http://www.escholarlypub.com/cwb/oaw.htm

Only resources in English!

http://www.aber.ac.uk/history/sealspilot.html

On Seals Cataloging.

See also
http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/81034/
and in German
http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/81028/

Main Title : The Irish society for archives
Web Address (URL): http://www.ucd.ie/archives/isa/isa-index.html
Alternative Title : Cumann cartlannaíochta éireann
Description : This is the website of the Irish Society for Archives (ISA), which was founded in 1970 'to promote the place of archives in Irish society.' Its links page is indispensable as a hub for archives in the Republic of Ireland and in Northern Ireland.

The website is maintained by the Archives Department of University College Dublin. The links page is divided into four sections, one each for: 'Statutory and Professional Bodies'; 'Irish Archives Services'; 'Northern Ireland'; and 'Museums'. The second section, on Irish Archives Services, is further divided into four subsections: 'Universities'; 'Manuscript Libraries'; 'Public Records/Local Studies'; and 'Specialist Repositories'. Besides the links page, the website offers an online newsletter, a page dedicated to the ISA's journal (articles not online), and membership and contact details.
Language : English

http://www.humbul.ac.uk/output/full2.php?id=15146

Agustín Vivas Moreno: El tiempo de la archivística: un estudio de
sus espacios de racionalidad histórica

http://www.ibict.br/cienciadainformacao/include/getdoc.php?id=1268&article=684&mode=pdf

English Abstract:

The main objective of this proposal is to build up baselines for a Cultural
History of Archival Science. For this purpose, it is based on a seminal
axis: the formulation of several “historic rationality spaces” which have
conformed the history of the fi eld. It can be said that a rationality space
is a well determined and characterized combination of forces which
conform a system based on some historic homogeneity and whose
model can be established. So, the conception is that there are four great
historic rationality spaces in archival development: Archival science as
an inductive and functional instrument, Archival science as patrimonial
and legal-administrative fi eld, Archival science as a historiographic
development and speculative theory, and Archival science in knowledge
society. Its vagaries would be specifi ed through the extension of archival
science scope, its scientifi c expansion, its insertion in Information
Science fi eld, determination of archives as information systems, and
technological determinism. In methodological development of our
proposal, it is specifi ed the interoperation among several sociocultural
forces, which have formed, in their historic course, the different
understanding archival science history spaces. In consequence, we infer
as a main result that understanding spaces are basic for comprehension
of archival science cultural history, a ground-breaking concept.

http://www.freepint.com/issues/140705.htm#tips
"Free Public Domain and Copyrighted e-Books Online"
By Sam Vaknin

"By far the largest and best maintained index is John Ockerbloom's
Online Books page, with well over 20,000 individual items listed
< http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/ >. It offers links to new books
almost daily < http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/new.html >. Browsing
through this index is bound to get you virtually everywhere. There is
rarely a (legal) book online that is not listed here"

This is not true.

1. OBP has 20,000+ free books
http://www.digitalbookindex.org/ 60,000+

It is recommended to use both listings. Example: keyword metaphor brings 6 books (OBP 4, DBI 5).

2. There are some large collections (and a lot of small collections) NOT in the OBP (nor in the DBI).

Examples of large collections with English books not in the OBP

http://www.archive.org/details/texts

http://link.library.utoronto.ca/booksonline/
800+ titles

OHIOLINK Brittle Books
See http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/442689/
400+ titles

UMich Digital General Collection
http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=genpub;cc=genpub

Gallica
http://gallica.bnf.fr/
Hundreds of items.

http://www.alexanderstreet7.com/firp//index.html

This release of In the First Person provides in-depth indexing of more than 2,500 collections of oral history in English from around the world. With future releases, the index will broaden to identify other first-person content, including letters, diaries, memoirs, and autobiographies, and other personal narratives.

The database is free!

It allows for keyword searching of more than 260,000 pages of full-text by more than 9,000 individuals from all walks of life. It also contains pointers to at least 2,500 audio and video files and 16,000 bibliographic records.

http://freegovinfo.info/blog

A weblog.

http://www.earlystuartlibels.net/

“Early Stuart Libels” is a web-based edition of early seventeenth-century political poetry from manuscript sources. It brings into the public domain over 350 poems, many of which have never before been published.

