OCLC
OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Incorporated d/b/a OCLC is an American nonprofit cooperative organization "dedicated to the public purposes of furthering access to the world's information and reducing information costs". It was founded in 1967 as the Ohio College Library Center. OCLC and its member libraries cooperatively produce and maintain WorldCat, the largest online public access catalog in the world. OCLC is funded by the fees that libraries have to pay for its services. OCLC maintains the Dewey Decimal Classification system. OCLC began in 1967, as the Ohio College Library Center, through a collaboration of university presidents, vice presidents, library directors who wanted to create a cooperative computerized network for libraries in the state of Ohio; the group first met on July 5, 1967 on the campus of the Ohio State University to sign the articles of incorporation for the nonprofit organization, hired Frederick G. Kilgour, a former Yale University medical school librarian, to design the shared cataloging system.
Kilgour wished to merge the latest information storage and retrieval system of the time, the computer, with the oldest, the library. The plan was to merge the catalogs of Ohio libraries electronically through a computer network and database to streamline operations, control costs, increase efficiency in library management, bringing libraries together to cooperatively keep track of the world's information in order to best serve researchers and scholars; the first library to do online cataloging through OCLC was the Alden Library at Ohio University on August 26, 1971. This was the first online cataloging by any library worldwide. Membership in OCLC is based on use of services and contribution of data. Between 1967 and 1977, OCLC membership was limited to institutions in Ohio, but in 1978, a new governance structure was established that allowed institutions from other states to join. In 2002, the governance structure was again modified to accommodate participation from outside the United States.
As OCLC expanded services in the United States outside Ohio, it relied on establishing strategic partnerships with "networks", organizations that provided training and marketing services. By 2008, there were 15 independent United States regional service providers. OCLC networks played a key role in OCLC governance, with networks electing delegates to serve on the OCLC Members Council. During 2008, OCLC commissioned two studies to look at distribution channels. In early 2009, OCLC negotiated new contracts with the former networks and opened a centralized support center. OCLC provides bibliographic and full-text information to anyone. OCLC and its member libraries cooperatively produce and maintain WorldCat—the OCLC Online Union Catalog, the largest online public access catalog in the world. WorldCat has holding records from private libraries worldwide; the Open WorldCat program, launched in late 2003, exposed a subset of WorldCat records to Web users via popular Internet search and bookselling sites.
In October 2005, the OCLC technical staff began a wiki project, WikiD, allowing readers to add commentary and structured-field information associated with any WorldCat record. WikiD was phased out; the Online Computer Library Center acquired the trademark and copyrights associated with the Dewey Decimal Classification System when it bought Forest Press in 1988. A browser for books with their Dewey Decimal Classifications was available until July 2013; until August 2009, when it was sold to Backstage Library Works, OCLC owned a preservation microfilm and digitization operation called the OCLC Preservation Service Center, with its principal office in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The reference management service QuestionPoint provides libraries with tools to communicate with users; this around-the-clock reference service is provided by a cooperative of participating global libraries. Starting in 1971, OCLC produced catalog cards for members alongside its shared online catalog. OCLC commercially sells software, such as CONTENTdm for managing digital collections.
It offers the bibliographic discovery system WorldCat Discovery, which allows for library patrons to use a single search interface to access an institution's catalog, database subscriptions and more. OCLC has been conducting research for the library community for more than 30 years. In accordance with its mission, OCLC makes its research outcomes known through various publications; these publications, including journal articles, reports and presentations, are available through the organization's website. OCLC Publications – Research articles from various journals including Code4Lib Journal, OCLC Research, Reference & User Services Quarterly, College & Research Libraries News, Art Libraries Journal, National Education Association Newsletter; the most recent publications are displayed first, all archived resources, starting in 1970, are available. Membership Reports – A number of significant reports on topics ranging from virtual reference in libraries to perceptions about library funding. Newsletters – Current and archived newsletters for the library and archive community.
