That's Not Online!

Library collections, archives and other information that aren't accessible online, and how to find them. Use the links at top right to ask a question or submit a post. Contact: jacquelinekbarlow [at] gmail [dot] com or tweet @thatsnotonline Jacqueline's posts / Jennifer's posts

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Finca Vigía , Hemingway's home in Cuba

Photo via Matt Brooke Studio.

The Finca Vigía Foundation was founded in 2002 to preserve Ernest Hemingway’s Cuban home, Finca Vigía. After living there for over 20 years and composing two of his most famous works there, Hemingway left Finca Vigía in 1960. He probably intended to come back, because items such as pens and were left as he had used them. After his death in 1961, the Cuban government claimed ownership of the property.

Today the property is run as a museum and the house and many of the objects within are being preserved due in large part to the Finca Vigía Foundation. The Foundation has worked with the Cuban government (a rare example of collaboration between the Cuban government and a US institution) to maintain and restore both the house and the objects within, including over 3,000 documents and 9,000 books.

By 2010 3,000 documents had been conserved and digitised, and copies are now stored at the Consejo Nacional de Patrimonio Cultural in Cuba and the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, where it was added to a collection of personal papers Hemingway’s wife had retrieved from Cuba in the late 1960s. While the Presidential Library has useful finding aids on its website, none of items that form the Hemingway collection appears to be available through the website. Likewise, it seems the Consejo Nacional has not made its copy of documents available online.

Among the next projects of the Foundation is a concerted effort aimed at preserving Hemingway’s Cuban library. Many of the books include marginalia and will be of interest to Hemingway scholars. Information about the books is also unlikely to be online. In fact, access to the museum itself is very limited; visitors are only able to view the rooms through windows. Entry to the house is not permitted, and no doubt any future researchers may have to work quite hard to gain access to the books. It seems photography is permitted, though.

Not surprisingly, few Cuban archives or resources are available online. However, the University of Miami has a Cuban Heritage Center, and a number of the collections can be accessed online. A guide to Cuban archives has also been published, and a digitization project for 19th century Cuban newspapers is underway.

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Marianne Moore

Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

Marianne Moore was a Modernist poet who had a particularly keen eye for the details of the physical world as a trained biologist (The same skill may have been handy while she worked for Melvil Dewey's). Much of her poetry describes natural objects (particularly animals) from a slant perspective, providing a different way to think about physical objects. Some of her most famous poems include "The Pangolin", "Fish" and "The Steeple-Jack". Her interest in the physical world makes it particularly appropriate that Marianne Moore's presence online is almost entirely limited to digital versions of her published poetry.

The most significant collection of her papers is held by the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia. The Rosenbach has more than just her papers, though: the museum also includes a recreation of Moore's living room. There are overflowing bookshelves, comfy chairs, and all the papers that are present in the home of an active poet. However, her papers have not been digitised, and few pictures of the living room are available online.

Moore's letters are scattered throughout several institutions, predominately along the U.S. Eastern coast. It appears, however, that few or none of these collections have been digitised, though a project at the University of Michigan is aiming to change that.

If you would like to read some of Moore's published poetry, much of it is easily accessible online. There are also recordings of her reading her work available. For a short time, Moore also edited The Dial; digital versions of the magazine are available here.

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Note: This is a guest post by Kelly Wooten, Research Services and Collection Development Librarian of the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture in the Duke University Libraries. Kelly is curator of the Bingham Center Zine Collections.

The Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture has a collection of over 4,000 zines written by women and girls from the early 1990s to the present. So far we have about 2,600 of these issues cataloged in a metadata-only database. At first glance, the zines look like perfect candidates for full-scale digitization. They are frequently used by researchers from around the United States and beyond, have great visual appeal, and often are the only copies to be held in an archives. Digitizing would help preserve zines from heavy use and promote broader access to unique material in a popular collection.

When you take a closer look, digitizing zines becomes a lot more complicated…

Permission- Before posting anything online, the first step is often getting permission from the creator. The authors of zines usually no longer live at the address included in their zine, if they give a name or address at all. Even email isn’t a reliable way to contact people since many zines were created in the pre-internet era, or include old addresses no longer in use.

