EU Commission recommends

EU Commission Recommendations on digitisation and Digital Preservation. Here is a link to their press release (28 October 2011), which itself can take you to the full text of the recommendations and to other useful background information.

"The Recommendation is an update of a first recommendation adopted in 2006. It takes account of Member States’ progress reports from 2008 and 2010, which show that although progress has been made, more and better action is needed as regards financial resources, quantitative targets for digitisation and solid support for Europeana. It also builds on the conclusions of the Comité des Sages, appointed by Commissioners Kroes and Vassiliou in 2010, on bringing Europe's cultural heritage online."

Scintillating stuff indeed.

Today I have been mainly...

For the last couple of weeks I've been working on a project for Ffotoaber, putting together a show of photographs and moving image, historical and modern which was screened on the Aberystwyth Promenade over the last couple of nights.

Hard graft in the time available, but great fun, and a couple of hundred satisfied "customers".

With a lot of luck and a little money, Ffotoaber will hopefully continue into the future. A great example of how community spirit and a handful of get-up-and-go people can make things happen (i.e the organisers, not me).

BL sound archive gets what it deserves

The British Library Sound Archive has received the highest UNESCO accolade for its ethnographic collection. Read all about it here.

Photo of the day 17-10-11

Just the other day I happened upon the tail end (sorry!) of a sheep sale.

This was the first foray of the month with a camera, as I've been too busy doing "other things", mainly picture research for a couple of books (not mine). One book down, one to go.

Mentioning books, there are a few second hand copies available of an old one of mine and Paul O'Leary - "Wales of one hundred years ago" (they don't make them like that any more). Lovely pictures from NLW and very interesting passages from the archives, if you're interested... various sellers... on Amazon

Thanks - Diolch

From time to time I consider giving up on this blog. It often comprises links to information that I feel is important or timely, or just interesting, that can be found elsewhere, and there are umpteen aggregators of such data, semi automatic twitter feeds and so on that do a much more comprehensive job than I'm able to do, and of course a blog should really be a place to "state one's mind" rather than an inefficient SDI service; but somehow keeping my thoughts and views to myself is ingrained. But for some reason I can't bring myself just yet to kill the blog off.

This evening I looked at the blog stats and found that the majority of those peeking at the blog, including many users who return several times a month, mainly come from outside the UK.

So whoever you might be, I hope that you found the links I provide useful, and the pictures interesting - thanks to you from the following places and countries who have visited these pages over the last couple of weeks, from Nebraska, Texas, Vietnam, Cambridge (UK) Bangalore, Gloucester, Hyderabad, California (several of you), Wick, Paris (many of you), Wrexham, Leicester, Huddersfield, Moscow, Malvern, Lancaster, Poland (several), BBC London, LA, Norway, Peru, Santiago, Ohio (several of you), Brussels (several), Wedel, Oxford. Munchen, Melbourne, Aber Uni., New York, Amsterdam, Utrecht, Missouri, Barcelona, Dominican Republic, Brisbane, Prague, Monaco, Baku, Bratislava, Jerusalem, Utrecht, Koln, Meath, Stockholm, Basel, Sweden, Italy (several peekers), Lusaka, Malta, Edmonton, Brussels, Donegal, Bulgaria....

Like I said, thanks for looking!