Thursday, June 21, 2007

CRL + Footnote = More Awesome Documents

Footnote announced a partnership with the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) which means more content will be coming to the Footnote site soon. The blurb from the press release says the following about CRL:

Founded in 1949 by 10 major U.S. research universities, CRL is a nonprofit organization that supports advanced research and teaching in the humanities, sciences, and social sciences by ensuring the availability of diverse knowledge resources vital to those activities. In the years since its inception, CRL membership has grown to 233 North American universities, colleges, and independent research libraries. It is based in Chicago and governed by a Board of Directors drawn entirely from the higher education and libraries community.
From the press release:
This new partnership will result in the digitization and indexing of historical documents including U.S. ethnic newspapers, military records, and other materials that provide a unique perspective on American history. This partnership will enable us to provide wider access to rare American materials, said Bernard Reilly, President of CRL.
I think the key phrase in there is "wider access to rare American materials". While wider access to "common" historical documents is fun (for example the American Milestones on Footnote), it is much cooler to enable wider access to those documents that have been sitting in boxes on shelves in warehouses similar to the one at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. In these rare documents are "real" history, the stuff that fills in the details left missing by Jr. High Social Studies class.

Press Release
Center for Research Libraries (CRL)

2 comments:

Unknown said...

This, indeed, looks like an exciting project! A few questions:

What is the timeline for this? Is there a catalog or inventory of documents? What is the schedule for completion? Where and how will these documents be classified on Footnote.com?

I'll promote it on http://www.ShoeStringGenealogy.com/ssg1.htm, if you can provide a bit more information.

Thanks,
Happy Dae

Mike Clement said...

I'll provide more information as I am able!