by Just heard about this huge project, which is undertaking to document all species of life on Earth. Pretty cool idea. The first release of about 30 000 entries was just released. You can check it out here or read more about it here. It officially launches tomorrow and hopes to document all 1.8 million species of life, with it’s ultimate goal being to help in conservation efforts.
information
Google’s Done It Again!
Google is now offering a new service: news archives. You can now get newspaper archives, some going back to the 1700s, although not all will be free. You will have the ability to target dates or browse. Take a look at this CNN report on Google’s project for more info.
Update: Also, in case you haven’t heard the news (and you likely have), Google is also providing access to public domain books, making them nice and ready for printing. Check it out here.
Info! Get your Info!
An intersting item from Free Government Information. It seems that 56 000 maps from USDG were held for ransom. Jared Benedict purchased the public domain maps from the USDG for $1600 and threatened to keep them unless he could recoup the cost. Once the cost was recouped, he offered to make the maps freely available to all via Internet Archive. Needless to sat, the money was raised, in less than a day! A very interesting and proactive way of creating access and preserving these maps and offers possiblities for the future, at least in the US.
More free info is being offered by Google. Now you can print off books from the public domain in print-ready format.
Merger
For those of you who may not know, OCLC and the Research Libraries Group (RLG) are thinking of merging together. As two of the biggest non-profit library groups, this is big news. You can read more about this merger and possible implications (loss of jobs, integrated database, etc) in the Chronicle of Higher Education (requires subscription, sorry).
Update: For those who can't access CHE, here's a link to an ALA tidbit on the merger that doesn't require a subscription (as far as I can recall).
Free Information
There has been a lot of free information lately. ArchiveGrid has been discussed in a number of library blogs. This site allows free access to historical documetns from around the world.
Statistics Canada has announced that they will make all electronic publications found on their website (http://www.statcan.ca) free as of April 24th.
Exciting news from my library. We’ve hired Jeffery Trzeciak as our new UL. His presentation was Library 2.0 oriented. Can’t wait to see what we do!
Unknown
Questions are being raised about the possibility of a mysterious, unknown library in Iona. We have lost so much knowledge over the ages, that the possibility of finding even a scrap of it intrigues me. This can also be accounted for my other passion, Classics, including ancient libraries and archaeology. It would be simply amazing to get funding to begin an archaeological search for the lost library in Iona. I hope someone does it. Check out the Iona story here http://heritage.scotsman.com/myths.cfm?id=313532006