General Interest
http://www.sercotransarctic.com/
In our time, it would seem that all of the boundaries of exploration have been pushed to the limits here on terra firma. With the notable exception of the world's oceans, every mountain peak has been successfully conquered, every inhospitable landscape traversed and so on. Stepping into the grand tradition of exploration is Ben Saunders, a long distance skier from Devon, England, who is currently seeking to become the first person to ski solo more than 1200 miles across the Arctic from Siberia to Canada via the geographic North Pole. On the website dedicated to his expedition, visitors can learn more about his previous expeditions, view a map of his route, and view statistics on his progress on a daily basis. Of course, visitors will also want to read his daily dispatches, and perhaps send along a word of encouragement via email. [KMG]
http://frank.mtsu.edu/~kmiddlet/history/women.html
Greatly revised and expanded since its last Scout Report mention, (March 13, 1999) Ken Middleton's American Women's History: A Research Guide includes over 2100 citations to print and Internet sources and hundreds of links to digitized primary sources, as well as frequent updates and link checking to ensure the currency of cited resources. The Research Guide now consists of 4 main sections: an index to resources by subject, an index to resources by state, and two Tools sections offering guidance on finding primary sources (e.g. archival, manuscript, and museum collections, historical newspapers and periodicals), as well as secondary sources (e.g. books, articles, theses and dissertations). Some print resources listed under Marriage are bibliographies and historical overviews; examples of online materials are digital photo databases at the Los Angeles and Denver Public Libraries, that include images of weddings and marriage. Shortcuts to popular, quickly available, online resources are provided from the home page. [DS]
The world of the protozoa is one that is still not wholly understood, and certainly not by the average person. Of course one thing that can be immediately appreciated is the many interesting nuances amongst their number (something that is not lost on the creator of this site, one Piotr Rotkiewicz, who holds a PhD in chemistry). The site itself contains 184 pictures (drawn from 84 genera) of various protozoa, ranging from the well-known paramecium to the marine spiroloculina. All of the images have been taken by a number of different microscopes, and visitors to the site are also provided with some detailed information about these devices. The site has a nice collage that brings together images of protozoa from 45 different genera that gives users some sense of the relative size of each organism. The site is rounded out by an extensive set of outside links to other relevant websites, and a list of suggested readings. [KMG]
http://www.npr.org/news/specials/blackmun/
Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun was born in the small town of Nashville, Illinois, grew up around St. Paul, and later graduated from Harvard University. Blackmun was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Richard Nixon in 1970, and spent 24 years on the court, rendering important opinions on Roe v. Wade and other influential decisions. Blackmun passed away in 1999, and recently, NPR's Nina Totenberg was granted access to his papers, which are housed at the Library of Congress. Drawing on revelations in these papers and various interviews, this site offers a number of recent radio programs from NPR that hone in on various aspects of Justice Blackmun's time on the court and his various opinions on different cases. A couple of the more recent programs made available here deal with the humor of various fellow judges and the deliberations over the constitutionality of prayer at public school graduations. There are also a number of nice video clips, including one of Blackmun giving a tour of his Supreme Court chambers and another featuring him speaking about Roe v. Wade. [KMG]
http://dl.lib.brown.edu/carriers/index.html
Along with the plaintive cries of greengrocers, fishmongers, and small waifs calling out "Shine your shoes guv'nor?" in the late 19th century, one might also see a variety of newspaper boys out delivering the paper and hawking it on the streets by means of colorful language and lurid descriptions. One form of expression by these carriers was their annual addresses, which were printed pieces distributed to their customers on New Year's Day in order to solicit a small tip for their faithful service throughout the year. The good people at the Center for Digital Initiatives at Brown University Library have placed a fine collection of these broadsheets online for the general public, dating from 1772 to 1912, and originating from such papers as the Albany Argus and the Peoria Journal. Visitors may search or browse this delightful collection, and read an introductory essay on these addresses, which includes a notable excerpt from one address about the carriers themselves that reads: "Bedouins of the street they are, tenting anywhere. Pitching camp upon the cobblestones, Braving rain and snow and sleet and winter's chilly wind; Lighting fires to warm their frozen bones." [KMG]
With origins in a 1994 online seminar on the history of community organizing led at the University of Illinois at Chicago, COMM-ORG has grown into a fine resource for persons interested in the current field (and history) of community organizing, both in the United States, and with an international perspective. COMM-ORG is currently under the direction of Randy Stoecker at the University of Toledo, and brings together a host of materials related to the field of community organizing, including a moderated listserv, various syllabi from courses about community organizing, and a collection of papers about this broad theme. The COMM-ORG Discussion listserv area allows visitors to view archives of the many interesting electronic listserv topics, and to join up to become a member of the listserv. The papers section is also worth a look, as it contains approximately 80 papers dating back to 1995 on the various subfields of community organizing, such as faith-based movements and social justice. [KMG]
http://www.lib.utk.edu/refs/smokies/
With project headquarters at the University of Tennessee Libraries, the Great Smoky Mountains Regional Project is designed to serve as both a physical and digital collection of resources for researchers studying the Smokies and their surrounding communities. From the homepage, visitors can view a selection of finding aids (if they are planning to conduct research), browse through the Project's newsletters dating back to 2002, and look through a list of other organizations (with hyperlinks to their respective homepages, where available). Currently, there are two nice digital collections available here, both of which are worth more than just a glance. The first is a digitized collection of 898 photographs taken by the late Albert "Dutch" Roth. Roth was an amateur photographer who spent six decades photographing the Great Smoky Mountains' Greenbrier and Mount Le Conte sections. Here visitors can peruse these images by subject heading and a variety of other fields; in doing so, visitors will get a real feel for the landscape of the region. The second digital collection is of the flora of Tennessee, and allows visitors to search through images of native and introduced flora throughout the state by plant name, family and genus.
