june08a.indd


David Free N e w s  f r o m  t h e  F i e l d  

Civil Rights resources online 
The University of Georgia Libraries and the 
Digital Library of Georgia recently launched 
the Civil Rights Digital Library (CRDL), an 
initiative to deliver online educational con­
tent on the Civil Rights Movement. CRDL 
promotes an enhanced understanding of 
the movement through its three principal 
components: a digital video archive of his­
torical news film of the Civil Rights Move­
ment, a virtual library portal aggregating 
metadata from more than 75 libraries and 
allied organizations from across the nation, 
and instructional materials to facilitate the 
use of the video content in the learning 
process. 

The centerpiece of CRDL is a collection 
of more than 30 hours of historical news 
film held by the Walter J. Brown Media 
Archives and Peabody Awards Collection at 
the University of Georgia Libraries. These 
moving images—about 450 clips—cover a 
broad range of key civil rights events, in­
cluding the desegregation of Central High 
School in Little Rock, Arkansas (1957); the 
Atlanta Temple bombing (1958); Atlanta 
sit­ins (1960); Freedom Rides (1961); deseg­
regation of the University of Georgia and 
Georgia Tech (1961); the Albany Movement 
(1961­1962); desegregation of Ole Miss 
(1962) and University of Alabama (1963); 
and the Americus Movement (1963, 1965). 

In addition to the news film, the digital 
library includes related collections of origi­
nal documentation, such as oral histories, 
letters, and photographs from libraries, 
archives, and museums. CRDL is freely 
available online at crdl.usg.edu. 

Open source digital music software 
Indiana University (IU) recently released 
the first open source software product 
relating to its nationally recognized Varia­
tions Digital Music Library. The Variations 
Audio Timeliner, available as a free down­
load, allows music students, teachers, and 
researchers to create and interact with 
time­based diagrams of music fi les. Sound 
files in many formats, such as MP3, WAV, 
and MIDI, can be connected to a timeline 

diagram. Users can identify relationships in 
passages of music, annotate their fi ndings, 
and play back the results through point­
and­click interaction. 

The IU Digital Library Program created 
the tool in collaboration with faculty and 
students in IU’s Jacobs School of Music. 
The IU Digital Library Program is a col­
laborative effort of the Indiana University 
Libraries and the Indiana University Of­
fice of the Vice President for Information 
Technology.

 Visit variations.sourceforge.net/vat/ to 
learn more and download the Variations 
Audio Timeliner. 

Second annual Sparky Awards 
Entries are now being accepted for the sec­
ond annual Sparky Awards, a contest that 
recognizes the best new short videos on 
the value of sharing and aims to broaden 
the discussion of access to scholarly re­
search by inviting students to express their 
views creatively. The contest is organized 
by the Scholarly Publishing and Academic 
Resources Coalition with additional co­
sponsorship by ACRL, the Association of 
Research Libraries, Penn Libraries at the 
University of Pennsylvania, Students for 
Free Culture, and the Student PIRGs. 

The 2008 contest theme is “MindMashup: 
The Value of Information Sharing.” The 
Sparky Awards invite contestants to submit 
videos of two minutes or less that imagina­
tively portray the benefits of the open, legal 
exchange of information. To be eligible, 
submissions must be publicly available on 
the Internet and available for use under a 
Creative Commons license. The winner will 
receive a cash prize of $1,000 along with 
a Sparky Award statuette. Two runners up 
will each receive $500 plus a personalized 
award certifi cate. 

Entries must be received by November 
30, 2008. Winners will be announced in 
January 2009, and the award­winning videos 
will be screened at the January 2009 ALA 
Midwinter Meeting in Denver. 

For complete details, visit the contest Web 
site at www.sparkyawards.org. 

306C&RL News June 2008 

http:www.sparkyawards.org
http:crdl.usg.edu


ACRL
Coutts-Nijhoff
Award-winning
research



The Coutts­Nijhoff Travel Study Grant, 
financially supported by the Coutts Infor­
mation Services company and awarded 
by a committee of ACRL’s Western Euro­
pean Studies Section, provides a unique 
opportunity for a librarian to spend two 
expense­paid weeks in Europe pursuing 
a research project. The 2005 winner of 
the grant, Charlene Kellsey, associate pro­
fessor and now head of the Acquisitions 
Department at the University of Colorado­
Boulder, spent two weeks examining the 
manuscript resources in the public library 
of Arles, France. 

Although a wide variety of documents 
is available electronically on the Internet, 
there are large numbers of historical 
manuscripts hidden in the archives and 
libraries of Europe, as in the United States. 
In France, many towns have municipal li­
braries and archives containing documents 
originally confiscated from monasteries 
and religious organizations during the 
French Revolution that are not listed in 
their online catalogs or Web sites. 

A major reference work provides list­
ings of these manuscripts and very brief 
descriptions, but examination of the 
manuscripts onsite in the library of the 
city of Arles revealed a wealth of useful 
documents, the value of which could not 
be deduced from the descriptions. 