Copyright- Some zine archives claim that publishing PDF scans of zines online falls under “fair use” for nonprofit educational purposes, and because they usually aren’t hindering anyone’s ability to profit from the publication. To further complicate this question, most zines cut, paste, reprint, borrow, steal, and repurpose images and text from other publications, with or without attribution. According to the Copyright Office: “The distinction between ‘fair use’ and infringement may be unclear and not easily defined. There is no specific number of words, lines, or notes that may safely be taken without permission. Acknowledging the source of the copyrighted material does not substitute for obtaining permission.”

Privacy- Even though zines are “published” rather than private, like a letter or diary, we have no idea whether 10 copies were made for close friends or 1,000 copies were made and sent far and wide through a zine distributor. They are most often written by young women who never imagined that their deepest secrets and angsty rants would be archived in a research library. One could argue that other digital projects that post diaries and letters of historical significance also violate this right to privacy, but the now-adult women who created these zines are likely to be living, active Internet users whose personal and professional lives could be negatively (or positively) affected by someone else finding their zine online. For example, we have been contacted to remove a last name from our database that was associated with a zine title that the author felt damaged her reputation in her current career—at age 16, she had no idea that the flippant title would ever be available online.

Print culture- This argument for maintaining the print and material nature of zines as opposed to creating digital surrogates is perhaps the weakest of these 4 factors, but it is still a point to consider. Zines are created by hand, crafted with paper, scissors, tape, glue, staples. They were meant to be handed from person to person, physically shared. The experience of handling zines in person, turning each page to reveal intimate secrets, funny comics, and poetry, can’t be duplicated on-line. You would get the content, but miss out on the physical experience, an aspect that is even more important as the medium of communication has shifted to the electronic.

I could write a few more reasons why we are not digitizing our zine collection, just as I could write as many more about why we perhaps should digitize them. Instead I’d rather hear what others have to say on the subject.

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Read more about Zines in our post of 29th March 2011.

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The Museum of Jurassic Technology, Culver City, California

Image of the Idol of 'Fombum' courtesy The Museum of Jurassic Technology.

The dissonance created by the juxtaposition of "Jurassic" and "Technology" seems to be representative of the experience of visiting this museum. Firsthand accounts include a questioning of sanity and the assertion that "[t]he museum was larger inside than out".

As noted in the Introduction to the Museum's website, "[i]n its original sense, the term "museum" meant a spot dedicated to the muses - 'a place where man's mind could attain a mood of aloofness above everyday affairs.'" The Museum claims to trace its roots to the nineteenth century and to stand today "in a unique position among the institutions in the country," a statement which is certainly true - one would have difficulty finding any other exhibit devoted to, for instance, the Deprong Mori, a bat native to "the Tripiscum Plateau of the Circum-Caribbean region of Northern South America" which is reputed to have the ability to fly through walls, or a collection of the works of violinist and microminiaturist Hagop Sandaldjian, including a Little Red Riding Hood tableau carved into the eye of a needle and the figure of a woman carved on a strand of the artist's white hair, or a series of letters to the Mount Wilson observatory from individuals claiming to be in posession of "the key to all existance" [sic].*

According to Roadside America, the Museum of Jurassic Technology was founded in 1989 by artists David and Diana Wilson as an "educational institution dedicated to the advancement of knowledge and public appreciation of the Lower Jurassic." This 1996 story from National Public Radio on the Museum comments on the authoritative tone of the displays: "that voice of unassailable institutional authority -- you know: the voice from every museum acoustic guide and nature special". In an interview with David Wilson called "The Museum museum," Frieze magazine notes that while touring the MJT "one may begin to doubt the veracity of this particular museum, and this doubt may spill over to museums in general." It is still unclear to us, however, whether this is a museum of fictions, or a collection of authentic artifacts presented in an unfamiliar way. What is clear is that the Museum of Jurassic Technology provides not just an assembly of arcane "facts" but a multisensory user experience - that its physical location may be just as important as any information contained therein.

Click here for a list of the Museum's Collections and Exhibitions, and here for visitor information including location and visiting hours. We reblogged another review of the Museum of Jurassic Technology last week.

