Technology and Books for All Part 8

RLIN included:

(1) records that described works cataloged by the Library of Congress, the National Library of Medicine, the US Government Printing Office, CONSER (Conversion of Serials Project), the British Library, the British National Bibliography, the National Union Catalog of Ma.n.u.script Collections, and RLG members and users;

(2) nearly all the books cataloged since 1968 and rapidly expanding coverage for older materials;

(3) information about non-book materials ranging from musical scores, films, videos, serials, maps, and recordings, to archival collections and machine-readable data files;

(4) unique on-line access to special resources, such as the United Nations' DOCFILE and CATFILE records, and the Rigler and Deutsch Index to pre-1950 commercial sound recordings;

(5) international book vendors' in-process records, that were transferred to bibliographers, acquisition services and catalogers, to order records or help them for cataloguing items in their own local databases.

RLIN also provided:

(1) A catalog of computer files. Machine-readable data files were useful to a growing number of disciplines. RLIN contained records describing a number of such files, from the full-text French literary works in the ARTFL Database to the statistical data collected by the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) at the University of Michigan;

(2) A catalog of archives and special collections. The archival and ma.n.u.script collections of research libraries, museums, state archives, and historical societies contained essential primary resources, but information about their contents was often elusive. Archivists and curators worked with RLG to create an automated format for these collections. In 1998, there were 500,000 records available in RLIN for archival collections located throughout North America. These records described many collections by personal name, organization, subject, and format.

RLIN also hosted the English Short t.i.tle Catalogue (ESTC), an invaluable research tool for scholars in English culture, language, and literature. This file provided extensive descriptions and holdings information for letterpress materials printed in UK or any of its dependencies in any language, from the beginnings of print to 1800 - as well as for materials printed in English anywhere else in the world.

Produced by the ESTC editorial offices at the University of California, Riverside, and the British Library, in partners.h.i.+p with the American Antiquarian Society and over 1,600 libraries worldwide, the file was updated and expanded daily. ESTC served as a comprehensive bibliography of the hand-press era and as a census of surviving copies. ESTC included 420,000 records as of June 1998, from the beginnings of print (1473) through the 18th century - including materials ranging from Shakespeare and Greek New Testaments to anonymous ballads, broadsides, songs, advertis.e.m.e.nts and other ephemera.

2007: CITIZENDIUM

[Overview]

Citizendium was launched in October 2006 as a pilot project to build a new encyclopedia, at the initiative of Larry Sanger, who was the cofounder of Wikipedia (with Jimmy Wales) in January 2001, but resigned later on over policy and content quality issues. Citizendium - which stands for a "citizen's compendium of everything" - is a wiki project open to public collaboration, but combining "public partic.i.p.ation with gentle expert guidance." The project is experts-led, not experts-only.

Contributors use their own names, not anonymous pseudonyms, and they are guided by expert editors. "Editors will be able to make content decisions in their areas of specialization, but otherwise working shoulder-to-shoulder with ordinary authors." (Larry Sanger, Toward a New Compendium of Knowledge, September 2006) Constables make sure the rules are respected. Citizendium was launched on March 25, 2007, with 1,100 articles, 820 authors and 180 editors.

2007: ENCYCLOPEDIA OF LIFE

[Overview]

Launched in May 2007, the Encyclopedia of Life is a global scientific effort to doc.u.ment all known species of animals and plants (1.8 million), and expedite the millions of species yet to be discovered and catalogued (8 to 10 million). This collaborative effort is led by several main inst.i.tutions: Field Museum of Natural History, Harvard University, Marine Biological Laboratory, Missouri Botanical Garden, Smithsonian Inst.i.tution, Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL). The initial funding comes from the MacArthur Foundation (US $10 million) and the Sloan Foundation ($2.5 million). A number of pages will be available by mid-2008. The encyclopedia will be operational in 3-5 years and completed (with all known species) in 10 years. Built on the scientific integrity of thousands of experts around the globe, the Encyclopedia will be a moderated wiki-style environment, freely available to all users everywhere.