The Swan's Island Library was completely destroyed by fire early Thursday morning, July 24

Bangornews



See also
http://www.swansisland.org/
http://www.swansisland.org/library.htm
http://blog.genealogybank.com/2008/07/swans-island-public-library-burns-to.html

Why Is It So Hard to Get Documents from the National Archives About the National Archives?

By Anthony Clark

Mr. Clark is an independent researcher writing a book on the politics and history of presidential libraries.

While researching my book on the history of presidential libraries, I discovered a shocking but perhaps not surprising situation: the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is improperly withholding its own records. Theoretically a non-partisan as well as non-political agency, NARA is at the center of some of the most controversial issues of our time, including government secrecy, executive privilege, and timely access to presidential records. Rather than abide by legislative requirements and professional standards, NARA has chosen to avoid accessioning and processing many (if not most) of its own records dating back more than forty years. Worse, officials have blocked access to records, perhaps due to concerns over their possible criticism of the agency.

Read more at:
http://hnn.us/articles/52350.html

Update: http://www.archivesnext.com/?p=174

Update: http://anthony-clark.com/home.html

Update to: http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/4369822/

IMSLP is back:
http://imslp.org/wiki/Main_Page

Just recently, SAA has published a new reader, edited by Christopher J. Prom and Ellen D. Swain, College and University Archives: Readings in Theory and Practice (Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2008). It is volume all academic archivists should acquire, and it provides an interesting window into the state of the modern American archival community.

Read more:
http://readingarchives.blogspot.com/2008/07/academic-archives.html

NARA-archivist V. Paul Rood wrote today:

"[Below are a few words about archival training and the National Archives, which can be an excellent place to start--and finish--a career as an archivist. Please pardon this re-posting of a message, slightly edited, from two years ago.]

Archival Education at NARA.

NARA is the nation's largest employer of archivists, and I have been surprised that the current Listserv discussion has not included the practices of this agency. Although I am not any kind of spokesperson for NARA, a few basic facts about NARA's program are not privileged information. Basically, NARA existed before today's university programs to train archivists, and as a result, NARA has traditionally trained its own archivists.

When I came through the archivist training program in the 1980s, it was called the CIDS program (which I think stood for Career Intern Development System, or something similar). A group of a couple dozen of us trainees began the program with two weeks of instruction on the theory and practice of archival work. For the following two years, we trainees then worked in a number of different departments. In those two years, we each gained about 4,000 hours of on-the-job experience in arrangement & description, reference, appraisal, as well as other fields. Personally, I thought that this was an unrivalled program for training archivists. The program still exists [as the Archivist Development Program, or ADP], and most archivists at the National Archives have gone through it.


Library Training and NARA

Unlike much of the rest of the archival world, very few NARA archivists have librarian degrees. Until recently, NARA hired as archivists mostly people with backgrounds in American history. The educational requirements for archivists have changed recently, however, as has also the work of archivists at NARA. As our work becomes more centered on the computer, our work of processing records, for example, has become much more like library cataloging than traditional arrangement and description. [NARA is now hiring more librarians than before.]

Personally, I have a librarian's degree, and I also went through F. Gerald Ham's excellent archival training program at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. All of this training has been useful to some degree, because it is largely complementary, concerned as it is with the storage and retrieval of information. I also have happy memories of wonderful information professionals, like Dr. Ham, that I worked with and learned from in those days. [Although the archives program involved some hands-on processing, I and many other students also worked part-time at the SHSW, which proved a fantastic addition to the formal training.]

While I am on the subject of NARA's differences from other archives, one could mention also the paucity of NARA archivists*please correct me if I am wrong!*who have become Certified Archivists. Perhaps that will change with time, also.


In Conclusion

Although NARA traditionally has trained its archivists on-the-job, I would not argue that it is inherently superior to academic training. In fact, I think that there is merit in both classroom and on-the-job training. In Germany, for example, its world-class archival training programs inherently combine study and on-the-job archival work.

Finally, I wish to repeat that I am in no way an official spokesperson for NARA. I am merely providing the archival community with non-privileged information about archival education at NARA so that well-considered judgments are possible.

V. Paul Rood, MA, MALS, Ph.D
Archivist, Initial Processing and Declassification Division (NWMD)
National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)
8601 Adelphi Road
College Park, Maryland 20740 "

From: The ARCHIVES & ARCHIVISTS (A&A) LIST (My emphasis)

http://libraryjuicepress.com/blog/?p=454

http://www.archives.gov/research/arc/topics/world-digital-library/

This paper has demonstrated that it is almost impossible to determine with certainty whether a work published from 1923 through 1963 in the US is in the public domain because of copyright restoration of foreign works. First you have to determine if the work was also published abroad or if it is based on or derived from a work published abroad. If a foreign edition is found, one then has to establish the order of publication, and whether the foreign publication occurred less than 30 days before the US publication. If foreign publication was more than 30 days before American publication, one next needs to determine if publication occurred in an eligible country and if at least one of the authors of the work was living in or a citizen of an eligible nation. Checking the copyright renewal database is still important, but only after one has determined that the work's foreign copyright was not restored or that it does not draw upon subsisting foreign copyrights.

Copyright restoration has been criticized for unnecessarily removing thousands of foreign-published works from the public domain in the United States. What has been little noticed up to now is its negative impact on the determination of the potential public domain status of works published in the US. In many cases the impossibility of determining with certainty the absence of subsisting foreign copyrights in American publications that otherwise would be in the public domain means that American institutions will either have to keep these works inaccessible to the general public or risk the possibility of an infringement suit.

Peter Hirtle: Copyright Renewal, Copyright Restoration, and the Difficulty of Determining Copyright Status, D-Lib Magazine Volume 14 Number 7/8, 2008
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july08/hirtle/07hirtle.html