New Sustainability Resource – BuildingGreen Suite – Try it out

BuildingGreen Suite, is a resource you can try out via the Library until Oct 10.  If you want to take a look, you’ll find articles, reviews, and news stories covering energy-efficient, resource-efficient, and healthy building practices. We also look forward to your feedback! BuildingGreen Suite,  updated monthly, offers full access to BuildingGreen.com, a key source of information about improving environmental performance. It also includes information on a wide range of topics related to sustainable building, including energy efficiency, recycled-content materials, land-use planning and indoor air quality. The BuildingGreen Suite brings together material from Environmental Building News (EBN) since 1992, product listings from the GreenSpec products directory, and a database of project case studies from the High-Performance Buildings Database. If you are trying out this resource from off-campus, just login with your myNeu account information.  From on-campus, you should be able to access this resource.  Any problems, please contact Amy Lewontin, Collection Development Librarian, (617)373-2001.

Erasing the tape

Buzz Aldrin on the moon Yes, Rebecca, I remember it! I was a little tyke at the time, but my parents woke me up and put me in front of the TV to see Neil Armstrong walking on the moon. They knew it was historic, Armstrong knew it was historic, the TV broadcasters knew it was historic. So you would think someone at NASA would have thought to put a sticky note or “Don’t erase this” in red marker on that moon landing videotape, right? But, apparently…not. So the original video of the moon landing, according to NASA, was probably taped over in the 1970s. Fast forward to the 40-year anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission and sure enough, NASA has spent over $200,000 restoring and “enhancing” television video copies of the moon landing with the help of a Hollywood film company. On the plus side, apparently the picture quality is better than the TV. You can compare them on the NASA web site. I’ve been thinking about the whole cost-benefit of preservation in the context of our Archives and Special Collections department, which is preserving and digitizing NU’s history and local Boston history, too, hopefully more diligently than NASA! After all, does anyone here have 200 grand to spend restoring our stuff?

Joan Krizack appointed to the Massachusetts Archives Advisory Commission

We’re very please to announce that Joan Krizack, University Archivist and Head, Special Collections for Northeastern University Libraries, was appointed by Secretary of the Commonwealth, William Galvin, to the Massachusetts Archives Advisory Commission.   The Archives Advisory Commission was established in the mid 1970’s as the central advisory body for historical records planning for the state.  The Commission is mandated to advise the Secretary on archival matters and establish, with the Archivist of the Commonwealth, a comprehensive statewide documentary preservation plan. Acting as the central advisory body for historical records planning, the Archives Advisory Commission served as the model for the National Archives when it established a State Historical Records Advisory Board in every state. They have a number of online exhibits, and from one entitled Le Grande Derangement, I learned that in 1755 10,000 French Canadians were exiled from Nova Scotia, and 1,000 of them ended up as refugees in Massachusetts. As these ‘Acadians’ did not pledge allegiance to the British Crown, they were compelled to remain until the end of the French and Indian War in 1763.  At that time most tried to relocate to other French regions where they shared a language and religion-France, Quebec and Haiti, along with Louisiana.  It’s an interesting interment history that I knew nothing about until discovering the exhibit.  Apparently, Longfellow also wrote a related poem titled Evangeline, about lovers separated during the conflict, that later served as the basis for a movie starring Dolores del Rio!

Images and belonging

I was fascinated to read in this morning’s Boston Globe that a new and compelling image of Phineas Gage has recently been uncovered.  Gage is the famous 19th century Vermonter who was shot through the head with a piece of iron in an industrial accident, and survived–but with his personality completely changed. He became the subject of one of the most famous medical cases in history, illustrating the functions of different parts of the human brain. The photo was identified because the owner scanned it and posted it on Flickr.  What a great example of how content on the open web takes on a life of its own, and becomes something entirely different from what we thought, something that no longer belongs to us alone. In this case, the owner of the photo (it’s actually a daguerreotype) originally thought it depicted a 19th century sailor with a harpoon.  But a Flickr viewer recognized it as something else.  High resolution scanning and zooming confirmed that the man is indeed Gage   Now the daguerreotype is no longer just a curio belonging to a collector, but an cultural artifact that belongs all of us. I wonder what our viewers will uncover from the images published in the NU library’s Archives and Special Collections.  Are there Phineas Gages in our digital collections, waiting for you to discover them?

On this evening’s Google Books Settlement Discussion at the Boston Public Library

“The future is here, but it doesn’t come to everyone at the same rate.”– Hal Abelson, MIT

In a nutshell: there seemed to be three major issues of concern (or queasiness as they echoed to each other) that the panelists (and the moderator) had, sans the Face of Google guy, Daniel Clancy.  Monopolization of the books market, access to library users and concerns of cost to libraries, commercialization of orphan works and the transformation of written culture.  Regarding the monopolization issue, John Palfrey of Harvard Law School, said “game over” if the settlement is ruled favorably.  He claimed that no one else will have the incentive to compete against Google in the digital books market.  Palfrey is also concerned regarding orphan works (works whose copyright owner cannot be found after an effort) and what will happen to orphan works legislation as a result of the Google Books settlement decision.  Palfrey and Anne Wolpert of MIT, also expressed ‘queasiness’ over the commercialization of orphan works.  Wolpert talked about the pricing model of Google Books.  She explained that individuals could subscribe, that libraries could have one dedicated terminal with access to the Google Books project, or libraries could subscribe to the entire corpus.  She took issue with the undefined pricing, which Dan Clancy said would adjust to the market.  Wolpert’s key point was that libraries have been burned in the past by publishers who had a monopoly on literature in specific fields.  She also made the point that libraries have paid some of the costs in the development of the corpus that is Google Books, as well as taxpayers supporting public libraries.

Personally, I agree with the points made.  Regarding orphan works, it is my understanding that identifying, digitizing and making acccessible more orphan works is to the greater good of society (and will ultimately help to identify previously unknown copyright holders).  However, the difference between a project like the Open Library Project through the Open Content Alliance and Google Books is that the latter seeks a profit.  My lingering question is to those libraries that signed up with Google Book Project.  Did they think about the greater long term ramifications to society of one business potentially controlling 40 million volumes of our nation’s great libraries, before making a deal with a company whose philosophy Hal Abelson claims, is “Manifest Destiny”?