"The International Council on Archives, a founder member of the International Committee of the Blue Shield (ICBS], strongly supports the statement issued by ICBS about the tragic events in resulting from the earthquake in the Abruzzo region of Italy. A copy of the statement is attached.
Reports are still coming in, but it is clear that there has been serious damage to the State Archives in Aquila. Many members of ICA will wish to demonstrate their professional solidarity by offering help and support to their Italian colleagues at the appropriate time. It is the policy of ICA to use the Blue Shield network for the co-ordination of offers of help in situations where archives are under threat or have already been damaged. We therefore recommend that members who wish to help should follow developments on the web site of the Association of National Blue Shield Committees (ANCBS) - http://www.ancbs.org/.
In addition, members who live in a country with an established National Blue Shield Committee should ask it for advice on how they can best assist the recovery efforts. "

Link:
http://www.ica.org/en/2009/04/09/earthquake-abruzzo

s. a. http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/5633415/

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10216485-38.html

See also:
http://editorialconsultant.wordpress.com/

http://www.acehbooks.org/

On this website you will find a list of over 600 titles of books about Aceh. These books are now digitally available.

The devastating tsunami that struck Aceh on 26 December 2004 caused thousands of victims but also destroyed important libraries in Banda Aceh. The Royal Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) in Leiden initiated a project that aimed to digitize a major part of the literature on Aceh that is kept in the KITLV Library. The Dutch Ministry of Education agreed to finance this project and the Royal Library of the Netherlands in The Hague supervised the digitization process.

At present 656 files are available in digital form in pdf format via this website. More titles are to follow in the course of 2009.

The titles listed here are books about Aceh in a variety of languages such as Indonesian, Acehnese, English, Dutch, as well as other European languages. These books are published with Indonesian as well as European publishing houses. The books date from the 17th century till the present time.

See e.g.
http://www.acehbooks.org/search/detail/1272?language=en
"14 Jahre in den Tropen"

http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/04/institutional-motives-for-raising-or.html

Kristin R. Eschenfelder, Controlling Access to and Use of Online Cultural Collections: A Survey of U.S. Archives, Libraries and Museums for IMLS DRAFT VERSION 4/7/2009, a preprint, self-archived April 9, 2009.

http://dlist.sir.arizona.edu/2572/

Abstract: This report describes the results of an Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) funded study to investigate the use of technological or policy tools to control patron access to or use of digital collections of cultural materials created by U.S. archives, libraries and museums. The technological and policy tools serve primarily to control copying or other reuses of digital materials. The study had the following goals: 1. Assess what technical and policy tools cultural institutions are employing to control access to and use of online digital collections. 2. Investigate motivations for controlling access to or use of collections (e.g., copyright, privacy, protecting traditional restrictions, income generation etc.). 3. Investigate discouragers to the implementation of access and use control systems (e.g., preference for open collections, lack of resources, institutional mission, etc.). 4. Gauge interest in implementing technical systems to control access to and use of collections. 5. Determine what types of assistance IMLS could provide. 6. Identify institutions with innovative controlled online collections for follow up case studies on policy, technical and managerial details.

Comments

This is the most nuanced study I've seen of institutional motives for adopting or rejecting access restrictions. Instead of merely asking institutions whether or not they provided OA, Eschenfelder asked what reasons they might have for providing OA, and what reasons they might have for creating a non-OA "controlled online collection" (COC) instead. These reasons can coexist. A COC uses some access restrictions, even if they are not financial. From table 40 at p. 56: The leading reason why surveyed archives would not be inclined to create COCs was "Belief that open collections have greater impact". The same was true for museums (table 48 at pp. 62-63). For libraries (table 44 at p. 59) the leading reason was "Belief that open collections have greater access." In all three cases, the case for OA was direct, resting on the advantages of OA, rather than indirect and resting on disadvantages of alternatives such as fear of legal complexity, fear of technological complexity, and fear of alienating users.
BTW, among the leading reasons why archives would be inclined to create COCs (table 39 at p. 55) were "proper object description and repository identification", "avoid misuse/misrepresentation", and "avoid legal risk". The same was true for museums (table 47 at p. 61). Libraries (table 43 at p. 58) drop the first of these and add "donor or owner requirement".
Note from p. 24: "the sample purposefully excluded certain types of organizations including those whose primary purpose was to provide open access to public records or government publications."
This study focuses on archives, libraries, and museums. I'd like to see a similar study of publishers.

The Wellcome Library is pleased to announce that its entire collection of 17th century receipt (recipe) books - 75 manuscripts in total - have been made available online. They are currently available as PDFs from our catalogue records.

http://wellcomelibrary.blogspot.com/2009/04/bon-appetit.html

" ....Describe a typical day:
My day is usually extremely varied, but generally includes answering enquiries from both members of the public and other Royal Household Departments, using papers held in the Royal Archives. The subject of enquiries can range from genealogical research to requests for speech material from the offices of Members of the Royal Family.
I also spend some of each day cataloguing part of our collection, either on our computer database or adding to our manual indexes. We also admit research academics to the Royal Archives which entails supervision, providing assistance with enquiries and checking texts.
Quite frequently I will need to spend time on preparation for exhibitions and there is also a manual aspect to this job, as we have to deal with new accessions of material and undertake projects to re-box and re-organise parts of our collection within the archive stores. ...."
Quelle: Link

Thanks to the twittering library mistress!

"[O]n 27 March the Guardian Weekly published Bettina Schmidt-Czaia's first-person account of the collapse of the Historical Archive of the City of Cologne. Schmidt-Czaia is the director of the Historical Archive"

http://www.guardianweekly.co.uk/?page=editorial&id=1004&catID=9

Via
http://larchivista.blogspot.com/2009/04/bettina-schmidt-czaia-cologne-archives.html

Machines in the archives: Technology and the coming transformation of archival reference by Richard J. Cox and the University of Pittsburgh archives students
First Monday, Volume 12 Number 11 - 5 November 2007
Abstract:
Technology is transforming the way in which researchers gain access to archives, not only in the choices archivists make about their uses of technology but in the portable technologies researchers bring with them to the archives. This essay reviews the implications of electronic mail, instant messaging and chat, digital reference services, Web sites, scanners, digital cameras, folksonomies, and various adaptive technologies in facilitating archival access. The new machines represent greater, even unprecedented, opportunities for archivists to support one of the main elements of their professional mission, namely, getting archival records used.
Link: First Monday

Via Library Mistress. Danke !