2008 Fall - Europe in Bits & Bytes

Pan-European Resources

Previously not available to the public, the database of European Grey literature, Sigle, has been released in open access at http://opensigle.inist.fr. OpenSIGLE permits searching for European technical and research reports, working papers, doctoral dissertations, conference proceedings, preprints, and official publications produced before 2006.

The site http://www.monasterium.net has not yet been mentioned in this column. Providing access to primary archival documents from Central Europe’s monasteries and dioceses, Monasterium.net is an invaluable tool for locating personal data (birth, wedding, and death certificates), land register records, and contracts from the Middle Ages to today. At the time of writing over 22,000 primary documents were freely available online from Germany, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia, Slovakia, and Austria.

DRIVER, the Digital Repository Infrastructure Vision for European Research, released D-NET v.1.0 as an open source software tool for the deployment of a customizable distributed system featuring tools for harvesting and aggregating heterogeneous data sources. For more information on this latest release visit http://www.driver-repository.eu/DRIVER-News-Events/PR_D-NET_1_0.html --to learn more about DRIVER visit http://www.driver-community.eu.

In August 2008, the European Commission launched an open access pilot as an essential endeavor in the EU’s 7th Research Framework Programme (FP7). Under this pilot, grant recipients in seven areas (energy, environment, health, parts of information and communication technologies, research infrastructures, science in society, and social sciences and humanities) will be required to 1) deposit peer-reviewed research articles or final manuscripts resulting from their FP7 projects into an online repository; and 2) to extend their best efforts to ensure open access to these articles within either six (health, energy, environment, parts of information and communication technologies, research infrastructures) or twelve months (social sciences and humanities, science in society) after publication. For a full version of the announcement, refer to http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/08/1262&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en.

The “Bibliothèque nationale de France” (Bnf) has accounced that it will start adding records to WorldCat. The 13.2 million bibliographic records from the BnF will join millions of records added between July 2007 and June 2008, from the National Library of Sweden and the Swiss National Library (in addition to records from the National Library of Australia and the National Library of New Zealand). Further expanding the access to French-language resources within WorldCat would be the inclusion of the approximately 7 million records from the French Union Catalog, the Système universitaire de documentation (Sudoc).

The Swiss National Library has joined Europeana, Europe’s digital library, at http://dev.europeana.eu/. Europeana itself will launch on November 20th and include access to digitized books, films, paintings, newspapers, recordings, and archival resources from Europe’s great research libraries and archives. The prototype of Europeana is available at http://dev.europeana.eu/new_look_for_europeana_launch.php.

Casalini Libri has been providing bibliographic coverage and services for France, Belgium, Switzerland, Spain, and Portugal for some time now. This coverage has recently been expanded to include Greece, though bibliographic records are not yet available, through “i libri international:” http://www.casalini.it/

Through Sarah Wenzel we are alerted to Europa Film Treasures, at http://www.europafilmtreasures.eu/, a cooperative effort on behalf of some of the most prestigious film archives in Europe to provide online access to their holdings. Select films from the archives in numerous European countries are described and placed within their historical context and may be viewed online. Still under development, the site will be complemented with access to online reference works and bibliographies in Film Studies, as well as resources for teaching.

Brill has acquired the Linguistic Bibliography (LB). Providing bibliographical references to scholarly publications in linguistics, the LB is edited by Sijmen Tol and Hella Olbertz on the authority of the Comité international permanent de linguistes under the auspices of the International Council for Philosophy and Humanistic Studies of UNESCO. Covering all branches of linguistics, both theoretical and descriptive, from all geographical areas, including lesser-known and extinct languages, the LB is an essential reference tool in the discipline. Brill, who has been publishing the print volumes of the BL as of 2008, will also develop the Linguistic Bibliography Online. Previously published free of charge with the support of the National Library of the Netherlands, the Linguistic Bibliography Online will be restricted to subscribers only.

French Resources

The Réseau francophone des bibliothèques nationales numériques (RFBNN) was launched at IFLA in Québec this past August at http://www.rfbnn.org/. RFBNN’s aim to provide a digital library of the “Francophonie” by bringing together and serving as portal to major libraries and archives engaged in the digitization of francophone resources. Current participants include libraries from Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and South East Asia. Digitized materials include an already impressive list of newspapers and journals, as well as ebooks, maps, and archival documents.