*I am really not sure how many, if any, of these are hoaxes.

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#Macclesfield Silk Museum

Image courtesy of Red Oaks Farm.

The Macclesfield Silk Museum is dedicated to the silk industry in Macclesfield, Cheshire, which was at one time the world's biggest producer of finished silk.

While the far East is traditionally thought of as the home of the silk industry, silk weaving made its way to England via France and China in the late 17th century. It maintained a strong presence in the textile industry for centuries and continues to contribute to the industry today. Macclesfield in particular has long been a hub for the trade (This is why the football team are called The Silkmen.)

The museum celebrates the history of the town's silk industry and silk production in general. It is comprised of the Heritage Centre, the Silk Industry Museum and Paradise Mill Silk Museum, which are integrated to make a cohesive collection.  The Heritage Centre describes how the silk industry arrived in Macclesfield and includes some samples of work, ranging from fabric swatches to full Victorian dresses, produced in the city. The Silk Industry Museum takes a narrower focus, describing what a Macclesfield weaver's life might have been like, while Paradise Mill contains the traditional machinery and includes a demonstration of silk weaving. A full description of the museums is available here. The museum also includes a library and archives service, which are also used as a library for the Silk Association and Macclesfield School of Art.

While the Silk Museum has a website which provides some information about upcoming exhibitions, it appears there is no online photo gallery or interactive tour.

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“Confusion can be a very creative state of mind,” said David Wilson (museum founder) in an interview with author Lawrence Weschler, originally aired on NPR, October 27, 2001. ************************************************** ***************************** As my husband and I stand just feet from the museum’s entrance, a couple exit the building. The man, looking perplexed, rubs and bats his eyes. The woman with him has a thought bubble over her confused face that says, “What did  we just experience?!!” But they themselves say nothing at all. My husband and I don’t know what to expect. We enter.  It’s dark inside. There are disembodied sounds - howling coyotes and Indian chants - floating around the serious looking, yet curious, exhibits; many of these odd exhibits are accompanied by recordings of verbose, Latin-filled double speak, sounding very authoritative and knowing. After seconds of listening to this, my brain starts to feel like it’s spinning in my skull on puree.  After nearly an hour of repeating “What?” about a thousand times, we stumble upon the tea room with a high Moorish ceiling and a pixy in a Russian dress who asks if we want tea and cookies. Of course, my husband and I don’t resist. We sit down at a candle lit table and think. A threesome (a guy and two girls) entwined in a velvety corner alcove, sip tea while discussing Nietzsche and existentialism. Meanwhile, I’m just thinking, “Hey, these almond cookies are really good.” Horned humans, bats who can fly through solid matter, theories on forgetting, yellowed Victorian-era telegrams that come across as scammy as Nigerian Spam… What? Do you question? Do you simply trust? Do you have a good ironic laugh? Yep, and you may just see things a little differently after. Upon returning to the glare and noise of mid-day Venice Boulevard, everything looks a little askew, like entering an alternate universe. I probably look as perplexed as those other people I saw leaving earlier, but actually I’m just thinking (and not about cookies, this time): “Question everything.”  David Wilson is right: “Confusion can be a very creative state of mind.”

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Computerspielemuseum, Berlin

Image courtesy The Next Web.

The Computerspielemuseum (computer game museum) in Berlin has in its collections more than 22,000 computer games and applications, more than 300 computer game consoles, and more than 10,000 journal issues (on the topic of computer games, one would assume). This same collection has been deteriorating ever since it began in 1997. Most historic computer games are stored on magnetic drives, and as The Next Web notes,

Magnetic drives fail quickly, and the data carriers that hold the information we’d like to preserve begin to demagnetize about ten years into their existence. Once they’re demagnetized, the data is gone and lost... In the digital world, only a few bits lost through demagnetization could render the source wholly uninterpretable.

It is possible to preserve games that are stored on magnetic drives, by using an emulator: "hardware or software or both that duplicates (or emulates) the functions of a first computer system (the guest) in a different second computer system (the host)." Unfortunately for the Computerspielemuseum, emulating a computer game involves copying code, and doing so is prohibited by US and European copyright law. There is no exemption for preservation.

