To start off this week, we revisit two topics we’ve previously addressed on the blog: Google Books and the Wilderness Battlefield’s fight with Wal-mart. Then, read the latest National Humanities Alliance newsletter, join a discussion at H-Disability, and hear a conversation between James McPherson and Craig Symonds. We bring you three posts focused on photos or video: a new site on Florence Kahn, a collection of dissection photographs, and images of from Japan in the 1860s to the 1930s. Finally, we conclude with some May-themed posts: “MayDay,” a garden-themed roundup, and a history of Mother’s Day.

• Snags Hit Google Settlement
  There are signs that the Google Book Settlement may be unraveling. Jennifer Howard at the Chronicle’s Wired Campus blog reports a delay at least to October, and some interest from the Justice Department’s antitrust division. Meanwhile, the library community, which will be key intermediaries in the proposed arrangements, raise significant concerns about privacy, access, and costs under the terms of the settlement in a new filing with the court. This bears close interest from the many independent historians and faculty at small colleges who are beginning to rely on the resources available through Google Books. Also see this article by Dan Clancy, engineering director for Google Book Search, where he surveys the issues from the Google perspective in the latest Library Journal.
• Wal-Mart vs. the Wilderness
  James McPherson, historian and former AHA president, discusses the Wal-Mart vs. civil war battlefield fight. Actor Robert Duvall is now lending his support to the fight as well.
• National Humanities Alliance – April 30, 2009 Newsletter
  In the latest NHA-Announce newsletter, you will find out about the NHA testifying for increased NEH funding, NARA seeking input on alternative models for presidential libraries, requests for international and foreign language programs, the Dear Colleague Letter for NEH submitted in the House, the announcement of Leon Kass delivering the annual NEH Jefferson Lecture, and the launch of the World Library.
• H-Disability and HIPAA
  There is an interesting discussion taking place on H-Disability about how the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) Privacy Rule regarding the privacy of individually identifiable health information might affect access to archival information of interest to historians of disability, health, and medicine, as well as how the rules might impact archives and historic web sites. Readers can access the discussion logs at http://www.h-net.org/~disabil/
• McPherson and Symonds: A Conversation
  The Oxford University Press blog has posted a conversation between James McPherson and Craig Symonds.

Photos and Video

• Florence Kahn: Congressional Widow to Trailblazing Lawmaker
  The Office of the Clerk has created a new site that uses video to explore the life and work of Florence Kahn.
• Portraits Capture Life In Dissecting Class
  ”Dissection: Photographs of a Rite of Passage in American Medicine 1880-1930 contains hundreds of pictures of medical students posing with the cadavers they were learning to dissect.” According to John Warner, a professor of medical history at Yale, these slightly morbid photographs were part of a sort of underground genre.
• Old Photos of Japan
  A blog that showcases photos of Japan from the 1860s through the 1930s. Sort of an Eastern version of Shorpy.

May Posts

• MayDay – Do One Thing for Emergency Preparedness
  Is your archives, library, museum, or institution prepared for an emergency? See the Heritage Preservation’s tips for preparedness, one of the resources they offered on May 1st for MayDay (an initiative to protect cultural heritage from disasters.) Hat tip.
• History Carnival #76: April Showers Bring May Flowers?
  The Disability Studies, Temple U. blog presents the 76th History Carnival with a garden theme. Linking to things like, the Free Gardeners of Scotland at the Bartholomew Archive.
• A short history of Mother’s Day
  ”Arise, then, women of this day/Arise all women who have hearts,/Whether your baptism be by water or by tears.” Julia Ward Howe uttered these words in 1870 as a rallying cry for mothers who lost their sons during the Civil War. “As a result of her efforts, June 2nd was designated as Mother’s Day and by 1873, women in 18 American cities celebrated this new Mother’s holiday.”

Contributors: Debbie Ann Doyle, Elisabeth Grant, Arnita A. Jones, Jessica Pritchard, and Robert B. Townsend

This post first appeared on AHA Today.