Library Archives Research Articles

Los tratados de práctica notarial en las bibliotecas de escribanos neogranadinos del siglo XVIII

Entre las bibliotecas particulares de escribanos numerarios y de cabildo que ejercieron durante el siglo XVIII en el Nuevo Reino de Granda, constatamos la presencia de formularios, tratados o manuales prácticos que se inscribieron en la tradición europea de la literatura jurídica de los “ars notariae” y sirvieron para ejercer un oficio fundamental para el desarrollo social y económico de las ciudades americanas, un oficio escasamente estudiado por la historiografía colombiana. Para ello analizamos los Inventarios Post Mortem de Jacobo Facio Lince, Mariano Bueno, Juan Andrés Sandoval y Joaquín Sánchez de la Flor, escribanos que ejercieron su oficio en las ciudades de Medellín, Cartago y Popayán. Los registros de sus bibliotecas particulares nos permiten caracterizarlas para centrarnos luego en la descripción individual de los tratados notariales identificados y su circulación en Indias.

Análise e indexação da paisagem: o Arquivo Fotográfico Ilustrativo dos Trabalhos Geográficos de Campo do Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística

Resumo O propósito desta pesquisa é abordar a análise e a indexação de paisagens da vida rural tendo por referência o Arquivo Fotográfico Ilustrativo dos Trabalhos Geográficos de Campo, do Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística, cujas fotografias foram produzidas pelos geógrafos agrários do então Conselho Nacional de Geografia, entre os anos de 1940 e 1960. Trata-se de uma pesquisa exploratória que aborda a informação geográfica no âmbito da Ciência da Informação voltada para a organização e a representação do conhecimento registrado no processo de transferência da informação. Partindo de estudos sobre a paisagem levantados na literatura de Geografia e conjugado com a bibliografia das áreas de Arquivologia, Biblioteconomia, Ciência da Informação e História, buscou-se identificar conceitos e categorias que subsidiaram a proposta de uma matriz para análise e indexação de fotografias de paisagens. Os conjuntos fotográficos selecionados do acervo para o experimento referem-se às regiões brasileiras Nordeste e Sul, de acordo com a primeira divisão oficial proposta pelo Conselho Nacional de Geografia em 1941.

John McCutcheon's Asian Adventure

For more than forty years, John McCutcheon was America's “Dean of Political Cartoonists.” His Pulitzer-Prize winning career in satirical art has obscured his early fame as an adventure journalist and one of the first “embedded reporters” in military action. While merely visiting on a new U.S. military cutter during its first test voyage, McCutcheon found himself an “accidental tourist” when the ship was called into action for the Battle of Manila Bay. Using memoirs, McCutcheon's own accounts, and other papers housed at Chicago's Newberry Library archives, this account of his early career highlights McCutcheon's dispatches from Manila, written on battleships and in Army camps, as an important step in the development of war reporting.

Rhythm through Experience

This article provides a historical context for Placido de Montoliu’s Eurhythmics instruction at Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania, between 1913–1922 and 1930–1931, and it highlights pedagogical and philosophical principles that shaped his approach. The research is based on noncirculating, historical documents at the Bryn Mawr College Library Archives. Examples include Placido de Montoliu’s class schedule, contracts, letters, catalogues, student records, photographs, newspaper clippings, and alumni newsletters. Also referenced are Montoliu’s two essays, “The Meaning of Eurhythmics” and “Concepts of Time, Measure and Rhythm,” written in 1931 for Overtones, at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, where Montoliu taught between 1925–1940. In an earlier article the author established Montoliu as one of the first of Dalcroze’s students to bring Eurhythmics instruction to America and the first to integrate Eurhythmics fully into an American college curriculum. The present study centers on Montoliu’s assertions that rhythm should be the basis for a child’s first music learning experience and that it should be taught through aural and kinesthetic experience, as opposed to learning through written notation. Montoliu sought to create the “condition” of rhythm in his students through exercises in movement. Within his curriculum, he integrated hearing, singing, reading, coordination, and response. Hand-held percussion instruments were used to simulate ensemble experience, and children were invited to direct the group. Instruction culminated in semiannual demonstrations before the community. Equally important to the development of the child’s coordination and muscle control was cultivation of her artistic temperament. He also placed value on student attention, effort, seriousness, concentration, and interest in Eurhythmics.

