Starting Today - Your Facebook, Tweets and Blogs could be shared with library users

 

Material on 1bn webpages from nearly 5m .uk websites, plus public tweets and Facebook entries, are to preserved for the historical record at six libraries in the UK and Ireland.

The archive project, aimed at preserving a digital record of events and cultural and intellectual works to match traditional print archives, begins on Saturday.

Its organisers say copies of every public tweet and Facebook entry in the UK could eventually be included. The moves will also cover ebooks and iPad editions of newspapers and other digital forms.
The British Library will begin the enormous operation a day after new regulations laid down by parliament come into force but already it is warning that key accounts of some events over the past 10 years have already been lost.

"If you want a picture of what life is like today in the UK you have to look at the web," said Lucie Burgess, head of strategy at the library. "We have already lost a lot of material, particularly around events such as the 7/7 London bombings or the 2008 financial crisis."

Social media reactions to the Queen's diamond jubilee celebrations were among other information that had fallen "into the digital black hole of the 21st century because we haven't been able to capture it," she said. "Most of that material has already been lost or taken down."

Burgess added: "We will have to distinguish between content published in the UK and elsewhere but in principle we will be able to archive the publicly available tweets of any individual, company or organisation."

Until now the British Library could only preserve a relatively small number of websites. The 2003 Legal Deposit Libraries Act paved the way for such information to be stored but copyright laws had forced it to seek permission each time it wanted to collect web content.

The Bodleian Library, in Oxford, Cambridge University library, the National Library of Scotland, the National Library of Wales and Trinity College library in Dublin, like the British Library, which is acting on behalf of all, have the right to receive a copy of every UK electronic publication.

The trawl will include embedded audio and video material but the regulations do not cover other mediums such as YouTube or Spotify. The project will later seek to identify UK sites in the .org and .com domains.

Burgess said that it had taken over 300 years to collect 750m pages from printed newspapers, yet the aim now was to collect 1bn webpages in a year and then conduct regular sweeps in future. "It is about taking a snapshot. It is not for us to say what is of interest. Researchers will be the judges of that."

Roly Keating, chief executive of the British Library, said that there had been " a very real danger" of millions of web pages, e-publications and other non-print items "falling through the cracks of a system that was devised primarily to capture ink and paper".

While the 2003 act established the principle that legal deposit "needed to evolve to reflect the massive shift to digital forms of publishing", the regulations would make "digital legal deposit a reality, and ensure that the legal deposit libraries themselves are able to evolve – collecting, preserving and providing long-term access to the profusion of cultural and intellectual content appearing online or in other digital formats."

Access to the material will be offered in reading rooms at each of the six libraries.

Guardian.co.uk
BBC News http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-22028738

Sharon x

   

http://www.beckvalleybooks.co.uk 
http://www.beckvalleybooks.blogspot.com

Terry Deary's thoughts on libraries is dismissed by author Julia Donaldson

Children's favourite author Julia Donaldson

Children's laureate Julia Donaldson has come out in staunch support of libraries, dismissing Horrible Histories author Terry Deary's belief that they have "had their day" as "seriously flawed".

Earlier this week, Deary told the Guardian that in an age of compulsory schooling, libraries were "no longer relevant". But Gruffalo author Julia Donaldson – the third most-borrowed author from the UK's libraries last year – said Deary's belief that bookshops are closing "because someone is giving away the product they are trying to sell" is mistaken.

"I think it's brilliant that libraries are free. Not only do library users also buy books, but if some users genuinely are too poor to buy books, then it's great that we've got libraries for those people … [And] If libraries have any bearing on bookshops, it's the other way – libraries are creating readers," said Donaldson, who has "never met" a bookseller who believes libraries are putting them out of business.

"When I did my recent library tour from John O'Groats to Lands End, I interspersed the library visits with signings in local bookshops, and the booksellers all blamed Amazon, and to some extent ebooks, for their decline," she said. "If yet more bookshops close and people can only find books online, without public libraries there would be no place for children to physically browse and discover their tastes in reading. And publishers would only be able to publish the most popular titles, so that far more authors would be out of a living."

According to Donaldson, there is not an "either/or" between bookshops and libraries. "In reality, libraries are the places where our readers and book-buyers are created. Without the huge choice of books which libraries provide, children are not going to discover their favourite authors, and will not then be asking for books for their birthdays or buying them when they are adults with their own money," she said. "One of my sons found Horrible Histories in the library, and I used to buy them for his birthday. I would never have found them without the library, so I think library borrowing definitely contributes to sales.

Donaldson pointed to recent statistics which show that children's fiction has seen an increase in borrowing numbers for the last two years, saying that "the toddlers who go to the 'Rhymetime' sessions in libraries and the schoolchildren who do the Summer Reading Challenge are much more likely to become readers and future book- buyers than those who don't".

On Deary's comment that libraries are not needed because schools provide access to literature, Donaldson said she had "never visited a primary school which could provide a fraction of the books or specialist knowledge and advice which a library can provide". Deary agreed with her, saying that "all I am asking is 'are there other ways of addressing the problem?' Ways that do not involve a library building perhaps? Let's start with a blank sheet of paper here, not with a 100-year-old building."

Donaldson did agree with Deary that "writers need to make a living", and admitted that it "annoys me when we are often expected to do events for free", but said she had "never met any other author who feels that libraries are robbing them of their income. Like him I am one of the country's most-borrowed authors … but I think it is partly for this reason that we are also among the bestselling ones".

