General Interest
http://www.dimitritiomkin.com/
Master of a melody and composer of many a rousing theme, composer Dimitri Tiomkin contributed greatly to the world of film music during his long career. Throughout his life, Tiomkin was a favorite of directors like Frank Capra, Alfred Hitchcock, and Howard Hawks. Some of the films he worked on include "Strangers on a Train", "High Noon", "The Old Man and the Sea", and "The Guns of Navarone". On this official website, visitors can listen to excerpts from his film scores, learn about his various awards, and also read a biographical essay. The "Photo Gallery" area is a real treat, and visitors can browse through photographs of Tiomkin, his wife, and some of the actors and directors he worked with over the years. The "Audio Clips" section contains clips from some of his most memorable scores, and visitors can also listen to them as they wander around the site. [KMG]
http://historicbuildings.unl.edu/
The University of Nebraska's campus in Lincoln has grown in interesting ways over the past 140 years, and this website offers curious parties an architectural tour of the City and East Campuses. Using architectural records and documents from the university's Facilities Management department and other publications, researchers at the University of Nebraska Libraries offer photographs and narrative essays on the histories of standing and demolished structures on both campuses. Visitors will want to start by reading the "Historical Overview" essay. After that, they can click on a tour of the City or East Campus as they wish. While the whole exhibit documents the transformation of the campuses and the mission of the university over the decades, a few buildings in particular are worth a closer look. Visitors should make sure to look at the Agricultural Experiment Station on the East Campus and the Temple on the City Campus. [KMG]
http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/infrastructure/
As talk about reinvesting in America's infrastructure continues to grow, some people are looking back to the public works projects of the New Deal as a model for thinking about how what a new "New Deal" might look like. American Radio Works has done a fine job of providing some perspective on this question in one of their recent documentaries, "Bridge to Somewhere". The program looks at the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Works Progress Administration, and the Public Works Administration. On the site, visitors can read transcripts of the segments dedicated to exploring each organization's legacy, complete with additional links to materials elsewhere on the web. Of course, visitors should listen to the complete program in its entirety, and they can also share the documentary with others via a number of social media sites, like Facebook and Twitter. Perhaps one of the most compelling features here is the section where reporter Catherine Winter talks about her own familial connection with the New Deal. [KMG]
http://archive.nlm.nih.gov/proj/ttp/intro.htm
Working together with the British Library, the National Library of Medicine created this delightful digitized collection of "rare and beautiful" historical books in the biomedical sciences. The website is designed to complement their physical kiosks at the Library, and they have done a remarkable job with this project. The site contains six important texts, including Hieronymus Brunschwig’s Liber de Arte Distillandi, a crucial work from 1521 on chemical, alchemical, and distillation devices. Actually, this volume is a good place to start one's explorations, and visitors will find that "turning" the digital pages is quite easy. After getting their feet wet, users can move on to look over Robert Hooke's Micrographia and Vesalius' seminal work, De Humani Corporis Fabrica. [KMG]
Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II might be well known for such numbers as "People Will Say We're In Love" and "Happy Talk", but they were also rather astute businessmen. They started the Rogers & Hammerstein Organization in 1944, and today the organization represents works by those two tunesmiths, and others of their ilk such as Jerome Kern, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Sheldon Harnick. On the organization's homepage, visitors will find sections that include "Shows", "Songs", "Concerts", and "Gallery". In the "Shows" area, visitors can look up information about the shows the organization represents, along with information about obtaining performance rights. Moving on, the "Songs" section contains information about the songs represented by the organization, and they can be searched via a small search engine and an alphabetical listing. Finally, the "Gallery" area contains photographs and other ephemera from shows from "A Christmas Carol" to "Wings". [KMG]
FemLink started out in 2006 in order to recognize a female video artist from each country who would produce a two-minute film around a central them. In 2006 the theme was fragility, and then the artists combined each of the videos into one in order to create a video collage. Visitors interested in viewing the first video can use the link entitled "The Video-Collage Fragility", which is accessible after clicking anywhere on the homepage. The video-collages from 2007-2009 are also available for viewing on the same page as "Fragility". A brief description of the theme is given, as well as biographies of the artists who contributed a video to the year's collage. The theme for 2007 was "Resistance", and in 2008 it was " Preoccupation". Interestingly, the theme for 2009 was “Male,” and for the first time, male artists were invited to contribute a short video on a woman artist from his country. The list of "Screenings and Exhibitions", accessible on the left side of the page, lists an impressive number of countries that have hosted the exhibition since 2006, including Lithuania, Uruguay, Lebanon, and the Palestinian Territories. [KMG]
http://www.nmm.ac.uk/collections/explore/index.cfm/category/jewellery
The National Maritime Museum in London has a collection of over 400 pieces of jewelry, including buckles, seals and lockets. Images of over 300 of those pieces are digitized and available online at the website of the National Maritime Museum. The jewelry here includes pieces that are connected to maritime figures, such as Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson, but are also from successful passenger ship travel and shipwrecks, such as the Titanic. Visitors can view the collection by following the "Browse the entire collection" link under the "Search This Collection" heading in the top middle of the page. Viewing the collection as a list or by thumbnails are the two browsing options. Under the "View By" heading right below the "Search This Collection" heading, visitors can choose to view the collection by "Type", "Maker" or "Century". Once an image is chosen, each one can be purchased, e-mailed, enlarged, sent as an e-card or saved by clicking on the appropriate button below the image. [KMG]
http://blog.metmuseum.org/penandparchment/
The Metropolitan Museum is using a highly customized version of Word Press blogging software to present this exhibition web site that accompanies a show of medieval drawings. A little known area of art history, these Medieval drawings were created primarily in Western Europe, dating from the early 9th century to the late 1300s. The drawings can be viewed organized by themes, such as "Early Drawing and the Written Word," or "Drawing and the Learned Tradition," a section pointing out how a great many medieval drawings were made in monasteries, which were also centers for learning. It is also possible to jump to the end and see all exhibition images arranged on one long page. From this perspective, it is possible to see the variety: calligraphy (such as Initial T from Corbie, France in the early 9th century), battle scenes, pictures of saints and angels, a few diagrams, and one of the earliest known architectural renderings, Façade of Strasbourg Cathedral from the 1260s. [DS]
