http://motherboard.tv/2011/8/29/the-copyright-nightmare-of-i-have-a-dream--2

If you weren’t alive to witness Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech on the Washington Mall 48 years ago this week, you might try to switch on the old YouTube and dial it up. But you won’t find it there or anywhere else; rights to its usage remain with King and his family.

Update (German)
https://plus.google.com/u/0/117546351384071338747/posts/e6TS31dQqLd

"From a preliminary evaluation, damage from Tuesday’s earthquake and its aftershocks includes spalling and cracking of masonry in internal walls and stairwells, a small water leak in one stack area, and a limited amount of shelving failures in a vault within one stack area. In the shelving failures, several rows of shelving shifted into other rows or walls, causing minor crushing of some boxes of records. The records, however, appear to have remained intact. Masonry debris has fallen in the perimeter aisles of stacks and in the internal stairwells of the building.

During the closure, a small team of National Archives staff members are on-site to coordinate the response, prepare for potential complications from Hurricane Irene, and to service a limited number of emergency requests from federal agencies."
in: Part of the official press release of the National Archives via facebook.

Asks Michael Rubin

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/08/21/preserve-libyan-archives/

The world and how we communicate and share information has changed completely from the way we did things in 1961 – the 100th anniversary of the start of the United States Civil War.

This year, the 150th anniversary, we have blogs, websites, and many other online resources to learn from and explore. This presents a unique opportunity in human history for those of us alive today.

We can drill down into local affects of war without leaving our homes. We can read letters and journals that used to be locked up in private collections or in rare book archives in libraries. We can see family histories online thanks to the hard work of thousands of genealogists and tale keepers in thousands of families from all walks of life.

We can see high resolution photos of monuments, museums, and battlefields. We can watch panel discussions and lectures online even if they are occurring half a nation away from our homes. This is a great time for history buffs to be alive as the number of online resources multiplies every month.

http://blog.accessible.com/2011/04/the-civil-war-begins-some-online-resources-you-might-have-missed/

Carl Malamud, who has spent two decades cajoling the government into putting public data online for free, is confronting his latest institutional Goliath.

The Sebastopol activist has launched a new campaign targeting the Smithsonian Institution and its policy of charging licensing fees to use public images downloaded from its vast collection of historic American artifacts.

Unlike the Library of Congress and the National Archives, the Smithsonian is alone in charging the public to use images from its collections.

“I think that is illegal, and unconscionable,” Malamud said. “Many, many more artists would be using this material, but it's all locked up.”

Read more at
http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20110811/BUSINESS/110819897/1350?Title=Malamud-seeks-to-unlock-Smithsonian-archives&tc=ar

Update:
http://digital-scholarship.org/digitalkoans/2011/08/14/carl-malamud-issues-complaint-about-smithsonian-institutions-terms-of-use-and-licensing-policy/

https://wwlbd.org/

http://www.publiccollectors.org/

Public Collectors consists of informal agreements where collectors allow the contents of their collection to be published and permit those who are curious to directly experience the objects in person. Participants must be willing to type up an inventory of their collection, provide a means of contact and share their collection with the public. Collectors can be based in any geographic location.
Public Collectors is founded upon the concern that there are many types of cultural artifacts that public libraries, museums and other institutions and archives either do not collect or do not make freely accessible. Public Collectors asks individuals that have had the luxury to amass, organize, and inventory these materials to help reverse this lack by making their collections public.

The purpose of this project is for large collections of materials to become accessible so that knowledge, ideas and expertise can be freely shared and exchanged. Public Collectors is not intended, nor should it be used, for buying and selling objects. There are many preexisting venues for that.

Collectors can accommodate viewers at whatever location is most comfortable or convenient for them. If their collection is portable or can be viewed in a location other than the collector’s home, this would still be an appropriate way to participate in the project.

In addition to hosting collection inventories and other information, www.publiccollectors.org includes digital collections that are suitable for web presentation, do not have a physical material analog, or are difficult or impossible to experience otherwise.

