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Weekly News Digest
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March 30, 2009 — In addition to this week's NewsBreak(s), the editors have compiled the Weekly News Digest, featuring stories from the week just past that you should know about. Watch for additional coverage to appear in the next print issue of Information Today.
CLICK HERE to view all of this week's Weekly News Digest items.
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Library of Congress in New Media Initiatives
The Library of Congress (LC) will begin sharing content from its vast video and audio collections on the YouTube (www.youtube.com) and Apple iTunes (www.apple.com/itunes) web services as part of a continuing initiative to make its treasures more-widely accessible to a broad audience. The new LC channels on each of these services will launch within the next few weeks. All content made available on third-party sites will also be available on the LC's own website at www.loc.gov.New channels on the video and podcasting services will be devoted to LC content, including 100-year-old films from the Thomas Edison studio, book talks with contemporary authors, early industrial films from Westinghouse factories, first-person audio accounts of life in slavery, and inside looks into the LC's fascinating holdings, including the rough draft of the Declaration of Independence and the contents of Lincoln's pockets on the night of his assassination. The General Services Administration (GSA; www.gsa.gov) also announced agreements with Flickr, YouTube, Vimeo, and blip.tv that will allow other federal agencies to participate in new media while meeting legal requirements and the unique needs of government. GSA plans to negotiate agreements with other providers, and the LC will explore these new media services when they are appropriate to its mission and as resources permit. The LC began a groundbreaking pilot project with the Flickr photo-sharing service (www.flickr.com) last year, loading 3,100 historic photos to start and an additional 50 photos each week. The overwhelmingly positive response from the Flickr user community not only brought broad public awareness to the LC's existing online collection of more than 1 million prints and photos but also sparked creative interaction with them-users helped provide LC curators with new information on photos with limited descriptions through public review and tagging. LC photos on Flickr currently have received more than 15 million views. Source: Library of Congress
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Paula J. Hane
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