Institute of Museum and Library Services: Digital Collections and Content

IMLS: Digital Collections and Content contains descriptions and access to a wealth of digital resources developed by IMLS grantees. Examples of what you will find here include: cookbooks from MSU's Feeding America, theater posters from Colorado State University, prints of samurai fighting demons from the Japanese Prints collection at the UCLA Hammer Museum, war posters from Minnesota's A Summons to Comradeship.
There's also a link to the Civil Rights Digital Library based at the University of Georgia which features 30 hours of imagery captured by Atlanta's WSB and Albany TV station WALB taken between 1948 and 1982. The Web site also is a portal: It links users to 75 other civil-rights-related sites. They range from WGBH in Boston to Emory University, from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History to the Nashville (Tenn.) Public Library.

To search the available collections, go to: http://imlsdcc.grainger.uiuc.edu/

Images of medieval manuscripts: Digital Scriptorium / CORSAIR

There are two databases that contain a wide range of digital images of medieval and renaissance manuscripts. They are:

The Digital Scriptorium is an image database of medieval and renaissance manuscripts that unites scattered resources from many institutions into an international tool for teaching and scholarly research. It bridges the gap between a diverse user community and the limited resources of libraries by means of sample imaging and extensive rather than intensive cataloguing.

Go to: http://www.scriptorium.columbia.edu/

CORSAIR: Thousands of digital images from The Pierpont Morgan Library’s renowned collection of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts are now available in CORSAIR. The collection spans some ten centuries of Western illumination, and contains manuscripts from all the major schools, including some of the great masterpieces of medieval manuscript art. The images and accompanying descriptions are the product of an extraordinary collaboration between the Library and the Index of Christian Art to photograph, digitize, and describe all significant illustrations within the Morgan’s medieval and Renaissance manuscripts. CORSAIR currently offers more than twenty thousand medieval images, and the number is constantly growing.

Go to: http://utu.morganlibrary.org/index.htm

Open Access publishing and dissemination

Concise guidance is now available for researchers wishing to take advantage of the Nottingham Central Fund to assist with the costs associated with open access publishing. It is available online. The guide is available from the Research Innovation Services web site.

New Electronic Resources added to eLibrary Gateway

Les Signets de la Bibliothèque nationale de France - Bookmarks from the National Library of France

An annotated selection of internet resources, useful for French language and cultural studies, chosen by librarians of the National Library of France.

The resources can be searched alphabetically or by theme. They cover a wide range of subjects including: philosophy and religion, social sciences, law, science and technology, arts, language and literature, history and geography. General works such as dictionaries and encyclopaedias etc. are also covered.

Lexilogos

Lexilogos is a key resource for language students. It provides access to a comprehensive set of tools for the study of world languages including French, German, Spanish, Russian and many other national and regional languages. Resources available include on-line dictionaries (mono-lingual and bi-lingual), encyclopaedias, translation sites, maps and atlases. There is also a multi-lingual keyboard facility which allows you to type a range of scripts including the International Phonetic Alphabet.

Ancient petitions, Henry III - James I

This website, part of the National Archives Documents Online service, provides free access to over 17,000 digital images of ancient petitions in the National Archives.

These petitions date from the reign of Henry III (1216-1272) to James I (1603-25), with concentrations in the reigns of Edward I (1272-1307), Edward II (1307-1327) and Edward III (1327-1377). Petitions represent appeals for the righting of wrongs and for favours from the king, but additionally reveal social, political and linguistic information.

The website allows this extensive collection to be searched by name, place, occupation, date and keywords, images may be downloaded.

The resource was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council under the Resource Enhancement Scheme.

Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers

Chronicling America allows you to search and view newspaper pages from 1880-1910 and find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present. Chronicling America is sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress as part of the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP).

At present it is possible to view newspaper pages from 1880 to 1910 from the following states: California, District of Columbia, Florida, Kentucky, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York, Texas, Utah, and Virginia.

Ultimately, over a period of approximately 20 years, NDNP will create a national, digital resource of historically significant newspapers from all the states and U.S. territories published between 1836 and 1922. This searchable database will be permanently maintained at the Library of Congress (LC) and be freely accessible via the Internet. An accompanying national newspaper directory of bibliographic and holdings information on the website will direct users to newspaper titles available in all types of formats.

For further details and to search either the full-text papers or the Newspaper Directory, go to: http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/