See
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_07_03_fosblogarchive.html#a112083506880835124

On February 28, 2005 the Head of the Russian Archives Administration (Rosarchiv) Dr. V.P. Kozlov was reporting to the board of senior officers of the Ministry of Culture and Mass Com-munications about the results achieved in 2004 and the plans for the year 2005. (Note that Rosar-chiv is not an independent agency, it reports to the Ministry of Culture).

Dr. Kozlov emphasized a number of factors influencing the situation in Russian archives.

The first factor is the new archival legislation, especially the federal Act on archiving in Russian Federation. The Act had brought about the changes in the distribution of the rights and responsi-bilities with respect to archives between federal, regional and local governments. Even more im-portant, there was redistribution of property.

Dr Kozlov assured that the Act would allow preserving the unified statewide archives and re-cords management system because it contained corresponding declarations of good intentions. (Unfortunately, the analysis of the regional legislation enacted in the wake of the federal Act shows that each region interprets the Act and modifies its provision as the region sees fit.)

The Head of Rosarchiv said that the additional regulation was necessary to set the same policies and practices for both state (i.e. federal and regional) and local (now considered "non-state") ar-chives.

There is an urgent need to determine how regional and local archives will be compensated for the storage of federal records, and local archives – for the storage of regional records. Previously the records of the field offices of the federal agencies were transferred to the corresponding re-gional and local archives as a matter of fact. Now federal agencies are either to pay for the stor-age services or to take their records to federal archives (most of which are in Moscow and St. Petersburg).

Rosarchiv suggested arranging a number of meetings for state officials and archivists to develop the best practice for the new circumstances. It asked the Ministry of Culture fir the money since nowadays Rosarchiv has very limited funds and authority of its own.

Ongoing administrative reform was named as the second major factor. The reform doesn’t go well, and even senior government officials can see that – but they are trying to placate their own consciousness by mumbling, "maybe in 20 or 100 years the reform will deliver some positive results".

The reform started with closing down a number of ministries and agencies. The archives were hard pressed to process half a million of extra files before the end of the FY 2004. Some 400 ar-chivists were engaged in this work. As could be expected, the gross negligence in the manage-ment of the archives by the agencies was revealed.

New ministries and agencies established during the reform refused to accept the custody of the records and archives of the perished ones. Now all these records should be transferred to federal archives that have no free storage space. Federals has got no new facilities during last 10-15 years.

Also, according to Dr Kozlov, there were the "chaotic changes" in the regions, in the wake of the changes at the federal level. Regional archives became isolated from the federal center, espe-cially since Rosarchiv now has no authority over regional archives, and the Ministry of Culture doesn’t consider the problem as high-priority.

The third factor is the insufficient salaries and social protection of Russian archivists. Dr. Kozlov said "at least the situation isn’t as bad as it was in 90’s when all state archives went on strike". Nevertheless he described the state of federal archives as "catastrophic": the average monthly salary is below 200 US dollars while federal archives are situated in the very expensive cities. Average age of the employees is about 60 (in Russia retirement age is 55 years for women and 60 for men).

In 2004, 79 employees left the largest archive in Europe – the Russian State Historical Archive, for which modern archive facilities are being built in St. Petersburg. "Who will work in the new building?", Dr. Kozlov asked. Few of the remaining specialists are able to read ancient Russian scrolls or hand-written documents of XVII-XVIII centuries. 30% payment increase promised by the Ministry will solve nothing. Head of the Rosarchiv suggested giving the federal archivists the status of the "civil servants" (i.e. to increase their salaries 2-3 times).

http://eos.ru/eos/150074

... the "universal repository" that Brewster Kahle and I are setting up at the Internet Archive. This repository will accept deposits from any scholar in any discipline in any country. I'd like it to be open for business by October 1, 2005, but it's still too early to say whether this will be possible.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/04-02-05.htm#oara
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_04_03_fosblogarchive.html#a111297430877667121

Source: Open Access Newsletter