http://www.nyam.org/library/pages/current_grey_literature_report#

The New York Academy of Medicine has been around since 1847, and they have had a distinctly urban mission since their founding. Their online library contains a number of resources for medical doctors and other health care professionals, and the Grey Literature Report is one of the most compelling offerings on their site. The Report was started in 1999, and it was initially intended for internal research purposes. Currently, the Report is now published bimonthly by the Academy Library, and it contains "unindexed materials that are not produced by commercial publishers and are unavailable through normal, commercial distribution channels." The documents include case studies, conference proceedings, fact sheets, government documents, research reports, and white papers. Recent editions of the Report have included timely works from the AARP, the Commonwealth Fund, the John A. Hartford Foundation, and the Kaiser Permanente Institute for Health Policy. [KMG]

To find this resource and more high-quality online resources in math and science visit Scout's sister site - AMSER, the Applied Math and Science Educational Repository at http://amser.org.

http://cartography2.org/

Professor Mark Harrower at the University of Wisconsin Madison's Department of Geography was frustrated with the "inability of traditional textbooks to keep pace with Web technologies." So he and his colleagues set out to create Cartography 2.0, which is a "free knowledge base and e-textbook for students and professionals interested in interactive and animated maps." First-time visitors might want to look over the "Purpose" section before diving into the separate "Chapters" of the book. All of the chapters can be found on the homepage, and they cover topics such as map animation, virtual globes, elements of design, and map interaction techniques. Each chapter contains descriptive essays, along with maps and diagrams that illustrate key principles. The "New Content" section on the homepage features the latest additions to the site, and overall this work is a model for educators who might be interested in crafting an engaging and dynamic online textbook. [KMG]

To find this resource and more high-quality online resources in math and science visit Scout's sister site - AMSER, the Applied Math and Science Educational Repository at http://amser.org.

http://blog.chicagohistory.org/

The Chicago History Museum has mounted a number of popular initiatives and exhibitions in the past several years, and their new blog is something that historians, young people, and anyone with an interest in Chicago will want to check out. While the site is organized like a traditional blog, each entry contains interesting insights into Museum's holdings, along with commentaries on the city's cultural, social, and historical landscape. The posts are written by Museum staff members, and from time to time, there will be guest bloggers with a special insight into some subject. Recent posts have included information about tamale vendors in the city, the history of Chinatown, and the refitting of 19th century socialite Bertha Palmer's elaborate gown from 1892. Visitors can browse through previous posts by category (which include "Film" and "Multimedia") and also look at their Web 2.0 features, which include YouTube videos, Flickr photo galleries, and so on. [KMG]

http://www.edruscha.com/

This very attractive website catalogs the work of the Nebraska-born artist, Ed Ruscha. The site is elegant in its simple scheme of gray text on a cream background, red hyperlinks, and floating menu at the top of each page. Visitors unfamiliar with the paintings, drawings, photography and artist's books of Ed Ruscha should check out the "Biography" link to learn about his work that "combine[s] the cityscape of his adopted hometown with vernacular language to communicate a particular urban experience." A link to the "Chronology" of his life and work can be found underneath his picture, on the same page as the biography. The link to his "Work" is on the right hand side of the menu, and when clicked, visitors will be transported to a page of search options. The titles can be searched via keyword, or a year can be chosen from a list of years ranging from 1958 to 1992. Each year provides thumbnails of his work that can be enlarged by a click. Visitors interested in viewing his bright, colorful paintings, which are also still quite mysterious, should check out his earlier works from the 1960s to early 1980s. [KMG]

http://digitalhorizonsonline.org/index.html

The Digital Horizons website "provides, maintains, and preserves a wide range of historical and significant content related specifically to Fargo-Moorhead and broadly to North Dakota and Minnesota." In the "About Digital Horizons" link, visitors can read the foregoing purpose of the project, as well as the vision statement. The goals of the project, the audiences it's intended for--students, educators, internal staff, commercial users; and how to become a member of the project, are also in the "About Digital Horizons" link. The homepage has sections on "Managing Your Collection", about preserving or donating the photos, film, audio and textual materials one might have in one's home, and "Contributing Organizations", the list of which institutions have contributed to the project, which include Concordia College Archives, Prairie Public Broadcasting and the State Historical Society of North Dakota. Visitors can browse by "General Subject", "Collection", or "Popular Searches", via the homepage or the right hand side of any other main page. [KMG]

http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/BrechtGuide/

In the United States, Bertolt Brecht is perhaps best known as the composer of the Threepenny Opera with Kurt Weill, which gave birth to the popular song known in English as "Mack the Knife". He is generally regarded as a tremendously prolific playwright, poet, and theatre director, and his works have been translated into a host of different productions and settings during the 20th and 21st centuries. This bibliography of Brecht's works in English contains over 2600 bibliographical entries and is a cooperative project between the International Brecht Society and the Bertolt-Brecht-Archiv in Berlin. The bibliography is hosted by the University of Wisconsin Digital Collections, though it should be noted that the database is not a record of the holdings of the University of Wisconsin Libraries. Visitors can scan down the homepage to access specific citation sets for Brecht's journals, essays, interviews, letters, plays, poems, and songs. The site is rounded out by a list of links to related materials, including the German Studies collection at the University of Wisconsin and the International Brecht Society. [KMG]

http://www.rand.org/pubs/occasional_papers/2009/RAND_OP269.pdf

Susan Rohwedder of the RAND Corporation recently asked an important question: "How are U.S. households coping in these difficult times?" The results of her investigations were published in the Fall of 2009 as part of the RAND Labor and Population group's Occasional Paper series. Her work was based on two Internet surveys conducted by the RAND Corporation in late 2008 and in early 2009 which sought to probe the extent to which U.S. households have been affected by the crisis and patterns of giving and receiving financial help during this period. The findings included the observation that many more households are giving financial help than receiving it and that help most frequently flows from parents to children. All in all, the paper will be most useful for policy scholars and others working in related fields. [KMG]