently housing the Design for the other 90% exhibit which displays clever designs that solve basic needs for the world’s poor. Today, entrepreneurs of all kinds tend to cater to the wealthiest portion of the world’s population, encouraging them to buy stuff they could have never imagined they “needed,” aiming at changing this trend this exhibit displays items that facilitate daily life around the world.

Some of the designs include a donut shaped jug of water that can be pulled by a child, helping women and girls in the arduous chore of gathering water. There is also the Lifestraw which kills bacteria as water is sucked through it. Another one of the projects highlighted is the One Laptop per Child initiative, which aims at narrowing the digital divide between the rich and the poor.

Amy Smith, from MIT has also been working on creating simple solutions for everyday problems. Along with students from MIT, she has created an incubator that can stay warm without electricity, a simple grain mill, and tools that convert farm waste into clean-burning charcoal. To learn more about her projects, you can view this interview on the TED: Ideas Worth Spreading website.

The NYT has a short article, including pictures, about the exhibit today, you can read it here.

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A new technology is emerging in Zimbabwe, one that uses cell phone messages to exchange currency for goods. Mukuru.com is a company that has set up a system by which you can order fuel for friends and family in Zimbabwe and South Africa. Today, as people immigrate in search for opportunities, and are often force to leave behind children and relatives, this new service allows those abroad to continue helping back home, while reducing the amount of red tape involved. The site allows you to buy gasoline (prices are British pounds), and the relative back home will receive a text message with a coupon to pick up it up.

Similar sites are also starting to emerge for other basic goods. Zimland.com allows you to buy groceries, while Zimbuyer.com goes even further, by offering groceries, as well as furniture and even generators for family members back home.

These sites seem to be catching on rather quickly in Zimbabwe, not only for their convenience, but also because they provide an alternative to costly money wires; an important issues, since the Zimbabwean government has been cracking down on the back market and unregulated foreign currency exchanges.

I think this is a very ingenious alternative, and I can see if catching on in other developing countries that have large communities abroad.

Read more about this in a BBC article.

Image info here.

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Room to Read is an amazing nonprofit organization founded by John Wood, a former executive at Microsoft who had his life flipped upside down after traveling to Nepal. On this trip Wood realized that books are very scarce in many corners of the world, and while at a local school a man commented that maybe Wood might return some day with books. This simple comment stayed with him, and indeed he did return, not just once, but repeatedly, and with books, lots of them.

Today this simple idea of bringing books to people who need them has become a major organization dedicated to bringing not only libraries, but educational opportunities to people in need. Room to Read began in Nepal, but has expanded into Cambodia, India, Laos, Sri Lanka, Vietnam and South Africa. Room to Read has also started granting scholarships for girls to attend school, creating opportunities for young girls who might otherwise never have gotten a chance to attend school. The organization has also branched into publishing, printing books with local, relevant stories and in bilingual editions. They are also working on creating computer & language labs. The idea is to narrow the digital divide, and to help children become world players by being able to engage the world both in their native language as well as in English.

Room to Reads success has likely come from Wood’s endless dedication to this mission, as much as to the fact that he has surrounded himself with highly motivated people and has worked hard to keep the organization’s overhead costs as low as possible. In the coming years they hope to begin working in Latin America, and continue expanding in Asia.

John Wood has written a book recounting his story of how this organization came to be; “Leaving Microsoft to Change the World.”

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Later this year the project to create an Encyclopedia of Life will pick up speed for this ambitious project. The encyclopedia was first proposed by scientist E.O. Wilson who wished to see a type of “one stop shop” for information on the natural sciences; it’s aim is to be the next step up from an earlier project from the University of Arizona called the Tree of Life Web Project. With an initial founding of $12.5 million from the MacArthur Foundation, and the Sloan Foundation, yesterday the beginnings of this encyclopedia were formally revealed to the public. (The completed project is expected to cost $100 million, and take 10 years to complete.)

