Motherboard: Librarians Are Finding Thousands Of Books No Longer Protected By Copyright Law

Motherboard: Librarians Are Finding Thousands Of Books No Longer Protected By Copyright Law. “The books in question were published between 1923 and 1964, before changes to U.S. copyright law removed the requirement for rights holders to renew their copyrights. According to Greg Cram, associate general counsel and director of information policy at NYPL, an initial overview of books published in that period shows that around 65 to 75 percent of rights holders opted not to renew their copyrights.”

BBC: New archive to show life in Derby’s south Asian communities

BBC: New archive to show life in Derby’s south Asian communities. “Pictures illustrating life in a city’s south Asian communities over 30 years are to be collected in a new archive. Derby Museum’s Alternative Archive project is collecting images from the 1950s to the 1980s. Museum managers said the aim of the project was to fill a gap in its existing displays. The archive, which is being funded through a National Lottery Heritage Fund grant, will be displayed in an exhibition in 2024 and also online.”

Illinois State Genealogical Society Blog: BIG NEWS from the Illinois State Archives- Death Certificates Database Updated to 1971!

Illinois State Genealogical Society Blog: BIG NEWS from the Illinois State Archives- Death Certificates Database Updated to 1971!. “ISGS has just heard fantastic news from the Illinois State Archives Director, Dr. David Joens- The Illinois Death Certificates searchable database at ilsos.gov has been updated to include death certificate entries for the years 1951-1971!”

Online Exhibit: Night Train To Nashville (Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum)

Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum: Online Exhibit: Night Train To Nashville. “The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum was recently awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to create an online version of its award-winning 2004–2005 exhibition, Night Train to Nashville: Music City Rhythm & Blues 1945–1970. The online exhibit will revive, update, and preserve the significant story of Nashville’s pioneering R&B scene and its role in building the city into a world-renowned music center.”

BBC: Coventry photographer’s archive saved from a skip catalogued by volunteers

BBC: Coventry photographer’s archive saved from a skip catalogued by volunteers. “Thousands of photographs taken by Coventry photographer Arthur Cooper from the 1940s up to the 1960s have been digitized and released online by Coventry University. The archive, in the form of thousands of glass negatives, was found dumped on a Coventry street and returned to publishing company Mirrorpix.”

University of Toronto: Researcher’s archival exhibition spotlights 70 years of Black performance history in Canada

University of Toronto: Researcher’s archival exhibition spotlights 70 years of Black performance history in Canada . “An exhibit curated by Seika Boye, a researcher at the University of Toronto, is preserving seven decades-worth of Black dance performance history in Canada. ‘It’s About Time: Dancing Black in Canada 1900-1970 and Now’ is an archival exhibition that highlights the undocumented history of Black dance performance in Canada from the time period.”

BBC: Aerial photographer’s England collection goes online

BBC: Aerial photographer’s England collection goes online. “Thousands of photographic negatives and prints, taken by a pioneering aerial photographer, are being made available to view for the first time. Harold Wingham, who hailed from the New Forest, took photos across south-west England between 1951 and 1963. Wingham used hand-held aerial reconnaissance cameras to produce images with excellent resolution.”

Northeastern University School of Law: 1,000 Racial Homicides Investigated in Unprecedented Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive

Northeastern University School of Law: 1,000 Racial Homicides Investigated in Unprecedented Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive. “The Archive brings together evidence demonstrating the extensive scale and scope of killings between 1930 and 1954 in the Jim Crow South. Many of the 1,000 cases of anti-Black killings were mishandled by local police and prosecutors or went unreported until investigated by Northeastern students in law and journalism and their faculty. Built on open-source architecture, the Archive offers users the opportunity to learn about how violence affected people’s lives, defined legal rights and shaped politics during the Jim Crow era.”

George Mason University: Mason students build digital archive for victims of China’s Anti-‘Rightist’ Campaign

George Mason University: Mason students build digital archive for victims of China’s Anti-‘Rightist’ Campaign. “Predating China’s Cultural Revolution, the Anti-‘Rightist’ Campaign was launched by Chairman Mao Zedong to purge ‘Rightists’ from the Chinese Communist Party and the entire country. Beginning in 1957 and lasting for about two years, the campaign may have affected between 500,000 and 2 million individuals. Targeted individuals were reeducated, humiliated, relocated, or executed. The main focus was on ‘intellectuals,’ which tended to mean professors, artists teachers, writers and doctors.”

Knight First Amendment Institute: Newly Released Office of Legal Counsel Opinions from 1952-1971 Illuminate Government Policy During Civil Rights Era

Knight First Amendment Institute: Newly Released Office of Legal Counsel Opinions from 1952-1971 Illuminate Government Policy During Civil Rights Era. “The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University today published for the first time a set of Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) memos authored between 1952 and 1971 pertaining to desegregation policies and civil rights law.”

World’s Largest Computing Society Makes Thousands of Research Articles Freely Available; Opens First 50 Years Backfile (Association for Computing Machinery)

This launched in early April, and where was I? Off somewhere eating bon-bons, apparently. Anyway, from ACM: World’s Largest Computing Society Makes Thousands of Research Articles Freely Available; Opens First 50 Years Backfile. “ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, today announced that its first 50 years of publications, from 1951 through the end of 2000, are now open and freely available to view and download via the ACM Digital Library. ACM’s first 50 years backfile contains more than 117,500 articles on a wide range of computing topics. In addition to articles published between 1951 and 2000, ACM has also opened related and supplemental materials including data sets, software, slides, audio recordings, and videos.”

Jisc: Digital history of science collection ready to launch with nearly one million pages

Jisc: Digital history of science collection ready to launch with nearly one million pages. “For the first time researchers, teachers and students can access digitally more than 90% of the British Association for the Advancement of Science – Collections on the History of Science (1830s-1970s). Free to Jisc members and affiliates, the move to digitise this collection, much of which was previously unpublished, began in 2020, when leading UK university libraries and archives were invited to put forward their archives.”