Scaffolds from biomaterials: advantages and limitations in bone and tissue engineering

AbstractNowadays, there has been immense progress in developing materials to support transplanted cells. Nevertheless, the complexity of tissues is far beyond what is found in the most advanced scaffolds. This article reviews the types of biomaterials and their resulting scaffolds in the bio-engineering of bone and tissues by presenting an overview of the characteristics of ideal scaffold in tissue engineering along with types of scaffolds and examples of previous studies where these scaffolds have been applied. The advantages of scaffolds, and the three-dimensional culture system and its used commercially available scaffold is presented. Challenges encountered in the application of these scaffolds in bone and tissue engineering is also highlighted. Used method was by acquisition of materials through Google scholar, Science direct, PubMed and University library archives. Proper knowledge of the above highlighted facts will go a long way in re-addressing the production of scaffolds for bone and tissue engineering. With the proliferation of innovative applications in bioactive glasses and glass ceramics, the greater need for specific understanding of cell biology with emphasis on cellular differentiation, cell to cell interaction and extracellular matrix formation in engineering of bone and tissues becomes inevitable. This will enhance scaffold production, bone regeneration and transplantation outcome.

Book Review: Archives Alive: Expanding Engagement with Public Library Archives and Special Collections

In Archives Alive, Diantha Dow Schull expertly demonstrates the strength, vitality, and importance of rare books, special collections, and archives departments located in public libraries rather than academic or research libraries. Schull’s purpose is two-fold. First, she demonstrates the breadth and depth of special collections in public libraries; second, she demonstrates how twenty-first-century special collections departments work, frequently with technology, to increase engagement with the publics they serve. The scope is limited to special collections departments in American public libraries, but within these parameters, coverage is exhaustive and strikes an appropriate balance between activities at large, well-funded institutions and smaller departments with more modest resources.

Gowers and Osler: good friends 'all through'.

William Gowers and William Osler first met in 1878, and Osler visited Gowers often when in London. Osler dedicated his book On Chorea and Choreiform Affections to Gowers in 1894, addressing himself as Gowers' sincere friend. Two warm letters between Osler and Gowers exist in the Osler Library Archives, highlighting their strong friendship, and Gowers' son Ernest wrote Osler a letter after the death of his father. Referring to the relationship between William Osler and William Gowers, he noted that Osler had indeed been a good friend to him all through. Osler wrote and edited the first edition of his textbook from 1890 through early 1892, and was influenced by Gowers' Manual of Diseases of the Nervous System. In 1913, Osler commented that Gowers had ataxic paraplegia. Macdonald Critchley disagreed, and felt that Gowers had generalised cerebrovascular degeneration. Osler and Gowers were close friends, and this friendship was mutually beneficial.

Sahat al-Borj: A Feminine City Square as a Container of Events

Beirut’s city center, Sahat al-Borj, has been the receptacle to many historical events, which shaped its current identity, such as repeated wars and other violent events such as tsunamis and earthquakes. These events affected the Square’s identity and the national identity and culture of Lebanon, and led to the creation and evolution of Sahat al-Borj from a cosmopolitan city center in the 1950s and 1960s, to a demarcation line between East (Christians) and West (Muslims) during the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990) to an abandoned city center since 1990. Like Derrida’s khōra, the sites of Beirut and Sahat al-Borj both have interior qualities and are receptacles of repeated wars and violent events. In Lebanese, both the city and the city Square are referred to with a feminine pronoun: hiyeh or “she” in Lebanese and elle in French. In Arabic and Lebanese, the nouns Sahat (a square, is an open space; open to a diversity of activities) and Mdineh (city) are feminine, giving both feminine connotations. This gendered pronoun accruing to cultural practices humanizes the Square and personalizes its identity and its occupation by referring to the city and its center as “she” or “her.” In Anglophone societies, city squares are usually referred to as “it” in English and do not have feminine or masculine genders or “character” attributed to them, unlike French, Arabic, or Lebanese. Through a series of historical cartographic maps and images collected from different library archives in France and Lebanon, this article will explore the human occupation of the Square throughout history and will examine the urban site of Beirut as a container of events and a transitional “non-place” with feminine and interior qualities with a specific reference to Derrida’s khōra. Although there are many interpretations of Khōra, like Derrida’s Khōra, in this article, the interior is explored as a receptacle associated with the feminine, the container, which receives human’s occupation.1

Archives alive: expanding engagement with public library archives and special collections

Archives alive: expanding engagement with public library archives and special collections

Archives in Libraries: What Librarians and Archivists Need to Know to Work Together. By Jeannette A. Bastian, Megan Sniffin-Marinoff, and Donna Webber. [Review

Archives in Libraries: What Librarians and Archivists Need to Know to Work Together. By Jeannette A. Bastian, Megan Sniffin-Marinoff, and Donna Webber. [Review

Archives Alive: Expanding Engagement with Public Library Archives and Special Collections. By Diantha Dow Schull. [Review

Archives Alive: Expanding Engagement with Public Library Archives and Special Collections. By Diantha Dow Schull. [Review

G. H. W. Bush and M. Gorbachev’s Negotiations at Malta in 1989 (With Reference to G. H. W. Bush Presidential Library Archive)

The article analyzes the Gorbachev-Bush negotiations at the Malta Summit. The author uses documents from the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library and memoirs of the participants to research the then changing Soviet-American relations. According to the memoirs of its participants and contemporary journalists’ articles, the Malta Summit became a milestone in the process of the Cold War’s ending. Such negotiations were only possible only in relatively peaceful conditions. However, the analysis of the Malta Summit is not in the limelight of historical science; the works published are mainly based on memoirs. It was crucial for the George H. W. Bush Administration to determine the changes in the Soviet policy. The summit was an attempt to verify the genuineness of Gorbachev’s foreign policy shift, which made the preparation for it very rigorous. There was no agenda at the Summit, but G. H. W. Bush made specific proposals both in arms control and in regional issues. M. Gorbachev used peaceful rhetoric and appealed to the new status of the USSR –US relations. Despite the fact that there was a cooperative spirit at the Summit some issues remained unresolved. There were no formal agreements at the Summit; thus, its importance lies in the psychological sphere. The G. H. W. Bush Administration made sure that the changes in the Soviet foreign policy were real, and they could get more concessions, including the German reunification.

Radical Socialism, Simplified Serialism: John Weinzweig and CBC Wartime Radio Drama during the Second World War

Radio drama was a quintessential source of entertainment for Canadian audiences during the Second World War, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) used the art form to distribute propaganda and garner support for the Canadian war effort. Similarly, radio drama became an essential artistic outlet for artists and composers to articulate their political beliefs to a national audience. This article frames Canadian composer John Weinzweig’s works for the CBC radio drama seriesNew Homes for Old(1941) in light of Canada’s wartime socio-political climate and the rise of the Popular Front movement during the 1930s, and suggests that radio drama provided Weinzweig with a national soapbox for his radical socialist ideals during a time of political upheaval.Drawing upon archival materials from Library and Archives Canada, the CBC Music Library Archives, and Concordia University’s Centre for Broadcasting and Journalism Studies, this article builds upon the biographical work of Udo Kasemets (1960), Elaine Keillor (1994), and Brian Cherney (2011). It establishes Weinzweig’s socialist ties and argues that his political leanings prompted him to simplify his serial language in favour of a simplified modernist aesthetic which appealed to Canada’s conservative wartime audiences. Specifically, this study of Weinzweig’s radio works reveals how the composer desired to make serial compositions accessible and palatable, and shows how he incorporated vernacular idioms such as folk songs and national anthems as foils to the elitist European serial aesthetic. Finally, this article demonstrates how Weinzweig, in incorporating these devices, uses a powerful and pervasive medium to promote his unique compositional style and reveals how his simplified serial aesthetic reflects the cultural, political, and aesthetic ideals of leftist socialism and the Popular Front.

