I recently read an article in the Guardian where Google announced they plan to digitize 14,000 items from the National Museum of Iraq. Google explains that this project aims at introducing to the world many of the cultural artifact that shaped the beginning of civilization, many of which play a significant role in the three [...]

Today the Times Online has a interesting article about ImHalal, a new search engine designed to help Muslims navigate the web without running into potentially “sinful” material.
The service was developed by the Dutch company AZS Media Group, and was launched yesterday. Currently ImHalal functions in 15 different languages, and the developers expect it to really [...]

Just as I was falling asleep last night listening to the BBC, I heard about a very interesting software called Haystack. Basically Haystack is software that was developed by Austin Heap, a San Francisco based “techy” to help Iranians bypass government censorship of the web, while simultaneously protecting their identity. The software will allow people [...]

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 [...]

Israel’s Antiquities Authority has begun digitizing the Dead Sea Scrolls to make them available to everyone on the web. The project is an effort to preserve the remains of this 2,000 year old document that is currently a series of parchment and papyrus fragments.
The Dead Sea Scrolls contain the earliest know version of the Hebrew [...]

360 Cities is a great site that allows you to see all 360 degrees of over 50 cities around the world. Well you don’t actually get to see every corner of the cities, but you do see major streets and attractions. Cities in this project are mostly European cities, with a number of places in [...]

Yesterday Wired magazine had an interesting article titled “Web Has Unexpected Effect on Journalism,” about the effect that the web has had on journalism, and it’s not what I would have initially thought. The article explains that, rather than making journalism more democratic, the web instead serves as a medium for recycling many of the [...]

This morning the New York Times had an article about two parallel art exhibits displaying art looted during WWII. The exhibit is a collaboration between France and Israel in aims at reconnecting these pieces with their original owners. Most of the art on display was either outright looted or forcefully “bought” by the Nazi, and [...]

As the year comes to an end the Million Book Project has reached its goal of scanning and making freely available a million books! This project is spearheaded by the Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Sciences and University Libraries, with a number of partnerships including the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the United [...]

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, [...]