The current USA administrations is keeping its word of making more information available to everyone. Today, 120 into the new administration the site Data.gov has been launched. This new site aims at providing data in a variety of formats that web developers can convert into web applications.

Here’s an article in today’s Washington Post commenting on this project, and other White House initiatives towards being more accesible.

La actual administración en la Casa Blanca esta guardando su palabra de ser más accesible. Hoy, 120 días desde el cambio de mando están lanzando un nuevo sitio web llamado Data.gov que proveerá data en una variedad de formatos, y que cualquiera podrá convertir en aplicaciones web.

Aquí hay un artículo (en inglés) en el Washington Post de hoy explicando un poco más el proyecto y otras iniciativas parecidas de la Casa Blanca.

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Today the World Digital Library goes live! The project has been in the works for about 4 years now, and was initially conceived by James Billington of the USA Library of Congress (LOC), and developed by UNESCO and LOC. The site will function in seven languages and will showcase digital treasures from around the globe and throughout the ages. It is hoped that the site will help promote international understanding and expand non-English, non-Western content online.

¡Hoy la Biblioteca Digital Mundial se lanza en vivo! El proyecto ha estado en las planeación cerca de 4 años y fue inicialmente concebido por James Billington de la Biblioteca del Congreso de EE.UU. (LOC), y desarrollado por la UNESCO y la LOC. El sitio funcionará en siete idiomas y mostrará tesoros digitales de todo el mundo y a lo largo de los siglos. Se espera que el sitio ayudará a promover el entendimiento internacional y expandir el contenido de la web en idiomas diferentes al inglés, y de regiones no occidentales.

This really is a fascinating collection. You can search it by geographic region, time period, topic, holding institution, and type of item. While looking  you’ll find old photographs, curated videos, detailed explanations of the items, and links to share these treasures through some of the most commons web 2.0 venues, such as Facebook and Twitter.

Esta realmente es una colección fascinante. Se puede buscar por región geográfica, período de tiempo, tema, institución, y el tipo de elemento. Mientras ojea la colección encontrará fotografías viejas, videos, explicaciones detalladas de los artículos, y enlaces pare compartir estos tesoros a través de algunos de los más comunes sitios web 2.0, tales como Facebook y Twitter.

You can read the full review I wrote about this project on October 18, 2007 here. And an article from the Guardian about the release here.

Usted puede leer la revisión completa que escribí acerca de este proyecto el 18 de octubre de 2007 aquí. Y un artículo de The Guardian aquí.

The chigüiros above are part of the collection titled “Through the Brazilian Wilderness, by Theodore Roosevelt.”

Los chigüiros en la fotografía son parte de la colección titulada “A través del desierto de Brasil, por Theodore Roosevelt”.

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I just read about a call for help to assist in the saving of hundreds of years worth of information on birds’ migrating patters. The North American Bird Phenology Program has 6 million note cards, dating back to the 1880s sitting in a Basement in Virginia, which they need help converting into digital files. There’s a call for volunteers to help transcribe this information, which they explain can help scientists trace bird patters, which in turn can help explore patters in climate change. Volunteers are asked to take a 15 minute online tutorial, and are then given access to hundreds of these cards to be manually transcribed into a database. Volunteers can work from the comfort of their home while helping preserve this information. If you wish to help, here’s the contact link.

Turns out that there is a World Migratory Bird Day to be held during May 9 – 10. Learn more about the event here.

You can read more about this project from an article in Wired.

Image info.

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I really enjoyed my visit to the Prado Museum back in 2001 and was delighted to find out that the museum and Google have formed a partnership to make 14 of the museum’s holdings available to the world for free and up close and personal. What the project does is provide users very detailed views of certain masterpieces, offering images with resolutions of 14,000 megapixel. This allows used to get so close you will be able to see the brush strokes. Some of the art work includes pieces by Francisco de Goya, Diego Velázquez, Peter Paul Rubens, and Heironymus Bosch.

The Prado’s director explain that the museum allowed for the digital files to be created because it they would provide another tool to check the quality of restorations done on the original pieces. And as of right now there appears to be no other similar projects, in the works, with other museums.

You can download Google Earth here, and visit the Prado’s website here. You can read an article from the Guardian on the subject matter here, and you can read the Prado’s news release on the project here.

Image; Immaculate Conception by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo.

Cuando estuve en España en el 2001, realmente disfrute mi visita al Prado, y ahora me entero que el museo se ha unido a Google para traernos 14 de sus obras, que estarán a la disposición del mundo, completamente gratis. El proyecto nos ofrece acércanos a estas obras de una manera que nisiquiera es posible visitando el museo. La imágenes tiene una resolución de 14.000 megapíxeles, y a tal resolución podremos ver hasta las pinceladas que cada maestro. Este proyecto incluye obras de Francisco de Goya, Diego Velázquez, Peter Paul Rubens, y Hieronymus Bosch.

El director del Prado explico que el museo permitió que se hicieran estas imágenes por que ellas permitirían evaluar la calidad de las restauraciones que se han hecho a estas obras. Pero por ahora, no hay signos de que Google tiene planes de duplicar este proyecto con otros de los museos del mundo.