History Document Image Background Noise and Removal Methods

It is common for archive libraries to provide public access to historical and ancient document image collections. It is common for such document images to require specialized processing in order to remove background noise and become more legible. Document images may be contaminated with noise during transmission, scanning or conversion to digital form. We can categorize noises by identifying their features and can search for similar patterns in a document image to choose appropriate methods for their removal. In this paper, we propose a hybrid binarization approach for improving the quality of old documents using a combination of global and local thresholding. This article also reviews noises that might appear in scanned document images and discusses some noise removal methods.

The Institute of Archaeology Library 1937–1986: Collections, Communities and Networks

This article documents the history of the Institute of Archaeology Library from its independent beginnings in 1937 until the merger of the Institute with UCL in 1986. Documents from the Institute of Archaeology Library Archive, unpublished Institute Management Committee Minutes and published Annual Reports are used to demonstrate how the Library and the activities of its librarians reflected changes and developments not only in the Institute community, but also within wider archaeological networks. Initially situated in a united archaeological community with fluid boundaries, the Library was to develop its own independent identity as changes in Higher Education, professionalisation and commercialisation destroyed this unity and promoted the development of distinct communities of professional practice.

Fair Use in Post-publication Peer Review

The Wikipedia page on fair use (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use) states: “In United States copyright law, fair use is a doctrine that permits limited use of copyrighted material without acquiring permission from the rights holders. Examples of fair use include commentary, search engines, criticism, parody, news reporting, research, teaching, library archiving and scholarship. It provides for the legal, unlicensed citation or incorporation of copyrighted material in another author's work under a four-factor balancing test.” The exact wording of U.S. Code § 107 is described in Appendix 1. In plain speak, provided that the ultimate objective is academic or educational, parts of a manuscript can be used to display errors, or to make commentary or criticisms. Since post-publication peer review (PPPR), a tool used to correct the literature through critical analysis of the already published literature (Teixeira da Silva 2015a), often relies on the use of visual aids to make comparisons between duplicated material, to facilitate understanding by the readership, fair use thus plays a central role in PPPR, and forms part of the road map to achieve structured, reliable, understandable and sound PPPR (Teixeira da Silva 2015b). Scientists who wish to engage in PPPR are reticent, as they do not know their legal or ethical limitations. Thus three key questions arise, and answers are provided to address these. 1) Is fair use copyright infringement? No, since it is an exception to copyright law, within reasonable limits. 2) Is fair use duplication or partial duplication (of text, tables, or figures)? No, since the source is fully described and permission is not required to reuse parts of copyrighted material for academic purposes, within reasonable limits, such as PPPR. 3) Is fair use unethical? If used correctly, while referencing the original source of the copyrighted material, there are no ethical constraints. According to the DCMA (http://www.dmca.com/FAQ/Fair-Use), fair use is now widely accepted around the world, and thus the limited academic use of copyrighted material from any country would thus not constitute copyright infringement. It is expected, however, that as more literature becomes challenged, that some publishers may turn to DCMA take-down notices to try and silence the voices of academic criticism.

Sustainable and Accessible Integrated Heritage Science Datasets

A current challenge in the scientific, humanities and cultural heritage realm is the storage of and access to the increasing volume of digital datasets, paramount to advancing knowledge and assuring the future of research. The European Union has established a number of research infrastructures focused on addressing access and sustainability of digital data, while initiatives in the Unites States appear less integrated. The establishment of standardized digital protocols for storing and accessing scientific cultural heritage data is critical to ensuring interoperability between heritage institutions, and the preservation of international culture in libraries archives, and museums. The Preservation Research and Testing Division of the Library of Congress has moved forward with an initiative to standardize and make accessible, data from a range of scientific instrumentation, including related metadata files and assuring open access file formats.

