Research and Education
http://www.c-span.org/lincoln200years/
February 12, 2009 will mark the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth, and the C-SPAN network will be ready with this website and a host of special programming to commemorate this important date. The materials on the site are divided into five sections including "Schedule", "Timeline", "Video", "In His Own Words", and "Gallery". The "Timeline" offers a brief overview of important events in Lincoln's life, and the "Video" area brings together programming from C-SPAN related to Lincoln, including interviews with scholars, performance artists, and others. Moving on, "In his Own Words" offers up transcripts of his most notable works, including his speech at Cooper Union, the Gettysburg Address, and the Lincoln-Douglas debates. Visitors can also watch a video "bio-vignette" of Lincoln and peruse some of the external links provided on the right-hand side of the page. Overall, this is a tremendous resource, and one that visitors will want to return to multiple times. [KMG]
More and more universities are joining up to offer a variety of course materials through the OpenCourseWare project, and Utah State University is now one of the partner institutions involved in this laudable venture. This site is made possible by funding from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and visitors will be delighted to learn that they can make their way through course materials from over a dozen departments, such as anthropology, economics, electrical and computer engineering, and wildland resources. Within each department, visitors will also note that there are tabs that allow them to email a friend about the course and also link up to an RSS feed. There are some great course materials here, including those from "Introduction to Writing" and the "History of Utah". [KMG]
http://www.communities.gov.uk/publications/housing/ecotownsgreenerfuture
The Brits usually have some fine ideas about town planning, and some of their innovations (such as the creation of enterprise zones) have jumped across the pond in past decades. This recent 57-page paper released in April 2008 looks at the potential of so-called "eco-towns". Eco-towns are intended to be "a combined response to three challenges: climate change, the need for more sustainable living and the need to increase housing supply." The paper contains five separate chapters which provide an introduction to the potential benefits of eco-towns and how the British government will continue to evaluate various development proposals for such forms of habitation. The report also contains five appendices which detail how the planning of such towns will work throughout Britain. Overall, it's a compelling read, and those in the fields of urban planning or sustainable development will want to forward this report to their colleagues and associates. [KMG]
http://www.undp-povertycentre.org/
Working with partner organizations to help alleviate poverty is a hallmark of the United Nations Development Programme. Over the past few years that have been working wit the Brazilian government to promote broad cooperation on applied poverty research and training. On their website, visitors can learn a bit more about the International Poverty Centre (IPC) which represents one of these most recent collaborations. The homepage provides access to their event calendar, their latest publications, and information on their social and economic policy programs. In the "Publications" area, visitors can look through their in-house magazine, "In-Focus", policy briefs on topics like land reform and public utilities, and their "One Pager" series. For persons with a general interest in policy matters, the "One Pager" series is a great place to start as these short papers are written in non-technical language for a wide audience. [KMG]
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/kidsonline/
The PBS program Frontline always asks good questions, and their question for this particular program is a complex and difficult one to unravel: "Just how radically is the Internet transforming the experience of childhood?" The program talks with experts in child psychology, teenagers who've created online personalities for themselves, parents, and others who are involved in this restructuring of the childhood experience. Visitors to the site can watch the program in its entirety, and also move on to additional web-only materials. One section of note is the "Inside the Revolution" area, which includes interviews with researchers looking at the role of the Internet in young people's lives and also additional interviews with the young people profiled in this program. Other areas of the site include updates from the participants and a place where visitors can leave their own comments on the program. [KMG]
How do people understand what goes on in cities? What types of communications take place in public spaces? These are a few of the questions that the Urban Archives group at the University of Washington is interested in exploring. Comprised of a broad range of scholars, the Urban Archives group hopes "to create a conversation between scholars, artists and activists interested in a variety of issues related to communication in public spaces." On their homepage they have assembled a number of resources for visitors, including links to their digital collections, their wiki, and their weblog. In the "Digital Collections" area, visitors can look at areas that cover yard art, electric signs, graffiti, windows, and "ghost signs", which are fading old advertising images and murals. Visitors can also perform keyword searches across these collections as well. Their weblog is worth a look as well and it seeks to document changes in the urban landscape of Seattle, and it does a good job through its thoughtful posts and accompanying images. [KMG]
http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/FS/
During his life, Alan Gregg was one of the most influential men in the world of medical education and research. For many years he worked at the Rockefeller Foundation as the director of their medical sciences division, and he oversaw a budget that offered millions of dollars of support to institutions and individuals involved in medical training and research. The Profiles in Science Project at the National Library of Medicine has recently collaborated with the Rockefeller Archive Center and the Indiana University Center on Philanthropy to create this digital collection of documents related to Gregg's career and professional life. The materials on the site are divided chronologically, and they include "Director of Medical Sciences, 1930-1945" and "Postwar Work and Retirement, 1945-1956". The documents here include items of correspondence with different medical experts, institutions, and family members. Along the way, visitors will also learn about Gregg's keen interest in tracking the development of medical education in Ireland and Brazil during the early 20th century. [KMG]
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/SaccoV/SaccoV.htm
In 1927, Ferdinando Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were executed for the armed robbery of two pay-clerks in South Braintree, Massachusetts in 1920. Their case became a cause celebre across the world, as many felt that their trial was prejudiced by the prevailing anti-immigrant and anti-anarchist sentiment of the time. This collection of documents related to their trial is offered as part of the "Famous Trials" site created by Professor Douglas Linder at the University of Missouri, Kansas City School of Law. Visitors to the site can view a chronology of events, maps, biographies of the trial participants, and statements from the sentencing phase of the trial. Additionally, visitors can also read letters written from Sacco and Vanzetti during their incarceration and also look over a selection of images from their trial. The site is rounded out by a thorough bibliography and a short collection of additional websites. [KMG]