Presentations – Presentations from both guest speakers and OCLC research from conferences and other events. The presentations are organized into five categories: Conference presentations, Dewey presentations, Distinguished Seminar Series, Guest presentations, Research staff
Penny
A penny is a coin or a unit of currency in various countries. Borrowed from the Carolingian denarius, it is the smallest denomination within a currency system. Presently, it is the formal name of the British penny and the informal name of one American cent as well as the informal Irish designation of 1 cent euro coin, it is the informal name of the cent unit of account in Canada, although one cent coins are no longer minted there. The name is used in reference to various historical currencies derived from the Carolingian system, such as the French denier and the German pfennig, it may be informally used to refer to any similar smallest-denomination coin, such as the euro cent or Chinese fen. The Carolingian penny was a.940-fine silver coin weighing 1/240 pound. It was adopted by Offa of Mercia and other English kings and remained the principal currency in Europe over the next few centuries until repeated debasements necessitated the development of more valuable coins; the British penny remained a silver coin until the expense of the Napoleonic Wars prompted the use of base metals in 1797.
Despite the decimalization of currencies in the United States and throughout the British Commonwealth, the name remains in informal use. No penny is formally subdivided, although farthings and half cents have been minted and the mill remains in use as a unit of account in some contexts. Penny is first attested in a 1394 Scots text, a variant of Old English peni, a development of numerous variations including pennig and pending; the etymology of the term "penny" is uncertain, although cognates are common across all Germanic languages and suggest a base *pan-, *pann-, or *pand- with the individualizing suffix -ing. Common suggestions include that it was *panding as a Low Franconian form of Old High German pfant "pawn", it has been proposed that it may represent an early borrowing of Punic pn, as the face of Carthaginian goddess Tanit was represented on nearly all Carthaginian currency. Following decimalization, the British and Irish coins were marked "new penny" until 1982 and 1985, respectively.
The regular plural pennies fell out of use in England from the 16th century, except in reference to coins considered individually. It remains common in Scottish English and is standard for all senses in American English, however, the informal "penny" is only used of the coins in any case, values being expressed in "cents"; the informal name for the American cent seems to have spread from New York State. In British English, prior to decimalization, values from two to eleven pence and of twenty pence are written and spoken as a single word, as twopence or tuppence, threepence or thruppence, &c. Where a single coin represented a number of pence, it was treated as a single noun, as a sixpence or two eightpences. Thus, "a threepence" would be single coin of that value whereas "three pence" would be its value and "three pennies" would be three penny coins. In British English, divisions of a penny were added to such combinations without a conjunction, as sixpence-farthing, such constructions were treated as single nouns.
Adjectival use of such coins used the ending -penny, as sixpenny. The British abbreviation d. derived from the Latin denarius. It followed the amount after a space, it has been replaced since decimalization by p written without a space or period. From this abbreviation, it is common to speak of pennies and values in pence as "p". In North America, it is common to abbreviate cents with the currency symbol ¢. Elsewhere, it is written with a simple c; the medieval silver penny was modeled on similar coins in antiquity, such as the Greek drachma, the Carthaginian shekel, the Roman denarius. Forms of these seem to have reached as far as Sweden; the use of Roman currency in Britain seems to have fallen off after the Roman withdrawal and subsequent Saxon invasions. Charlemagne's father Pepin the Short instituted a major currency reform around AD 755, aiming to reorganise Francia's previous silver standard with a standardized.940-fine denier weighing 1⁄240 pound. Around 790, Charlemagne introduced a new.950 or.960-fine penny with a smaller diameter.
