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NLM: American Medical Books Dating Back to 1610
Medicine in the Americas: 1610-1920: A Digital Library National Library of Medicine Releases "Medicine in the Americas," Featuring Digitized Versions of American Medical Books Dating Back to 1610, NLM News (23 May 2011).
The National Library of Medicine, the world's largest medical library and a component of NIH, announces the release of "Medicine in the Americas." A digital resource encompassing over 300 early American printed books, Medicine in the Americas makes freely available original works demonstrating the evolution of American medicine from colonial frontier outposts of the 17th century to research hospitals of the 20th century. Drawing on the collections of NLM's History of Medicine Division and including works from the United States, Latin America, the Caribbean and Canada, this initial release of Medicine in the Americas encompasses monographs dating from 1610 to 1865. Additional titles, dating up to 1920 and drawing further upon NLM's comprehensive collection of early American printed books, will be available on an ongoing basis in the future.Note that "All of the works included in Medicine in the Americas are in the public domain, usually because of their dates, though sometimes because they were published by a government body. Also, the National Library of Medicine does not claim copyright on the electronic files created for Medicine in the Americas, so images and text files created for the project can be published or distributed without seeking permission." http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/americas/americascopyright.html Continue reading
CIA finally declassifies last WWI era classified documents
So the CIA just got around to declassifying 6 of the U.S.'s oldest classified documents from WWI (1917 + 1918). They've posted them in their CIA FOIA reading room and the CIA Records Search Tool (CREST) at the National Archives (but to use CREST, a researcher must physically be present at the National Archives, College Park, Maryland :-|). That also means that the documents will also soon be available at the archive-it FOIA collection (I'm harvesting them as we speak ;-)).
These documents, which describe secret writing techniques and are housed at the National Archives, are believed to be the only remaining classified documents from the World War I era. Documents describing secret writing fall under the CIA's purview to declassify. "These documents remained classified for nearly a century until recent advancements in technology made it possible to release them," CIA Director Leon E. Panetta said. "When historical information is no longer sensitive, we take seriously our responsibility to share it with the American people." One document outlines the chemicals and techniques necessary for developing certain types of secret writing ink and a method for opening sealed letters without detection. Another memorandum dated June 14, 1918 - written in French - reveals the formula used for German secret ink. "The CIA recognizes the importance of opening these historical documents to the public," said Joseph Lambert, the Agency's Director of Information Management Services. "In fiscal year 2010 alone, the Agency declassified and released over 1.1 million pages of documents."These documents, which describe secret writing techniques and are housed at the National Archives, are believed to be the only remaining classified documents from the World War I era. Documents describing secret writing fall under the CIA's purview to declassify. "These documents remained classified for nearly a century until recent advancements in technology made it possible to release them," CIA Director Leon E. Panetta said. "When historical information is no longer sensitive, we take seriously our responsibility to share it with the American people." One document outlines the chemicals and techniques necessary for developing certain types of secret writing ink and a method for opening sealed letters without detection. Another memorandum dated June 14, 1918 - written in French - reveals the formula used for German secret ink. "The CIA recognizes the importance of opening these historical documents to the public," said Joseph Lambert, the Agency's Director of Information Management Services. "In fiscal year 2010 alone, the Agency declassified and released over 1.1 million pages of documents."Declassified CIA documents (all pdf):
- Document 1
- Document 2
- Document 3
- Document 4 -- This is the one with the steps for checking for invisible ink.
