General Interest
http://www.loc.gov/chroniclingamerica/
The Library of Congress has indeed chronicled much of America, and this latest stellar effort will be of great interest to just about anyone with a penchant for learning about American history. Working with the National Digital Newspaper Program, the Library of Congress has created this prototype website to provide direct access to select newspapers from the period 1900 to 1910. Additionally, for this first phase the project coordinators decided to focus on newspapers that have ceased publication entirely. Visitors can use the “Search Newspaper Pages” function to examine those pages that have been digitized already, and they will definitely find a few surprises here. The papers include Paris, Kentucky’s “The Bourbon news”, Washington, D.C.’s “The Colored American”, and DeLand’s own “Florida Agriculturist”. Moving along, visitors can also use the newspaper directory to look for newspapers of interest from all over the country. [KMG]
http://collections.stanford.edu/menuez/bin/page?forward=home
Douglas Menuez began his careers as an intern with the Washington Post, and over the past several decades he has covered the AIDS crisis, the destruction of the Amazonian rainforest, and a host of other topics. One of his projects included documenting the rise of Silicon Valley, and along the way he took some 250,000 photographs that together constitute an insider’s look at the world of venture capital, the semiconductor industry, and of course, the heady early days of the Internet’s exponential growth. Recently, Stanford University acquired this prodigious collection. Visitors to this site can browse through approximately 2900 of these photographs, and given the number of images, this site certainly warrants several visits. [KMG]
http://images.lib.wvu.edu/cgi/i/image/image-idx?c=wvcp
Like many states, West Virginia has embarked on an ambitious project to digitize a wide range of photographs for use by the general public, historians, and those just curious about the state’s history. Created by staff members at the West Virginia University Library system, this online collection brings together 20,000 photographs. The search engine for the site is easy enough to use, but the site might have benefited from a number of subject guides or thematic collections for more casual users. Overall, the site is a real find, as users will enjoy looking through construction photographs of the Personal Rapid Transit system on the campus of West Virginia University, demonstration farm projects in Hancock County, and African American miners at work. [KMG]
Under the banner of “A clear voice for science”, the radio program “Earth & Sky” has been on the air since 1991. On this site, visitors can listen to the program, which has answered such questions as “How slow does the slowest animal move?” and “How will Antarctic ice sheets behave?” Visitors can browse their archive, listen to their podcasts, and sign up to receive RSS feeds here. One rather fine feature of the site is the “Skywatching” area. Here, visitors can learn about that night’s sky, and what to watch for as they go outside. Visitors can also read and comment on their blog and read program transcripts. [KMG]
http://www.hgtv.com/hgtv/gardening/0,1784,HGTV_3546,00.html
Dear Scout Report reader, we would like to ask you an important question: How does your garden grow? It is hoped that the answer is a positive one, but if not (or even if it is), this informative website about gardening and landscaping offered by HGTV may come in handy. The site brings together materials featured on some of their television programs, and a number of web-only features as well. Visitors may want to start by take a look over their “Most Popular” links, which include short essays (accompanied by illustrations and photographs) on topics like “Landscape Makeover 101”, “Plant-Buying Boo-boos”, and “Water Features for Any Budget”. Users looking for specific materials will want to click on over to the left-hand side of the homepage, where they will find an alphabetical listing of gardening-related topics. Finally, the site also includes video clips from some of HGTV’s gardening and landscaping programs. [KMG]
Rothko, Picasso, and Kapoor are but some of the many artists covered in the delightful online course on the world of modern and contemporary art offered by the Tate Online website. Developed as part of their educational outreach efforts, this course offers a brief primer on some of the developments in this field of art, and for those who might find themselves intimidated by such a subject, this is a perfect place to start learning. Utilizing materials from the Tate Modern museum and a variety of other visual materials, this online course contains eight units, including “Art and Materials”, “Art and Everyday Life”, and “Art and Politics”. After registering on the site, visitors can proceed through these units at their leisure, and they can also download complementary brochures for each unit. [KMG]
http://www.carnegieendowment.org/
When he gave the money to create the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in 1910, Andrew Carnegie charged the trustees of the new organization to use the fund to “hasten the abolition of international war, the foulest blot upon our civilization.” They have done so for the past ten decades, and they are currently interested in transforming the Endowment into the “first truly multinational-ultimately global-think tank.” On their homepage, visitors can delve right into some of their latest analyses, reports, and policy documents. The “Publications” area is a great place to look as well, as visitors can search through a variety of papers, including works like “Political Reform in Yemen”, “Roots of Radical Islam in Central Asia”, and “Protecting Intellectual Property Rights in Chinese Courts”. For those who would like to contact different staff members, there is the “Experts” section, which contains details on various persons who work for the Endowment. [KMG]
http://moma.org/exhibitions/2007/comic_abstraction/
This web site from MoMA presents one work each from 13 living artists, selected from about 30 pieces on display at the Museum. The underlying concept of the exhibition is that the work of these artists, although primarily abstract, shows influences from comic books and cartoons. Some of these influence are overt, such as Philippe Parreno's Speech Bubbles, mylar helium balloons, floating in a corner of a room; or boom, by Gary Simmons, a painting of a cartoon explosion. Others are veiled, for example the reference to racist caricature of Black minstrels in Ellen Gallagher's Oh! Susanna, in the form of popping eyeballs and thick lips that appear as a completely abstract pattern until examined closely. [DS]