Surviving specimens have an average weight of 1.70 grams, although some estimate the original ideal mass at 1.76 grams. Despite the purity and quality of these pennies, they were rejected by traders throughout the Carolingian period in favor of the gold coins used elsewhere, a situation that led to repeated legislation against such refusal to accept the king's currency; some of the Anglo-Saxons kingdoms copied the solidus, the late Roman gold coin. Around AD 641–670, there seems to have been a movement to use coins with a lower gold content; this decreased their value and may have increased the number that could be minted, but these paler coins do not seem to have solved the problem of the value and scarcity of the currency
French corsairs
Corsairs were privateers, authorized to conduct raids on shipping of a nation at war with France, on behalf of the French crown. Seized vessels and cargo were sold at auction, with the corsair captain entitled to a portion of the proceeds. Although not French Navy personnel, corsairs were considered legitimate combatants in France, provided the commanding officer of the vessel was in possession of a valid letter of marque, the officers and crew conducted themselves according to contemporary admiralty law. By acting on behalf of the French Crown, if captured by the enemy, they could in principle claim treatment as prisoners of war, instead of being considered pirates; because corsairs gained a swashbuckling reputation, the word "corsair" is used generically as a more romantic or flamboyant way of referring to privateers, or to pirates. The Barbary pirates of North Africa as well as the Ottoman Empire were sometimes called "Turkish corsairs"; the word "corsair" comes directly from the French word corsaire, itself borrowed from the Italian corsaro.
This derives from the Latin cursus, meaning "course". The French word corsaire may have originated as a mispronunciation of the Arabic word qarṣan. However, Sayyid Sulaimān Nadvī, an Indian Muslim scholar of Islamic studies, says that "Qarsan... is the arabicised form of'Corsair'." The corsairs were privateers working for the King of France attacking the ships of France's enemies. In France they did not need to fear punishment for piracy—being hanged—as they were granted a licence as combatants, the lettre de marque or lettre de course, a document which legitimised their actions to the French justice system and which they hoped gave them the status of a war prisoner in case they were captured; the corsair was ordered to attack only the ships of enemy countries, theoretically respecting those of neutral nations and his own nation's. If he did not respect this rule, he was treated as a pirate and hanged; the corsairs' activities provided the King with revenue as the licence required them to hand over a part of their booty to the King.
In common with privateers of other nationalities, they were considered pirates by their foreign opponents, might be hanged as pirates if captured by the foreigners they preyed on. The "corsair" activities started in the Middle Ages the main goals being to compensate for the economic problems in war periods. Jean de Châtillon, a bishop, in 1144 gave the town of Saint-Malo the status of rights of asylum which encouraged all manner of thieves and rogues to move there, their motto was "Neither Breton, nor French, but from Saint-Malo am I!". Saint-Malo, progressed and in 1308 the town was made into a free commune to encourage the commercial activities of craftsmen as well as merchants and ship owners; this did not work out and in 1395 the town became a free port. This situation continued until 1688. Between the early 1500s and 1713 when the signing of the treaty of Utrecht put an end to the French corsair raids in the Caribbean, the guerre de course, as the French called it, took a huge toll on the Spanish treasure fleet's efforts to ship the gold and silver from Peru to Santo Domingo and Havana and on to Spain.
During this period, there was an intense drive to improve, not only the speed of the ships involved in this contest, but their maneuverability and ability to sail into the wind. It was a matter of life or death, immense wealth was at stake. Jean d'Ango and son, came to be among the wealthiest and most influential men in France. In addition to those listed below, Giovanni da Verrazzano and Jean Fleury were among the principals in this era; the activities of the corsairs were so profitable that the Minister of the Navy used this in his strategy to make money. Moreover, the King used to take one-quarter or one-third of the booty; the corsairs' activities weakened France's enemies. In a note based on an examination of Lloyd's List from 1793 to 1800, the anonymous author showed that British shipping losses to captures exceeded those resulting from the perils of the sea. Losses to capture: 4314; the relationship between the corsairs and the State changed. The rules became State control more and more present.
