General Interest
http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/whi/feature/wtc/
In 1969, Wisconsin native Richard Quinney was teaching at NYU and living in Greenwich Village. During this time the World Trade Center was under construction, and Quinney made a number of trips down to the site with his camera and tape recorder. From these images, he produced 161 color slides that documented the construction process. Several years ago, he donated these images to the Wisconsin Historical Society and they recently digitized these powerful photographs and placed them online here. Visitors can browse through the images at their leisure, and they can also search the collection as they see fit. The site also includes a link to an article by Quinney that appeared in the Autumn 2002 edition of the Wisconsin Magazine of History. [KMG]
http://www.burkeandwills.net.au/index.htm
Unless one has a penchant for the history of Australian exploration or the 1985 film "Burke and Wills", they may not be familiar with the personages of Robert O'Hara Burke and his third in command, William John Wills. In 1860, they set forth from the city of Victoria on their way to explore their way across the continent of Australia. While the expedition successfully crossed the continent, some of the party expired along the way back, including Burke and Wills. This site, created by historian Dave Phoenix, brings together an impressive array of transcribed documents from that expedition, including their letters, journals, and progress reports. Casual visitors can read "A Brief History", and then they may wish to proceed through the various sections of the site which describe the members of the expeditionary party, their camels, and a detailed map of the expedition. [KMG]
The National Indian Gaming Commission is an independent federal regulatory agency, and along with regulating gaming activities on Indian lands, they are also responsible for "shielding Indian tribes from organized crime and other corrupting influences." The Commission's website is designed to inform interested parties about their ongoing activities, and visitors will find that the information here ranges from calendars of upcoming conferences to official decisions and actions taken by the Commission. First-time visitors may wish to start by looking over the FAQ section within the "About Us" area. Once there, they can find the answers to questions like "Do Indian tribes pay taxes?" and "What happens to the profits from Indian gaming operations?" Moving on, the "Laws & Regulations" area contains the text of such important documents as the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act and the Johnson Act. The site is rounded out by the "Reading Room", which contains recent and past bulletins, gaming ordinances, and a list of tribal gaming operations. [KMG]
http://invention.smithsonian.org/home/
Jerome "Jerry" Lemelson was, to put it simply, a born inventor. As a young boy growing up on Staten Island, he invented a lighted tongue depressor for his father, a physician. He continued his inventing ways for over forty years, as he averaged one patent a month during that time period. Before he passed away in 1997, he made a generous gift that helped create The Jerome and Dorothy Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. For those who can't make it to the Lemelson Center in person, their website is a great way to start learning about the history of invention and innovation. The homepage contains an embedded search engine, a selection of shortcuts for specific audiences (such as historians and teachers), and a featured invention. Visitors should definitely take a look at the "Centerpieces" area, which features interactive exhibits on industrial design, the Nobel Prize, and the invention of the electric guitar. Additionally, the "Video & Audio" area contains podcasts on puppets, women and invention, and the construction of robots. [KMG]
http://www.bathingbeauties.org.uk/
In past decades, bathing beauties might have meant beautiful people on a beach, but these "bathing beauties" are actually a collection of new bathing hut designs. They are, of course, beautiful indeed, and visitors with a droll curiosity in the world of seaside architecture, leisure studies, or other seaside pursuits will certainly find this site useful. The impetus for creating such a site was a recent international beach hut design competition, which was held at the National Centre for Craft & Design in the United Kingdom. On the site, visitors can view both the winners of the competition and the other entries as well. Understandably, the other entries are just scale model designs, but there are some real pippins among their number. If beach huts aren't enough, there are also some beachfront restaurant designs and a few boathouse designs as well. [KMG]
http://www.uk.olivesoftware.com/Default/Skins/BL/Client.asp?Skin=BL&enter=true
Old newspapers are engaging for a wide range of people, including historians and journalists. Access to digitized newspapers has been increasing in the past few years, and a number of specialized projects have popped up at institutions like the Library of Congress and the British Library. In fact, the British Library has created this rather excellent site to provide detailed access to papers like the Manchester Guardian and the Weekly Dispatch. Visitors can only access a limited range of years, but the visual interface for viewing the images is quite user-friendly, and visitors can navigate through each paper by column or complete page. It's a delightful selection of important British newspapers, and it may spark a new interest among readers. [KMG]
http://www.porr-rrop.gc.ca/index-e.html
People love opinion polls, and many researchers rely on them for any number of studies. Recently, the Canadian government decided to place a great number of the public opinion research reports they have created here on this site. These reports include work contracted by a wide variety of departments and agencies, such as the Department of National Defence and Health Canada. It is worth noting that the database only contains reports contracted from August 2006 to the present. Visitors can click on "Find a Report" to look for materials of specific interest, or they can also just use the "What’s New" button to glance over recent additions. Visitors will find hundreds of documents here, including recent works such as "Canadians' view on emergency management" and "Views on trans fats findings from focus group research". [KMG]
MOCA, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, uses blogging, podcasting and other Web technologies to create the WACKsite as a component of WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, a major show of feminist art created between 1965 and 1980. The WACKsite includes 42 Installation views of the exhibition, as well as a series of images from Walks Through the Revolution, a tour of the show held March 4, at which many of the artists spoke. There are also short audio tours, featuring individual artists talking about their work, such as Miriam Schapiro discussing Big OX No. 2, 1968, and downloadable podcasts of longer lectures by Angela Davis, Griselda Pollack, and Linda Nochlin. Visitors' comments are also posted; one recurring theme suggests that perhaps women would be more comfortable viewing imagery of nude women, if the museum guards were also women. [DS]
