Monthly Archives: January 2011

Digitizing All Balinese Literature

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The Balinese, with the help of the Internet Archive and Ron Jenkins of Wesleyan University, have started digitizing the libraries of Balinese literature. They are in the running for being the first culture to have their entire literature go online, even current writings and lectures. It is an exciting development to see one of the most beautiful places and beautiful people on earth fully embrace the digital world. I find it interesting that Bali may lead the world in going fully online, while the west is stalling or stalled for various reasons.

Feature article in the Jakarta Times and an earlier piece on the project.

Developments will be posted here on archive.org and on the Archive Blog.

Go Bali!

-brewster

All Icelandic literature to go online?

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Þorsteinn Hallgrímsson, formerly of the National Library of Iceland, had a big idea:  digitize all Icelandic literature all the way to the current day and make it available to everyone interested in reading it. The Internet Archive was eager to be a part of this bold vision. I am in Iceland now, and because the financial crisis and Icelandic reaction to the US Department of Justice’s subpoenaing the tweets and Facebook account of a sitting member of the Icelandic Parliament, this project may have the momentum it needs to happen.

Ingibjörg Steinunn Sverrisdóttir, the National Librarian, and Katrín Jakobsdóttir, the Minister of Culture, met to discuss this possibility this week. I have met with several other ministers and parliamentarians in the last few days to discuss how this could be done.

The total literature of Iceland is under 50,000 books, which is easily scannable in 2 years by 12 people using the scribe scanners of the Internet Archive. David Lesperance, a lawyer from Canada who has helped support the Room to Read project, has offered to fundraise for this project; the Internet Archive has offered scanning technology, training, and backend software; and the Library has offered to administer the project. A digital lending system could be a way that they decide to limit access to a book to one person at a time in order to balance the interests of the writers and publishers while still having some access to everything from anywhere forever for free. Egill Helgason, of the Icelandic TV network, interviewed Brewster about this (photo below, video on the Archive).

If they decide to go ahead, Iceland could be the first country to have its complete literature go online. Fingers crossed.

The next step beyond this that is interesting to many here is to have Iceland become a “Switzerland of Bits,” where the laws will help protect the historical record from foreign or corporate danger. This is being promoted by Birgitta Jónsdóttir, a member of parliament. The Internet Archive works with many libraries around the world, and everyone wants to make sure that the digital copies are safe for the long term. Iceland is taking steps to be a good place for this.

As an aside, with all their inexpensive “green” electricity from their hydro electric and geothermal plants, I found it interesting that they are growing some vegetables under lights in the long winters as a way to become more self sufficient. With LED lights that can be tuned to produce specific wavelengths at different parts of the growth cycle, this approach could be a fairly energy efficient way to grow food for their people.

-Brewster Kahle

Meeting with the Prime Minister of Greece

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As an Archive first, Brewster Kahle and June Goldsmith met with the Prime Minister of Greece, the Minister of Culture, and the Minister of Education, and their respective teams as a member of 8 outsiders for 6 hours last friday to talk about educational technologies. We met in their equivalent of the White House. We were honored to be invited, but floored that there would be such dedicated time devoted to the subject at such a high level. It was heartening to see the Prime Minister and these top Ministers discuss and change their opinions based on studies and experiences relayed by domain experts that have no financial levers on Greek power.

We talked about reading tablets, digital lending programs, smart whiteboards, and digitizing their libraries. The National Library of Greece has approximately one million volumes in it, and about 7,000 to 8,000 new books are published in Greek each year.

As is widely known it is a difficult time in Greece because of the monetary crisis, and this was apparent in the streets because of strikes and graffiti.

I hope something comes of this meeting, but at least we were honored to have the chance to advise such a group.

– Brewster Kahle

“The e-book thing isn’t happening, it has happened.”

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The ALA Midwinter held its annual meeting in San Diego on January 8, 2011. Moderated by Rick Weingarten, former director of ALA’s Office for Information Technology Policy, the panel featured Internet Archive founder and digital librarian Brewster Kahle; Sue Polanka, head of reference and instruction at Wright State University and author of the e-book blog No Shelf Required; and Tom Peters, CEO of TAP Information Services.

You can watch video of the panel discussion at http://www.archive.org/details/alamidwinter2011. There is also an HD version.

A nice writeup of the conference held in San Diego, CA on January 8, 2011:
At ALA Midwinter, Brewster Kahle, Librarians Ponder The E-book Future

From the article:

‘“The e-book thing isn’t happening,” Kahle, noted “it has happened.” Kahle, who founded the Open Content Alliance, and Open Library project, a digitization program, offered a strong message to librarians: don’t let a few powerful corporations take control of the digital future. He expressed his longstanding concern over Google’s efforts to scan collections “and sell it back to us,” and urged libraries not to give up their traditional roles. “What libraries do is buy stuff, and lend it out,” he said, suggesting that libraries “digitize what we have to, and buy what we can,” but not to let the promise of licensed access turn libraries into agents for a few major corporations. “We do so at our peril.” He also urged more dialogue with publishers and vendors about the future of digital content and the role of libraries—but he also urged bold action.’

-posted by Jeff Kaplan

Martin Luther King Jr. Day

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On this Martin Luther King Jr. Day I found a number of items of interest. I’ve included some descriptions written by the uploaders.

“I Have A Dream” speech from August 28, 1963
Often referred to as one of the greatest speeches in American history.

The March On Washington (1963):
Scenes from Civil Rights March in Washington, D.C., August 1963. People walking up sidewalk; gathering on Mall, standing, singing. Lincoln Memorial with crowds gathered around reflecting pool. People singing and clapping at speakers platform. Speakers, including Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Crowd swaying, singing, holding hands.

Integration Report I (1960):
A documentary showing sit-ins, marches, boycotts and rallies in 1959 and 1960. Includes such events as the first mass marches in Montgomery, Alabama, reactions against police brutality in Brooklyn and protests against the prejudiced treatment of Negroes in court.

Democracy Now! Monday, January 18, 2010:
Today is the federal holiday that honors Dr. Martin Luther King. He was born January 15th, 1929. He was assassinated April 4, 1968, at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He was just thirty-nine years old. While Dr. King is primarily remembered as a civil rights leader, he also championed the cause of the poor and organized the Poor People’s Campaign to address issues of economic justice. Dr. King was also a fierce critic of US foreign policy and the Vietnam War. We play his “Beyond Vietnam” speech, which he delivered at New York’s Riverside Church on April 4, 1967, as well as his last speech, “I Have Been to the Mountain Top,” that he gave on April 3, 1968, the night before he was assassinated.

The New Negro (1957). An interview with Martin Luther King Jr.: Guests: Martin Luther King with J. Waites Waring.

-Jeff Kaplan

Montana State Library Adopts the Internet Archive As Its Institutional Repository

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The Montana State Library (MSL) has just completed moving 3,070 born-digital state publications from OCLC’s CONTENTdm to the Internet Archive.  This is a key piece of the Montana State Library’s institutional repository for state publications now hosted by the Internet Archive (IA). The born digital state publications are integrated with two other pieces of MSL’s institutional repository at IA:

  1. IA is hosting, as part of its free library, a growing number of Montana state publications newly digitized by IA under contract to MSL. This digitization project will take several years to complete given staffing limits.  Nine thousand state publications and nearly one million pages have now been digitized.  Ultimately, MSL expects to digitize 55,000 print items dating from the 1870s.
  2. MSL has contracted with IA’s Archive-It team to crawl and archive state agency web sites. This partnership has significantly improved MSL’s capture of state publications as compared to the previous manual methods. For example, the archived publications are accessible by full-text search.  Publications up to 10 MB are indexed. MSL has branded the web archive piece of its institutional repository, Archive Montana. Because web pages and linked state publications are crawled regularly, Archive Montana also provides a history of state publications in their web context.

As MSL began evaluating whether to commit the born digital piece to IA, MSL staff already knew that we could place links to IA display pages from state publication MARC records. During the evaluation, we learned the metadata exposed on the display pages is from a meta.xml file uploaded, integrated, and stored at IA with each digital object.  The meta.xml files are crosswalked from MSL’s MARC records in two-steps.  In the first step, MSL builds the meta.xml with customized fields it wants to appear on the display pages.  Then, IA puts the finishing touches on the meta.xml to ensure standard fields are included.  The content of the meta.xml is then indexed for search.  So, search at IA is metadata driven with full-text search available in PDFs and the Read Online format.

MSL also came to understand the riches of the variety of formats produced and made accessible by IA display pages – PDF, EPUB, Kindle, Daisy, DjVU, and Read Online.  Read Online has a new accessibility feature that reads aloud, providing a valuable option for patrons. In addition, IA can handle many other formats, such as audio and video.  Patrons can quickly access and download materials or read online.  MSL can brand its landing and display pages.  In addition, IA enables repositories to articulate usage rights to patrons.

To support the IA display pages, there are effective metadata management tools. Plus, IA has a capable backup/preservation infrastructure.  In summary, we found IA to be a versatile digital library.  And, not insignificantly, IA is a library, officially recognized by the State of California.  Given these findings, the Montana State Library realized IA could serve as its institutional repository and so began the process of uploading its born-digital content.

MSL uploaded born-digital state publications in batches by writing basic scripts to work with batch utilities at the IA.  IA assigned software engineer, Hank Bromley, to advise the project.  Hank was both very helpful and articulate.  If the reader would like more information on how MSL completed the project, there is more information in the IA text forum or feel free to contact MSL Library Information Services division.

State publications use has increased significantly since so many publications are now available digitally.  In a recent week, 5,042 items were downloaded from of our current collection of 11,999 state publications at IA.  These 5,042 state publications were downloaded 6,827 times.  Having an institutional repository at the Internet Archive has enabled the Montana State Library to extend the use of Montana state publications.

-Chris Stockwell for Montana State Library, 01/04/2011

Brewster Kahle receives the Zoia Horn Intellectual Freedom Award

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Brewster Kahle and Zoia Horn

On December 17, 2010 Brewster Kahle received the Zoia Horn Intellectual Freedom Award for successfully challenging a National Security Letter (NSL) issued by the FBI that demanded personal information about a user of  Internet Archive’s site, archive.org.

You can see the award presentation and hear Brewster recount the entire ordeal.

A number of articles were written about it at the time including:

FBI Backs Off From Secret Order for Data After Lawsuit

Brewster Kahle offers a cookbook for fighting security letters

From the articles:
“What we wanted to do out of this was to leave a very public cookbook for how to push back. That was our goal in our negotiations with the FBI. We would not have settled without being able to talk about what the letters look like, how to push back and who to call.” -Brewster Kahle

Zoia Horn presented the award and spoke of her own ordeal as the first librarian to be jailed for refusing to divulge information that violated her belief in intellectual freedom during the 1972 conspiracy trial of the “Harrisburg Seven” anti-war activists.

You can also see photos of the lunch event at Internet Archive prior to the presentation in the great hall.

-Jeff Kaplan