OpenDOAR reaches its 2000th Repository

Sherpa's OpenDOAR, a directory of academic open access repositories throughout the world, recently added its 2000th repository entry. The directory lists repositories and allows breakdown and selection by a variety of criteria - see the Find page - which can also be viewed as statistical charts.

Ad*Access -- Over 7,000 Digitized Ads, 1911-1955

Duke University's site Ad*Access is a particularly interesting digitization project. It provides access to over 7,000 U.S. and Canadian advertisements dating from 1911 to 1955. Five product categories are included - Beauty and Hygiene, Radio, Television, Transportation, and World War II propaganda. Students very frequently look for ads that they can use in their research papers. While more contemporary ones are fairly readily available from a variety of sources, older ones are often more difficult to locate. However, Ad*Access should be of major help in identifying ads from the first half of the 20th century.

The ads are free to be used for research, teaching, and private study. "For these purposes under Fair Use, you may reproduce (print, make photocopies, or download) materials from this web site without prior permission, on the condition that you provide proper attribution of the source in all copies." More information about Ad*Access and copyright may be found at http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/adaccess/about/

Visualising China: China 1850-1950, An Interactive Resource

The recently launched Visualising China project has 8,000 rare photographs of China and Chinese life from the period 1850 to 1950. The site "allows access to many previously unseen albums, envelopes and private collections and also major collections such as Historical Photographs of China, the Sir Robert Hart Collection and Joseph Needham's Photographs of Wartime China. These have many sub-collections and albums."

For more about the Visualising China project see http://visualisingchina.net/#page=about

The Royal Society has announced the launch of Open Biology, a new open access journal covering biology at the molecular and cellular level. "This selective, online Royal Society journal will publish original, high quality, peer-reviewed research in cell biology; developmental and structural biology; molecular biology; biochemistry; neuroscience; immunology; microbiology; and genetics. The criteria for acceptance will be scientific excellence, importance and originality."

Digital Public Library of America: Updates

On 16 June Paula J. Hane provided in Information Today an update on the Digital Public Library of America. Yesterday John Palfrey, the vice dean for library and information resources at Harvard Law School, the co-director of the Berkman Center and Chair of the DPLA, provided a YouTube video update on the DPLA: