News Round-up

Africa/Europe

Two like-minded organizations, AfLIA (African Library and Information Associations and Institutions) and EBLIDA (The European Bureau of Library, Information and Documentation Associations) signed a Memorandum of Agreement in August 2019. The aim is to foster closer collaboration between these two organizations in advancement of knowledge and access to information to drive sustainable development and the implementation of UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.

Australia

Books Create Australia has announced the launch of a new website (https://bookscreate.com.au/) and unveiled two industry agreements that will benefit libraries across the country. The first is the Jolly Postman agreement, which enables libraries to photocopy the removable inserts of children’s activity picture books so lost items can be easily replaced. The second is the storytime agreement, which addresses the grey area of copyright law around whether libraries can host storytime events outside the library premises, without needing to seek permission from the copyright holder. Books Create Australia is made up of: Australian Booksellers Association; Australian Library and Information Association; Australian Publishers Association; and Australian Society of Authors.

Germany

The German Research Foundation (DFG) is funding the digitization and cataloguing of Jan Tschichold’s legacy. The legacy of this typographer is housed in the German Museum of Books and Writing (DBSM) at the German National Library (DNB) in Leipzig. During an 18-month-long project, selected parts of the legacy will be digitized and catalogued. The project is being funded with approximately 110,000 Euro. The digital copies will be allocated authority data and made accessible globally online via the DNB portal. At the same time, the materials will be catalogued by subject under the academic supervision of Professor Patrick Rössler from the University of Erfurt. The insight thus provided into Tschichold’s workshop is unprecedented in terms of both scope and ease of access. To complete the project, the results will be summarized in a book and at a conference. Jan Tschichold was one of the most influential typographers and font designers of the 20th century. He worked within the sphere of the Bauhaus movement and was regarded there as the initiator of the so-called new or constructive typography. Following the Second World War, he was increasingly guided by traditional role models and published numerous typographical works and textbooks on font design. Jan Tschichold’s heirs gifted his legacy to the DBSM so that it can be used for research and teaching. In recent years, it has been one of the museum’s most frequently-used legacies. The more academics, artists and students view the legacy on site, however, the more wear it suffers. Digitization is a good way to provide many people with an insight into the legacy while protecting it as much as possible. Here it is especially important to enrich the digital copies with accurate descriptions (metadata) in order to help users find precisely what they are looking for. Once digitized, the files will become part of the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek and Europeana, the European digital portal for culture.

Japan

The National Diet Library, Japan (NDL) is digitizing the collections of personal papers of political figures in the Modern Japanese Political History Materials Room, and making a significant part of them available online. All of the documents (1008 items) of the Ito Hirobumi Papers (No.1) are available as part of the National Diet Library Digital Collections. Some of the other materials are only available at the NDL.

Lithuania

EIFL (Electronic Information for Libraries) has joined a partnership in a one-year project to raise awareness about and support Research Data Management (RDM) in Lithuania. RDM is a core component of open science and a growing number of research funders in Europe and in Lithuania now require researchers to include RDM plans in their research proposals. To meet funders’ requirements, the research community needs awareness, guidance and support. The new project, ‘Research Data Management: Awareness Raising and Support’, addresses these needs. It is supported by Research Data Alliance (RDA) Europe, a membership-driven organization that promotes the growth of openness in research, and open science principles and practices. Kaunas University of Technology (KTU) is the new RDA National Node in Lithuania. RDA national nodes coordinate RDA activities and act as champions in their countries, advocating for the development of solutions to data challenges.

Netherlands

Employees from the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (National Library of the Netherlands, KB) have been working with researchers to explore the possibilities of automatically describing publications. The interim results of that exploration are now available in a white paper: ‘Exploring Possibilities: Automated Generation of Metadata’. At present, the description of publications within the KB is done partly by hand and partly by copying data obtained via other sources. Due to the growth of born digital material and the growing storage capacity of websites, the KB expects to preserve increasingly more publications in the coming years. Therefore, it is important to consider the possibilities of optimizing the manual description of publications. Thanks to the growing influx of digital publications and new technologies from the domain of Artificial Intelligence, the library is increasingly able to have the computer interpret these digital texts and assist in generating metadata.

Oceania/United Kingdom

A new project led by the British Library aims to reconnect a rich archive of early sound recordings of cultures from the Pacific region with the indigenous communities from which they originate. Funded by Leverhulme Trust and the UK’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), the project ‘True Echoes: reconnecting cultures with recordings from the beginning of sound’ will utilize recently digitized wax cylinder recordings that date from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and which represent some of the earliest uses of sound in anthropological research. Beginning with the recordings made in 1898 by members of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, the wax cylinder collection held by the British Library Sound Archive also includes recordings made over the subsequent two decades in Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, New Caledonia and Australia. These rare recordings are hugely significant as the earliest documents of oral traditions from Oceanic communities, where cultural rituals and histories are primarily recorded in music and song. Over the next 3 years the project will work with cultural and research institutions in the region and in the UK to enhance the visibility and accessibility of these collections, ensuring that they are catalogued in ways that are accessible to the communities whose heritage they represent. Partners include: Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies (IPNGS); Vanuatu Kaljoral Senta (VKS); Solomon Islands Archives and Museum (SIAM); New Caledonia Tjibaou Cultural Centre (NCTCC); PARADISEC (Pacific And Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures) at the University of Sydney; Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (CMAA); and the British Museum (BM).

Russia

The National Library of Russia has launched an online exhibition, ‘French Royal Bindings of the 17th-19th Centuries’. The collection of European Books in the National Library of Russia includes publications from the libraries of the French royal family – the houses of the Bourbons. These books have their former owners’ bookplates embossed in gold. The online exhibition shows books with Bourbon bookplates from personal libraries of the dynasty members and from the collection of the Royal Library. Books published in the Royal Printing Works are displayed separately. Each exhibit has a bibliographic description and characteristics of its binding, an indication of origin and some interesting facts about the publication. Identification of ownership is carried out using various reference books. In cases where there is no complete certainty about the origin of the publication, further clarifications and special reservations are provided. In the section Exhibition Catalogue, the full list of publications is given. In total, the exhibition presents 86 editions and 196 items from the collection of European Books of the National Library of Russia.

United Kingdom

As part of its Digital Scholarship service, the National Library of Scotland has launched a website for its data collections (https://data.nls.uk/). The new Data Foundry site presents Library collections as data in a machine-readable format, widening the scope for digital research and analysis. Techniques like content mining and image analysis can now be carried out using the Library’s collections. The website features more than 70 GB of data, including digitized text and images, metadata collections, map data and organizational data. Digitized Library collections available as data through the site include:

Encyclopaedia Britannica

Datasets from more Library material like British military lists, audiovisual collections and web archives are also planned to be published as the site is regularly updated.

United States

The Library of Congress has restored and made available online the Gandhara Scroll, a manuscript dating back to around the first century BC. The scroll, which is one of the world’s oldest Buddhist manuscripts, offers insight into early Buddhist history. It originates from Gandhara, an ancient Buddhist region located in what is now the northern border areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan. The scroll tells the story of buddhas who came before and after Siddhartha Gautama, the sage who reached enlightenment under the Bodhi tree in eastern India around the fifth century BC and the religious leader on whose teachings Buddhism was founded. The scroll is available for viewing at loc.gov/item/2018305008.