Month: December 2006

Web Archiving Book

Thanks to Andrew Hubbertz for bringing this to our attention! Many of us are trying to figure out how to deal with electronic government publications.

Just published:
"Web Archiving"
Masanès, Julien (Ed.)
2006, VII, 234 p., 28 illus., Hardcover
ISBN-10: 3-540-23338-5
ISBN-13: 978-3-540-23338-1

"The public information available on the Web today is larger than
information distributed on any other media. The raw nature of Web
content, the unpredictable remote changes that can affect it, the
wide variety of formats concerned, and the growth in data-driven
websites make the preservation of this material a challenging
task, requiring specific monitoring, collecting and preserving
strategies, procedures and tools.

Julien Masanès, Director of the European Archive, has assembled
contributions from computer scientists and librarians that
altogether encompass the complete range of tools, tasks and
processes needed to successfully preserve the cultural heritage
of the Web. This book serves as a standard introduction for everyone
involved in keeping alive the immense amount of online information,
and it covers issues related to building, using and preserving Web
archives both from the computer scientist and librarian viewpoints.

Practitioners will find in this book a state-of-the-art overview of
methods, tools and standards they need for their activities.
Researchers as well as advanced students in computer science will
use it as an introduction to this new field with a hopefully
stimulating review of open issues where future work is needed."

Read more detailed information
(including table of contents and sample chapter):
http://www.springer.com/3-540-23338-5

Canadian Documents Web Search Engine

Thanks to David Sharp for sharing this with us!

A few weeks back, David Oldenkamp from Indiana University kindly shared information on his international documents web search engine with us. His work inspired me to try and make a similar one for Canadian documents. If you would like to take a look at what I came up with, you can find it at: http://www.library.carleton.ca/madgic/

For now, it searches on the federal level, including select crown corporations, the provincial and territorial level; as well, it searches 80 municipal sites from across Canada. (The 80 municipalities were chosen from a list of Statistic Canada’s Census Metropolitan Areas, Census Agglomerations, and Census Subdivisions for Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. Apologies if I overlooked anyone.)

I would be happy to receive any feedback or suggestions for improvement, especially if you know of sites that I might have overlooked. I will also be happy to supply the code if you are interested in putting the search box on one of your pages.

David Sharp

Government Publications Librarian,

Electronic Resources and Provincial Documents

Maps, Data and Government Information Centre

Carleton University Library

1125 Colonel By Drive

Ottawa, Ontario K1S 5B6

(613) 520-2600 ext 8198

david_sharp@carleton.ca