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This article explores Msgr. Germano Straniero's Report on the State of the Catholic Church in America (1886), based on his official visit to the United States. It provides a historical context for the document, an understudied source of American Catholic history, and examines its significance within the Germano Straniero Papers housed at the University of Notre Dame Archives. Additionally, the article discusses a critical and pedagogical project resulting in the first digital edition of the text, which includes a translation and pedagogical resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The records of art conservators are important for many reasons. As people consider artwork a legacy of American culture so too will they also consider the records generated by individuals who have spent their working lives guaranteeing its long-term survival. Conservators and archival repositories need to work together to ensure that records relating to the treatment of art objects in their many forms be retained and made available to researchers generations from now. Some conservators and institutions have already begun to work together, most notably the conservators who have donated their papers to the Winterthur Museum. The American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works and The Getty Conservation Institute organized a two-day roundtable discussion in May 2003, bringing conservators and archivists together to discuss the next steps in archiving the records of art conservators. (Contains 7 notes.)

The article offers information on the collections of the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan related to U.S. military history. A list is provided of archival materials along with brief descriptions of their historical value. Historical documents discussed include official correspondence from New York governor George Clinton, a diary from lieutenant Jehu Hay, a statistical record of the Continental Army under the command of general George Washington, and the papers and correspondence of British general Thomas Gage.

For those receiving funding from the UK HEFCE-funded Open Educational Resource Programme (2009-2012), the sustainability of project outputs was one of a number of essential goals. Our approach for the hosting and distribution of health and life science open educational resources (OER) was based on the utilisation of the WordPress.org blogging platform and search engine optimisation (SEO) techniques to curate content and widen discovery. This paper outlines the approaches taken and tools used at the time, and reflects upon the effectiveness of web strategies several years post-funding. The paper concludes that using WordPress.org as a platform for sharing and curating OER, and the adoption of a pragmatic approach to SEO, offers cheap and simple ways for small-scale open education projects to be effective and sustainable.

Discusses the personal papers of the late Derek Freeman, scholar and specialist in Borneo studies, which have been deposited at the Mandeville Special Collections Library at the University of California, San Diego. Acquisition of the collection; Completion of the collection in 2002; Correspondence; Field notes and documents concerned chiefly with Samoa and the so-called Mead-Freeman controversy.

The article provides information about Raphael Lemkin through his archival collections. Lemkin is a pioneering scholar of Genocide Studies and self-proclaimed founder of the Genocide Convention. The first collection of documents about Lemkin reside at the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of American Jewish Archives located at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, Ohio. The second collection was given to the American Jewish Historical Society. The third collection was donated to New York Public Library. Other collections were at the University of Alabama.

Reports on the collection of papers of Reginald H. Parsons at the Knight Library of the University of Oregon, Eugene. Collection of documents of the financial, civic and philanthropic activities of Parsons; Family background; Purchase of the Hillcrest Orchard, near Medford, Oregon, in 1908.

Presents an inventory on three volumes of the archives of Renaissance painter Giorgio Vasari at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. Highlights of the archives; Document on the work of Vasari on the decoration of the cupola of Florence Cathedral in Italy; Insights on account books in the archives.

The article discusses the archival Blevins Davis (1903-1971) Papers (K0031), which are primary source documents of the U.S. playwright and theater and radio drama producer Charles Blevins Davis, located at the State Historical Society of Missouri’s Kansas City Research Center in Kansas City, Missouri. An overview of Davis's career in theater and radio is provided.

The article profiles the Norman Bel Geddes Papers at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin as of August 2012. The article states that the papers consist of almost 800 boxes containing the records of U.S. industrial designer Norman Bel Geddes. The article discusses the participation of Bel Geddes in the compilation of his records, the filing system employed by Bel Geddes, and the dominance of Bel Geddes's records of documents from his "Futurama" exhibit at the 1939-1940 World's Fair in New York City. The article discusses opportunities for historical research within the records, access to the collection, and the significance of Bel Geddes to 20th century design concepts.

