This digital archive was launched to accompany the 2009 Poe Bicentennial exhibition, “From Out That Shadow: The Life and Legacy of Edgar Allan Poe,” a joint venture of the Ransom Center and the Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia. The digital collection incorporates images of all Poe manuscripts and letters at the Ransom Center with a selection of related archival materials, two books by Poe annotated by the author, sheet music based on his poems, and portraits from the Ransom Center collections. Poe’s manuscripts and letters are linked to transcriptions on the website of the Poe Society of Baltimore.

Most of the items in the exhibition from the Harry Ransom Center collections once belonged to William H. Koester (1888-1964). Koester, a resident of Baltimore, began collecting first editions and manuscripts of Poe in the 1930s; his major acquisition was the collection of the Richmond Poe scholar and collector J. H. Whitty. In addition to the manuscripts of “The Domain of Arnheim,” “The Spectacles,” and some of Poe’s most famous poems, the Koester collection includes many letters written by and to Poe, books belonging to Poe (including the author’s annotated copies of the Tales and Poems and Eureka), and a large group of sheet music for songs based on Poe’s works. The Koester Collection was acquired by the Center in 1966.

Europeana—Europe’s online library, museum and archive—opened in November 2008 as part of the Commission’s digital libraries initiative, aiming to make Europe’s cultural and scientific heritage accessible to all on the internet. The European Parliament and the Council have highlighted the importance of Europeana both as a showcase of the cultural heritage of the Member States on the internet and to provide access for everyone to that heritage. At the same time they have underlined the economic potential of making our cultural treasures available online as a source for creativity and new products and services in areas such as tourism and learning.

This document looks ahead to the next phase of development of Europeana and its orientation for the future. It sets out the main challenges for the coming years in relation to 1) enriching Europeana’s content with both public domain and in copyright material of the highest quality and relevance to users, and 2) a sustainable financing and governance model. The objective is to ensure that Europeana and the underlying policies for digitisation, online accessibility and digital preservation give European culture a lasting visibility on the internet and turn our common and diverse heritage into an integral part of Europe’s information infrastructure for the future.

source: DigitalKoans

Researchers and scholars now will be able to delve into archived Web sites captured by the California Digital Library’s Web Archiving Service (WAS). This new tool enables faculty, researchers and librarians to capture, curate and preserve Web sites, thus creating permanent archives available to researchers everywhere. The social history of our times is now being preserved in archives as rich and varied as the contentious 2003 California recall election, hundreds of California state Web archives, the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp Web archive and the Middle East Political Sites archive.

source: Library Technology Update; 8/1/2009

The First World War Poetry Digital Archive project has digitised and made freely accessible over 4500 items relating to some of the major British poets of the First World War as well as a wealth of contextual material from the Imperial War Museum and National Archives (audio, video and photographs). In addition the project has launched The Great War Archive, over 6500 items submitted by the general public originating from this historic event.

The 1911 census is a record of everyone who lived in England and Wales in 1911. It provides a unique snapshot of the lives of your ancestors. 1911census.co.uk brings this vast resource to you online, so that you can search the census simply and quickly to discover how your family lived in the past.

SEARCH FOR FREE
Search through the census index to find an ancestor, or to find out who lived in your house. This service is free.
PAY TO VIEW
Once you are sure of the record you want, you’ll need to register and buy credits (see left) to view and print and save a typed transcript or an image of the original handwritten page.