At the end of the 18th century, the "course" started to decline until its legal death in 1856. The "course" disappeared in France with the Empire in 1804, but was ended only by the 1814 Treaty of Paris, where every major northern hemisphere nation except Spain and the United States, was present, the 1815 Congress of Vienna. François Aregnaudeau, was a Breton who commanded a number of privateers, most notably Blonde, Duc de Dantzig. In them he captured numerous prizes, he and Duc de Dantzig disappeared without a trace around the end of 1812. Their disappearance gave rise to an unsubstantiated gruesome ghost ship legend. Jean-François de La Roque de Roberval was a Protestant French nobleman and adventurer who, through his lifelong friendship with King Francis, became the first Lieutenant General of New France; as a corsair, he attacked towns and shipping from Cuba to Colombia. When his appointment as the first Lieutenant General of New France
Cape of Good Hope
The Cape of Good Hope is a rocky headland on the Atlantic coast of the Cape Peninsula in South Africa. A common misconception is; this misconception was based on the misbelief that the Cape was the dividing point between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Contemporary geographic knowledge instead states the southernmost point of Africa is Cape Agulhas about 150 kilometres to the east-southeast; the currents of the two oceans meet at the point where the warm-water Agulhas current meets the cold-water Benguela current and turns back on itself. That oceanic meeting point fluctuates between Cape Point; when following the western side of the African coastline from the equator, the Cape of Good Hope marks the point where a ship begins to travel more eastward than southward. Thus, the first modern rounding of the cape in 1488 by Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias was a milestone in the attempts by the Portuguese to establish direct trade relations with the Far East. Dias called the cape Cabo das Tormentas, the original name of the "Cape of Good Hope".
As one of the great capes of the South Atlantic Ocean, the Cape of Good Hope has long been of special significance to sailors, many of whom refer to it as "the Cape". It is a waypoint on the Cape Route and the clipper route followed by clipper ships to the Far East and Australia, still followed by several offshore yacht races; the term Cape of Good Hope is used in three other ways: It is a section of the Table Mountain National Park, within which the cape of the same name, as well as Cape Point, falls. Prior to its incorporation into the national park, this section constituted the Cape Point Nature Reserve, it was the name of the early Cape Colony established by the Dutch on the Cape Peninsula. Just before the Union of South Africa was formed, the term referred to the entire region that in 1910 was to become the Cape of Good Hope Province. Eudoxus of Cyzicus was a Greek navigator for Ptolemy VIII, king of the Hellenistic Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt, who found the wreck of a ship in the Indian Ocean that appeared to have come from Gades, rounding the Cape.
When Eudoxus was returning from his second voyage to India, the wind forced him south of the Gulf of Aden and down the coast of Africa for some distance. Somewhere along the coast of East Africa, he found the remains of the ship. Due to its appearance and the story told by the natives, Eudoxus concluded that the ship was from Gades and had sailed anti-clockwise around Africa, passing the Cape and entering the Indian Ocean; this inspired him to attempt a circumnavigation of the continent. Organising the expedition on his own account he set sail from Gades and began to work down the African coast; the difficulties were too great, he was obliged to return to Europe. After this failure he again set out to circumnavigate Africa, his eventual fate is unknown. Although some, such as Pliny, claimed that Eudoxus did achieve his goal, the most probable conclusion is that he perished on the journey. In the 1450 Fra Mauro map, the Indian Ocean is depicted as connected to the Atlantic. Fra Mauro puts the following inscription by the southern tip of Africa, which he names the "Cape of Diab", describing the exploration by a ship from the East around 1420: "Around 1420 a ship, or junk, from India crossed the Sea of India towards the Island of Men and the Island of Women, off Cape Diab, between the Green Islands and the shadows.
It sailed for 40 days in a south-westerly direction without finding anything other than wind and water. According to these people themselves, the ship went some 2,000 miles ahead until - once favourable conditions came to an end - it turned round and sailed back to Cape Diab in 70 days". "The ships called junks that navigate these seas carry four masts or more, some of which can be raised or lowered, have 40 to 60 cabins for the merchants and only one tiller. They can navigate without a compass, because they have an astrologer, who stands on the side and, with an astrolabe in hand, gives orders to the navigator". Fra Mauro explained that he obtained the information from "a trustworthy source", who traveled with the expedition the Venetian explorer Niccolò da Conti who happened to be in Calicut, India at the time the expedition left: "What is more, I have spoken with a person worthy of trust, who says that he sailed in an Indian ship caught in the fury of a tempest for 40 days out in the Sea of India, beyond the Cape of Soffala and the Green Islands towards west-southwest.