In his FYI France newsletter of September 21, Jack Kessler highlighted the numerous local “smalltown” libraries that are increasingly placing their collections online. These regional digital libraries provide access to a body of historical documents that were previously unknown or very difficult of access, but highly relevant to any researcher of local history. More information, including a list of these local digital collections, is at http://www.fyifrance.com/fyi1plib.htm.

The Bibliothèque de Port-Royal (http://www.bib-port-royal.com) has placed online the “base Scriptæ” to describe and provide access to its collection of autographed letters and manuscripts at http://site.voila.fr/autographes. Covering documents from 1600 to the present, the “base Scriptæ” is complemented by a rich collection of digital resources available through the catalog of the Bibliothèque de Port-Royal at http://site.voila.fr/portroyal/cataloguegen.htm and through the collections of the Jansenist virtual library at http://site.voila.fr/portroyal/bibvirtuellegen.htm.

Persée launched its new web site (version 2.0) at http://www.persee.fr/ this past Spring with a redesigned user interface and additional features, including:

• Tables of contents, abstracts, and subject descriptors (keywords) in several languages.
• A new search interface permitting to concurrently search the metadata and the full text of articles, as well as to build complex queries, and to limit to speficic disciplines, magazines, periodicals or types of Documents.
• A number of sorting options.
• The ability to download high and lower quality pdf versions documents according to one’s requirements and internet connection speeds.
• The provision of audio versions of articles.
• Linking citations within Persée through CrossRef.

Revues.org breached the threshold of 100 online journals this past July. New titles include:

• Égypte/Monde arabe at http://ema.revues.org/
• Regards sur l’économie allemande at http://rea.revues.org/
• Chrétiens et sociétés (XVIe-XXe siècles) at http://chretienssocietes.revues.org/
• Quaternaire at http://quaternaire.revues.org/
• Bulletin de méthodologie sociologique (BMS) at http://bms.revues.org/
• Revue historique des armées at http://rha.revues.org/
• Lapurdum at http://lapurdum.revues.org/
• Balkanologie at http://balkanologie.revues.org/
• Trivium at http://trivium.revues.org/
• Discours at http://discours.revues.org/
• Revue archéologique du Centre de la France at http://racf.revues.org/
• EchoGéo at http://echogeo.revues.org/
• Géocarrefour at http://geocarrefour.revues.org/
• Cahiers d’Outre-Mer at http://com.revues.org/
• Mots at http://mots.revues.org/
• Revue d’économie industrielle at http://rei.revues.org
• Études caribéennes at http://etudescaribeennes.revues.org

The Bibliothèque national de France regularly conducts studies on its long distance users. Since 2002, four studies were conducted:

• 2002-2003: “Bibusages,” the first Gallica users study.
• 2006-2007: two studies on the design and the prototype of the European Digital Library, Europeana.
• 2007-2008: a study on collaborative practices using Gallica and the first user study of the BnF’s new Gallica 2 digital library interface.

The results of these studies are now accessible and may be downloaded at http://www.bnf.fr/pages/infopro/publics/publ_distance.htm.

Ménestrel, “Médiévistes sur l'internet sources travaux références en ligne,” has been updated at http://www.menestrel.fr. Following Intute’s description, Ménestrel is supported by the École Nationale des Chartes, the Institut de Recherche et d'Histoire des Textes, and the Laboratoire de Médiévistique Occidentale de Paris—in addition to a number of new partners throughout Europe. Ménestrel aims at promoting the development of web-based European resources for the study of the Middle Ages; to promote the work of medievalists on an international level; and to facilitate the exchange of information among researchers. The site includes a list of core electronic resources in the field of medieval studies, a directory of contributing members, a gateway to useful online resources arranged by research themes, a link to electronic resources produced and published by various contributors, news, and a calendar of events.

Attempting to challenge Wikipedia’s dominance of the market for free online encyclopedias, and taking a risk by diluting its name, Larousse has launched its own collaborative encyclopedia at http://Larousse.fr.

