General Interest
The Scout Report has profiled numerous sites on the vast world of Greek mythology before, but this most recent site is perhaps the most enchanting and visually stimulating so far. Winged Sandals, produced by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (in association with The University of Melbourne's Centre for Classics and Archaeology), takes visitors through the world of Greek mythology with a number of Flash-enabled movies, intriguing games, and quizzes. Visitors are led through the site by Hermes (appropriately enough, as he is the messenger god), and are transported above the city of ancient Athens, to various locales. The Storytime section is particularly lovely, as visitors can watch retellings of such important tales as the acquisition of the oracle at Delphi by Apollo or the story of Perseus's encounter with Medusa. Also of note is the games section which allows visitors the opportunity to charm Cerberus with music and to create their own musical creations in Groove Pentatonica. Designed for children age 6 to 12, this website is a fine teaching aid and a real delight for young people and adults. [KMG]
http://iris.lib.virginia.edu/tibet/frameset.html
As stated on the home page, "The Tibetan & Himalayan Digital Library is an international community using Web-based technologies to integrate diverse knowledge about Tibet and the Himalayas for free access from around the world." In other words, visitors to THDL can expect more than an image database and digital documents, although these materials are present. The Guide to Resources, accessed by choosing the First Time Visitors link, provides an overview of THDL resources grouped into broad categories (that appear as images on the homepage) including: Collections, Reference, Community, Education, and Tools. Collections are further organized by format, such as audio, video, or GIS-technology based materials including a gazetteer and maps of Tibet, Asia, Lhasa and Sera. There are multimedia collections based on the work of a particular individual, such as Frederick Williamson, a British political officer who took about 1700 photographs of Tibet in the 1930s. Also included are thematic collections such as Architecture, Art, Literature, History; Interactive maps and models, such as a 3D interactive model of Meru Nyingba Monastery (Lhasa, Tibet); and electronic journals. There are a number of resources to assist with Tibetan languages, such as translators and dictionaries, and digital tools for displaying fonts, and the Community section provides discussion forums, email lists, Blogs, and links to associations and individuals of interest. [DS]
http://www.wtcsitememorial.org/
Reconstruction of the World Trade Center site has begun in earnest in Lower Manhattan, and many people are looking forward to see the transformation of the site move forward. While the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation was responsible for launching the largest design competition ever to elicit submissions for the World Trade Center Site Memorial, only recently have all of the submissions been put online for the general public. Here visitors can look at all of the 5201 submissions, which came from 63 nations and 49 U.S. states. Each submission may be viewed in its entirety, and visitors may also read more detailed information about the seven finalists. Additionally, there is detailed information about the winning entry, Reflecting Absence, which was submitted jointly by Michael Arad and Peter Walker. Finally, visitors may browse through a detailed archive of press releases related to the official competition. [KMG]
http://www.dovebeyondcompare.ca/
Sponsored by the Dove Company, this online exhibit designed to showcase the work of women photographers and photos of beauty complements a ongoing photo exhibition that is making its way through Canada during the spring of 2004. As the website notes, "The exhibit speaks to the uniqueness of each artist's interpretation of beauty. Each photograph is beyond comparison-beautiful on its own terms. These images which depict confidence, individuality and character are also accompanied by an anecdote or quote that explains the photographer's vision." The photographs displayed online here come from around the world, and include the work of such notable photographers as Annie Leibovitz, Tierney Gearon, and Peggy Sirota. While looking through the photo galleries, visitors can also stop to read the story behind each image, and read different comments made by the photographers as well. [KMG]
http://www.memory.loc.gov/ammem/dcmhtml/dmhome.html
Dayton C. Miller grew up on a small farm in Ohio in the middle years of the 19th century, and later became a well-regarded acoustician and physicist, and an avid collector of flutes and related musical instruments and ephemera. In 1941, in his bequest, Dayton Miller donated his massive collection of more than 1700 flutes and other wind instruments to the Library of Congress. In order to offer greater distributed public access to this trove of material, the American Memory Project at the Library of Congress has created this interesting archive of Mr. Miller's extensive collection. Here visitors can search or browse through some of the many wonderful instruments collected by Miller during his lifetime, including a number of rare crystal flutes, a 22-karat gold flute designed by Miller himself, and a flute presented to President James Madison. Along with looking through this archive, visitors will want to take a look at some other presentations on the site, such as a section titled Fife vs. Band Flute, which looks at the substantial differences between the two instruments, and one of the more than 3000 books and pamphlets contained within the collection, titled The Pleasant Companion: or New Lessons and Instructions for the Flagelet from 1680. [KMG]
http://www.npg.org.uk/live/index.asp
Founded in 1856, the National Portrait Gallery in London was established to collect the likenesses of famous British men and women. For persons with a penchant for portraiture, this website will be a welcome addition, and one with enough material to merit a number of extensive visits. Besides information about visiting the Gallery (which is available in several languages, including German and Japanese), visitors will delight in the fact that they can search the entire collection of 50,167 portraits online here. In all fairness, only 28,539 of this total number are illustrated, but that's still quite impressive, as visitors can look at renderings of Samuel Johnson, Henry VIII, and other luminaries. Visitors to the site can also browse the Gallery as if they were there, by selecting any one of the rooms, organized by century. The site is rounded out by a nice selection of special website features, such as the most recent one added to the site, which deals with well-known Britons of the past 100 years. [KMG]
From its auspicious beginnings in 1792, the Massachusetts Historical Society (MHS) has grown to be one of the major historical research libraries and manuscript repositories in New England. Along with its public outreach programs (which visitors can learn about on the site), the society also offer a number of fellowship programs for visiting scholars and persons interested in utilizing its collections. For persons interested in doing research at the society, there are over 51 digitized online finding aids available here as well, along the ABIGAL online catalog which may also prove useful. From the homepage, visitors can also view the Object of the Month feature, which gives detailed information and a digitized image of an important object in the Society's holdings, such as a dramatic photograph of the Boston & Albany passenger train from 1885. Of course, users will not want to miss the fine online resources here, including the electronic archive of correspondence of the Adams Family (including those legendary letters between John and Abigail Adams) and the wonderful electronic archive that contains many original documents and papers from Thomas Jefferson in the collection of the MHS. [KMG]