The idea is to collaborate with all the libraries and repositories in the world who gather information on the natural sciences and aggregate all this information in one location. Yet, as so many individuals have access to post their own material on the web, researchers are working on creating a new software program called “bots” that will trawl the web for further relevant information. The information found in this manner is to then be corroborated by scientist before linking or posting it to the encyclopedia.

A million books and 250,000 research papers from the Natural History Museum in Chicago will be available through the encyclopedia, with much more to come. And while the initial projection is just to gather existing information, the project’s leaders realize that todays technology allows for great collaboration. They realize that just anyone who gets a good picture while on a nature walk, or while bird watching will want to share their discoveries and the encyclopedia will allow for this as well. They also foresee a lot of comparative research to arise for the site.

As it stands, the Encyclopedia of Life has a few sample pages up which show the structure of what is to come. The idea is that every species will get it’s own page, including common and scientific name, type, an image, location, explanation, and even videos where applicable. Each page will also give credit to the creator and will provide sources and expert references. The project is starting off with the bigger species, and leaving amoebas and the like, that can’t always be so clearly defined into species for later on.

The encyclopedia also wishes to be free and in doing so is part of the Linking Open Data Project, which aims at making data available to everyone. There is more on this collaboration at AI3 (Adaptive Information, Adaptive Innovation, Adaptive Infrastructure).

The Guardian has an article about this project today. Boston.com had another article a few days ago.

26.02.08 – On Thursday the Encyclopedia of Life released the first 30,000 pages of information, with an expectation of close to 2 million more to come. Much of the initial information available here has been gathered through software designed to search the web for content. There is an emphasis on species that much is known about such as amphibians, fish and plants. You can read about this in a NYT article here, and from a BBC article here.

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Usually library fundraisers might involved a party, reading event or book sale, but a few libraries have come up with creative alternatives all their own. The National Library of Peru was recently renovated, and now has a functioning pool. The library offers swimming lessons and raises money this way. This method will also attract non-traditional patrons into the library, who will then, hopefully, become regular patrons.

The city library of Vienna is currently running a sex hotline to raise money for their library. Here, Austrian actress Anne Bennent reads erotica in German, both original pieces and translations. The program was organized in collaboration with the Aktionsradius Wien cultural organization. The call cost about 53 US cents a minute, and the library estimates that they already have about 660 minutes worth of calls. You can read more about this projects from the American Libraries Online, the article is here.

It’s all fair when trying to keep libraries afloat!

08.21.07 – The Montana Library Association has found another interesting way of raising money. They are putting out a 2008 calendar called “Montana Book Babes: Librarians Under the Big Sky.” The calendar features real librarians along with a brief bio of each model. Calendars are $20 and can be purchased here.

01.30.08 – Here’s another calendar trying to raise funds, “The Mildly Attractive Men of SLIS” (These funds will be used towards helping library students at USC attend the World Library and Information Congress “Libraries Without Borders: Navigating Towards Global Understanding”, which will take place in Quebec, August 2008.) Cheers to the guys who helped out with this cause!

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Just a couple of weeks after the incidents at Virginia Tech, the university’s Center for Digital Discourse and Culture (CDDC) with help from George Mason University’s Center for History of New Media (CHNM) have created the April 16 Archive, an electronic archive to share and preserve related information in digital format. Their press release announces that people from around the world are encourage to look at the site and contribute as desired.

This site has been created using technologies previously used in projects such as The September 11 Digital Archive, Mozilla Digital Memory Bank, and the Hurricane Digital Memory Bank (full list of projects). These technologies arose from the CHNM, and have been created to democratize history by including a wide variety of voices to the narrative that will eventually make it to posterity. Among the tools that you can access for free to create a similar site, are tools to build a web scrapbook, create polls, and others to help you keep track of the websites you’ve visited for citation purposes. There are also other tools specifically designed for historians, which include help with understanding history preservation in digital format, blogs, and wikis. All of these tools can be used for free (I assume they are based on opensource software, but I can’t find anything on their website that clearly states this).

All of these digital banks clearly show just how technology has evolved to allow us to witness history as it is unfolding. They also help diversify accounts, including the voices of literally anyone, not just those in power. It’s a perfect example of Wed 2.0.

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