The resources of the museum of the Compagnie des Indes of Lorient are now accessible through their online catalog at http://mediatheque.lorient.fr. In total, the museum’s library provides access to over 3,000 bibliographic references describing monographs, specialized periodicals, and reference books, as well as archival materials, including manuscripts, flyers and brochures, exhibition catalogs, and ephemera pertaining to the colonial history of Lorient. Additional information is available at http://musee.lorient.fr.

The updated online exhibit space at the BnF is well worth a new visit at http://expositions.bnf.fr/. Included are exhibits on Sartre, Hugo, Zola, Proust, and on the notebooks of writers held at the BnF—among numerous other topics. In addition, the BnF has centralized access to its publications at http://editions.bnf.fr/, which lists a range of highly relevant publications based upon the BnF’s vast holdings.

Gallica 2 has digitized the archives of over 1,200 periodicals, including the back issues of the newspapers Le Temps, Le Figaro, L'Humanité, La Presse, Le Journal des débats, Le Matin, Le Petit Parisien, and L’Ouest-Éclair, among numerous new titles at http://gallica2.bnf.fr. Access to these historic newspapers is completed with the back issues of an increasing number of scholarly journals, such as La Revue des Deux Mondes, La Gazette des Beaux-Arts, La Revue de Métaphysique et de morale, Le Journal des économistes, La Revue d'Economie politique, Le Bulletin des Lois, La Revue générale de droit international public, Les Compte-rendus de l'Académie des sciences. While most of the issues are available as page-images only, the BnF is running OCR on these and their full texts is increasingly searchable. Bibliographic records/metadata for the titles may be harvested through OAI-PMH at http://oai.bnf.fr/oai2/OAIHandler?verb=Identify.

The blog of the Association des bibliothécaires de France is available and informs visitors and subscribers of news events in the French library world at http://abfblog.wordpress.com/.

The Centre de recherche en histoire des sciences et des techniques of the CNRS has developed a site destined to document the history of the invention of electricity at http://www.ampere.cnrs.fr/correspondance. The site includes the correspondance of André-Marie Ampère (1775–1836). The site of the Centre de recherche en histoire des sciences et des techniques further provides access to portals dedicated to Buffon, Lamarck, and Lavoisier, as well as to thematic dossiers.

The Service commun de la documentation de l'Université de Poitiers created an online exhibit on the first socialist thinkers, the saint-simoniens, fouriérisme, Cabet and Icarian communism, as well as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon at http://premierssocialismes.edel.univ-poitiers.fr.

The site “Recherches ethnologiques,” hosted by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication and the Musée des civilisations de l'Europe et de la Méditerranée at http://www.ethnologie.culture.fr/, is intended to open access to ethnological research carried out in France and abroad to a wide audience. The dossiers and collections presented through the site include a large number of visual and audio resources on topics such as Hip Hop (http://www.hiphop.culture.fr/), the significance of the olive tree in Mediterranean cultures (http://www.ethnologie.culture.fr/olivier/flash/), the history of glass (http://www.ethnologie.culture.fr/verre/), cafés (http://www.cafe.culture.fr/), the Armenians in Europe (http://www.armeniens.culture.fr/), and other subjects.

The Northern city of Roubaix, once a center of the textile industry in Europe, has opened its digital library to document local culture and history at http://www.bn-r.fr. The library assembles medieval manuscripts, historic documents and maps, the literary archive of Maxence Van der Meersch (1907-1951), local newspapers, posters, postcards, and other ephemera.

Italian Resources

The Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento, the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, and the Library Labronico Guerrazzi have launched “Imago Historiae: Biblioteca digitale dell'Umanesimo e del Rinascimento” at http://imagohistoriae.signum.sns.it. The site provides access to a canonical corpus of historiographical texts in page images, written during the Italian Renaissance and devoted to the reflection on the nature and purpose of history and its rhetoric. With many of the works stemming from private collections of bibliophiles, having been bound by renowned bookbinders, and having accumulated autographs and marginalia over the centuries, the site also provides an important corpus for the study of the history of the book.

Another project by the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa not yet described in this column is the biblioteca delle fonti storico-artistiche at http://fonti-sa.signum.sns.it. The site unites select historical and artistic texts including treaties, guides, descriptions, emblem books and correspondence by seminal authors, such as Leon Battista Alberti, Andrea Alciato, Lodovico Dolce, and others.

