http://erc.europa.eu/pdf/ScC_Guidelines_Open_Access_revised_Dec07_FINAL.pdf

The importance of open access to primary data, old manuscripts, collections and archives is even more acute for SSH. In the social sciences many primary or secondary data, such as social survey data and statistical data, exist in the public domain, but usually at national level. In the case of the humanities, open access to primary sources (such as archives, manuscripts and collections) is often hindered by private (or even public or nation-state) ownership which permits access either on a highly selective basis or not at all.

From the Open Access mandate.

(an English version of http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/4606498/ )

Publishing digitized versions of programmatic or propagandistic nazi material is always a difficult issue. I think that, generally, such texts must be part of any truly universal retro digitization project, and that they are part of the historical material that digital libraries must provide. That said, publications should contain scholarly introductions or at least a classification with some historical background. In some legislations (e. g. in Germany) these may even be necessary in order to distinguish educational historical material from propaganda published for political reasons.

As Klaus Graf already pointed out on Archivalia in August 2007 (Link), the internet archive "archive.org" in its all-in approach to preserving everything does not distinguish anything at all, and hence has become a veritable platform for neo nazis. There are more or less educational historic nazi pamphlets (Link), but also dozens of newer and newest texts from Holocaust deniers (Link). I doubt that they have been uploaded for historical research, since they are propagandistic in nature as well as commonly used by neo-nazis until today.

All this is still documentation, albeit documentation taken too far for my taste, and also much too far for German and Austrian laws.

Now what is really outrageous is that introductions and commentaries on the historical sources are propagandistic in nature (Link):

Daß diese alte Schrift „ausschließlich zu Zwecken des wissenschaftlichen Studierens“ gedacht ist, versteht sich von selbst. Die in ihr dargelegten Worte sind klarer Natur und sprechen für sich. Möge ihr Geist auch über 70 Jahre nach ihrer Niederschrift, unter völlig veränderten Zuständen, wirken!

(My translation: „It's obvious that this old work is "only for scholarly studies" [ironically citing the exemption in German laws that allows publication of otherwise banned nazi works] The words herein are of a clear nature and speak for themselves. May their spirit take effect even 70 years after writing, in completely different states of things.“)

This is the introduction to archive.org's scan of the nazi pamphlet „Die Frauenfrage und ihre Loesung durch den Nationalsozialismus“ (The question of women's rights and its solution by National Socialism), written in 1933 by Paula Siber von Groote, head of division at the Ministery of the Interior of Nazi Germany.

This is not retro digitization or documentation anymore, it is propaganda of the worst kind, in the front matter (= meta data) of an archive.org scan. Archive.org should part with contributors like this uploader quickly and thoroughly.

Update: http://www.archive.org/iathreads/post-view.php?id=175053

A new YouTube video detailing why libraries need LOCKSS was recently created by University of Michigan School of Information graduate students. In the two-part series, they do an impressive job walking the viewer through the advantages and benefits of being a LOCKSS Alliance member.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POJf38RzihA (Part I)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKr1Adc8tnA (Part II)

http://www.lockss.org/lockss/Home

http://repositoryman.blogspot.com/2008/01/journey-of-thousand-deposits.html

Poster from Leslie Carr (Eprints)

http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/01/call-for-oa-to-greek-public.html

Greek activists are working for OA to the archive of the Greek Public Broadcasting Company (ERT). [...] Here's an English draft of a manifesto to accompany a future petition:

Greek citizens, but also citizens of other countries, we jointly sign this text on the occasion of ERT’s choice to distribute its audiovisual archive non-freely to the public. Our aim and ambition is to publicize our propositions so that they become the starting point of an open dialog among the Greek society, the European and global public audience and to signal the revision of backward policies and the creation of common political wealth....

If today, you store in your computer, or send to a friend, or allow your children to make a creative montage for their homework in the history course, using material based on this archive, you will have committed a list of offences regarding the protection of ‘’intellectual property'’....

If a large number of people, including you, have paid with your own money for the production of a television or radio show, you surely have your say for how this show should become publicly available. If it is freely available to anyone who has got an interest in it, this does not make you by no means poorer, since it does not deprive you of the possibility to enjoy the same privileges with others....

The ERT archive that was produced with the contribution of Greek citizens and today is digitized with the money of European tax payers, should become freely available to all the residents of the planet via the Internet....