Usted podrá descargar Google Earth aquí, y podrá visitar el sitio web del Prado aquí. También podrá leer un articulo del Guardian sobre el asunto aquí, y encontrara el comunicado de prensa del museo aquí.

Imagen: Inmaculada Concepción, de Giovanni Battista Tiepolo.

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A couple days ago I heard an interview with James Boyle on NPR that reminded me of a lot of information related issues that I have previously discussed with other librarians (and my father). See Boyle bring up the issue that current copyright laws are actually a disservice to the general public. While no one wants the author of any piece, be it in writing, audio or visual format to be robbed of their intellectual products, we also need to think of the needs of the general public.

Copyright is supposed to give the intellectual author of a piece credit and when appropriate, income from their work. All this is great, the problems begin when people begin extending these rights for increasingly long periods of time, and passing these rights down through the generations. In effect this creates a scenario where an increasingly larger amount of information is under copyright, but out of print, and therefore out of reach to most users.

For a little historical background, the Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) dates back to 1998, when copyright in the USA was extended by an additional 20 years. Before copyright would last the lifetime of the author, plus an additional 50 years, 75 years in the case of a corporate authorship. Fair enough, but now the extended term says the copyright holder has copyright for a lifetime plus 70 years, and 120 years for corporate authorship. These extended dates are making more and more information inaccessible to users.

I’ve discussed these issues with my father because he works as a scientist in a third world country and he is often frustrated by finding so much intellectual material inaccessible. The organization where he works has little money to buy access to the large (and expensive) journal databases, the fact that he lives outside the USA means that mailing documents back and forth is difficult, costly and timely. So how is he supposed to get current information to keep up to date in his field? He’s been forced to increasingly rely on Google Scholar, which he thinks is a great source to find useful citations, but often doesn’t provide full text article. And we’re back to large amounts of information being out of the reach of users.

All this brings me back to the issues of copyright, and in Boyle’s case to the Public Domain. As a people it is in our collective best interest to be educated. There are plenty of books, pieces of music, movies and the like that have become part of our collective understanding of the world, and we should all be able to use these works. And I’m not advocating that authors get the short end of the stick and not be able to claim copyright. Everyone who produces intellectual material of some kind or other should be given full credit for their work, and should be allowed to profit from it when appropriate, but I don’t see why this person’s offspring or trust holder should continue to make money off their work when they are not the authors. Likewise it bothers me that this situation prevents people like my father from being able to access material in an inexpensive and timely manner.

Fortunately a few things are changing. For one people are starting to publish in the public domain, making their work available under licenses such as Creative Commons. (Even president elect Obama has begun using them!) Universities such as Harvard are encouraging their faculty to embrace open access and sites such as the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) are helping us find more and more information that is freely available to us.

Coming back to that NPR interviews, you should check out James Boyle’s book The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind. He will give you much more detail on the subject, and true to his word, you can either purchase the book, of download the entire thing for free from his website!

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A couple weeks ago Google come out with one more impressive online collection. This time it’s the LIFE Photo Archive. Most of us have probably seen the powerful images that have been printed in LIFE Magazine over the decades. Google’s press release explains that only a small percentage of this archive has been made public, but now we get to see a much larger portion of the collection.

From the front page of the collection you can browse images by decade, as well as use the search box to find more specific images. Some of the options include searching for individual people, places, sports, cultures and events. The site also suggest we add “source:life” to searches to make sure the images we get are the ones from this collection.

While looking through some of the images, I’ve found that results show you a variety of images, but if you open an individual image, you’ll find tags related to the image, information as to where the photograph was taken, the date, and size of image (You have the option of two sizes for all images). When available, you are also given a few “related images.”

The images you’ll find are for the most part photographs, although there are a few posters, and pieces of art work as well. Currently the collections begins back in the 1860s, and reaches the 1970s. The plan is to eventually catch up with current times.

The collection is really great, so happy browsing!

Image: “Cats Blackie & Brownie catching squirts of milk during milking at Arch Badertscher’s dairy farm” by Nat Farbman.

Hace un par de semanas Google salio con otra impresionante colección. Esta vez se trata de la colección LIFE Photo Archive. Muchos de nosotros probablemente hemos vista algunas de las impactantes imágenes que han salido en la revista LIFE a través de las décadas. El comunicado de presa de Google explica que solo una pequeña parte de esta colección alguna vez se ha puesto a la disposición del público, pero ahora tendremos la oportunidad de una porción mucho más grande.

Desde la página principal de la colección podrá ojear por década, al igual que usar la caja de búsqueda para conducir una búsqueda más específica. Algunas de las opciones de búsqueda incluyen buscar por persona individual, lugares, deportes, cultura, y eventos. El sitio también nos sugiere que agreguemos “source:life” a nuestra búsqueda para asegurar que los resultados realmente sean parte de esta colección.

Mientras miraba algunas de las imágenes me he dado cuenta que los resultados nos muestran una variedad de imágenes, información sobre donde se tomo la foto, fecha, y el tamaño de la imagen (tendrá opción de dos tamaños diferentes). Cuando haya imágenes relacionadas con esta, también le serán disponibles.

