More than two centuries ago, November 11th was a significant date for another reason; the signing of the Treaty of Canandaigua between the Six Nations of the Iroquois and Timothy Pickering, who signed on behalf of President George Washington and the United States of America. The Treaty was signed on November 11, 1794 in Canandaigua, N.Y., just a short drive down the road from our Kirtas headquarters here in Victor.

The treaty, which is still actively recognized by the United States and the Six Nations, established peace and friendship between the two governments and affirmed land rights for the Iroquois in the state of New York and boundaries established by the Phelps and Gorham Purchase of 1788.

Every year on this date the city of Canandaigua recognizes the importance of the signing of this treaty with a ceremony at the site of the signing. You can learn more by visiting http://www.ganondagan.org/CanandaiguaTreaty.html

You should also check out www.kirtasbooks.com and search for titles with the word “iroquois” or “indian”; there’s a lot of great stuff you can find!

“New technology has allowed the Library to greatly expand access to its collections,” said Paul LeClerc, President of The New York Public Library. “Now, for the first time, library users are able to order copies of specific items from our vast public domain collections that are useful to them. Additionally the program creates a digital legacy for future users of the same item and a revenue stream to support our operations. We are very pleased to participate in a program that is so beneficial to everyone involved.”

Using existing information from NYPL’s catalog records, Kirtas will make the library’s public domain books available for sale through its retail site before they are ever digitized. Customers can search for a desired title on www.kirtasbooks.com and place an order for that book. When the order is placed, only then is it pulled from the shelf, digitized and made available as a high-quality reprint or digital file.

What makes this approach to digitization unique is that NYPL incurs no up-front printing, production or storage costs. It also provides the library with a self-funding, commercial model helping it to sustain its digitization programs in the future. Unlike other free or low-cost digitization programs, the library retains the rights and ownership to their own digitized content.

Whether patrons are looking for a title about a president—such as, Memories of President Lincoln, by Walt Whitman—or by a president—African Game Trails; An account of the African wanderings of an American hunter-naturalist, by Theodore Roosevelt—The New York Public Library is the place to turn. Collections available on Kirtasbooks.com are from NYPL’s General Research Division and include books from the local and U.S. history, genealogy, humanities and social sciences collections. Titles include several 19th century cookbooks, a first print edition of Casey at the Bat by Ernest Thayer, The Origin of the Werewolf Superstition (1909) by Caroline Taylor, and first edition version of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick from 1851.

“The New York Public Library is an iconic institution that represents strength, history and knowledge,” said Kirtas Founder and CEO Lotfi Belkhir. “We’re honored to be partnering with them to help make their collections available to the world.”

Kirtas currently has 13 partnerships with universities and public libraries to make special collections available for sale online. Virtually any library with a modern records database and valuable collections can participate in the Digitize on Demand program.

The Espresso is a Point of Sale machine that prints and binds a book, while the consumer waits. Quality has to come into question when someone pays reportedly $8.00 for a book, that is potentially missing pages, contains operator’s hands and the like. (see example below)

An article written by Norman Oder — Library Journal, 9/17/2009 found at http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6697430.html actually calls out the questions of quality.

Quality questions
One issue regarding the PoD deal for libraries and other end-users is the quality of the scans. Some libraries, such as the University of Pennsylvania (UP) system, have teamed up with Kirtas Technologies for PoD access to public domain holdings. Nothing is scanned until an order is placed.

Penn officials in February said Kirtas’s scanning process results in a higher quality scan, suitable for PoD.

http://www.Kirtasbooks.com currently has more than 800,000 books available from content partners like UPENN, New York Public Library, McGill and McMaster Universities to name a few. Kirtas Technologies offers the complete digitization solution.

As pointed out by the by the University of Pennsylvania, quality digitization is the key to a truly successful program. Google’s rush to scan everything they can get their hands on as fast as the can has produced less than desirable results for a lot of their library partners. Their poorly captured images, and OCR has facilitated their recent purchase of ReCaptcha in an effort to try to make corrections to some of their previous mistakes.

Captured from Google Books 9/17/09

Charles Dickens
Great Expectations
A Christmas Carol
A Tale of Two Cities
David Copperfield

Mark Twain
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

Jane Austen
Emma
Pride and Prejudice
Sense and Sensibility

Jack London
Call of the Wild
White Fang

These are just a few of the “classic collections” available on Kirtasbooks. There are so many more great titles from literary greats such as Alexandre Dumas, Cervantes, James Fenimore Cooper, Lewis Carroll, Tolstoy, Emily Dickinson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Oscar Wilde, Edith Wharton and so many more! I hope you’ll check out Kirtasbooks.com today!

“Stewardship of America’s Legacy: Answering the Call to Action,” was the fourth and final session I attended in Buffalo, N.Y., and it explored how committed individuals, ranging from small town librarians to directors of national conservation training programs, can work together to improve collections care and to inspire and inform others, both nationally and in their communities.

So, what did I learn? Passion for your cause and building and sustaining relationships to support that cause are what matter when looking for support for your organization. Was this a surprise? Of course not. Don’t we all learn early in our careers that it’s never what you know but who you know?

There were, however, some surprising statistics Clotilde Perez-Bode Dedecker, president of the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo, cited from a report compiled by Giving USA.

Did you know that in 2008 83 percent of charitable contributions came from individuals and bequests? 83 percent! The remainder came from foundations and corporations.

Also part of the study; what is the number one reason an individual contributes to a cause? Because they were asked or presented with the opportunity for giving!

Presenter after presenter emphasized the significance of relationships, and not just building them but also sustaining them…which speaks to the final point in the Giving USA study: 60 percent of those who STOPPED giving to a charitable organization attributed their behavior to no longer feeling connected to the cause.

The bottom line? Even as the country’s economic woes continue, people who share your passion still want to help out and contribute, but you have to ask! In order to gain that support you need to have a well thought out plan and the ability to carry it out.

You also need to remember those people once they’ve contributed! It’s always easy to reach out, contact people, and network while you’re looking for help, but don’t abandon those people once they’ve stepped up for you! Keep them engaged and grateful that they’re part of your organization and efforts.