9,000 missing title

50 years without shelf reading:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/mar/17/british-library-books-mein-kampf.

You would think they would have a team of shelf readers working on this wouldn’t you? 16th century titles, 1st editions of Dickens, I can think of a few people who would love to spend the summer shelf reading at the British Library.

UCLA's virtual library of manuscripts

I recently received an email from my friend Dot that originated at the UCLA Office of Media Relations. It highlighted a virtual library of manuscripts held at UCLA. The library launched in 2008 and the catalog now links to almost 1000 manuscripts in various languages.

I tested it out using the example from the news release, Matthew Paris’s The Life of King Edward the Confessor. There is no subject search, however, you can search by author, date, provenance, shelf mark, language, repository, text title, and bibliography. The search field has a handy auto fill in feature, too. I tried searching by title and received no hits. I had to look up the record using Paris, Matthew. The records themselves do not contain the title of the work itself and the metadata is sparse but each record has a link to its originating location and their high quality images. It is far too much fun to play around with and I highly recommend it with a glass of brandy and a tobacco pipe.

Digitization as preservation?

All the cool kids are doing it. I read this snippet from the latest February issue of Information Today:

The LC digitized the 25,000 book in its $2 million Digitizing American Imprints at the LC program, funded by the Alfred P Sloan Foundation. The project, which preserves brittle books through digital scanning, digitized The Heroic Life of Abraham Lincoln: the Great Emancipator to reach the milestone.

Here is the link for the lengthier LC article: http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2009/09-10.html

Love letters and grants

Harvey Milk's love letters? It doesn't get much better. Congrats to SFPL. They just scored a grant from the Mellon foundation.

Executive Order 13233

The new administration has revoked Executive Order 13233. Basically, Executive Order 13233 was an attempt to prevent access to information from the executive branch as stipulated in Nixon v. Administrator of General Services. You can read more about the decision at the National Coalition for History and more background of the Executive Order at Wikipedia. - Thank you to Kate Theimer for the posting on A&A.

Essentially, the Obama administration is making good on the promise of achieving security without sacrificing our core values. I hope that somewhere in Washington D.C. a few archivists are celebrating and giving a toast to "access".

Poggi's and Medici's

Today Andy and I went to the Pitti Palace, its gardens, the Piazza Poggi and to the State Archives. Unfortunately, the piazza has very little to do with Giuseppe Poggi. It was named in honor of him in 1911. Still there is an impressive tower from the original wall protecting the city, in the center of the Piazza. Whether Giuseppe Poggi is related to Andy or not is unknown (at least to him) but I think he was still able to channel the Poggi spirit. Actually, I think Andy is really starting to feel at home. Our hotel is located right next to the Plaza San Spirito (named for the Brunelleschi church on the square) and they have cool little markets there daily. Andy's eyes got very big when he saw a gigantic piece of cooked pork at one of the food stands in the market. He ordered a pork sandwich and they took a giant knife and sliced off some chunks off of the pork, then grilled it to perfection. I think it was a spiritual experience for Andy. Of course, Andy just told me how much he wants a hamburger but that's a complaint I hear everyday, regardless of what country I'm in. We've already agreed to go to El Farolito's the day we get back to San Francisco. Despite all the fantastic food, I'm having tortilla withdrawls.

The highlight of the day has to be the State Archives of Florence. We received a very lively tour from the State Archivist, Stefano Vitali and one of his collegues. They had such a funny repoire and it was obvious these guys had worked together for many years. They were very knowledgable of the history of Florence and they were very eager to share their collection. They showed us the oldest documents in the archives, contracts from the year 743. While the Bancroft has papyrus, I thought it was particularly special to have documents dating so far back that relate to the specific area of origin. In other words, these papers were official, notarized documentation of a contract made in Florence. That was very special. And even more interesting was that they were stored rolled up, like scrolls. The Archives of Florence invented this ingenious way of storing scrolls in little boxes that are stored in larger cartons which open up from the front. It was very interesting storage and the parchment is in perfect condition. The parchment is from goats and the joke (which is an archival joke internationally) is that the documents are in perfect condition wheras the documents on our floppy discs from 10 years ago are now lost forever.

While digitzation isn't accepted as a form of preservation, they certainly use it as an aid in preservation. They've digitized many of their documents to lower the abuse of physical usage. This has become especially important with documents pertaining to the great artists. The Medici collection contains correspondence and documentation of the commissions of such artists as Sandro Botticelli. You can imagine how popular such documents are, especially with art history students. So now, students can search and read these documents online. Mr. Vitali is in charge of the website and I think he's done a superb job. The documents are scanned at high resolutions and while it still isn't translated, it is a very easy site to navigate.

The whole tour was pretty amazing and I felt very fortunate to have access to the documents. I spotted the Medici collection and Mr. Vitali kindly pulled out a box and we examined letters written to and from Cosimo Medici, the Elder, who was the first Medici to really build any power. I believe he is the great-grandfather of Lorenzo. I don't know if it is because I am a packrat or because I put sentimental value on minor things, but holding these documents was like going to the holy land. At a recent SAASC meeting at the Environmental Design Archives at Berkeley, Waverly Lowell asked everyone what they're fantasy job would be. My choice was the State Archivist in Florence and after seeing it, I still feel that way, perhaps more so. As Andy pointed out, these items date before the Magna Carta and this information is the bedrock of Western Civilization. It was certainly a memorable day and I'm looking forward to going to Rome tomorrow.

Burning Blueprints

Thanks to Andy for finding this little gem. This article from the San Francisco Chronicle features the San Leandro Library History Room. It has some great information of the development of farming divisions into suburban lots for mass consumption. Beware the mention of Julia Morgan and William Yelland blueprints going into the incinerator; it's...difficult.