Teoretyczna myśl archiwalna Kazimierza Konarskiego (1886–1972)

Kazimierz Konarski was most of all a methodologist. But his wide experience in archives enabled him to draw theoretical conclusions and generalizations. The archival work of Konarski was focused mostly on arrangement and description of archival holdings and on organizing it, which gave notable methodological effects in the form of systematics of archival aids and methodological guidelines for arrangement and description of various types of documents. For Konarski arrangement and description of archival holdings was always a central problem in archives’ activity. To a small degree his experience involved problems of disposal and providing access to archival materials. But performing leading functions in archives enabled him to get to know the organization of archives and mechanisms of functioning of the archival service. In the thought of Konarski, the scope of archival science was outlined by activities of archives. Problems of arrangement and inventorying of archival holdings occupied a crucial role. It was a consequence of the central position of a fonds, which was, for Konarski, the subject of archival science. Konarski understood the scope of archival science very widely. In this scope he included all the activities performed by archivists, even issues of building up and running an archival library or the atmosphere of an archive. The subject of archival science itself did not change. What did change was emphasis placed by Konarski on particular problems. First, the crucial issue for him was the principle of provenance, then he focused on the understanding of an archival fonds. Finally Konarski recognized that the cornerstone to archival studies is the process of crystallizing the term “record” (“akt”). This approach is clearly an effect of being influenced by some fashion. What can be seen is, at first, relishing the principle of provenance, and then turning towards diplomatics, certainly under the influence of Meissner. Konarski consequently held his view on the necessity of creating the Polish version of archivistics. He thought that archival science is not a universal discipline and that it has to have a local character, what he probably achieved. He made a key contribution to creating the specific, Polish archival science, focused on issues of records and office, demanding a detailed archival description, at least in that different from the world archivistics. Kazimierz Konarski has become an inherent part of history of Polish archival science. But could it be a surprise, if he is the creator, the first and maybe the main promoter of the Polish version of archivistics?

Experimental Solid and Liquid Propellant Rocket Development in Universiti Teknologi Malaysia : 1992-2011

This paper reports on the research and development activities related to the experimental solid and liquid propellant rocket in Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) from year 1992 to 2011. A total of 41 closed access academic theses and project papers from UTM library archive were exclusively selected for this review work. Some of these theses and papers originally written in Malay language were translated into English language in this paper for better understanding of the research community. This paper gives a historical insight on the apparatus and methodology designed for educational research activities related to rocket propulsion in UTM. With the available resources within UTM, a few chemical propellant using Ammonium Perchlorate, Potassium Nitrate and hydrogen peroxide as oxidizer were tested in UTM propulsion lab. Besides discussing the rocket fuel components, composite rocket body, ceramic nozzle and alternative binder using natural rubber also covered in this review work. Significant experimental results and numerical findings achieved by UTM researchers were included in this paper.

Current Concepts in the Presentation, Diagnosis and Management of Primary Hyperparathyroidism

Background: Primary hyperparathyroidism (PHPT) is a common clinical endocrine disorder. It is the most common cause of hypercalcemia in the outpatient setting. This review presents a brief summary of the new trends of presentation, diagnosis and management PHPT. Data Sources: PubMed (National Library of Medicine) articles, and Memorial Library archives of the University of Wisconsin System. Conclusions: PHPT occurs at any age, but it is most commonly seen in people over the age of 50 years and postmenopausal women. The current presentation of PHPT shifts from the classical symptomatic form to the asymptomatic form; however, parathyroidectomy is still the treatment of choice for both symptomatic and asymptomatic forms. In the past, bilateral neck exploration and intraoperative identification of all 4 parathyroid glands was the standard of treatment, nevertheless, nowadays, with the introduction of the preoperative and intraoperative localization techniques, the minimally invasive parathyroidectomy has evolved