Thus one can believe and confirm what is said by both these and those, that they had therefore sailed 4,000 miles". Fra Mauro comments that the account of the expedition, together with the relation by Strabo of the travels of Eudoxus of Cyzicus from Arabia to Gibraltar through the southern Ocean in Antiquity, led him to believe that the Indian Ocean was not a closed sea and that Africa could be circumnavigated by her southern end; this knowledge, together with the map depiction of the African continent encouraged the Portuguese to intensify their effort to round the tip of Africa. I
£sd
£sd is the popular name for the pre-decimal currencies once common throughout Europe in the British Isles and hence in several countries of the British Empire and subsequently the Commonwealth. The abbreviation originates from the Latin currency denominations librae and denarii. In the United Kingdom, one of the last to abandon the system, these were referred to as pounds and pence; this system originated in the classical Roman Empire. It was re-introduced into Western Europe by Charlemagne, was the standard for many centuries across the continent. In Britain, it was King Offa of Mercia who adopted the Frankish silver standard of librae and denarii in the late 8th century, the system was used in much of the British Commonwealth until the 1960s and 1970s, with Nigeria being the last to abandon it in the form of the Nigerian pound on 1 January 1973. Under this system, there were 20 shillings, or 240 pence, in a pound; the penny was subdivided into 4 farthings until 31 December 1960, when they ceased to be legal tender in the UK, until 31 July 1969 there were halfpennies in circulation.
The advantage of such a system was its use in mental arithmetic, as it afforded many factors and hence fractions of a pound such as tenths, eighths and sevenths and ninths if the guinea was used. When dealing with items in dozens and division are straightforward; as countries of the British Empire became independent, some abandoned the £sd system while others retained it as long as the UK itself. Australia, for example, only changed to using a decimal currency on 14 February 1966. Still others, notably Ireland, decimalised only; the UK abandoned the old penny on Decimal Day, 15 February 1971, when one pound sterling became divided into 100 new pence. This was a change from the system used in the earlier wave of decimalisations in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, in which the pound was replaced with a new major currency called either the "dollar" or the "rand"; the British shilling was replaced by a 5 new pence coin worth one-twentieth of a pound. For much of the 20th century, £sd was the monetary system of most of the Commonwealth countries, the major exceptions being Canada and India.
Similar systems based on Roman coinage were used elsewhere. In the classical Roman Empire, standard coinage was established to facilitate business transactions. 12 denarii were rated equal to 1 gold solidus – a 4th-century Roman coin, rare but which still circulated. Following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, new currencies were introduced in Western Europe though Roman currencies remained popular. In the Eastern Roman Empire, the currencies evolved away from the solidi and denarii. In the eighth century, Charlemagne re-introduced and refined the system by decreeing that the money of the Holy Roman Empire should be the silver denarius, containing 22.5 grains of silver. As in the old Roman Empire, this had the advantage that any quantity of money could be determined by counting coins rather than by weighing silver or gold. Different monetary systems based on units in ratio 20:1 & 12:1 were used in Europe in medieval times; the English name pound is a Germanic adaptation of the Latin phrase libra pondo'a pound weight'.
There were several ways to represent amounts of money in writing and speech, with no formal convention. Spoken, unless there was cause to be punctilious, "two pound and six". Whether "pound" or "pounds" was used depended upon the speaker, varying with class and context. 1/–, colloquially "a bob". 11d. 1 1⁄2d. As spoken, the lf in halfpenny and halfpence was always silent. 3d, with reference to the above, this became thruppence referred to as a "threepenny bit". 6d known as half a shilling. 2/– 2/6 4/3 5/– £1.10s.– £1/19/11 3⁄4d. £14.8s.2d Halfpennies and farthings were represented by the appropriate symbol after the whole p
Bengal
Bengal is a geopolitical and historical region in South Asia in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal. Geographically, it is made up by the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta system, the largest such formation in the world. Politically, Bengal is divided between Bangladesh and the Indian territories of West Bengal and Assam's Barak Valley. In 2011, the population of Bengal was estimated to be 250 million, making it one of the most densely populated regions in the world. Among them, an estimated 160 million people live in Bangladesh and 91.3 million people live in West Bengal. The predominant ethnolinguistic group is the Bengali people, who speak the Indo-Aryan Bengali language. Bengali Muslims are the majority in Bangladesh and Bengali Hindus are the majority in West Bengal and Tripura, while Barak Valley contains equal proportions of Bengali Hindus and Bengali Muslims. Outside Bengal proper, the Indian territories of Jharkhand and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands are home to significant communities of Bengalis.