As we have been alerted by Jeffry Larson, “The World of Dante” is now available at http://www.worldofdante.org. The Institute for Advanced Technologies in the Humanities (IATH) launched “The World of Dante” this past July, to include a gallery of more than 600 images and unique materials, including Botticelli's Chart of Hell (presented in an interactive version through Flash) and illustrations from Yates Thompson 36, one of the most famous illuminated manuscripts of the Divine Comedy. Illustrations by Botticelli, Doré, Flaxman, and other artists are also included. Each illustration contains a considerable amount of contextual material about the persons, places, deities, creatures, and other structures depicted. In addition to the Gallery, The World of Dante includes the Italian text and Allen Mandelbaum's translation of the Divine Comedy; an interactive timeline; an array of maps of Dante's Italy and of all three realms of the afterlife; as well as musical recordings of the liturgical chants and hymns mentioned in Purgatory and Paradise; and teaching resources and activities.

Following an announcement by Intute, forwarded by Sarah Wenzel to the WESS-list, the Italian publisher, Polimetrica, is placing a growing selection of open access publications online at http://www.polimetrica.com/main/list.php.

Sarah also alerted us to “Scrittori d'Italia,” a site that Intute describes as “an excellent resource on Italian literature, poetry and history.” Scrittori d'Italia provides access to the digitized volumes of the Laterza series, which ran from 1910 to 1987 and in which a total of 179 titles were published. Serving as editor for the series, Benedetto Croce selected the manuscripts to be published and served as guarantor for the quality of the editions and their critical apparatus. Additional information is available through Intute: http://www.intute.ac.uk/artsandhumanities/cgi-bin/fullrecord.pl?handle=20080310-16305079.

Spanish Resources

Through Patricia Figueroa and Adan Griego we are alerted to the Archivo Rojo, launched by the Spanish Ministerio de Cultura at http://pares.mcu.es/ArchivoRojo/inicio.do. This extensive collection of photographs from the Spanish Civil War was originally used by the Republican government to denounce the civil war and its consequences for the population of Madrid. After the war it became a tool for repression to identify Republicans depicted in the photographs.

German Resources

The University of Bielefeld’s “Retrospektive Digitalisierung wissenschaftlicher Rezensionsjournale und Literaturzeitschriften des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts aus dem deutschen Sprachraum”: 99 digitized titles have been complemented with 61 new titles at http://www.ub.uni-bielefeld.de/diglib/aufklaerung/zeitschriften.htm--which completes the project. The selection of the journals is largely based upon the “Index deutschsprachiger Zeitschriften 1750-1815” produced by the Academy of Sciences of the University of Goettingen, with the support of the Olms Verlag, which provided the microfiche editions serving for the digitization. As Jim Campbell reminded us on German-e, the new titles may be included in our OPACs by activating these with Serials Services and SFX (provided their knowledge bases are up to date).

The Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Düsseldorf is digitizing its extensive Thomas-Mann-Collection with the support of the German Research Foundation (DFG). As described at http://www.ub.uni-duesseldorf.de/home/ueber_uns/projekte/dfg_tms, the Project will lead to the full cataloging of the approximately 13,000 scholarly monographs (complete with scans of their tables of contents), essays, and newspaper clippings on Thomas Mann and his family, which were acquired for the collection since 1990. In addition to the implementation of an OpenURL resolver providing access to the full texts of articles available through the DFG’s national licenses, resources in the collection will be available through a document delivery service throughout Germany. More complete information about the complete Thomas Mann collection is available at http://www.ub.uni-duesseldorf.de/home/ueber_uns/sonder/mann.

De Gruyter has launched http://www.reference-global.com/ to provide electronic access to its journals, books, and databases on a single platform. De Gruyter’s online journals are now available only through Reference-Global, together with an increasing number of ebooks. The site, built and hosted by Atypon Systems, permits its users to stay abreast of new developments via email or RSS feeds, is a CrossRef partner, and COUNTER compliant.

