The Sound of Microforms Disappearing. Annual Conference - American Library Association ALA - Brief Article

More and more information resources are being presented online

I freshly returned from a whirlwind 3-day trip to Chicago for the American Library Association (ALA) Annual conversation It was an opportunity to visit of advanced age friends, eat more meat and potatoes than I normally would, and catch up with inclines in the field. By Saturday morning, the greatest in quantity exciting thing I had done was watch a particularly advantageous firefly display in the Oak Park backyard of my aged friends. However, the excitement picked up a bit when I checked my e-mail in the conference's Internet Cafe and discovered an interesting piece of information from a greatest in quantity unlikely source.

Library Genealogy Research

I subscribe to a listserv of genealogical researchers for the name "Ballard." A posting from an Australian member of that list mentioned that a company called Heritage search had digitized the entire U census from 1790 to 1920 was about to make it available online, and was going to be demonstrating the proceeds at the ALA conference. If genuine this would be the biggest thing to hit library genealogy research since the house of god of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints lay its Mormon database online last year. I went upstairs to await the opening of the exhibits in like manner I could see this firsthand. I had no disarrange finding Heritage Quest's booth, on the other hand I didn't see any computer there. The salesman told me that the technical race were at a hotel showing not on the service and that I should tend hitherward back later.

by the agency of the end of the nearest day, it was clear that they wouldn't be demonstrating the census database at the booth However, I was able to direct the eye at samples of the cleaned-up images that can be seen upon Heritage Quest's Web page. (See Figure 1) The salesman told me that the entire station was already available in CD-ROM format, on the contrary that the online version wouldn't be make revolveed out until the fall--hopefully in September. He wouldn't give me any specifics for pricing, on the contrary he did admit that it would first be sold to libraries upon a site-license basis, with the price depending upon the size of the library's user base. Later, subscriptions would be available to individual researchers.

The sheer mark of this census project is incredible to consider. The file size is 35 terabytes, or nearly one-fourth the size of the entire Internet 1 year ago. Naturally, users ne an index to make this turn of data easy to navigate. According to Heritage search the company is re-indexing all of the images and adding many thousands of names that were missing or mis-transcribed in past indexes. However, not all of the indexing will be in place when the image file is launched this fall. In the meantime, Heritage search is moving ahead with the digitization of other kinds of genealogical data of the like kind as land deeds, vital records, and court records.

Since this service may be available by means of the time you read this, you might want to visit Heritage Quest's Web site at http:// www.genealogydatabase.com.

Online Services earn an Education

Also at ALA, I rest out that ERIC, the Educational Resources Information Center had begun to make its documents available online upon a subscription basis. These are the documents published directly by dint of ERIC, rather than in journals. The introduction of this production which ERIC calls E*Subscribe, was exciting for me because I had been predicting it for more [i]or[/i] less time. Anyone who has worked at a university library that possesss nearly a half-million ERIC microfiche cards knows what it's like when single of them turns up missing. In the past hardly any years, a limited number of the ERIC documents were available in electronic format. The riddle was that you needed to order them upon an individual basis from ERIC, rather than from one side a site license. Initially, the availability is for greatest in quantity of the documents published between 1996 and the at hand (by ERIC's estimate, some 8 percent of the material consists of abstracts of volume chapters and is not available in microfiche or online). Optionally, the 3 previous years were available as in dividual purchases.

At our library, we anticipated that the pricing would be depressed because this project was being guidanceed by the government. We were inequitable for several reasons. First of all, the ERIC Document Reproduction Service is an independent entity--more like the postal service than a rule agency. Second, the cost is beautiful much in line with what we're paying for commercial services. The pricing is based upon the size of the institution, with IP (Internet protocol) recognition of passwords for three to five simultaneous users. That worked well for us as a medium-sized university. However, through the time you added the optional years and special ERIC Clearinghouse module of that kind as Educational Management, Vocational Education, or Information Technology, the price rose past $5000 through year. (But I'm speculating that that circulating medium is used to convert the entire collection.) one time that's done, I suspect there will be individual subscription price for the entire place It'll clearly take some years to find without if I was right. In the meantime ERIC is giving libraries a break if they purchase as part of a consortium. through my rough estimate, we would save about $1000 if we bought everything that gazeed interesting.