COLLEEN ROBLEDO Web Developer | Librarian | Researcher | Genealogist

Newsweek published an interesting article today about the growing popularity of cloud computing. Cloud computing allows organizations to house their applications with data centers, instead of relying on traditional in-house solutions. This cuts back on I.T. costs without sacrificing performance, and (as Newsweek's Brian Braiker points out) without sacrificing security, if served by one of the providers with good security track records, such as Google or Amazon.

The U.S. National Archives & Records Administration (NARA) announced yesterday a 5-year partnership with The Generations Network (TGN), parent company of Ancestry.com, to digitize selected NARA records.

TGN will provide the staff, hardware, and software, and will make the digitized records available online to Ancestry subscribers. Access to those records will be available for free, from within any NARA facility, and NARA will receive digitized copies of all records.

The Associated Press reports today that The New York Times will begin offering free access to portions of its online archives beginning this Wednesday, September 19th.

Effective midnight on Tuesday, NYT will do away with if fee-based subscription program and allow free access to NYT articles from the last 20 years (1987 - present), as well as to articles published between 1851 and 1923, which fall within the public domain.