Highlights from the eighth release of file from the Ministry of Defence.

"Among the 1,600 folders of documents reported missing since 2005 are letters from Sir Winston Churchill to General Franco, the Spanish dictator; minutes of Harold Wilson's meetings with the Queen; and documents from the courts of Henry VIII, Elizabeth I and Charles I.

Dozens of regimental diaries, medal records and squadron and battleship logbooks have also seemingly disappeared.

Some of the files, many of which contain the sole copies of historical documents, have not been seen since the early 1990s and fewer than a half have been recovered, according to a register of missing items released under freedom of information laws.

Historians have accused the National Archives, which is overseen by the Ministry of Justice, of "administrative laxness".

Dr Andrew Roberts, a Second World War expert and scholar on the Royal family, said: "It should be a top priority of Government to ensure these files are tracked down as soon as possible because they are of the first importance.
"There is nothing more frustrating as a historian to call up papers from an archive and find that the reason you cannot have them is not because of a 50–year rule preventing disclosure, but because of bureaucratic negligence or incompetence."

Dr Tristram Hunt MP, the historian and MP who sits on the all–party Parliamentary group on archives and history, said: "To have areas of the national memory erased like this is worrying." He plans to table written questions to Lord McNally, the Justice Minister with responsibility for The National Archives, to ask about the documents.

"I'm hopeful it's a temporary aberration," he said. "These things do get lost and come back to life.

"History is an asset in this country. It's a natural resource, like oil. We have a lot of it and we need to take care of it."

An archives spokesman said the majority of the missing papers were thought to still be at its depository in Kew, Surrey.

She said that incidences of theft were rare and most of the missing files were believed to have been put on the wrong shelves by staff after being consulted by a reader.

Papers could become lost in transit while being borrowed by government departments, she added.

She said the missing files amounted to 0.01 per cent of the collection, and there is a continual programme to search for lost items.

Among the items lost for more than a year were the British plans for D–Day, including original correspondence between Gen Dwight Eisenhower and Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery.

The operations record book of 617 Squadron – the legendary Dambusters – was listed as "misplaced" for 18 months after being lent to a Labour–run government department.

Two bundles of documents from the war crimes trial of SS commander Fritz Knoechlein, who had 97 prisoners of war from the 2nd Battalion, Royal Norfolk Regiment mown down by machinegun in the Le Paradis massacre of May 1940, were mislaid by staff for nine months.

Among the oldest missing papers are exchequer rolls from the 1220s and a Papal Bull from Pope Clement V in 1309, encouraging the foundation of Ciscertian abbeys."
Telegraph, 8.8.11

http://archives.syr.edu/panam/

This site is dedicated to the 270 men, women and children whose lives were lost in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland on December 21, 1988. Thirty-five students studying abroad with Syracuse University were killed in this terrorist attack.
The Syracuse University Archives established this special archives in 1990 to:

bring together in one place materials generated regarding the disaster and make those materials available for research, and
provide a place to personalize our students whose lives were lost; where their families can donate materials by or about them to let the world know in some way what has been lost by their deaths.
In 2006 the scope of the Archives was expanded to include all 270 victims.

http://www.iwatchnews.org/2011/08/02/5456/millions-federal-court-records-are-being-destroyed-save-money

"The federal courts are destroying millions of judicial case records that have been stored in the Federal Records Centers of the National Archives for decades, all in an effort to save money.

The plan is to destroy all records on cases that did not go to trial that were filed between 1970 and 1995. For other records, the federal judiciary has reduced the current record retention time from 25 to 15 years in an effort to cut costs. All cases that went to trial or were filed before 1970 will be kept.

[...] However, the decision to destroy 79,000 boxes filled with civil cases, 43,000 boxes of criminal cases and over 500,000 bankruptcy records is cause for concern among legal historians and advocates for public access to information."