Las imágenes que encontraran son en su mayoría fotografías, aunque también encontrara algunos afiches, y obras de arte. Actualmente la colección empieza en el año 1860 y llega hasta 1970. El plan es eventualmente ponerse al día con el presente.

Esta colección es realmente asombrosa, así es que a diviértete ojeándola!
Imagen “Cats Blackie & Brownie catching squirts of milk during milking at Arch Badertscher’s dairy farm” de Nat Farbman.

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Mujer desnuda con espejo, Goya

Spain’s National Library has recently set the Biblioteca Digital Hispánica to highlight some of its most valuable items, including paintings, photographs, maps, and written texts spanning several centuries. The collection can be browsed through its main categories, or can be searched by keywords. The site also connects you to a number of other digital collections related to Spanish history and culture, such as the Biblioteca Cataluña, the Digital Library of the Royal Gardens, the Biblioteca Digital Vasca, the Memorias Digitales de Canarias, and the Colección Digital Complutenseamong many others.

La Biblioteca Nacional de España esta resaltando algunas de sus más valiosas pertenencias, incluyendo pinturas, fotografías, mapas y textos que cubren varios siglos, en la Biblioteca Digital Hispánica. La colección puede ser ojeada atreves de búsquedas por varias categorías ya establecidas, o se pueden conducir búsquedas por medio de palabras claves. El sitio también lo conectada a otra cantidad de colecciones digitales relacionadas con la historia y cultura Española. Estas incluyen la Biblioteca Cataluña, la Biblioteca Digital del Real Jardín Botánico, la Biblioteca Digital Vasca, las Memorias Digitales de Canarias, y la Colección Digital Complutense, entre muchas otras.

You can access the site here.

Puede entrar al sitio aquí.

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Google as set out with the ambitious goal of digitizing as many news papers (large and small, national and international), as they can get their hands on. These digital files are keyword searchable, and offer a closer look at newspaper headlines, advertisement and complete articles. The project started in 2006 with a partnership with the New York Times and the Washington Post, in which Google offered access to the indexes of both newspapers digital collections.

You can search for old newspapers through the Google News Archive.

You can reach the full news release on this story here.

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Turning the Pages is a great collection digitized books, at the British Library, that allow you to turn the pages and almost experience the real thing. The works included in this project include some very old books, such as the first atlas of Europe, Blake’s notebooks, sketches by Leonardo DaVinci, and the original Alice in Wonderland, among others. To actually see the books you will need Shockwave, but the site also has static, annotated, images of the same works that include audio.

Image; Blackwell’s Herbal – Female Peony and Iris, plates 65 and 69.

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At ALA I sat in on a great presentation titled Digitizing Indian Country. The first presentation was on Alaska’s Digital Archives. The collection brings together photographs, oral histories, maps, moving images and other files that record the state’s history between 1860 until the early years of statehood. Material was gathered partially through an invitation to the state’s community to share their photographs and other items related to this period in Alaska’s history.

Mientras asistía a la conferencia de ALA vi una presentación buenísima de titulo “Digitizing Indian Country”. La primera presentación fue sobre Alaska’s Digital Archives, una colección que reúne fotografías, historias orales, mapas, imágenes de video, y otros documentos, que juntos hacen record de la historia del estado desde 1860 hasta sus primeros años como estado de EEUU. El material aquí reunido se recogió por medio de un llamado a la comunidad de compartir sus fotos viejas, y otros documentos relacionados con la historia de Alaska durante este periodo de su historia.

Currently the collection is divided into two larger categories; Alaska Native History & Cultures, and Movement to Statehood. Under Alaska Native History & Cultures you will find links to a rich collection of photographs, and moving images organized in categories such as Religion and Church Leadership, Education, Art, Traditional Technology, and Ceremonial Life, among others. The Movement to Statehood collection is divided into categories such as Government, Military, Natural Resources, and Society and Daily Life, among others. You can browse both collections by geographical region, or by time period. Every photograph contains information on provenance, time period, subject headings assigned and holding institution. The site also provides access to a detailed timeline of the state.

Actualmente la colección está dividida entre dos categorías; La historia y cultura indígena de Alaska, y el movimiento para convertirse en estado. Bajo la primera categoría encontrara enlaces a una rica colección de fotografías, e imágenes de video organizadas bajo categorías como religión, iglesia, educación, arte, tecnología tradicional, y ceremonias, entre otras. Bajo la segunda categoría encontrara la colección dividida bajo categorías como gobierno, ejército, recursos naturales, sociedad, y vida diaria, entre otras. También podrá ojear la colección por regio geográfica, o por periodo de tiempo. Cada fotografía contiene información de su proveniencia, periodo de tiempo, y categorías asignadas por la institución. También podrá encontrar acceso a una detallada línea de tiempo que traza la historia del estado.

Image from the Anchorage Museum of Rasmuson Center, Library & Archives.

La imagen usada es del Anchorage Museum of Rasmuson Center, Library & Archives.

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