Europeana : think culture

After a failed launch on November 20th Europeana is back up and running. Now with quadruple the server capacity the European Commission believes they will be able to handle the estimated 10 million hits per hour.

Europeana offers multilingual access to approximately 2 million digitized books and artifacts from over 1,000 institutions from 27 European Union Member States.



Europeana is similar to the United States American Memory project but so far has a friendlier search interface than the American Memory project.

The site offers the following suggestions when searching their collection:

Just ask yourself who, what, where or when you are interested in and type these words into Europeana's search box.

If you are stuck for ideas try:
Who: Names of actors, authors, architects, artists, choreographers, composers, conductors, dancers, film directors, musicians or photographers.
What: Words from titles of books, poems, newspapers, paintings, photographs, films or television programmes.
Where: Names of towns, cities or countries within Europe or around the world.
When: Dates (e.g. 1945) such as the year you were born in or a famous date in history or a period (e.g. Roman or Medieval).

Using the advanced search you can search specifically for words in titles, for names of creators (e.g. authors, artists, musicians etc.) or dates (e.g. 1945).

Europeana is currently in beta, but looks very promising with some new features that have yet to be activated. Among these is the ability to register with the site to create a personal collection of your favorite artifacts or to participate in the communities section of the website where users may "share, discuss, reuse or blog about Europeana content".

This is definitely a site that deserves more exploration and attention, and may be the topic of future articles.

The LOC.gov Wise Guide

The loc.gov Wise Guide, brought to you by the Library of Congress and the AD council is updated monthly in the spirit of a magazine to bring to you a sampling of online resources from books to videos. The "Wise Guide" offers articles incorporating the use of these digital artifacts with links back to the parent collection in the American Memory Project, with the hope of encouraging further exploration and use of these resources.

Don't forget to Check the "Wise Guide" archives for past editions. You wouldn't want to miss out on articles like: "In God We Trust... Show Me the Money!" and "It's not a Beauty Pageant. It's a Scholarship Program".

New E-Book Available - Encyclopedia of Survey Research Methods

The Thomas College Library has added a new title to its e-book collection in the Gale Virtual Reference Library; Encyclopedia of Survey Research Methods. Paul J. Lavrakas, ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications Inc., 2008. 494 pp. 2 vols.

The following is the publishers description of key features for this title:

Key Features

Covers all major facets of survey research methodology, from selecting the sample design and the sampling frame, designing and pretesting the questionnaire, data collection, and data coding, to the thorny issues surrounding diminishing response rates, confidentiality, privacy, informed consent and other ethical issues, data weighting, and data analyses

Presents a Reader’s Guide to organize entries around themes or specific topics and easily guide users to areas of interest

Offers cross-referenced terms, a brief listing of Further Readings, and stable Web site URLs following most entries.

Check out this and other titles in our growing collection of e-books by visiting the Gale Virtual Reference Library on our Library Databases web page.

Attention Education Majors - visit the Learning Page!

The American Memory Project has a page created the Learning Page especially for K-12 Educators. This site brings together a rich collection of resources for professional development, primary source documents, lesson plans and activities that are easily accessible and free.
The learning page acts a portal to the larger American Memory Project by connecting to over 100 American Memory sub-collections. Resources are offered on subjects ranging from literature to United States history and include high quality digital images of artifacts, original documents, and audio and video files of historical events. The Learning Page also provides information on ordering reproductions, citing resources and search strategies on finding primary source documents.


So if you are in need of some great resources, lesson plans or information on using resources from the American Memory Project visit the Learning Page and discover something new.

books.google.com ~ browse.seek.find

Google Book Search
Similar to Google Scholar Google Book Search limits your web search to a particular subset of content on the web, in this case millions of books.

Which Books Are Included

If the book is out of copyright, or the publisher has given us permission, you'll be able to see a preview of the book, and in some cases the entire text. If it's in the public domain, you're free to download a PDF copy.

The Different Views available through Google Book Search

Full View is available if the book is out of copyright or the owner of the copyright has given Google permission to scan and make the book fully viewable. For books in the Public Domain, users are able to save or print PDF versions of the book.

Limited View is when copyright holders on grant Google permission to make a limited section of the book viewable by users as a preview to the book.

Snippet View is similar to what users see from an online bookseller. General information about the book and a summary displaying your search terms in context is usually displayed in this view.

No Preview Available is similar to a basic library card catalog. Only basic book information is displayed along with links of where you may find a print copy if it is available.

Will this make libraries obsolete?

Quite the contrary, not all books are able to be made available for full-text scanning and libraries do not have the space or money to buy and house all the books people need. By offering a number of copyrighted and public domain titles Google has given libraries a hand in preserving and making the classics available at the same time as freeing up resources for libraries to use on future titles, or on titles that are unique and specific to their missions.

By working with libraries and bookstores the overall beneficiary is the customer who is searching for a book or some bit of information. Together these institutions with seemingly different ends have made it easier than ever before to access and obtain written works.

So the next time that you are unable to locate a title in our collection give Google Book Search a try, you may be suprised to find it online. If you would like more information about Google Book Search visit http://books.google.com/intl/en/googlebooks/about.html or stop by the library and I would be happy to help you.