Book Preservation: The New ‘Physical Archive’ of the Internet Archive

The founder of the Internet Archive—the non-profit organisation created in 1996 to build an internet library—recently announced the official launch of "the Physical Archive of the Internet Archive." The IA original dispersed the books it collected for digitization through donation, but is now shifting to storing and preserving them in state-of-the-art facilities, soliciting new donations in an effort to obtain “one copy of everything ever published”, with current storage at 450,000 items.

This Physical Archive reflects some of the effects of digitization projects in its response to the increasing number of library books moved to repositories to make space for meeting and working spaces, and the throwing out of original library texts in the wake of digitized Google versions. Founder Brewster Kahle explains that the Physical Archive seeks to preserve original copies for future researchers and readers, underscoring the importance of maintaining physical archiving in a digital era.

For a report from Libraryjournal.com, click here; for an article by Kahle explaining the impetus behind the Physical Archive in full, click here.

Questions from #AskArchivists day!

A couple of places have noted the questions they were asked and it makes interesting reading! Here are two examples. In other news the University of Exeter Heritage Collections and Culture Services which includes Special Collections, the Bill Douglas Centre and Arts & Culture are now on twitter! Follow them @UoEHeritageColl

The Bodleian
 http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/about/exhibitions/ask-archivists/askarchivists-q-and-a

We have compiled our Twitter answers to #AskArchivists Day questions here; you can find further #AskArchivists Day questions and responses by searching Twitter for the hashtag #AskArchivists.

Q: We're a music archive and we're curious: Which of all archives participating in #AskArchivists Day have music in their collections?
A: We do, although our music curator is unavailable today. See our music pages for a bit of basic info.

Q: To all #archives - What are your main reasons for #digitisation? #Genealogy? Preservation?
A: Lots - preservation and expanding access 2 big ones. See our digital collections pages for some examples.

Q: What's your favourite item in your archive?
A: The OU archivist says his favourite item is 1636 Uni statutes issued by Archbishop Laud.

Q: What's the most underused UK resource for research into everyday life in the Middle Ages?
A: Local land documents in county archives, for brave readers with high boredom thresholds?

Q: What's the biggest influence that your archive has had on public life?
A: We work hard to acquire, preserve & share archives of international value - from political to personal!
A: Our Conservative Party Archive helps promote democracy & encourage political accountability

Q: Is there a book or blog to explain how to use archives? E.g. when I don't know what box to order bec. I only know the topic.
A: Best way: look @ catalogue if available or email for advice - see our Special Collections catalogues & Special Collections 'Planning a Visit' for more info

Q: It's #AskArchivists day (involving our very own @bodleianlibs) - any tips from those in the field for aspiring archivists?
A: Get experience! Volunteering is great and helps you know if it's a career for you
A: From a modern papers archivist: Do research on job/institution. Be enthusiastic & positive!
A: From our CPA archivist: Read NRA email list for topical issues & to show awareness

Q: Are you doing any digitalisation of old books/diaries? If so, how extensive and how will it be accessible?
A: We do lots - see our digital collections pages and also most recent project Shelley-Godwin Archive

Q: What do you find is your biggest challenge as a modern-day archivist?
A: We have many, but one is what to do with digital formats (& analog!) Projects like @beamtweet are exploring!

Q: Entice me... I'm looking into privies of London, c10th-c15th (not literally looking into, of course). What might you have?
A: That's tough! Working on it - will update. For now, The Royal Palaces of Tudor England has info on high status royal privies
Alas no privy but prison, still enticing we hope: an image of The Clink, 1580, by Stephan Batman

Q: Is the Gehenna Press archive catalogued? We have some lovely Leonard Baskin/Ted Hughes items here at Exeter
A: We're working on Gehenna material, hoping to finish later this year. We do have a few images of the archive's arrival
(Question from our archive at Exeter! @UoEHeritageColl)

Q: Digital storage media suggestions for easier future migration?
A: Tough question. If you're sensible w storage and refresh often, files generally OK but ... Format is a bigger issue. Have a look at 'Sustainability of Digital Formats' from @librarycongress for some info.

Q: What are the Bod's plans for digitizing its catalogues of Western manuscripts?
A: We add new collection catalogues regularly (see Special Collections pages); others are goals but depend on time/funding

Q: Given space and logistics, I suppose you can't take on every archive you get offered. How do you decide which to preserve?
A: We have priorities/collection policy, but hard to say no to something good - often depends on how it fits with what we already have

Q: What is the best part of being an archivist?
A: Uncovering little bits of history no one knew (or remembered) existed!