Unlike scholars in many other disciplines, economists show little organized concern for preserving disciplinary archives. Consider the contrast between the community of mathematicians and the community of economists: the American Mathematical Society and the Mathematical Association of America have embarked on a joint project to preserve official archives and to advise individuals and groups about the preservation of personal and organization-related papers: these two large organizations have recognized that mathematicians' "personal papers and the records of mathematical institutions and organizations are a source for an understanding of history." Generally, donors are asked to sign an agreement that gives property of the papers to the repository; rarely do repositories accept collections on loan or deposit. Before signing such an agreement, one should become familiar with the repository's policies on availability and publication of the papers. Most repositories are willing to attempt to address any concerns one may have, such as a desire to restrict part of the collection to protect the privacy of others.

The Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress seeks to preserve personal papers and organizational records that document the course of America's national experience. Its more than 10,000 collections with more than 40,000,000 manuscript items touch upon every aspect of American history and culture. Collections containing labor-related material are considerable and constitute a major archive for labor history research. Some of the organizational records in the library includes the American Federation of Labor Letterbooks, American Friends Service Committee Work Camp Diary, Brotherhood of the Sleeping Car Porters, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, National Association of Railway Postal Clerks, National Child Labor Committee, National Consumers League, National Women's Trade Union League of America, and People's Legislative Service. Some of the personal papers included in the library are of Henry J. Allen, former governor of Kansas, Otto S. Beyer, a consulting engineer and labor-management relations specialist, Warren K. Billings, a labor militant, William E. Borah, a former U.S. Senator from Idaho, and Andrew Carnegie, a labor activist in the late 19th century.

The article discusses archives that hold collections dealing with the history of women scientists in the U.S. The author describes her own research methods when studying the topic of U.S. women scientists since 1972. She explains the benefits of utilizing such resources as the Archives of Women in Science and Engineering at Iowa State University (ISU), the Vera Kistiakowsky Papers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the Jewel Plummer Cobb Papers at the New York Public Library in New York City.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to understand the emergence of digital reformatting as a technique for preserving information within the cultural heritage preservation community by reviewing historical trends in modern preservation research. Design/methodology/approach: This paper analyzes secondary sources, reviews and historical texts to identify trends in the intellectual and technological histories of preservation research, beginning with the first applications of the scientific method to combating book decay in the early nineteenth to the emergence of digitization techniques in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Findings: This paper identifies five major historical periods in the development of preservation knowledge: the early experimental era; era of microfilm experimentation; era of professionalization; era of digital library research; and the era of digital reformatting and mass digitization; and identifies three major trends in its development: empirical inquiry, standardization and centralization. Research limitations/implications: Findings reflect broad trends in the field of preservation, primarily in a United States context and are limited to the modern era of preservation research. Practical implications: This paper's broad historical overview provides a reference for preservation professionals and students in library science or archives programs. Identifying historical trends enables practitioners to critically examine their own preservation techniques and make better decisions when adopting and using new preservation technologies. Originality/value: This paper provides a unique perspective on the history of preservation knowledge that synthesizes existing historical research in order to identify periods and trends that enable a clearer understanding of digital reformatting in its historical emergence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper compares the American and Soviet transformations at Kabul University, Afghanistan, during the 1960s to the 1980s explained in terms of Americanisation and Sovietisation. Using new declassified documents from both American and former Soviet archives, the author reveals that both powers attempted to impose their rival models of university education in Afghanistan. However, resistance on the part of the Afghan university undermined both of their cultural influences, thus causing their policies of reform to eventually fail. The case of Kabul University demonstrates the inability of the superpowers to encourage the formation of pliable students and professors. Despite crucial transformations in the structure, administration apparatus, and content of disciplines, both superpowers were not able to change the traditions and values of professors and students. The university community has been proven to be the main cause for the success or failure of any reforms brought to a university by external powers.

The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr. Volume 1: Called to Serve, January 1929-June 1951,' edited by Clayborne Carson et al.

The article discusses the George Palmer Putnam Collection of the Amelia Earhart Papers located at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. The article details the relationship between Earhart, a U.S. pilot, and Purdue University. According to the article, Earhart and her husband, George Palmer Putnam, met with Purdue president Edward C. Elliot in 1935 and established The Amelia Earhart Fund for Aeronautical Research at Purdue. The article describes the collection and states that the papers cover a time period between 1785 and 1948, encompassing 16.5 cubic feet of materials. According to the article, the papers are classified into seven series including Earhart's flying career, her personal and family life, and artifacts. The article describes the uses and drawbacks of the collection.

