From: avatar (avatar@renegadeclothing.com.au)
Date: Fri Feb 07 2003 - 22:42:29 MST
This may be of interest to some. I received this letter from the Library of
Congress:
The upshot is currently when you send your 3 or 7 or whatever copies
of your book or publication to a central HQ library/depository for preservation
for posterity, it is not scanned. Currently.
Would opening up technical-scientific books/journals further speed the
Singularity?
"Dear Avatar Polymorph,
The Library of Congress has already scanned parts of its collections and
made them available via the World Wide Web. Here are some of the things
scanned to date and made available via the Library's World Wide web site:
* Selected books about the Library of Congress originally published by the
Library. Some are available here <http://www.loc.gov/about/books/>;
* Selected American History and culture materials via the American Memory
Historical Collections <http://memory.loc.gov>. These comprise more than
eight million digital files;
* Current and recent (1973-present) congressional materials
<http://thomas.loc.gov>;
* Books and studies, originally published by the Library's Federal Research
Division <http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/>;
* Selected copyright-free materials requested by other institutions
<http://lcweb.loc.gov/rr/loan/illscanhome.html>;
* Selected prints and photographs
<http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/catalog.html>; and
* Other materials via the Library's conservation and preservation programs
<http://www.loc.gov/preserv/prd/presdig/prestoc.html>.
In some cases, these categories overlap.
The Library of Congress is considering a wide array of other digital
projects. Materials that are converted to digital form for use only within
the confines of the Library of Congress buildings are scanned with either
the permission of the rights holders or under the "fair use" exceptions to
copyright law. Some of the digital surrogates of photographs presented in
the Library's Prints and Photographs Catalog, for example, may only be
viewed by researchers within the Library's buildings. And selections of
manuscript materials from the Hannah Arendt collection are available in
computer form only from within the Library of Congress Manuscript Reading
Room. Other selections are available via American Memory (here <
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/arendthtml/>). Of course, since the Library of
Congress is home to the United States Copyright Office, the Library must
follow the law to the letter. The must also carefully adhere to the
restrictions on materials placed by the materials' donors and their
heirs. These agreements are a particular issue when a prominent person
donates or sells his or her personal or professional papers to the Library
of Congress.
Some general information about may of the above programs, plus some
information and a link to the National Digital Information Infrastructure
and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) are here:
<http://www.loc.gov/library/libarch-digital.html>. The NDIIPP is
investigating all sorts of issues relating to the digital conversion of
analog materials as well as the conservation of materials which are "born
digital.". This is a new field of study and most of the answers are still
unknown."
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