Kellsey chose the librar y in Arles 
because of her interest in the history of 
an important women’s monastery there, 
founded in the sixth century and still in 
existence until the French Revolution 
when it was destroyed.The library has an 
online catalog available on the Internet, 
but, as in most libraries, manuscripts and 
archival materials are not included.1 

There is a major reference tool that 
lists the manuscripts of all the libraries 
in France, with brief descriptions, but the 
titles and descriptions do not always make 
it clear whether the item would be of use 
for the research in hand.2 

The research trip to Arles provided not 
only the opportunity to discover some 
very interesting manuscript resources, 
but also to see how a public library in 
a medium­sized French town combined 
modern interior architecture and public 
library services with a rare book and manu­
script reading room and climate­controlled 
storage facilities in a historic building in 
the heart of the town. 

The Mediathèque, as many public 
libraries in France are known, because 
they include media in addition to books, 
moved into a renovated space in 1989, in 
the old hospital where Van Gogh was once 
a patient. During the French Revolution, 
the books and manuscripts of the many 
monasteries and convents in France were 
confiscated and eventually given to their 
local municipalities, including Arles, even­
tually forming the foundation, or fonds 
patrimoniaux, of the public libraries.This 
is why one can find very old and rare manu­
scripts in the public libraries of France, 
items that in other countries would still 
belong to the monastic order, or be found 
in national or university libraries. 

Further discussion of this library his­
tory and of the interesting manuscripts 
and sources found in the library of Arles 
are included in Kellsey’s forthcoming ar­
ticle,“Access to Historical Documents in a 
French Library: Documents for Monastic 
History in the Médiathèque d’Arles” in 
the Fall 2008 issue of RBM: A Journal of 
Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Cultural 
Heritage. 

Notes: 
1. Go to www.ville­arles.fr and click on 

the Culture tab, then Mediatheque, then 
Recherche documentaire. There doesn’t 
seem to be a direct link to the Mediatheque 
that works. 

2. Cataloque général des manuscrits des 
bibliothèques publiques de France. Départe­
ments (Paris: Librairie Plon, 1886­). 

June 2008 307 C&RL News 

http:www.ville-arles.fr


Renovating Wisconsin 
The University of Wisconsin­Milwaukee 
(UWM) Libraries have received a $1.75 mil­
lion gift from the Daniel M. Soref Trust to 
assist with the renovation of the Golda Meir 
Library building’s fi rst floor west wing. Fea­
turing group study rooms, a technology­rich 
environment, and a café, the Daniel M. Soref 
Learning Commons will provide vibrant 
and engaging learning spaces for students 
to gather, interact, and work together. Two 
classrooms for information literacy instruc­
tion will be created, and seating will double 
in the area. The remodeling will also offer 
students ready access to writing, tutoring, 
and information technology support ser­
vices. 

Construction is scheduled to begin this 
fall, with the new learning commons set to 
open in late fall 2009. More information on 
the project is available at www.uwm.edu 
/Library/renovation/. 

University of Utah course 
collaboration wins award 
This March, a University of Utah course cre­
ated by Languages and Literature Professor 
Christine A. Jones in collaboration with Lu­
ise Poulton, curator of the Rare Books Divi­
sion of the University of Utah’s J. Willard 
Marriott Library, received a 2007–08 Innova­
tive Course Design Competition Prize from 
the American Society for Eighteenth­Century 
Studies. 

During spring semester 2006, the gradu­
ate and undergraduate students of French 
4900/7900 wrote essays based upon their 
research relying on rare books from the Mar­
riott Library. The essays are now online as 
part of Dramatis Personae Archive: A History 
of 17th and 18th Century Performance Arts. 
The site is designed for researchers of the­
ater, dance, music, French culture, and early 
modern history, showcasing rare books from 
the Marriott Library’s collection. 

Dramatis Persona Archive is available at 
www.dramatispersonaearchive.org. 

Digital Libraries à la Carte 
The University of Tilburg in the Netherlands 
is again presenting its award­winning Digital 
Libraries Digital Libraries à la Carte course 
this summer. To be held from August 25–29, 
2008, the course consists of seven day­long 

modules covering topics such as library man­
agement, open access, marketing academic 
libraries, institutional repositories, physical 
and virtual library spaces, and hands­on 
training in Library 2.0 applications. 

Visit www.tilburguniversity.nl/ticer 
/08carte/ for additional information, includ­
ing course details, speakers, and registration 
information. 

NCSU Libraries taps 2008–2010 
fellows 
The North Carolina State University (NCSU) 
Libraries has announced the appointment 
of the 2008–2010 NCSU Libraries Fellows. 
Cory Lown, Dan Lucas, Genya O’Gara, An­
dreas Orphanides, and David Zwicky will 
begin their fellowships on July 1, 2008, with 
Freeman Culver, III beginning September 1, 
2008. 

