http://www.boston.com/dailynews/160/wash/Archives_of_Saddam_rule_were_d:.shtml

Fires at the Iraq National Library set as U.S. forces took over Baghdad did not destroy large numbers of rare books and ancient manuscripts as initially feared, U.S. investigators say.

Instead, the fires apparently were aimed at destroying sensitive records about Saddam Hussein's government, said Mary-Jane Deeb, a specialist on the Arab world at the Library of Congress.

[...]

http://www.ingenious.org.uk/

Ingenious.org.uk is a new online resource including over 30,000 objects and pictures taken from the Science Museum, the National Museum of Photography, Film & Television and the National Railway Museum.

Via Ten Thousand Year Blog
http://www.davidmattison.ca/wordpress/index.php/archives/2004/06/08/532/

http://www.ub.uu.se/arv/waller/eindex.cfm

An ongoing project of the University Library Uppsala (Sweden) digitizes the Waller manuscript collection, one of the most voluminous collections of autographs, i.e. original manuscripts by scientists, philosophers, scholars, politicians, explorers from all parts of the world, from the Middle Ages through the 1950s.

Examples:

Letter of Georg Fugger, Nürnberg 1496
http://publications.uu.se/waller/object.xsql?DBID=27064

Health status of several persons at Stuttgart (including the duke), 1690
http://publications.uu.se/waller/object.xsql?DBID=27607

(English) letter of Karl Baedeker, Koblenz 1849
http://publications.uu.se/waller/object.xsql?DBID=15441

Letter of Oscar Fraas, Stuttgart 1879
http://publications.uu.se/waller/object.xsql?DBID=26855

Disaster Management for Libraries and Archives ed. Graham Matthews and John Feather, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003
ISBN: 0-7546-0917-0
Hardback: 254 pages

This collection of essays provides an up-to-date assessment of current thinking and practice in disaster management for libraries and archives both in the UK and abroad.

Read more from the review in the new E-Journal of the (UK) National Preservation Office at:
http://www.bl.uk/services/npo/journal/0504/disaster.html

Useful link collection (U of Delaware)

http://www2.lib.udel.edu/subj/elecimgs

Standardization in records management / Stephanie Waeyenbergh.
//In: Bibliotheek- en Archiefgids. - ISSN 0772-7003. - 80(2004)2; p. 10-17.
Standardization in records management is a recent phenomenon, which is the result of automation in public administration and service. Standards aim to assure the quality of records and records management in organizations, for which purpose an attempt is made to cover the entire field of records management. ISO 15489 supports the elaboration of records management policy and procedures in organizations. Specifications for records management applications define the functional requirements for software. Metadata standards define which information about the context, content, structure and management of records should be captured and preserved. Several trends in standardization can be discerned: firstly, attunement of the different initiatives, secondly, a coordinating role for ISO 15489 and other, new ISO standards, thirdly, development of standards for the private sector.
[Article in Dutch]

Archiving websites / Hilde Vanoverbeke.
//In: Bibliotheek- en Archiefgids. - ISSN 0772-7003. - 80(2004)2; p. 24-29.
Based on the study of literature, the article illustrates how web archiving initiatives are functioning and which problems remain to be solved. It dwells on the importance of archiving websites and goes into some major characteristics of the web: the existence of the deep web and its huge size. Three strategies exist for collecting web sources, each with pros and cons: automatic harvesting, selective approach and deposit. The first web archiving initiatives are presented, besides items such as user access, preservation and the development of standards that receive attention in the last two years.
[Article in Dutch]

Source:
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/720.html

Homepage of the Journal (only abstracts free):
http://www.vvbad.be/

http://www.bu.edu/law/scitech/volume10issue1/RyanWeb.pdf (PDF)

Alicia Ryan, Contract, Copyright and the Future of Digital Preservation, Journal of Science and Technology Law 10(1),(Winter 2004). Ryan views the access question in terms of preservation and argues that libraries and archives should be granted the right to copy digital works, copy web sites, and have the right to lend digital materials, especially in cases where the works are at risk or no longer commercially available.

http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2004_05_09_fosblogarchive.html#a108448262189996714

Archives and the Public Good : Accountability and Records in Modern Society
Author: Cox, Richard J.; Wallace, David A.
Publication: Westport, Conn. Praeger, 2002.
ISBN: 1567204694
Subject: Archives--Social aspects.
Archives--Administration--Case studies.
Records--Management--Case studies.
Common good.
Public interest.
Responsibility.

CONTENTS

Introduction
Richard J. Cox and David A. Wallace 1

Excerpt:
The fourteen contributions to this volume revolve around four closely related themes tying the importance of records for accountability in society—explanation (making laypeople understand what records mean), secrecy, memory, and trust.

Explanation 19

Archives on Trial: The Strange Case of the Martin Luther King, Jr., Papers
James M. O’Toole 21

“A Monumental Blunder”: The Destruction of Records on Nazi War Criminals in Canada
Terry Cook 37

From the Conclusion:

Critical to accountability in any sphere of human activity is the existence of reliable records as evidence of human and organizational activity. And for the records to be credible, the records management and archival processes themselves must be based on sound theoretical concepts of “value,” on logical strategies and methodologies to locate such values, and on consistent practice, verifiable implementation, and transparent documentation. Archivists and records managers must likewise themselves be transparent and accountable for their decisions. Significant improvements in all these areas at the National Archives of Canada were a direct result of the impact of the Deschênes Commission investigations or the criticisms of David Matas.

Odd but true, the conclusion seems inescapable that Nazi war criminals entering Canada illegally in the late 1940s led indirectly, by the end of the 1980s, to better ways of determining how archival records should be selected to form society’s collective memory. This perhaps atones a little for past apathies.

Information for Accountability Workshops: Their Role in Promoting Access to Information
Kimberly Barata, Piers Cain, Dawn Routledge, and Justus Wamukoya
67

Secrecy 89

Implausible Deniability: The Politics of Documents in the Iran-Contra Affair and Its Investigations
David A. Wallace 91

The Failure of Federal Records Management: The IRS versus a Democratic Society
Shelley Davis 115

Lighting Up the Internet: The Brown and Williamson Collection
Robin L. Chandler and Susan Storch 135

Memory 163

The Tuskegee Syphilis Study and the Politics of Memory
Tywanna Whorley 165

Turning History into Justice: The National Archives and Records Administration and Holocaust-Era Assets, 1996—2001
Greg Bradsher 177

“They Should Have Destroyed More”: The Destruction of Public Records by the South African State in the Final Years of Apartheid, 1990—1994
Verne Harris 205

Trying to Write “Comprehensive and Accurate’’ History of the Foreign Relations of the United States: An Archival Perspective
Anne Van Camp 229

Trust 245

What You Get Is Not What You See: Forgery and the Corruption of Recordkeeping Systems
David B. Gracy II 247

The Jamaican Financial Crisis: Accounting for the Collapse of Jamaica’s Indigenous Commercial Banks
Victoria L. Lemieux 265

The Anchors of Community Trust and Academic Liberty: The Fabrikant Affair
Barbara L. Craig 283

Records and the Public Interest: The “Heiner Affair” in Queensland, Australia
Chris Hurley 293

Index 319

About the Editors and Contributors 335

A weblog about maps:

http://www.mcwetboy.net/maproom/