NAP to provide free PDFs of all books
The National Academies Press announced that all PDF versions of books it publishes will be available for free download. This includes both its current catalog of more than 4,000 books as well as all future reports. Printed books will continue to be available for purchase through the NAP website and traditional channels. Browse the NAP catalog at http://www.nap.edu/ NAP is publisher for the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and National Research Council. Known collectively as the National Academies, they are private, nonprofit institutions that provide expert advice on some of the most pressing challenges facing the nation and the world, including many government issues. The National Academy of Sciences was formed by a congressional charter signed by President Lincoln signed in 1863. Many of their activities are mandated and funded by Congress and federal agencies. Continue reading
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
HTML for California statutes: Collaborate?
Ari Hershowitz, who runs Tabulaw (software tools for legal work), has converted California's statutes into structured html, with most internal references now hyperlinked (calaw.tabulaw.com), and has written about the process of doing this on his blog:
- How to Convert All Files in a Directory: CA Legislation.
- How to Convert Citations to Hyperlinks: CA Laws.
- How to: Convert Sections Into Hyperlink Targets.
- How to convert Text to HTML: Using txt2html Perl Module.
- California Laws: Converting Plain Text to HTML.
- California Law: Recovering Meaning and Metadata with RegEx.
...tracking of bills or proposed legislation becomes more meaningful if it can be compared to existing legislation. Please get in touch if you are interested in brainstorming or working with me to connect proposed legislation to the existing statutes to create a "legislative diff", or related improvements. Even better would be thoughts on how we can get California's legislature to include this metadata in the original drafts of bills.See www.tabulaw.com if you'd like to get in touch with Ari. Continue reading
Chronicling America Has a New Look!
Gary has a nice summary of how Chronicling America Has a New Look! (INFOdocket, by Gary D. Price, May 29, 2011).
Chronicling America is a Website providing access to information about historic newspapers and select digitized newspaper pages, and is produced by the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP). NDNP, a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Library of Congress (LC), is a long-term effort to develop an Internet-based, searchable database of U.S. newspapers with descriptive information and select digitization of historic pages. Supported by NEH, this rich digital resource will be developed and permanently maintained at the Library of Congress. An NEH award program will fund the contribution of content from, eventually, all U.S. states and territories. http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/about/Continue reading
List of government services moving to The Cloud
Agencies identify 78 services for cloud transition, By Joseph Marks, NextGov (05/26/2011).
Federal agencies have identified 78 computer systems they plan to migrate to the cloud within a year, according to the Office of Management and Budget. ...Computer clouds essentially are large banks of computer servers that can operate much closer to full capacity than standard servers by rapidly repacking data as one customer surges in usage and another one dips. Data storage in the cloud is operated like electricity grids or other utilities, with customers paying only for what they use. A handful of low-risk government services, such as websites that don't take in sensitive public information, are already in privately owned cloud space.Agencies Have Identified 78 Systems Migrating to the Cloud Within One Year (10 page PDF listing and describing services by agency). Continue reading