http://www.csmonitor.com/photosoftheday/index.php?image=11&date=2008/0826/

M. Spencer Green/AP

Ann C. Weller, special collections librarian at the University of Illinois Chicago Library, transported three boxes of documents that are part of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge files, which the UIC is making available for public inspection Tuesday at the Special Collections Department of the library in Chicago.

http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2218/2020

Abstract:

Derived from ancient Greek αρχειου (“government”), the late Latin word “archive” has come in the modern era to refer not just to public records but also to the entire corpus of material remains that the past has bequeathed to the present: artifacts, writings, books, works of art, personal documents, and the like. It also refers to the institutions that house and preserve such remains, be they museums, libraries, or archives proper. In all of these meanings, archive connotes a past that is dead, that has severed its ties with the present, that has entered the crypt of history. The essay explores the ways in which Internet 2.0 offers new possibilities for institutions of memory: novel approaches to conservation and preservation based not upon limiting but multiplying access to the remains of the past; participatory models of content production and curatorship; mixed reality approaches to programming and informal education that expand traditional library and museum audiences; and enhanced means for vivifying and for promoting active modes of engagement with the past.

Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, is teaming up with a number of academics in the culture sector to halt the transfer of the archives of Ulli and Georgina Beier from Osogbo, Osun State, to the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library, Abeokuta, Ogun State.

The process of securing the transfer of the cultural museum, Soyinka contended, was “devious, fraudulent, manipulative and a grand deception.”

Soyinka, who spoke at a press conference in Abeokuta on Thursday, said since the archives were procured with public funds, they could not be transferred to a private enterprise.

He explained that though he and his colleagues in the acedemia had written to the Director-General of the United Nations Educational and Scientific Organisation on the illegality of the exercise, they had also concluded arrangements to challenge the transfer in a court of competent jurisdiction.

Soyinka asked that the “manipulated MoU” submitted to UNESCO be withdrawn and represented in a proper manner.

The Osun State Government, which acquired the museum, had recently announced the transfer of the archives, under the auspices of the Institute of Black Culture and International Understanding, to the OOPL. [...]

http://www.punchng.com/Articl.aspx?theartic=Art200808151491270

Twenty-three years ago today, the online catalog was introduced in UNC’s Davis Library. This image shows several library employees happily exploring the new system, with the old card catalog hanging out in the background.

http://www.lib.unc.edu/blogs/ncm/index.php/2008/08/12/happy-birthday-online-catalog/

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/complete/la-oe-wiener8-2008aug08,0,7259766.story

Shortly after Baghdad fell in 2003, the Baath Party archives were shipped to the U.S. It's time to return them.
By Jon Wiener
August 8, 2008

http://blog.metmuseum.org/cloistersgardens/

Welcome to The Medieval Garden Enclosed, a blog dedicated to the plants and gardens of The Cloisters, a branch of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Enter and explore the role of plants and gardens in medieval life and art, learn how to find and grow medieval herbs and flowers, discuss the long histories of many familiar garden plants, discover which roadside weeds were once valued medicinals, and encounter legendary plants like the mandrake (Mandragora officinarum.)

http://ndpbeta.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/home

The National Library of Australia has made available to the public a pilot search service for historic Australian newspaper articles. The Australian Newspapers Beta service allows access to historic Australian newspapers digitised as part of the Australian Newspapers Digitisation Program. The newspapers available in the pilot site are the Canberra Tmes, Maitland Mercury, Sydney Gazette, Brisbane Courier, Courier Mail, The South Australian, Hobart Town Gazette, The Mercury, The Argus, The Perth Gazette.

Additionally, archival issues of the Sydney Morning Herald are currently being digitised by the National Library of Australia. Upon completion the years 1831-1954 will be digitised.

The beta site will be developed over the rest of the year.

http://blogs.library.auckland.ac.nz/arts/archive/2008/07/31/YetAgain.aspx

http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/collections/books/holdings/aldine/images/HRC_Aldine_Press.pdf

With provenances.