Flandrica.be online

On November 15th, the Central Library hosted the launching of Flandrica.be, the new portal website of the Flanders Heritage Library and its six partner libraries. In this online heritage library, the visitor can browse through the most important pieces of each library collection. You can stumble across beautifully illustrated medieval manuscripts, old prints of Plantijn, but also old cookery books, lyrics and catechisms.

Inspired by international examples like Europeana, Flandrica.be is the portal for – at this moment – more than 400 books, manuscripts, newspapers and other documents from the six partner libraries: Heritage Library Hendrik Conscience, University Library Antwerp, Public Library Bruges, University Library Ghent, Provincial Library Limburg and University Library Leuven.

For KU Leuven, Flandrica.be displays documents from the Central Library, Maurits Sabbe Library, University Archive and Campusbibliotheek Arenberg: masterpieces such as the Bible of Anjou, but also documents that vividly depict the university history of Louvain and the cultural life of the city and region.

Source: News KU Leuven

Read Full Post »

The Dutch Cultural Coalition for Digital Durability (CCDD) presents her strategic program

The Dutch Cultural Coalition for Digital Durability points the problem of preserving digital cultural data for the future. The CCDD instigates the Dutch heritage institutions to reflect about the organization of digital durability in the cultural sector.

The key element is awareness. This awareness is not only necessary outside the Dutch heritage institutions, but also inside them. Therefore the CCDD’s Strategic Program accents the responsibilities of the heritage institutions. For many institutions in the Netherlands it is not self-evident to pay attention in their policies to the strategic value of ICT, digitizing, digital support and digital accessibility. The CCDD wants to change that. To finance the digital durability co-operation between the institutions is necessary.

The co-operation should result in an e-depot and related services.

The CCDD’s Strategic Program has been published in a magazine and is also digitally available in pdf.

Source: Faro

Source photo: Vlaamse Erfgoedbibliotheek

Read Full Post »

The Encyclopaedia Brittanica is gone (the paper version)

Almost two and a half centuries after the first edition, he Encyclopaedia Brittanica stops with the paper version of the famous encyclopaedia. The Brittanica is the oldest still existing English encyclopaedia. The first edition, only three volumes, was published in 1768. Digital version exist since 1994, when for the first time an edition on CD-ROM came out.

With a price of 1400 dollar, the paper edition had become a luxury product. On line encyclopaedia’s are faster, more current, portable and cheaper. An annual subscription on the online version costs $70.

The most recent paper edition in our Central Library is the one from 2005. Since a few years the University Library offers in her LIMO-catalogue the online version of the Britannica Academic edition.

Source: Vlaamse Erfgoedbibliotheek

Source photo: Britannica

Read Full Post »

Cranevelt letters

The Cranevelt letters are one of the most important manuscript collections in the Central Library. They contain the correspondence of humanist Frans Cranevelt of Bruges with Erasmus, Juan Luis Vives and Thomas Morus, among others. In 1928 Henry de Vocht published the first part of the Cranevelt letters. The second part was published in 1992-1995 by Josef Ijsewijn et al., with the support of the Koning Boudewijnstichting (who donated the letters to the KU Leuven). During the last year all the Cranevelt letters were catalogued in Limo and digitized.  From now on you can find the entire letter collection online. In Limo you enter ‘Craneveltbrieven’ or ‘correspondence of Cranevelt’ as search terms. Then you access the letters by clicking on the tab ‘View online’ (within the Libis network) or via tab ‘Details’ and ‘Online version in Lias’ (outside the campus network).

Read Full Post »

Old filing card catalogue used for art project

Before the digital era filing cards were used to meticulously describe the library’s books. Nowadays these filing card catalogues remind us of the past. More information about the old card catalogue of the Central Library can be found here.

The card catalogue of the Sterling Memorial Library of Yale University is used for a remarkable art project.

Read Full Post »

Website Europeana Newspapers online

The website of the “Europeana Newspapers” project is online. Over the next three years, 17 European institutions (mostly national libraries) have joined forces to provide more than 10 million newspaper pages to Europeana. There will be a special focus on newspapers published during the First World War. In addition, this project addresses challenges particularly linked with digitizing newspapers, for example the refinement of methods for OCR (Optical Character Recognition).

Source: Europeana Newspapers

Read Full Post »

10.000 titles from Royal library available via Google

More than 10.000 titles from the catalogue of the Royal library of the Netherlands have been made available via Google Books. It takes only one click to access the full digital text for free. These 10.000 books are the first visible results of the agreement between the Royal library and Google to digitize more than 160.000 public domain books from the Royal library collection. Mainly Dutch 18^th and 19^th century publications on historical, juridical and social topics have been made online available for international research.

Source: Royal library of the Netherlands

Read Full Post »

First digitized book from collection Museum Plantin-Moretus online

The first completely digitized book from the collection of Museum Plantin-Moretus is available online. It is an atlas from Abraham Ortelius, published in 1587 by Christoffel Plantijn.

Other digitizing projects are in progress and are being realized in cooperation with Anet (University library of Antwerp) and World digital library.

Source: Vlaamse Erfgoedbibliotheek

Read Full Post »

Europeana Collections 1914-1918

The Belgian Royal Library will participate in a large-scale digitalizing project, the Europeana Collections 1914-1918. The initiative was taken by the State Library of Berlin who, together with ten national libraries from eight European countries have formed a consortium. The goal is to make approximately 400,000 documents available online at Europeana on the Europeana Collections 1914-1918, all of which are related to the First World War. The Belgian Royal Library will provide about 10,000 documents.

 More information on this project can be found here. There is also another project, named Europeana 1914-1918, with the focus being on the digitalisation of institutional content. Its content will mainly be contributed by private persons.

Read Full Post »

American university libraries under fire

There is still no decision in the lawsuit of authors and editors versus Google Books. Last month all the parties were given more time to work out a resolution. In the meantime scientific authors and translators are still unhappy with American university libraries, because they make digitized works from Google Books accessible to their readers, in accordance with the deal Google closed with several university libraries concerning the digitization of their books.

Source: Informatieprofessional.nl

Read Full Post »