The NCSU Libraries Fellows Program de­
velops future leaders for academic libraries, 
with a focus on science, engineering, and 
digital librarianship; on diversity; and on 
library management. Now in its ninth year, 
the program continues to attract talented 
new graduates from universities throughout 
North America. NCSU Libraries Fellows are 
appointed for a two­year term as members 
of the library faculty, combining a project 
assignment on an initiative of strategic im­
portance with a half­time appointment in a 
home department. 

Visit the NCSU Libraries news blog at www. 
lib.ncsu.edu/news/libraries.php?p=5816 to 
learn more about the current roster of fellows, 
including academic backgrounds and areas 
of expertise and responsibility. 

Lehman digital archive launches 
Columbia University Libraries have made 
the complete Special Correspondence Series 
of the Herbert H. Lehman Papers collec­
tion available online. This online database 
includes some 32,890 complete documents 
presented in an interface that facilitates 
browsing, searching and navigation. The 
collection is available to the public for edu­
cational and research purposes at www. 
columbia.edu/library/lehmanonline/. 

The Lehman Special Correspondence 
Series provides an overview of the politi­
cal and personal life of Herbert H. Lehman 
(1878–1963), four­term Governor of New 

308C&RL News June 2008 

www.tilburguniversity.nl/ticer
http:www.dramatispersonaearchive.org
http:www.uwm.edu


New
ACRL
publications



ACRL is pleased to announce the release of 
two new publications—Information Literacy 
Instruction Handbook and Copyright Policies: 
CLIP Note #39. 

The Information Literacy Instruction 
Handbook takes a practical approach to infor­
mation literacy, with an emphasis on up­to­date 
situations and approaches. Chapters include 
information on the psychology of learning, 
student academic integrity, diversity, instruc­
tional technology, and assessment. Edited by 
Christopher N. Cox and Elizabeth Blakesley 
Lindsay, the book was developed under the 
aegis of the ACRL Instruction Section. 

Copyright Policies: CLIP Note #39, 
compiled by Patricia Keogh and Rachel 
Crowley, is the newest entry in the CLIP Note 

York from 1933 to 1942 and U.S. Senator from 
1949 until 1957. 

Available in the new online archive are 
letters to and from Lehman and more than 
900 contemporaries including presidents, 
senators, politicians, foreign leaders, and 
members of Jewish and philanthropic organi­
zations. The site also provides a documentary 
overview of Lehman’s life and career. 

Papers and related collections are part of 
Columbia’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library 
and are a joint initiative of the Libraries’ Digi­
tal Program Division, the Preservation and 
Digital Conversion Division, and the Rare 
Book and Manuscript Library. 

Chronopolis project preserves at-risk 
information 
The Chronopolis Digital Preservation Dem­
onstration Project, a Library of Congress 
(LoC) effort to collect and preserve at­
risk digital information, has been offi cially 
launched as a multi­member partnership to 
meet the archival needs of a wide range of 
cultural and social domains. Chronopolis is 
a digital preservation data grid framework 
developed by the San Diego Supercomputer 
Center at UC San Diego, the UC San Diego 
Libraries, and their partners at the National 
Center for Atmospheric Research in Colora­
do and the University of Maryland’s Institute 
for Advanced Computer Studies. 

series and serves as a resource for the creation 
or updating of academic library and campus 
copyright policies. CLIP Note #39 contains a 
compilation of actual copyright policies in use 
at college and university libraries. The book 
additionally provides information on policy 
content, copyright monitoring, and educating 
stakeholders on copyright issues. 

Both titles are available for purchase 
through the ALA Online Store (www.acrl. 
ala.org/acrlinsider/www.alastore.ala.org) 
and by telephone order at (866) 746­7252 
in the United States or (770) 442­8633 for 
international customers. The volumes will 
also be available for purchase in the ALA 
Bookstore at the 2008 ALA Annual Confer­
ence in Anaheim. 

A key goal of the Chronopolis project is to 
provide cross­domain collection sharing for 
long­term preservation. With this launch, two 
collections from within the LoC community 
will be incorporated into the Chronopolis 
preservation grid. The Inter­university Con­
sortium for Political and Social Research, 
based at the University of Michigan, will 
provide up to 12 terabytes of data from its 
world­renowned archive of social science and 
political research data sets, marking the fi rst 
time that the collection is completely stored 
outside the State of Michigan. In addition, the 
California Digital Library will provide up to 
25 terabytes of content from its “Web­at­Risk” 
collections of political campaign Web sites 
archived since 2004 under LoC preservation 
programs. 

Additional information on the Chronopolis 
project is available on the project Web site at 
chronopolis.sdsc.edu. 

Correction


The caption of the image on page 206 
of the April 2008 issue misidentifi es 
Paul Courrant’s institutional affi liation. 
Courrant is the university librarian and 
dean of libraries at the University of 
Michigan 

The editors regret the error. 

June 2008 309 C&RL News 

http:chronopolis.sdsc.edu
www.acrl