The Smithsonian

http://blog.photography.si.edu/2011/06/13/summary-of-askarchivists-day-at-the-smithsonian/

The tweets started coming in fast and furious early that morning. Many wanted to know more about the archival profession and the education and training needed to be an archivist.
We have lots of resources about how to get a job; types of archive and museum jobs history buffs would enjoy; and information about what archivists and photo archivists do.

 

Q: do you have any advice for recent grads who want to pursue archiving?

A: http://ow.ly/5dSRf & http://ow.ly/5dSRg should get you started. Follow up ?s welcome anytime. Thanks! (RCW)

Q: Do uHav #DigitalArchivists &do they wk closely w/ IT or archives workers? Any idea of bg & training?

A: LSF: I am one, & we wrk closely w/SI IT. More than basics of computers, systems, sftwre. Coding sklls a+.

Q:Any advice or tips on curating exhibits w/ archive materials-how to display, preserve, document?

A: Respect archival context. Across the pond has an exhaustive document for display: http://ow.ly/5e9sw (RCW)

Q: What do you suggest for collections that require a confidentiality/privacy arrangement with the researcher?

A: LSF: Here's our policy for restricted collections: http://ow.ly/5eead

 

Q: is photocopying worse for preservation of paper docs than photographing them using a flash?
A:Yes. Digital photo or scan for unlimited re-purposing and only 1 traumatic experience for the paper. (RCW)

Exeter Arts Week: In the Archive with Daphne Du Maurier

As part of Exeter Arts Week, a special event is running at the University entitled 'In the Archive with Daphne Du Maurier.' This timely workshop chimes with the new discovery of her paintings, and offers an opportunity to see manuscripts of her most famous works including Rebecca and Jamaica Inn, led by Acting Head of Special Collections and Reclamation panelist Christine Faunch.
The event takes place on Monday 13th June, 11am - 12:30pm, Seminar A/B Research Commons, University of Exeter.
Booking is essential and can be made my telephone or email. Please click on the link above for the Arts Weeks brochure for details.

Du Maurier paintings to go on display

Paintings created by author Daphne Du Maurier are being put on public display for the first time, more than 20 years after her death.

The artworks were created during a turbulent period in her life, and only now have her family allowed the collection to be seen.

BBC news have a video report on their website, which features interviews with Du Maurier's son and Exeter's Professor Helen Taylor (one of our two Reclamation keynotes from back in October).

Helen remarks on Du Maurier's painting as an escape from writer's block, explaining that the author 'went into her little hut in the grounds of Menabilly where she was living, and instead of writing, which is what everyone thought she was doing, she was painting.'

Lost Conan Doyle novel to be published

"After languishing unpublished for almost 130 years, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's first novel is set to be released for the first time this autumn. [...]


http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jun/06/lost-conan-doyle-novel-narrative-john-smith?CMP=twt_gu

"As you might expect with the creator of Sherlock Holmes, there's a bit of a mystery around the manuscript," said Rachel Foss, lead curator of modern literary manuscripts at the British Library, which is publishing the 150-page book in November. "He wrote it in 1883 and 1884, when he was starting to try to establish himself in the medical profession and as a writer. He sent it to a publisher, but it got lost in the post, so he decided to try and redo it from memory. The manuscript we have is the novel as reconstructed from memory, and it stops around chapter six."

The book, said Foss, is "fairly loose in terms of plot and character", but it does provide "some hints towards the Sherlock Holmes stories to come". John Smith's housekeeper, Mrs Rundle, for example, "can be seen as a prototype for the garrulous Mrs Hudson, Sherlock Holmes's landlady".

"It gives a really fascinating insight into the early stages of [Conan Doyle's] development as a writer – his apprenticeship period ... It represents his first attempt to make the transition from short story writer to novelist," she said. "It demonstrates that there are still things we can learn about him.""

Ask Archivists Day - 9th June!

http://askarchivists.wordpress.com/

"Did you always wanted to ask archivists about their profession and about the collections in archives?

Ask away on #AskArchivists Day!

June 9, 2011, it will be #AskArchivists Day on Twitter. Join us that day and ask everything you allways wanted to know.

June 9 is also International Archives Day, organized by ICA, the International Council on Archives.

Follow the news on Twitter : @AskArchivists and be there on June 9, 2011!


If your archive wishes to join and let your collections and knowledge be a part of #AskArchivists all you have to do is to enter your information in this open googledoc. We will use it to make a masterlist of participating archives.

If you have special knowledge or subjects, that you are particularly keen on, you can enter them to. But it is NOT necessary – all archives are wellcome, with or without special topics.

So don´t hesitate: join in, and we´ll put you on the list. If you have problems using the document – write your complaint as a comment to this post, and we will look into it."