Two associations that aim to change that are KEEP (Keeping Emulation Environments Portable), which aims to "to facilitate universal access to our cultural heritage by developing flexible tools for accessing and storing a wide range of digital objects" and "will also consider legal issues" relating to this, and EFGAMP, the European Federation of Games Archives, Museums, and Preservation Projects, founded on 18th April of this year. EFGAMP is a federation of 13 organisations across Europe. Computerspielemuseum is a partner in both organisations.

The museum's permanent exhibition consists of a life-size Lara Croft to greet you on the main staircase, "top-performing" arcade games like Pong Machine, Nimrod and PainStation, a "wall of hardware" with over 50 consoles, the first 3D simulator, and more. Special exhibitions include an artistic approach to Streetfighter II, playable original consoles, and an homage to the "Computing Revolution" of the 1970s and 80s.

The Computerspielemuseum can be found at Karl-Marx-Allee 93a, 10243 Berlin, a five-minute tube ride from Alexanderplatz. They may also be contacted on [phone] or emailed here.

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Tattooed Human Skin at the Wellcome Collection

Image courtesy Wellcome Library/Wellcome Images.

At the first-ever Museums Showoff on 25th April 2012, Gemma Angel made a brief (9-minute maximum!) presentation on the subject of her doctoral research - a collection of tattooed human skin found at the Wellcome Collection in London. This particular collection consists of about 300 pieces of human skin, probably French in origin, created between 1850-1920 (as little is known about the collection, we must assume all dates are approximate). This collection is Angel's research subject as a PhD student at University College London.

The exact origin of the specimens in the collection remains something of a mystery; all 300 pieces were obtained from a "Dr. La Valette" in Paris in 1929. The purchasing agent wrote of the transaction:

These skins date from the first quarter of last century down to the present time; many of them are very curious and extremely interesting, consisting of skins of sailors, soldiers, murderers and criminals of all nationalities … Lavalette told me that the skins are unique, that no more could now be got under any circumstances and that each skin had taken him a long time and cost him a certain amount to cure and prepare for his permanent collection.

Quoted in "Current Research", Life & 6 Months.

Little is known about La Valette, but why would anyone feel the need to assemble such a seemingly macabre collection? The reason was likely scientific: as Angel pointed out at Museums Showoff (and in this 2010 blog post), tattoos were of interest to some nineteenth-century criminologists as examples of "signs of atavism, criminal proclivity, or dangerous 'degeneration'" within European society. The collection of actual skin, however, as opposed to sketches or photographs, certainly gives one pause.

Two pieces are on permanent display as part of Wellcome's Medicine Man exhibit, and seven more were available for public viewing in Wellcome's 2010 exhibition, Skin. A number of photos of the pieces can be found on Gemma's blog and elsewhere - so why claim that these aren't online? First, because the digital images represent only a fraction of the collection, and second, as with most museum artifacts, surely nothing can replace the handling of the actual thing. Especially when the artifact is made of a substance, which, according to some, is unmistakable.

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Museums Showoff, 25th April 2012

On 25th April 2012, That's Not Online! embarked on its first-ever act of reportage by attending the (also!) first-ever Museums Showoff at the Camden Head Pub in London. Modelled on the successful Science Showoff, Museums Showoff invited ten volunteers to speak for nine minutes each about anything at all to do with museums. The result? A lineup of entertaining, engaging, informative and downright entertaining folks. To wit:

Subhadra Das of University College London spoke about UCL's Pathology Collection, a collection so well-hidden that it doesn't appear have a website (UCL Museums are here) and that Russell Brand, though he was there once, was never able to find it again. By Das's description, the collection consists of "things [such as tongues, eyeballs, fetuses and penises] in jars." Further online research has revealed that the collection also contains some artificial items or, at least, one lead-painted toy car.

Terence Eden presented on QRpedia, a project that makes use of one of our favourite things: QR codes. QRpedia can create a QR code that is more than just a code: it will lead you (and your mobile device) to a Wikipedia article on any topic; but first, it will determine the language settings of your device's operating system and retrieve the Wikipedia article in that language (if available) and in its mobile version (if available). If your language isn't available, QRpedia will offer you a translation. How much more functionality can be packed into one, small code? QRpedia was developed for museums, but has also been implemented in a church, a zoo, and a whole entire town. QRpedia was conceived by Roger Bamkin, head of Wikimedia UK and coded by Eden himself.

Brian Macken gave an amusing and informative talk about the Dublin Natural History Museum, locally known as the Dead Zoo. For reasons relating mostly to the social and political history of Ireland, the Dead Zoo remains largely unchanged since its founding in 1856 and is a classic example of a Victorian "cabinet-style" museum. It contains mostly zoological specimens including birds killed by Irish lighthouses, a menacing beaver, and a giraffe that tweets.

Rosie Clarke of Museums at Night updated us on the progress of a project that asks museums across the UK to put on special programs after hours, raising the profile of British Museums. Museums at Night is currently running a competition; the prize, a visit to the exclusive Faber archive, of the renowned publishing house Faber and Faber.

Ayla Lepine of the Courtauld Institute of Art filled us in on Create! Architectural Design, part of the Create! series of young people's events at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Ayla and two colleagues sat down with a group of 16-19 year olds and talked about how architects communicate their ideas, and produced some drawings of their own, because "good education takes guts."

Gemma Angel and Catherine Walker both work at the Wellcome Collection, doing very different things. Gemma, a doctoral student at the UCL History of Art department, is researching a collection of preserved, tattooed human skin at Wellcome -- a collection that surely deserves a post of its own. Gemma showed us a picture of her favourite specimen, two large and remarkably detailed tattoos from the front of a man's torso, and then displayed an archival photograph of said man (his head, unfortunately, cropped from the photo). She is now on a mission to find out more about this tattooed man, and give him an identity beyond two sizeable scraps of inked-up skin.

Catherine displayed a number of object from the Wellcome Collection's handling collection, like a strand of DNA (okay, a model of one), a shrunken head (complete with instructions on making your own!), and a model of a human brain. (Any links for Catherine are welcome! Please leave in the comments.)

Gordon Cummings of the North West Essex Collection gave a brief and informative history about how a whole lot of really influential artists ended up living and working in Essex together in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Their gallery has been successfully resurrected and now holds pieces by Edward Bawden, Eric Ravilious, John Bellany and Keith Vaughan, and 900 members of the Fry Art Gallery Society. Few reproductions of these works are available to view online, so you'd better click here if you want to find out when you can see them next.

Steve Lloyd of ico design described the way that he and his design firm help places like the Science Museum and the Houses of Parliament "bring digital content into physical spaces", a mission that seems to be the complete opposite of what we do here, but interesting and worthy nonetheless!

And finally, there was a nine-minute performance of music from Dinosaur Planet, a rock opera, by MJ Hibbett (and Steve)! It was so entertaining, Dinosaur Planet has the official That's Not Online! seal of approval (and this librarian's heart was warmed by their ode to the literature search).

If you wish you were there, experience Museums Showoff vicariously through Terence Eden's Youtube channel.

It would be remiss of us not to mention Steve Cross as the evening's entertaining host. An interesting bit on a video game museum in Berlin will likely result in another blog post, sooner or later.

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Bethlem Royal Hospital

Image courtesy Royal College of Physicians.

Bethlem Royal Hospital (originally St. Mary's of Bethlehem) in London is one of the oldest hospitals in the world dedicated to the treatment of mental illness. Originally founded in 1247, it gained such a strong reputation that its nickname of Bedlam soon entered vernacular English as a synonym for madness and lunacy.

The hospital has extensive archives, and only a small number of items have been digitised.  The hospital is a deposit point for the National Health Service and  holds the archives not just for Bedlam, but for several other hospitals in South London as well. Contents range from a record of religious services held at hospitals to the more expected patient casebooks. A brief list of the different categories of information held in the archives is available as part of the online catalogue. It includes manuscripts as well as photographs and some realia. Items such as casebooks suggest that there are some practical reasons for the collections being left offline -- some items are still closed access due to confidentiality laws. However, the majority of the archives are accessible in person.

There are also two other collections associated with Bethlem Royal Hospital: a museum and a gallery. The museum includes objects from the history of the hospital and the gallery showcases art by artists "who have experienced mental distress from across South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust."

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Smell, part five: Musée international de la parfumerie, Grasse, France

Image courtesy Vanity Fair.

The Musée international de la parfumerie, in Grasse, birthplace of the luxury perfume trade, boasts 50,000 items related to the history of perfume. Since its 2009 renovation the museum offers olfactory tours, allowing participants to sample various scents in the perfumery's collection. Also available are interactive exhibits for children, a contemporary art collection, and a garden of sweet-smelling plants such as centifolia rose, jasmine, and orange blossom.

The collections of the Musée may be searched here, along with those of the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire de Provence and the Villa-Musée Jean-Honoré Fragonard (search facility in French only).

The Musee received much attention when it reopened in 2009, after a four-year renovation. You can watch a report from France 24 on the Museum's 2009 reopening, listen to this NPR story, or read an article from Vanity Fair.

Click here to download a guide and schedule of exhibitions at the Musée, and for contact information.

Click here to see previous posts in That's Not Online's series on smell.

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Controversial Children's and YA Literature, part one

Image courtesy Retrobookshop.com.

The Internet, and by extension digital media, has been hailed as a great equalizer. It has been feared and revered for its capacity to broaden our horizons by transmitting sensitive, scandalous, revolutionary, or revelatory information to those who would not otherwise have seen it, those whose information diet would previously have been limited by governments, by schools, by prejudice, or just by sheer geography.

Books, journals and newspapers can be banned or their import made difficult. Online information is not as vulnerable to censorship; in some ways ungovernable, digital information has a way of seeping through. So we're told, anyway. As it turns out, many banned children's and young adult books -- often one's first experience of censorsip -- are not available in ebook format. It's worth noting that nearly all of these can be ordered online in book format, and that goes a long way toward getting around local, though not national, censorship. However, the dearth of controversial children's ebooks, many of them considered classics, does raise questions about who makes those decisions, and why.

Following is a list of children's and young adult books that have at some point been challenged, that this blogger has not been able to find in ebook format, from any vendor, on any platform.

Forever... by Judy Blume

Stirred up controversy with its frank treatment of teenage sex, sexuality and birth control. It would seem that most of Blume's oeuvre is available in ebook format, including the similarly controversial Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret, Deenie and Tiger Eyes. Forever... is a glaring omission. However, in response to a tweet from That's Not Online!, Blume tweeted that the ebook version is coming soon. She did not give a reason for the delay.

UPDATE: Judy Blume tweeted that Forever... has a different publisher than her other books, meaning its e-book format has to be negotiated separately.

The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier

By this blogger's count, five other books by the prolific Robert Cormier are available in ebook format, from various platforms: Heroes, Fade, We All Fall Down, Frenchtown Summer and The Rag and Bone Shop. The Chocolate War was listed as one of ALA's most-challenged books in 2001-2005, 2007 and 2009 and the third most challenged book from 2000-2009; typically, it has been challenged for offensive language, violence, and depictions of sexuality.

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

According to The Houston Press, Lee sent a letter to O, the Oprah Magazine in 2006 that said,

Can you imagine curling up in bed to read a computer? Weeping for Anna Karenina and being terrified by Hannibal Lecter, entering the heart of darkness with Mistah Kurtz, having Holden Caulfield ring you up -- some things should happen on soft pages, not cold metal.

It is more than likely, then, that Mockingbird's absence from ebook stores has more to do with its authors distaste for the format than any kind of censorship. Lee, 85 years old, is still living. Her Pulitzer-prize-winning book has been challenged for a variety of reasons since its publication.

Show Me! by Will McBride

This post at Swiss Army Librarian describes a reference interview in which a patron was looking for further information on a book called Show Me!, which she had spotted at a neighbour's house and worried would classify as child pornography. This book, which has been challenged in several countries (see Wikipedia for a summary), was written as a sex education book for children and is notable for its explicit photography. According to the New York Times, publication of the book ceased in 1982. Unavailable as an ebook, Show Me! is barely available in print. AbeBooks lists used copies of various imprints and conditions ranging in price from £97.52 to £809.41.

Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman

Published in 1990, Heather Has Two Mommies quickly gained notoriety for its nonjudgmental depiction of a girl growing up with two mothers, a lesbian couple. According to the American Library Association it was the ninth most challenged book in the United States from 1990-1999.

EDIT: These two records from OCLC show that Heather Has Two Mommies has been digitized and the copies may be held at some libraries. However, it is not clear whether the book is available for purchase and download via the internet.

And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell

This tale of two male penguins bringing up a baby penguin, based on a true story, is among the most-challenged books in the USA, according to the American Library Association. It has consistently made the list almost since publication.

(And Tango Makes Three is an ebook! My mistake!)

The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

Like To Kill A Mockingbird, this book's failure to be adapted into ebook format may have more to do with its author's attitudes. As The News Herald points out, Salinger always resisted adaptations of this classic book, and since his death in 2010 his lawyers have taken the same tack, not so much as hinting that an ebook version is on its way.

A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein

From Banned Books 2011:

This collection of poetry was challenged mainly due to two of its poems. "How Not To Have to Dry the Dishes" was said to encourage messiness and disobedience while "Little Abigail and the Beautiful Pony" was objected to because it describes the death of a girl after her parents refuse to buy her a pony. The ever-popular reasons for challenges - supernatural, demons, devils and ghosts – were also voiced.

It would appear that none of Silverstein's corpus is available in ebook format, suggesting that reasons other than censorship might be at play.

Daddy's Roommate by Michael Willhoite

Depicts a small boy whose parents are divorced, and who lives with both of them. His father is gay and has a "roommate" named Frank.  Controversy, Censorship and Children's Literature has a summary of political actions against the book. Searching the book on Amazon shows its rarity; one "like-new" hardcover edition is listed at US$98.30.

*

If I am mistaken and any of these are available in ebook format, please reply with this information in the comments.

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Gloucester Cathedral library

Image courtesy Charles Dyer.

The library at Gloucester Cathedral houses several thousand items relating to the history of the cathedral. As the building dates back over a thousand years, it is not surprising that the collection includes some true treasures. It is of great interest to those who enjoy English history, historical bibliography and music.

Of particular interest to historians are books bearing the signature of William Laud, later an important figure in the English Civil War, who served as Dean of Gloucester from 1616-1621. One example is a register from the King's School, signifying the connection between the school and the Cathedral. The Cathedral library did in fact serve as the school library for many years, and some of the oldest items in the collection are related to the school. The library also stores the original charter that granted the church in Gloucester, formerly St. Peter's Abbey, cathedral status. It is a beautiful illuminated manuscript, complete with a Tudor rose.

The library does have some other early manuscripts and printed books. Among the collection are books with luxurious leather bindings and embroidered bindings.

Because Gloucester Cathedral is one of three cathedrals that participate in the rotating Three Choirs Festival, the library is also building a collection of sheet music. Much of it is choral, but there is also a sizable collection of organ music.

Many other cathedral libraries do have some of their collections online. A list of Church of England cathedral library websites is available here.

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How to find Scalamandre fabric archives?

Hello, sorry to make you wait so long! For those who don't know (and I didn't), Scalamandré is a venerable (est. 1929) house of fabrics, upholsteries, wall coverings and the like in New York City.

As far as I can tell, they do not have an online archive. The best I can do is to suggest that you visit their company website. It appears that, to view most of their products and collections, you must become a member, so it could be that all kinds of archival goodness is waiting behind that wall. This blogger has posted a few pics of items from the archives that he has seen. Happy searching!

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Special Collections at the University of Pretoria

Image from the Netherlands Cultural History Library, University of Pretoria

The University of Pretoria Library Special Collections consist of seven collections, including a digital research repository which can be searched here. Non-digital collections include: the Africana collection, consisting of "books in all disciplines limited to Africa south of the Sahara" as well as the collections of "eminent persons" and a pamphlet collection; the South African Music Collection, consisting of sheet music, photographs, and ephemera relating to South African musicians; the Jurriaanse Collection, which "covers the classics in literature and medicine"; the UP collection or works written by University of Pretoria scholars and/or relating to or funded by the University; the Reserved Collection of non-Africana, antiquarian collections; and perhaps most significantly, the Netherlands Cultural History Library, "the most extensive Dutch collection in the Southern Hemisphere".

With the exception of the digital research repository and the Netherlands Cultural History Library, little information on these special collections is given online. Of the latter collection, we know that it consists of about 40,000 books and 40,000 journals, and that some are accessible only via card catalogue. Items that have been catalogued electronically can be found via the online catalogue.

Contact information for the Special Collections library can be found on their home page. Policies state that the special collections are freely available to University of Pretoria researchers, and that private researchers may access the collection at the rate of 50 rand per day.

The Webometrics Ranking of World Universities (compiled by the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas in Madrid), whose mission is to promote web publication, support open access initiatives, and increase electronic access to academic materials, rates the University of Pretoria 4th in Africa and 646th in the world in terms of academic web presence. Eight of the top ten African universities in this ranking are South African, a statistic that mirrors listings of online African museums by Africom, according to which South African museums are far more likely to have an online presence. We reported on Africom here.

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Materials Library

Image by Jennifer Morrow

The Institute of Making , a project based at King's College London, describes itself as

a multidisciplinary research club for those interested in the made world: from makers of molecules to makers of buildings, synthetic skin to spacecraft, soup to clothes, furniture to cities.

All sorts of materials, ranging from the lightest solid in the world (aerogel) to a material that can smash concrete without getting damaged (a silicon nitride ball bearing), are kept at the Institute. The aim is to explore the scientific properties of physical objects, but also to look at how the materials themselves inspire creativity and innovation. The Institute recognises the significant amount of information that can only be gathered physically.

The Institute is a result of the growth of the Materials Library, 

an interdisciplinary collaborative team that make objects, events and exhibitions that foreground materiality.

While most of the research happens in the lab, the Institute (and Library) have gained international attention. It regularly receives samples from around the world, and have participated in various art installations. It also has a presence on Facebook and Twitter.

While the Institute of Making and That's Not Online! have different reasons for being interested in exploring the physical world, it is great to know that there is someone else out there who recognises the importance of physical information.

There are also several other materials libraries, and many of them do have websites in spite of the nature of their collections.

[thatsnotonline]

Smell, part four: Perfume Strips and Scratch 'n' Sniff

Image via Bubbledog's Scratch 'n' Sniff Stickers.

One of our first really popular posts on That's Not Online! was this one about old magazine and journal advertisements falling victim to digitisation. For the fourth installment of our series on smell (brought to you by watchful reader Vassiliki Veros), I would like to call your attention to two more casualties of the decline of print journalism: perfume samples and scratch and sniff technology.

According to Answers.com, the technology behind Scratch 'n' Sniff was invented in 1965 by an organic chemist working for 3M who was trying to make carbonless paper. The chemist, Gale Matson, succeeded in his goal, but the marketing department at 3M was tasked with coming up for some alternate uses for the patented micro-encapsulation technology, and Scratch 'n' Sniff was born. See HowStuffWorks for a more detailed explanation of the science behind this. Pull-apart perfume strips, another 3M brainchild, followed in either 1981 (as per Answers.com) or 1984 (says The New York Review of Magazines).

Scratch and sniff in popular culture, from Wikipedia's entry on scratch and sniff, lists some unusual uses of scratch and sniff technology, such as scratch 'n' sniff inserts in video games or music albums, and the 1981 John Waters film Polyester, which was released with Odorama -- a card containing 10 scent samples to be scratched at intervals throughout the movie. The most popular use of scratch 'n' sniff technology was for scented stickers, though it would seem these are not produced as often as they once were and have in fact become a collector's item. Mad Magazine included scratch 'n' sniffs for many years (if they still do, please let us know).

Perfume samples are still being included in magazines, of course, and this recent Forbes article reports that the technology is now also used for household cleaning products, hygiene and health products, and medicines and other remedies. The catch? They're not available on the iPad edition.