Creative Commons license distribution

The Creative Commons has create licenses to help people share their information more freely(i.e., publications in the broadest sense of the word). An article on license distribution notes:

Last week we mentioned there were over 5 million web pages linking to Creative Commons licenses. This week, it has come to our attention that Yahoo! has updated their index to find well over 10 million web pages that link to our licenses.

The accompanying chart can be viewed here. The most popular license (37%) is referred to as "Atribution - Noncommericial - ShareAlike".

CopyrightLaw.com

Lesley Ellen Harris has an interesting web site called CopyrightLaw.com. The site includes articles, newsletters AND a copyright quiz! The 12-question quiz definitely contains questions most people don't consider like "May libraries, archives and museums benefit from e-commerce? If so, how?"

BTW none of the newsletter articles published on the web site (under Newsletters & Reports) have dates on them. Odd...

The 2004 METRO Digitization Survey Final Report

The Metropolitan New York Library Council has released its 2004 METRO Digitization Survey Final Report. The announcements states that:

In September-October 2004, an online survey was conducted among members of the Metropolitan New York Library Council (METRO) to determine their activities and needs in digitization, and their plans for future digitization projects. The main objectives of the study were to determine digitization practices in the past two years; education and information needs in digitization; and digitization planning for the next two years.

The Executive Summary notes that:

The results of the 2004 METRO Digitization Survey show some interesting trends. While a number of barriers to digitization are mentioned -- funding being most frequently cited -- many institutions responded that their projects were funded by internal budget lines. This is a very positive trend for sustainability of institutional digitization projects, and differs greatly from many other state, regional, and national trends which show digitization efforts primarily funded by grants. Another strong area of institutional self-reliance was the production of digital works by in-house staff and equipment at a majority of responding institutions.

The three most common materials digitized over the previous two years were photographs, bound books and manuscripts.

Civil War battle in Petersburg, VA

Four years ago, I toured the Civil War battlefield in Petersburg, VA. This battlefield became very interesting to me for two reasons. First, on the Union side, Pennsylvania soldiers (coal miners) decided to use their mining skills to dig underneath the Confederate soldiers to gain entry and mount an attack. Second, some of the Union soldiers were African American. They trained to be the first soldiers through the hole and the first to engage the Confederate soldiers in battle; however, the Union changed its plans at the last minute and sent a white troop through first that had not properly trained for this role.

I tell the story of this battle occassionally. Recently, I decided to doublecheck the location of the battle (and ensure that my memory had not mixed up locations). What was interesting to me was that several Civil War sites online did not tell this version of the battle. I did finally find one that did and confirmed that I had the right location.

This search brought to mind an important feature that does not exist in the search engines I use. I would like for the search engines to analyze the pages retrieved and mark those that contain unique content (or a unique slant to the story). Yes, some search engines create categories, etc., but here I'm talking about something different. I want a search engine to tell me that of all of the pages returned, these are different, unique...and probably the ones were I will learn something new and different.

Is that too much to ask?

Do you use a digital library every day? Why not?

This question occurred to me this morning as I was laying in bed. I do a lot of research -- both personal and professional -- and am on a daily basis looking for some tidbit to prove a point or help me learn something new. But I rarely seek out a "digital library" to help me in my research efforts (unless I automatically know that a particular database held in a digital library that will be of help).

Why? The answer is simple. Because of how digital libraries are indexed (or not indexed) I cannot quickly identify those that contains what I need. If there is a fast way of identifying a digital library and its strengths, I haven't found it. (If you have, please let me know. Perhaps a searchable directory of digital libraries and digitization projects?) What I do find -- through any search engine -- are those pages (reputable or not) that contain information that is related to my topic. Which brings me to one other thought...a search engine will take me to a specific page. If it finds (somehow) a digital library that would be helpful, I might have to do another search in that collection, creating a longer process for me to find the information I need.

Should I vow to use a digital library every day or make digital libraries my first choice for finding information? mmm...sounds like a possible resolution that I'm not ready (or able) to keep.