By:
On:
In: access, archives, cultural heritage, technologies

The National Archives of Australia developed and maintain Vroom – Virtual Reading Room (http://vrroom.naa.gov.au/). Vrroom is like many systems in that it provides access to archival collection records and digitized materials. To those, Vrroom has added educational and contextual materials for a number of the items. Also, items are presented together in groups with more educational context for the group of items; thus, people can learn more about specific things/people/etc as well as the larger context for those items in relation to other items all in context together. From this description, Vrroom may seem like many educational websites. It is, but it is also an excellent example ofRead More →

By:
On:
In: cultural heritage, open access

Europeana has released their second whitepaper, Whitepaper No. 2: The Problem of the Yellow Milkmaid. The whitepaper begins with an excellent example, that of the yellow Milkmaid: ‘The Milkmaid’, one of Johannes Vermeer’s most famous pieces, depicts a scene of a woman quietly pouring milk into a bowl. During a survey the Rijksmuseum discovered that there were over 10,000 copies of the image on the internet—mostly poor, yellowish reproductions. As a result of all of these low-quality copies on the web, according to the Rijksmuseum, “people simply didn’t believe the postcards in our museum shop were showing the original painting. This was the trigger for us to put high-resolution images of the originalRead More →

By:
On:
In: ARL, copyright, cultural heritage

Press Release: For immediate release: August 4, 2010 For more information, contact: Karla Strieb Association of Research Libraries 202-296-2296 karla@arl.org ARL Promotes Member Use of Large-Scale Digitization Principles Washington DC— The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Board of Directors unanimously voted on July 26, 2010, to endorse a set of nine principles to guide vendor/publisher relations in large-scale digitization projects of special collections materials, recommended by its Transforming Special Collections in the Digital Age Working Group. The Board’s vote strongly encourages ARL member libraries to refrain from signing future agreements with publishers or vendors, either individually or through consortia, that do not adhere to theRead More →

By:
On:
In: cultural heritage, documentary heritage, preservation, scholarship

Victoria University of Wellington has announced the establishment of a targeted PhD scholarship in the broad area of digital preservation: Future Memory at Risk: Digital Preservation and Cultural Heritage The creation of a national digital memory poses fundamental challenges for cultural heritage institutions. Our libraries, archives and museums are searching for new ways to demonstrate their relevance in the digital world, but they are uncertain of the boundaries of their responsibilities which were established in a pre-digital age. Our future access to a trustworthy and meaningful national memory requires these institutions to identify, preserve and make accessible significant digital artefacts of society and also toRead More →