Dense woodlands, including hilly rainforests, cover Bengal's eastern areas. In the littoral southwest are the Sundarbans, the world's largest mangrove forest and home of the Bengal tiger. In the coastal southeast lies Cox's Bazar, the longest beach in the world at 125 km; the region has a monsoon climate. At times an independent regional empire, Bengal was a leading power in Southeast Asia and the Islamic East, with extensive trade networks. In antiquity, its kingdoms were known as seafaring nations. Bengal was known to the Greeks as Gangaridai, notable for mighty military power, it was described by Greek historians that Alexander the Great withdrew from India anticipating a counterattack from an alliance of Gangaridai. Writers noted merchant shipping links between Bengal and Roman Egypt; the Bengali Pala Empire was the last major Buddhist imperial power in the subcontinent, founded in 750 and becoming the dominant power in the northern Indian subcontinent by the 9th century, before being replaced by the Hindu Sena dynasty in the 12th century.
Islam was introduced through trade with the Abbasid Caliphate. The Islamic Bengal Sultanate, founded in 1352, was absorbed into the Mughal Empire in 1576; the Mughal Bengal Subah province became a major global exporter, a center of worldwide industries such as cotton textiles, shipbuilding, 12% of the world's GDP, larger than the entirety of western Europe. Bengal was conquered by the British East India Company in 1757 by Battle of Plassey and became the Bengal Presidency of the British Raj, which experienced deindustrialization under British rule; the Company increased agriculture tax rates from 10 percent to up to 50 causing the Great Bengal famine of 1770 and the deaths of 10 million Bengalis. Bengal played a major role in the Indian independence movement, in which revolutionary groups were dominant. Armed attempts to overthrow the British Raj began with the rebellion of Titumir, reached a climax when Subhas Chandra Bose led the Indian National Army allied with Japan to fight against the British.
A large number of Bengalis died in the independence struggle and many were exiled in Cellular Jail, located in Andaman. The United Kingdom Cabinet Mission of 1946, split the region into India and Pakistan, popularly known as partition of Bengal, opposed by the Prime Minister of Bengal Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy and nationalist leader Sarat Chandra Bose, they campaigned for a independent nation-state of Bengal. The initiative failed owing to British diplomacy and communal conflict between Hindus. Pakistan ruled East Bengal becoming the independent nation of Bangladesh by Bangladesh War of Independence in 1971. Bengali culture has been influential in the fields of literature, shipbuilding, architecture, currency, commerce and cuisine; the name of Bengal is derived from the ancient kingdom of Banga, the earliest records of which date back to the Mahabharata epic in the first millennium BCE. Theories on the origin of the term Banga point to the Proto-Dravidian Bong tribe that settled in the area circa 1000 BCE and the Austric word Bong.
The term Vangaladesa is used to describe the region in 11th-century South Indian records. The modern term Bangla is prominent from the 14th century, which saw the establishment of the Sultanate of Bengal, whose first ruler Shamsuddin Ilyas Shah was known as the Shah of Bangala; the Portuguese referred to the region as Bengala in the Age of Discovery. The modern English name Bengal is an exonym derived from the Bengal Sultanate period. Most of the Bengal region lies in the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta, but there are highlands in its north and southeast; the Ganges Delta arises from the confluence of the rivers Ganges and Meghna rivers and their respective tributaries. The total area of Bengal is 232,752 km2—West Bengal is 88,752 km2 and Bangladesh 147,570 km2; the flat and fertile Bangladesh Plain dominates the geography of Bangladesh. The Chittagong Hill Tracts and Sylhet regions are home to most of the mountains in Bangladesh. Most parts of Bangladesh are within 10 metres above the sea level, it is believed that about 10% of the land would be flooded if the sea level were to rise by 1 metre.
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