News from the digital world

There are an amazing number of new developments in the digital world of resources and information. Here are a few recent, noteworthy news stories as highlighted by the Digital Public Library of America:

From The Digital Shift of the LibraryJournal an article by Richard Byrne, "Getting Kids Engaged with Primary Sources | Cool Tools" stating:

The U.S. National Archives Experience Digital Vaults ... offers students a good introduction to discovering and working with primary source materials. Rather than turning kids loose on millions of records in the National Archives, Digital Vaults focuses on a curated collection of 1,200 items. Within the site, there are activities designed to help students discover important connections between primary sources. One section, Pathways Challenges, provides quizzes that ask kids to analyze a specific resource and then find the related document within the collection. Teachers and students can create their own quizzes or take advantage of the premade challenges. Students who create free Digital Vaults accounts can collect primary source documents and images and use them to create digital posters and videos within the available templates.

 From American Libraries, the magazine of the American Library Association an article entitled, "Simon & Schuster Launches Library Ebook Pilot"

The last holdout from the major trade publishers, Simon & Schuster, this morning announced the start of an ebook pilot (PDF file) with New York City public libraries. The program, which launches April 30, will make all “frontlist and backlist titles that are available as ebooks” available to libraries “simultaneous with their publication.”

From the United States House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, an announcement of a comprehensive overhaul of the copyright law. See Chairman Goodlatte Announces Comprehensive Review of Copyright Law.

Dated 24 April 2013, Today House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) announced that the Judiciary Committee will conduct a comprehensive review of U.S. copyright law over the coming months. This announcement was made before the World Intellectual Property Day celebration at the Library of Congress.