Copyright of IFLA Journal is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Stamp collectors frequently donate their stamps to cultural heritage institutions. As digitization becomes more prevalent for other kinds of materials, it is worth exploring how cultural heritage institutions are digitizing their philatelic materials. This paper begins with a review of the literature about the purpose of metadata, current metadata standards, and metadata that are relevant to philatelists. The paper then examines the digital philatelic collections of four large cultural heritage institutions, discussing the metadata standards and elements employed by these institutions. The paper concludes with a recommendation to create international standards that describe metadata management explicitly for philatelic materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article informs that the U.S.'s National Institutes of Health's (NIH's) new push to expand public access to papers it funds kicks in this week. As of 2 May, NIH-funded investigators are requested to submit copies of final, accepted journal manuscripts to NIH (www.nihms.nih.gov), which will post them in NIH's PubMed Central papers archive no more than 12 months after they're published in the journal. NIH announced the policy in February after a 6-month battle between open-access advocates and journal publishers, who say the policy violates copyrights and will put them out of business.

Institutional repositories have been established by most university libraries but their level of success has varied. Determining what belongs in such repositories has been the subject of some discussion but research would suggest that a broader rather than narrower compass is a positive approach to adopt. By seeking out a variety of content types, the library is able to initiate, renew, or redefine its relationship with faculty, departments, and administration, generating critical support for scholarly communication and repository initiatives. This paper provides examples of successful IRs and their scope. (Contains 1 chart.)

The Web-at-Risk project is a digital preservation project funded by the Library of Congress as part of the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program. The project is developing a Web archiving service to enable curators to build, store, and manage archived collections of Web-published materials captured largely from U.S. federal and state government agency Web sites. In 2005 the project's 22 curators, as well as librarians and archivists working primarily in academic libraries (n = 43), university researchers (n = 7), and content providers (n = 7) participated in a study to identify their needs in relation to Web archiving. This paper summarizes the issues and challenges these groups face and discusses the need for collaborations among libraries and government entities for preserving Web-published materials.

This article presents the author's comments on Robin Kelsey's "Archive Style: Photographs and Illustrations for U.S. Surveys, 1850-1890," a book about government documents that happen to be visual materials. The word "archive" now has intellectual cache in the academic world, but its currency has little to do with the "real world of archives" as "Journal of Archival Organization" readers understand it from a professional or institutional perspective. Rather, it is the metaphorical archive of French philosophers, their followers and interlocutors, who employ the concept of "the archive" as something produced by the nineteenth-century "drive to extract from the world a complete and corresponding record of itself (Kelsey 2007, p. 9)." While his "Archive Style: Photographs and Illustrations for U.S. Surveys, 1850-1890" is, thus, not about the "real world of archives," to dismiss--as theoretically driven or professionally irrelevant--Kelsey's elaboration of the practices of visual representation that created the archival record of nineteenth-century surveys of the American West would be a grave mistake. This reading of "Archive Style" straddles the "archival divide" separating academic and institutional, theoretical and professional understandings of "the archive" and the "real world of archives." "Archive Style" offers an opportunity to extract important lessons not only for archival theory and practice but also for professional self-reflection and identity. Taken as a whole, Kelsey's book demonstrates the important role of visual materials in the course of government business, in this instance specifically the United States' surveys of 1850-1890. (Contains 6 notes.)

The Archives of Labor History and Urban Affairs, Walter P. Reuther Library at the Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, was established in 1960 to collect and preserve the records of the American labor movement, with special emphasis upon industrial unionism and related social, economic and political reform movements in the U.S., especially those relating to workers. Later, in 1970, the scope of the Archives was expanded to include urbanization, especially relating to Detroit and southeastern Michigan. The majority of the archival collections relate to the period after 1920, though some collections like those of the Industrial Workers of the World, the American Federation of Teachers, and the personal papers of labor leaders date back to the turn of the century. Archives. From its beginning in 1960, the Archives has adopted a vertical collecting policy for union records. This vertical collecting policy differs sharply from the acquisitions policy of many archives that concentrate almost solely upon key offices of an international union and the personal papers of top union leadership.

Presents news briefs on events concerning historians in the U.S. as of 1983. Annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians in Los Angeles, California; Requirements of the Pelzer Award Committee for the essays to be submitted for the Louis Pelzer Award competition; Information on the accessions, openings and declassifications in the U.S. National Archives and Records Service.