- Document 5
- Document 6
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Crowd-sourcing transcription of historical texts
University College London has a treasure trove in the papers of the Enlightenment philosopher [w:Jeremy Bentham]. In the last 50 years, it has published 27 volumes of his writings — less than half of the 70 or so volumes ultimately expected. In an attempt to spur this project along, they're crowd-sourcing the transcription of the historical documents according to the NY Times. The story also mentions another interesting crowd-sourcing project at George Mason University to reconstitute the papers of the early War Department (1784-1800) which had been destroyed by a fire on November 8, 1800. Sharon Leon, a historian at George Mason University and Director of Public Projects at the Center for History and New Media -- developers of one of my favorite Web tools, Zotero! -- recently received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to design a free plug-in that any archive or library could use to open transcription to the public. Obviously crowd-sourcing is becoming an invaluable tool for expanding the reach of scholarship. Last week, I mentioned the Old Weather project which is crowd-sourcing old weather observations made by UK Royal Navy ships around the time of World War I in order to assist with climate model projections and improve a database of weather extremes. Old Weather is part of the Zooniverse of crowd-sourcing projects to help scientific projects. Some, like Daniel Stowell, the director and editor of the Papers of Abraham Lincoln in Springfield, IL, point out that hiring of nonacademic transcribers is not a panacea and in fact could produce so many errors as to make crowd-sourcing expensive and even more time consuming in correcting errors. But, as Ms Leon points out, “We’re not looking for perfect. We’re looking for progressive improvement, which is a completely different goal from someone who is creating a letter-press edition.” Dare I point out that the FDLP has been crowd-sourcing US government documents since 1813?! As Tomas Jefferson wrote in a 1791 letter, “Let us save what remains, not by vaults and locks which fence them from the public eye and use in consigning them to the waste of time, but by such a multiplication of copies, as shall place them beyond the reach of accident.” Continue reading
CIA secret experiments tonight on National Geographic channel
Close on the heals of this recent Radio Lab story about CIA experiments at Harvard in the 1950s that may have had a dire impact on the [w:Ted Kaczynski] aka the Unabomber, and the recent news report that the US govt conducted Syphilis tests in Guatemala in the 1940s (not to mention the long-known about [w:Tuskegee syphilis experiment]s), tonight on the National Geographic channel is an in-depth look at "CIA Secret Experiments" during the [w:Cold War]. And for all you govt docs library geeks out there, you can read the Report to the President by the Commission on CIA Activities within the United States, June 1975 (aka the "Rockefeller Commission Report") available in libraries throughout the country -- find a nearby library here and here. It's also available online. From National Geographic Channel:
- In the wake of World War II, the U.S. government was engaged in a large number of confidential medical experiments designed to help win the Cold War. During these elicit experiments they exposed unknowing members of the public to biological and chemical agents, developed techniques for mind control, and even planned assassinations on powerful leaders of developing nations.
- Some methods that were considered for the distribution of these chemicals were to poison cigars, toothpaste, and ink.
- The CIA embarked upon a multimillion dollar, highly classified research program into the covert use of biological and chemical materials such as bacteria to infect the enemy, poisons for assassinations, and truth drugs for interrogations.
- Included in the medicine chest used for these experiments would have been anthrax, the plague, and brucellosis.
- A U.S. army experiment on New York City in 1966 exposed over a million people to the bacterium bacillus subtilis variant niger. Scientists used light bulbs filled with a combination of bacteria and charcoal particles, which they then dropped through vents onto the subway tracks.
- During this experiment, trillions of germs were released into the transit system during peak travel hours. The trials were conducted without the knowledge or cooperation of the NYC Transit Authority or Police Department.
- During this period, the CIA was also looking into the use of chemical substances for ways to manipulate and control human behavior; one such chemical that caught their attention was lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD.
- The CIA recruited prisoner volunteers to be administered LSD as part of their experimentation. The prisoners who cooperated were sometimes given heroin as a reward. In one experiment, prisoners were kept on increasing doses of LSD for 77 consecutive days.
Open Library redesign and proposal for collaborative digitizing of documents
The Open Library announced yesterday that their redesigned site is now available with lots of new features and functionalities. As I suggested in my tweet a few minutes ago, wouldn't it be great if lots of depository libraries bought cheap book scanners like the Decapod (A Mellon funded project), digitized government documents and uploaded them to the Open Library? There are tons of records for government documents just waiting for the attachment of a digital file. And GPO could help by sharing their records from the Catalog of Government Publications (CGP) with the Open Library where librarians and others could enhance to make more robust metadata (which could be fed back in to the CGP!). Lots of libraries with Decapods make light work! (Full disclosure: I'm on the board of QuestionCopyright, a 501(c)(3) non-profit which has its own book scanning hardware/software project called Book Liberator. BL developers are in close contact with Decapod folks. But I get no economic benefit from either Book Liberator or Decapod.) Continue reading
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