Hannah Alpert-Abrams Building library or archival collections across national borders always involves a negotiation of power. In the United States, we have a long history of removing historical records from the communities that created them, often in the name of preservation. But these acts of preservation have often been paralleled by an effort...
First in the new Sidebar series —Charles Henry Editor’s update: This week, Kerala was hit with the worst flooding in more than a century, leaving hundreds dead and hundreds of thousands homeless. We have contacted P. Sainath, who believes that Chinnathambi’s village would have escaped the worst of the floods because it is at...
Christopher Prom and Kate Murray For many of us, email comprises the journal of our personal and professional daily life. We use it to exchange quick notes and detailed information; we make plans for business meetings or casual lunches; we catch up with family, friends, and colleagues; we give opinions, make decisions, and discuss...
Erin Connelly, Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies (SIMS), University of Pennsylvania Libraries Alberto Campagnolo, Library of Congress Heather Wacha at the University of Wisconsin-Madison The Library of Stains Project, also known as Labeculae Vivae, Latin for “#stainsalive,” is using multispectral imaging to gather scientific data drawn from stains found on parchment, paper, and bindings...
By Charles Henry The brilliant, thin edges of laser light played against the desert sky, creating flickering silhouettes of our destination that evening. It was April 16, the grand opening of the Qatar National Library (QNL) in Doha. The “red carpet” leading to the main entrance was a slightly elevated LED screen flashing images...
The authors have also posted this blog in Spanish. Editor’s note: In this post, Hannah Alpert-Abrams and Alex Galarza describe how they have understood their roles in collaborative projects with Guatemalan partner organizations seeking justice for human rights violations committed during the country’s civil war (1960-1996). Both are CLIR/DLF Postdoctoral Fellows in Data Curation...
Two press releases this month relating to CLIR’s Digitizing Hidden Special Collections and Archives (DHC) initiative have invited wider interest in the program and prompted important questions that pertain to its provision of service to the community. The announcement of a generous, $13.2 million three-year grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is an...