IREON, the International Relations and Area Studies Gateway, has come online at http://www.ireon-portal.de/. IREON is operated by the German Information Network International Relations and Area Studies (FIV), which is a network of libraries and documentation departments of 13 research organisations (12 German and 1 Nordic), coordinated by the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik - German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), and funded by the German government. IREON offers bibliographic references, full-text documents and (soon) web sites on the following subjects:

• foreign and security policy
• international cooperation and development policy
• European politics and transatlantic relations
• regional and country studies worldwide
• foreign cultural policy
• climate, environment, energy

In addition, IREON includes a thesaurus on international relations and area studies in nine languages of the European Union. The site further permits one to perform federated searches on bibliographic databases and a collection of international security treaties available through:

• World Affairs Online
• PAIS
• Library of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation
• WPSA
• WAO-Treaties
• Online Contents IBLK

The Digital Library of the University of Giessen provides access to online theses, dissertations, and other university publications, including monographic series and periodicals, but also to digitized catalogs of its manuscript collections, bibliographies, photographs, papyri, cuneiform inscriptions, and numerous other resources at http://geb.uni-giessen.de/geb/.

Austrian Resources

ANNO, the Austrian Newspapers Online (http://anno.onb.ac.at/), has expanded its collections to include the digitized versions of the Neue Freie Presse for 1864-1937 at http://anno.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/anno?aid=nfp and Die Presse for 1848-1896 at http://anno.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/anno?aid=apr. Continuing to expand its coverage, ANNO now provides access to over 4 million pages of historic Austrian newspapers.

Swiss Resources

The CESG-Codices Electronici Sangallenses-Digitale Stiftsbibliothek St. Gallen (already reported upon in Spring 2006) at http://www.cesg.unifr.ch received a million dollar grant from the Mellon Foundation to continue its work of digitizing its unique holdings of medieval manuscripts. Read more in the Book section of the New York Times of October 18.

The Haute École de Gestion de Genève accounced the launch of ARESO, the “annuaire électronique de ressources économiques sur la Suisse occidentale” at http://www.areso.ch. The ARESO directory is designed to simplify economic research on Western Switzerland by providing a listing of companies by sector of activity and geographic location, as well as financial information and economical statistics.

Since the beginning of 2008, the Zentralbibliothek Zürich (ZB), the city of Zurich, and the library of the University of Zurich have been actively contributing to the German Wikipedia. In particular, reference librarians and researchers at the institutions have been completing Wikipedia’s coverage of the history of Zurich and its famous personalities.

The Swiss National Library and the Réseau des bibliothèques de Suisse occidentale (RERO) have developed the site Digicoord, at https://www.digicoord.ch/index.php/, to provide a centralized platform describing Swiss digitization projects and to provide up to date information on new developmens in the digital library realm in Switzerland and to foster collaboration and exchanges. In particular the listing of Swiss digitization projects at https://www.digicoord.ch/index.php/Projets_de_numérisation is of particular interest for this column, as it leads to numerous digitization projects that are, perhaps, not yet or little known on this side of the Atlantic.

BeNeLux Resources

The Digitale Bibliografie Nederlandse Geschiedenis (DBNG) at http://www.dbng.nl/ provides comprehensive bibliographic access to the publications on the history of the Netherlands from the earliest times to the present. The database includes references to monographs and collections of essays, articles from scholarly journals and magazines, as well as online publications from various Dutch collections.

The Radio et Télévision Belge Francophone (RTBF) placed online its audiovisual archives pertaining to the World Exhibition in Brussels of 1958 at http://www.monexpo58.be. The site includes over 250 audio and video clips depicting life at the Expo. It is also a source of information on the first steps of television in Belgium and on the 50s in general.

English Resources

Through the Information World View (http://www.iwr.co.uk/), we are alerted that JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) has announced the launch of a multi-million pound digitization project to create an online news archive. The “NewsFilm Online” will provide access to decades of newsreel footage and other news content in partnership with ITN and the British Universities Film and Video Council. In total, the site will include over 3,000 pieces of newsreel material that will be freely searchable online, but only users from subscribing institutions will be able to download and manipulate the materials. NewsFilm Online is available at http://newsfilm.bufvc.ac.uk/.

Sarah Wenzel and Information World View also noted the launch of another multi-million pound digitization project, the UK Research Reserve (UKRR), which aims at increasing access to low use journals held the Imperial College London and the British Library, while preserving them for the long term. The project is supported by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and further described at http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/library/aboutthelibrary/annualreport/ukrr.

The map of early modern London is now available at http://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/.