Anyone should have the right to store, to copy, to modify and to redistribute this material freely without royalties or being obstructed by bureaucratic processes. The derivative products of this creative process are supposed to be freely available under the condition that these products will not become the exclusive property of anyone, but they will abide by the same legal status of free use. In this way, innovation and collective creativity are strengthened.

http://broadsides.law.harvard.edu/

Just as programs are sold at sporting events today, broadsides -- styled at the time as "Last Dying Speeches" or "Bloody Murders" -- were sold to the audiences that gathered to witness public executions in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain. These ephemeral publications were intended for the middle or lower classes, and most sold for a penny or less. Published in British towns and cities by printers who specialized in this type of street literature, a typical example features an illustration (usually of the criminal, the crime scene, or the execution); an account of the crime and (sometimes) the trial; and the purported confession of the criminal, often cautioning the reader in doggerel verse to avoid the fate awaiting the perpetrator.

The Library's collection of more than 500 broadsides is one of the largest recorded and the first to be digitized in its entirety. The examples digitized here span the years 1707 to 1891 and include accounts of executions for such crimes as arson, assault, counterfeiting, horse stealing, murder, rape, robbery, and treason. Many of the broadsides vividly describe the results of sentences handed down at London's central criminal court, the Old Bailey, the proceedings of which are now available online at http://www.oldbaileyonline.org .

There is no limit to the number of copies you make, but every copy request has to be approved by an archivist. You must use the Bundesarchiv-approved copy services offered by Selke GmbH if you want to copy documents except when copying files on microfiche or microfilm: you can print microfiche/microfilm documents directly from the microfiche/microfilm reader. One such copy will cost €0.15. If you want to have paper documents copied, you must fill out a couple of forms, including the „Kopierauftrag,” a blue form that has the name of the company which does copies at the Bundesarchiv on it (Selke GmbH), and, one form for each file from which you want to order copies of individual documents (see attached order form). In the latter form you must describe every single document you want to copy as accurately as possible (i.e. „Telegram from Hermann, Ministry of War, to Strauss, Chancellery, Berlin, dated 23 September 1939”). Make sure you have a pen on you (and do take it to the reading room). Pencilled signatures on order forms are not accepted. The staff member I was talking to was surprised to hear that the use of pens is usually not allowed in reading rooms; if you filled out a form in pencil, they will insist that you transcribe the whole thing with a pen, and then sign with a pen.

Mark Laszlo-Herbert on the Bundesarchiv Berlin, Nov. 2005 at
http://www.archivesmadeeasy.org/ame_germany.htm

The second number of e_conservation magazine is now online and available for free download. To know more we invite you to visit the website at
http://www.e-conservationline.com and download the file (registration is no longer required).

INDEX - No.2, December 2007

*News - 2007 Worksites
Medieval Values Discovered at the Assumption Church,
Cepari Village, Arges, Romania (1752)
by Mihail Gabriel Birhala

*Events Review
Lecture on Preventive Conservation of Contemporary Art
30 November 2007, Sintra, Portugal

Berlin Conference on Preservation of Himalayan Culture
4-5 December 2007, Berlin, Germany
by André Alexander

*Upcoming Events - December 2007 to February 2008

*Cultural Project
The Sibiel Cultural Centre, Ecomuseum – Contemporary Art Gallery
by Ovidiu Danes

*Material Studies
An Alteration Phenomenon of Cinnabar Red Pigment in the Mural Paintings from
Sucevita
by Ioan Istudor, Anca Dina, Geanina Rosu, Doina Seclaman and Gheorghe Niculescu

*Conservation of Contemporary Art
Reconstructing a 1972’s Neon Light Installation at the Faculty of Fine Arts,
University of Porto
by Filipe Duarte

*Case Study
The Church of "The Beheading of St. John the Baptist" from Arbore
Previous Interventions from the Perspective of Derestoration
By Anca Dina and Oliviu Boldura

*Organisations
Conservation Organisations in Europe
Chamber of Restorers in Slovakia
by Barbara Davidson

*Art History
The Crucifixes of Marginime
by Ovidiu Danes

*Documentation
Documentation for Architecture Conservation: La Villetta Cemetery in Parma,
Italy (part 2)

Formal References in Funerary Architecture
by Maria Carmen Nuzzo

The Urban Planning of Parma Cemeterial System
by Silvia Ombellini

The Master Plan for the Safeguarding and Restoration of La Villetta
by Elisa Adorni

The Virtual Museum - The Memory of the Cemetery Heritage
by Simone Riccardi

*Book Review
Lost City, Resumed Architectures
a book by Michela Rossi, reviewed by Federica Ottoni

LACONA VI Proceedings (Laser in the Conservations of Artworks)
reviewed by Rui Bordalo

e_conservation magazine
www.e-conservationline.com

Source: demuseum list