What We’re Reading this week is organized into three categories. First up is digitization, with articles on the digitization of scholarly journals, public domain books, and Spanish-language songs, as well as a list of digital archives online. This is followed by a small collection of online video resources. In the news category learn about recently presented grants and awards, a newly released newsletter, discoveries from the 1800s, and just for fun a roundup of some April Fools’ Day shenanigans. Finally, we wrap up with a couple of links to more remembrances of John Hope Franklin.

Digitization

• The Fate of the Humanities Article
  Stan Katz’s thoughtful post on the Chronicle’s Brainstorm blog considers the shift to digitization of scholarly journals, and is drawing a bit of a discussion from other scholars. Katz argues that, for the most part, the transition to digital is a net plus.
• The Bodleian’s treasures, available to all
  The Google Book Search blog announces that, in partnership with the Oxford University Library, they have digitized “many hundreds of thousands of public domain books from the Bodleian and other Oxford libraries, representing the bulk of their available public domain content.” Hat tip.
• Archive Watch: Rare Spanish Songs Go Online
  The Chronicle’s Wired Campus blog calls attention to a new online archive of Spanish-language songs.
• Digital Librarian
  “A librarian’s choice of the best of the Web.” Margaret Vail Anderson has thematically organized historic websites with digital archives (primary sources, photographs, etc), collaborative projects, and museum directories, to name but a few.

Online Video Resources

• YouTube Creates New Section to Highlight College Content
  Also from the Wired Campus blog, news of YouTube’s new grouping of educational content, at YouTube EDU.
• Bookmark These! Resources for Movie Friday
  The National History Education Clearinghouse offers up some links and info on online film resources, pointing to American History in Video, American Experience Films, and FedFlix.

News

• UGA Press Receives Grant from the Mellon Foundation
  The University of Georgia Press announces that “[t]hree university presses have received a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support Early American Places, a new scholarly book series devoted to early North American history.” These presses will receive $648,000 over five years for publishing this series.
• Faculty member earns best monograph award
  Rachel Fuchs, President of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association, recently won the Frances Richardson Keller-Sierra Prize, given by the Western Association of Women Historians.
• Disability History Association Newsletter
  The Spring 2009 edition of the Disability History Association’s newsletter is now available online. Hat tip.
• Early photo of New York fetches $62,500
  A 1848 daguerreotype of a home in New York, one of the earliest photos ever taken, sold at auction recently for $62,500.
• Alabama mass grave may contain bodies from 1870s epidemic
  CNN reports on a mass grave found in Montgomery, Alabama, that may hold victims of an 1870 yellow fever epidemic.
• The April 1 ‘News’ on Campus
  Inside Higher Ed rounds up some April Fools’ Day jokes in college newspapers. For instance, The Cornell Daily Sun’s “plan to replace full newspaper articles with Twitter.”

John Hope Franklin
Last week we noted the death of renowned historian John Hope Franklin, and linked to a number of his works, interviews, and articles on his life. Below read more about Franklin’s extraordinary life and career.

• John Hope Franklin, RIP
  Stan Katz, at the Chronicle’s Brainstorm blog, remembers John Hope Franklin.
• John Hope Franklin with his son, John W. Franklin
  Listen to John Hope Franklin sharing with his son a brief story about racial prejudice in the 1920s. This revealing snippet of audio is made possible through an initiative of StoryCorps, an organization that collects recordings of stories submitted by “everyday people” from around the country.

Contributors: Elisabeth Grant, Vernon Horn, Jessica Pritchard, and Robert B. Townsend

This post first appeared on AHA Today.