Deary has received an avalanche of hate mail this week, and has been subjected to what he has described as a "witch-hunt", as well as a petition – since taken down – for his bestselling Horrible Histories books to be removed from library shelves. "Some enlightened people have welcomed the debate," he said. "Many disagree but concede my right to freedom of speech. Many simply post obscenities to me that would make a grown man blush."

But according to Deary, "the most astonishing thing" was that "the campaign of vilification" against him has been led by authors. "Why is their language so intemperate, crude, personal and at the level of the playground? What are they doing for their reputations by their petty spite? And what exactly are they afraid of? And why didn't these same saintly authors march in protest against the closure of Borders bookshops as they did against the closure of libraries?" he asked.

Many authors have not been as measured as the children's laureate in their response to Deary's salvo. Neil Gaiman called Deary's views "selfish & stupid, shortsighted & sad" but "mostly selfish" on Twitter, adding: "Terry Deary gets avaricious & anti-library".

David Almond dismissed Deary's remarks as "self-serving ignorant cynical twaddle" on Twitter, and Joanne Harris wrote: "another middle-class author with plenty of money to buy books ignores the value of libraries to the old, the young & the less well off … Terry Deary's solo attempt to prove that all best-selling authors are venal, ungrateful & out-of-touch".

Speaking to the Guardian, the Chocolat author added: "It seems sad he thinks that. It also seems slightly insulting to his readership. The value of libraries to people is greater than just access to books – it is one of the benchmarks of civilisation. Free libraries were introduced for a reason – to give people who might not have access to books the chance other people had. They are the complete leveller."

Like Donaldson, Harris believes readers are not making a choice between borrowing a book from a library or buying it. "The assumption that everyone who borrows one of his [Deary's] books would otherwise be buying it from a shop is just naive," she said. "Books are borrowed from libraries, and often if people love them, they will buy them later. Libraries offer a legitimate way of trying an author, and maybe taking a punt on buying them later. Terry has left out of the equation the poor, the elderly and the vulnerable, and just people who don't have the space or money to buy thousands of books."

But "if that is what Terry genuinely thinks, then he should say it," said Donaldson. "Who knows – maybe one of us can get him to change his mind."

Deary was open to the possibility. "On a personal note I've not been to my local library for six months now. I prefer browsing and buying for my Kindle because I have a couple of million titles to choose from delivered in seconds. I feel terrible and disloyal but when my fabulous local librarian was pushed out of the door (budget cuts) I lost the motivation to go. Sorry," he said. "But I'm not alone. My experience exemplifies the problem libraries will face in the future. Where should an author stand on the question of library closures? I want libraries to convince me they are the future. I want them to lure me back in. Then I will support them with all my heart. Lovely places, lovely people."

Guardian.co.uk

Sharon x

   
http://www.beckvalleybooks.co.uk 
http://www.beckvalleybooks.blogspot.com

Europe's archived trove of rare Great War documents to go online

Libraries across Europe are collaborating to make 400,000 documents available to the public.

Remembrance Sunday was marked for the first time yesterday without the presence of a surviving serviceman from the Great War. Claude Choules, who served in the navy, died in May, aged 110.

Living witnesses to the war may no longer be with us, but British archives still hold a wealth of original documentation from those years and, although much of it is in danger of crumbling away, the range of testimony held by the British Library helps to broaden understanding of the war.

In an unprecedented effort to make this material available to the widest possible public, the library is to join forces with 12 European partners – including national libraries in Rome, Berlin, Paris and Copenhagen – to put key documents and images on the internet. The new three-year project, Remembering the First World War, will be finished in time for the ceremonies to mark the centenary of the outbreak of war in 2014.

More than 400,000 first world war source materials, many of them rare and highly fragile due to the deterioration of the paper on which they are printed, will be freely available online for the first time. Those interested in finding out more about the conflict will no longer have to apply to see documents in person in the reading rooms of Europe.

"It is particularly important that this project includes organisations that were involved in different sides of the conflict," said Jamie Andrews from the British Library, who is leading the British project.

"We feel this is a special and important collaboration. There is a lot of surprising material here, including the letters and postcards of German prisoners of war.

"Our German partners will also be releasing material about British soldiers held over there, as well as a lot of the fairly crude forms of propaganda that Britain dropped by balloon behind enemy lines."
The digital collection will include books, newspapers, trench journals, maps, music sheets, children's literature, photographs, posters, pamphlets, propaganda leaflets, art, religious works, medals and coins.

Sir Andrew Motion, the former poet laureate, is backing the launch of the scheme this weekend. "This is a tremendously important project that will transform access to Europe's shared cultural heritage in the run up to the anniversary of the war's outbreak in 2014," he said.

For Andrews and his team, one of the highlights is the insight offered into levels of censorship across the theatre of war. For instance, more than 130,000 Indian soldiers served on the western front with the wounded being treated in British hospitals. An office was set up at Boulogne under Captain EB Howell to censor all "Indian mails" going in and out of France.

The library's collection includes many letters that came under his scrutiny and which provide vivid testimony of how the Indian soldiers viewed the war, France and Britain.

The letters also reveal how their authors sought to evade the censor's pen; a lull in shelling, for example, is described with the phrase "the rain has stopped".

Vanessa Thorpe

The Observer