On-Line Collections - Universities and Public Institutions
The Library at the University of California, Berkeley contains some of the finest research collections in the United States...
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The Library at the University of California, Berkeley contains some of the finest research collections in the United States. Library holdings include over 8 million print volumes, and a significant number of maps, manuscripts, photographs, video and sound recordings, as well as a growing collection of materials in electronic formats.
Some of the famous collections at the New York Public Library have been placed online, including Small-Town America Stereoscopic views from the Robert Dennis Collection.
The Library of Virginia provides a glimpse of the vast library resources, accumulated at universities, upon which older students will rely as they progress towards and in college.
The Universal Library project, an initiative to place all of the world's books online, is sponsored by Carnegie Mellon. A form for quick searches of digital libraries is exampled at the Oakland University Library site.
The LARGEST, HUGEST Online Computer Library Center, physically in Dublin, Ohio, serves 40,000 libraries in 82 countries with 47 million library catalog entries. Subscribers can use its search services and reference databases. The Gates' recently awarded it $9million.
The Collaborative Digital Reference Service is the new generation of inter-library loan.
For instance, Australian Science and Technology Heritage Centre, part of the University of Melbourne in Australia, fosters the preservation, promotion and development of the heritage of Australian science, technology and medicine. Posting these archives on-line allows wide spread, low cost access that would not otherwise be available.
The Virtual Learning Research Center is the "favorite" of a very good librarian who combines traditional sources and obscure references. For instance, here you will find the History Place, certainly a comprehensive list for historical researchers, but also a link to the Bodlein (Bodlean or just the Bod)in Oxford, England. It contains all the obscure medieval books and documents anyone would want. A good source to peruse in pursuit of highly specialized topics.
The Librarians' Index to the Internet (LII) annotates some 9000 resources, including loists of libraries themselves. It is sponsored by the Library of California but is national in scope. It is a favorite of librarians, bridging traditional catelogs and virtual links.
Annotation
Access to these resources underscore one of the major contributions of telecommunications.
Altogether, these libraries illustrate the no longer futuristic concept of distributed (or infinite) branches. And think of the amount of paper to be saved. Individual students can pursue topics of choice without scrambling for a single, hard copy -- if it were available at all.
