The Complete Works of Charles Darwin: A Review of the Website
The Complete Works of Charles DarwinLet me start with the obvious: Darwin is hot. Popular books celebrating his legacy have been the rage for the last two decades and then some. Now the discoverer of evolution by natural selection has the website he deserves, sponsored by Cambridge University. I can't vouch that site lives up to its name, but 50,000 pages of searchable text, both published and manuscript, should meet the needs of the most serious scholars. The website also claims to have and the largest catalog of his manuscripts and the largest Darwin bibliography. The latter, with nearly 2,400 entries, starts with Darwin's earliest publications and goes through 2005. It's sortable by oldest or most recent entry, and also by relevance. Many entries link to the full text. Other features include mp3's of Darwin's well know texts as well as from selected letters. One drawback to the site is that there doesn't seem to be any easy way to track down images. Case in point: I sought in vain for Darwin's 1848 tree of life sketch, where he first proposed, in the privacy of his notebooks, common ancestry for all organisms. The image is easily retrievable through Google Images.
Causal admirers of Darwin are also well served. A homepage link for non-academic browsers provides easy access to Darwin's best known works, including the first (1859) edition of The Origin of Species. All images from each text can be viewed alongside the corresponding text.
Tony Doyle
Hunter College
LC group to discuss future of bibliographic control
(as posted by Marsha Clark on CULIBS-L) Advances in search-engine technology, the popularity of the Internet and the influx of electronic information resources have greatly changed the way libraries do their work. To address those changes, the Library of Congress has convened a Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control to examine the future of bibliographic description in the 21st century.
Libraries are looking at ways to catalog the avalanche of both print and digital materials that come to them for classification and control, and library managers worldwide recognize the need to examine critically the role of the catalog and its relationship to other methods of finding
information. Building on the work and results of the Library's Bicentennial Conference on Bibliographic Control for the New Millennium (2001), the new group will: Present findings on how bibliographic control and other descriptive practices can effectively support management of and access to library materials in the evolving information and technology environment, Recommend ways in which the library community can collectively move toward achieving this vision, and Advise the Library of Congress on its role and priorities.
José-Marie Griffiths of the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill serves as chair of the group.
"I agreed to chair this group because these issues are facing all libraries. It is an important opportunity for different sectors of the information profession to examine a common problem and recommend solutions that will benefit librarians and users," she said.
Deanna Marcum, associate librarian for Library Services, hosted the first meeting and thanked the Working Group members for volunteering their time and expertise. Marcum is the convener of the group and will receive its recommendations.
"The Working Group will provide extremely valuable insight and guidance to the Library of Congress and the entire library community in an area critical to the future of librarianship and the continuing role of libraries in American society," Marcum said.
During its inaugural meeting at the Library of Congress Nov. 2-3, Working Group members concluded that, rather than planning a single summit meeting on the future of bibliographic control, it would schedule three regional meetings during 2007. The venues will be in or near
large airports in different regions of the United States to make it easier for a broad range of participants to travel to the meetings.
The Working Group also organized issues and affected parties into three broad categories: Uses and Users, Structures and Standards, and Economics and Organization. Each category will be the focus of one regional meeting in 2007. The meetings will be preceded by distribution of a background paper that gives an overview of the current environment in which bibliographic control operates.
In July or August, after the three meetings have taken place, the Working Group will meet again to draft a report and recommendations by Sept. 1 for public comments, which will be taken into account in the group's final report, to be issued by Nov. 1, 2007.
Members of the Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control
- José-Marie Griffiths of the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (chair)
- Richard Amelung for the American Association of Law Libraries
- Diane Dates Casey, Janet Swan Hill, and Sally G. Smith for the American Library Association
- Brian E.C. Schottlaender, Olivia M.A. Madison, and Judith Nadler representing the Association of Research Libraries
- Gary Price for the Special Libraries Association
- Robert Wolven for the Program for Cooperative Cataloging
- Daniel Clancy for the Google Company
- Jay Girotto for the Microsoft Corporation
- Clifford A. Lynch of the Coalition for Networked Information
- Lorcan Dempsey of OCLC
Assisting the Working Group from the Library of Congress is Library Services Executive Secretariat Beth Davis-Brown.
More information on the Library of Congress Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control will be available beginning Dec. 11, 2006, at a special public Web site, www.loc.gov/bibliographic-future/.
New report on Research behavior
Researchers and Discovery Services: Behaviour, Perceptions and Needs
commissioned by the Research Information Network in UK at
http://www.rin.ac.uk/files/Report%20-%20final.pdffrom Nancy Macomber via CULIBS-L
Labels: information literacy
EPA Library Closings - Leslie Burger Will Speak to National Advisory Council
Leslie Burger is the invited speaker for LACUNY'S Winter Meeting on Dec. 8.