Repositioning Memory archive workshop, University of Exeter

Yesterday I attended a workshop event within Modern Languages at Exeter entitled 'Repositioning Memory: between the archive and the rubbish heap', organized by David Houston Jones and Chloe Paver. The workshop featured Prof. Ernst van Alphen (University of Leiden) as keynote and guest artists Paul Becker, PEN writer in residence, Antwerp.

The event offered some fascinating links back to the original Reclamation conference in many of its core discussions and themes, extending beyond the literary to include a range of speakers approaching the archive from a variety of angles, addressing the theme of recent articulations of cultural memory in terms of archival knowledge and the idea of waste. Panel themes included: the archive and ephemera; the archive and the manuscript; historical memory in Germany and Spain--buried pasts between disposal and retrieval; creativity and imposture in the archive, and the keynote address entitled 'Transgressive archiving: artistic practice using the archive'.

(Speakers also included a few of the original Reclamation conference panelists and it was great to see the progression of their research!)

I include the programme below so as to showcase the range of research and material under discussion.
All in all a stimulating event and fantastic to see such a productive exchange between a range of disciplinary approaches throughout the day.


Panel 1: The archive and ephemera
‘Cultural Memory in Action: Using Artefacts at The Bill Douglas Centre’ Phil Wickham, Curator, The Bill Douglas Centre for the History of Cinema and Popular Culture

‘Disposable Authors: Ephemera in the Film Archive’
Lisa Stead,Department of English, (Exeter)


Panel 2: The archive and the manuscript
‘But Who Decides What’s Rubbish? And When?’
Isabelle Cosgrave, Department of English (Exeter)

‘“Posterity is dispossessed”: Laurence Olivier’s Macbeth in the Archive’
Jennifer Barnes, Department of English (Exeter)


Panel 3: Historical memory in Germany and Spain – buried pasts between disposal and retrieval
‘The Recovery of Historical Memory in Spain’
Nuria Capdevila-Argüelles & Sally Faulkner, Department of Modern Languages (Exeter)

‘The Dictator in the Attic – in the Museum’
Chloe Paver, Department of Modern Languages (Exeter)


Panel 4: Creativity and imposture in the archive
‘If It Does Not Exist You Will Have To Invent It: Imaginary Artists and the Remediation of History’
Paul Becker (PEN writer in residence, Antwerp)

‘Arnold Dreyblatt, Christian Boltanski and the post-Holocaust archive’
David Houston Jones, Department of Modern Languages (Exeter)


Keynote address
‘Transgressive archiving: artistic practices using the archive’
Ernst van Alphen (University of Leiden)

Jane Austen rare manuscript for sale

A rare, handwritten manuscript of Jane Austen's unfinished novel The Watsons is to be sold at auction at Sotherby's in London.

An incredibly rare handwritten manuscript of an unfinished novel by Jane Austen – the only one that is still in private hands – is to appear at auction in London.

The neatly written but heavily corrected pages are for her unfinished work The Watsons, a novel which many believe could easily have been as good as her six completed works.

Gabriel Heaton, Sotheby's senior specialist in books and manuscripts, said it was "a thrill and privilege" to be selling it: "It is very exciting. This is the most significant Austen material to come on the market since the late 1980s."

Full story: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/may/20/jane-austen-rare-manuscript-sale-auction

New Material in Anthony Burgess' Archive

Previously unknown stories, scripts, letters and musical compositions by the late author Anthony Burgess have been found in an archive of his possessions.

The contents of three of his houses were left to the International Anthony Burgess Foundation in Manchester by his widow, who died in 2007.

Most famous for writing A Clockwork Orange, Burgess wrote 33 novels in all.

Researchers have now uncovered some 20 unpublished short stories as well as unproduced film and theatre scripts.

They include a previously unknown movie script about Napoleon Bonaparte, which was to have been filmed by director Stanley Kubrick.

Full story... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-13157885

New York Public Library Launches iPad App

"Now, the New York Public Library has created a new iPad app that bring the library’s research collections into “the palms of the public’s hand,” as library officials put it in a statement released Tuesday. “Biblion: The Boundless Library” is the name for a series of apps available on Apple’s tablet computer that highlight different elements in the library’s collection. It was developed by the library and the design firm Potion.

The first edition showcases the library’s 1939-1940 New York World’s fair holdings, which are among the most consulted by researchers. Users will be able to turn over, zoom in and roam through hundreds of items. At the end of this week, the library is putting out an app that lets the public play “Find that Future,” from game designer Jane McGonigal, author of “Reality is Broken.”This summer, look for an app that lets the public reserve books. The new app is available for free at Apple’s iTunes store. A Web version is to be available soon at nypl.org."

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/17/new-york-public-library-launches-ipad-app/