______________________________
American Library Association
Washington Office Newsline
ALAWON
Volume 15, Number 121
December 7, 2006
________________________________
ALA President Leslie Burger to Speak on EPA Library Closings at
National Advisory Council Meeting
________________________________
PRESS RELEASE
WASHINGTON - On December 14, ALA President Leslie Burger will speak at
a meeting of the National Advisory Council for Environmental Policy and
Technology (NACEPT) on the impact of Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) library closings.
The $2 million budget cut that brings about these closings - initially
proposed by the EPA and included in President Bush's budget proposals
for Fiscal Year (FY) 2007 - reduces the 35-year-old EPA Library
Network's budget by 80 percent and forces closure of several regional
libraries.
"The closure of these EPA libraries has given rise to grave concern in
the library, science, and environmental communities," Burger said.
"Public access to vital environmental information needs to remain
open, and the skilled librarians within those libraries need to remain on
hand in order to assist scientists and the public in accessing those
materials.
"I will share the concerns of librarians across the country - not to
mention scientists and those who care about the environment - to this
Council meeting," Burger continued. "I will make it clear just how
important these libraries and their respective librarians are."
The meeting will be held on December 14 and 15, 2006, at The Madison
Hotel, 1777 15th Street NW, Washington, DC, 20005, and Burger is
scheduled to speak on December 14 at 12:30 p.m. The meeting is open to
the public, with limited seating on a first-come, first-served basis.
#
EPA established the National Advisory Council for Environmental Policy
and Technology (NACEPT) in 1988 to provide independent advice to the
EPA Administrator on a broad range of environmental policy, technology and
management issues. Council members include senior leaders and experts
who represent academia, business and industry, community and
environmental advocacy groups, environmental justice organizations,
professional organizations, and state, local, and tribal governments.
________________________________
Click here
or the logo above to:
*
Jump to ALA's Legislative Action Center
*
See what library legislation is hot
*
Send a letter or fax to Congress
U.S. Capitol switchboard 202-225-3121
Looks like the ALA is experimenting with a new wiki focused on professional development and enrichment. Check out the new
Professionaltips wiki,
register, and start adding content (it's a wiki, after all!)
Blogging Issue Announcement, CFP: Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture
On H-Net today: Reconstruction is proud to announce the publication of its Vol. 6, No. 4 (2006) themed issue, "Theories/Practices of Blogging," which can be found at
http://reconstruction.eserver.org.
Featured in the issue:
* Craig Saper, "Blogademia" (I perused this: very interesting)
* danah boyd, "A Blogger's Blog: Exploring the Definition of a Medium"
* Tama Leaver, "Blogging Everyday Life"
* Erica Johnson, "Democracy Defended: Polibloggers and the Political Press in America"
* Carmel L. Vaisman, "Design and Play: Weblog Genres of Adolescent Girls in Israel"
* David Sasaki, "Identity and Credibility in the Global Blogosphere"
* Anna Notaro, "The Lo(n)g Revolution: The Blogosphere as an Alternative Public Sphere?"
* Emerald Tina, "My Life in the Panopticon: Blogging From Iran"
* Various Authors, "Webfestschrift for Wealth Bondage/The Happy Tutor"
* Lilia Efimova, "Two papers, me in between"
* Lauren Elkin, "Blogging and (Expatriate) Identity"
* Various Bloggers, "Why I Blog"
Reconstruction is now accepting submissions for the following upcoming theme issues:
* Class, Culture and Public Intellectuals (deadline: December 1, 2006)
* Visualization and Narrative (deadline: December 15, 2007)
* Fieldwork and Interdisciplinary Research (no deadline set)
For individual CFP requirements and guest editor contact information, please check our "Upcoming Issues" page at
http://reconstruction.eserver.org/upcoming.shtml.
Reconstruction is also accepting submissions for upcoming Open Issues. The next Open Issue is scheduled for publication in Fall 2007. See
http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=153945 for more details.
Using fake websites to teach evaluation of sources
One way to help students in your workshops and classes appreciate the value of evaluating web sites when doing research is to show them a real shocker (such as the white-supremacist created Martin Luther King web site, which I won't link to it here and help boost its Google ranking further) or a fake or spoof web site. If you are looking for some new sites to use, check out
this list from Philip Bradley on his web site (while you're there, take a look at
his blog, too, which I find indispensable).
Labels: information literacy
How to take action on EPA libraries closings
I've been fuming about the closing (and trashing) of the Environmental Protection Agency libraries for months now. If you would like to protest this, the Union of Concerned Scientists has created an
action alert.
Want to find out the buzz in the biblioblogosphere? Search for it in
LibWorm, a search engine that pulls together over 1000 RSS feeds from:
- personal blogs by librarians
- libraries
- library organizations and associations
- library vendors
Want to learn what's going on under the hood of LibWorm and get details on the content in it? Check out:
