The Scout Report -- Volume 20, Number 22

The Scout Report -- Volume 20, Number 22

The Scout Report

June 13, 2014 -- Volume 20, Number 22

A Publication of Internet Scout
Computer Sciences Department, University of Wisconsin-Madison




Research and Education

  Expeditions at the Field Museum: Amazonian Birds
  Open VA: Video Archive
  MagLab U: Learning about Electricity and Magnetism
  Italian Futurism, 1909-1944: Reconstructing the Universe
  Kress Foundation
  Arkansas Natural Resources Commission
  MathJax

General Interest

  Columbia Spectator
  Ralph Fasanella: Lest We Forget
  Brooklyn Historical Society Blog
  George and Frank C. Hirahara Photograph Collection, 1943-1945
  Pullman Digital Collection
  San Francisco Public Library: Golden Gate International Exposition
  Winona Newspaper Project
  Colossal
  The Brummer Gallery Records

Network Tools

  Ravel
  Marco Polo

In the News

  Summer travel season is well under way in the United States



Copyright and subscription information appear at the end of the Scout Report. For more information on all services of Internet Scout, please visit our Website: https://scout.wisc.edu

If you'd like to know how the Internet Scout team selects resources for inclusion in the Scout Report, visit our Selection Criteria page at:
https://scout.wisc.edu/scout-report/selection-criteria

The Scout Report on the Web:
Current issue:
  https://scout.wisc.edu/report/current
This issue:
  https://scout.wisc.edu/report/2014/0613

Feedback is always welcome: scout@scout.wisc.edu




Research and Education

Expeditions at the Field Museum: Amazonian Birds

·http://expeditions.fieldmuseum.org/amazonian-birds-0

Want to take a trip up the Rio Japura with world renowned ornithologists? It is completely possible with this lovely site from the Field Museum in Chicago, documenting the conservation expeditions of John Bates, Jason Wechstein, Alexandre Aleixo and their team. Visitors can make their way through six different sections, including Meet the Team, Photo Galleries, and Videos and Interactives. Be sure to check out the Latest Updates featured on the homepage to explore follow-ups from post-expedition findings, along with information about the team?s published research and related videos and podcasts. The interactive map offered in Videos and Interactives is another great feature, allowing visitors to follow in the scientists' footsteps as they track over two dozen bird species and catalog their sounds and activities along the way. Overall, it's an inspiring and refreshing site that warrants several visits. [KMG]


Open VA: Video Archive

·http://openva.org/live/

The Open and Digital Learning Resources Conference is a collaborative initiative between the Office of Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia, the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia, the Virginia Community College System, and fourteen institutions of higher education. This corner of its website brings together an archive of videos from the first annual OpenVA conference. Users can make their way through six different videos, including "A Future With Only Ten Universities" and "Staying Relevant in the Future of Education" by David Wiley. Taken as a whole, these vignettes offer a portrait of how higher education will change in the coming decades and is a resource most valuable to policymakers and education specialists. [KMG]


MagLab U: Learning about Electricity and Magnetism

·http://www.magnet.fsu.edu/education/tutorials/

Crafted by the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, MagLabU offers a boot camp in "nearly anything you might want to know about electricity and magnetism." Here, visitors can experience interactive tutorials, science demonstrations (including audio slideshows), and a lovely set of profiles on Pioneers in the field. The Interactive Tutorials highlight over three dozen helpful demonstrations, including "Alternating Current? and "Inductive Pendulum.? Tools of the Trade features detailed descriptions of tools and techniques used by scientists at the MagLab. Finally, a detailed glossary is offered along with a fun What is This? area which explains some of the odd items hanging around the MagLab, such as helium recovery bags and bus rooms. [KMG]


Italian Futurism, 1909-1944: Reconstructing the Universe

·http://exhibitions.guggenheim.org/futurism/

Italian Futurism was an artistic and social movement that launched when Filippo Tommaso Marinetti published his "Founding and Manifesto of Futurism? in 1909. Marinetti and his cohort worked to exalt "the new and the disruptive" over the coming decades and they did so by embracing visual arts that included advertising, poems, novels, and political manifestos. This remarkable digital collection from the Guggenheim Museum allows users to explore this world via an animated Time Line, an engaging exhibition Video, and some dramatic Manifestos. The Videos are a great place to start as visitors can learn about the movement through the words of senior curator Vivien Greene. Moving on, the Artists area provides information about such notables as Ivo Pannaggi and Giacomo Balla. Ten different items are also presented in the Manifestos section, including the "Manifesto of the Futurist Painters" and the wonderful "Manifesto of Futurist Cooking" that called for an alarming prohibition on pasta. [KMG]


Kress Foundation

·http://www.kressfoundation.org/

The Samuel H. Kress Foundation "devotes its resources to advancing the history, conservation, and enjoyment of the vast heritage of European art, architecture, and archaeology from antiquity to the early 19th century." To achieve this goal, the Foundation makes grants, offers fellowships, and also reports on its operations and various research initiatives. Scholars and policy makers should begin by looking over the Sponsored Research. Here, they can look over key documents that include "The Campus Art Museum: A Qualitative Study" and "Copyright, Museums and Licensing of Art Images.? The Grants area brings together complete information for scholars looking to apply for a grant in thematic areas such as History of Art and Conservation. Finally, the Kress Collection contains a detailed repository list of the more than 3,000 works in this rather comprehensive collection spanning four centuries. [KMG]


Arkansas Natural Resources Commission

·http://www.anrc.arkansas.gov/

In 1937, the Arkansas General Assembly enacted the nation's first conservation district law. Since that time, the state has grown to create entities like the Arkansas Natural Resources Commission to help protect its various natural resources. On this site, visitors can look through seven different sections, including Water Development, Conservation, and Arkansas Water Plan. Within each of these sections, visitors can look through a range of working papers, conservation documents, and online GIS data sets based on state-wide natural resource surveys. Moving on, the News & Publications features video blog posts, updates about conservation programs, and more. The Rules area is another helpful section of the site, providing a wide range of current rules created by the Commission to govern Arkansas wetlands, tax credits, groundwater management, and poultry management. [KMG]


MathJax

·http://www.mathjax.org/

Ever tried to type the curl of a vector field? Without the help of mathematics display platforms like MathJax, it is not easy or pretty. Created through the collaborative efforts of the American Mathematical Society, Design Science, Inc., and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, MathJax is the best source for visually displaying math online. Before downloading the free JavaScript-based engine, visitors of the site can test Demos of its features and see samples of various mathematical expressions and equations. To see MathJax in action, the site maintains a repository of articles, presentations, and tutorials surrounding the platform, illustrating its applicability. The website also provides multiple channels of communication, via Twitter, Facebook, an ?issue tracker,? contact forms, and Google groups. With close to 2,000 websites and web applications using MathJax, there is no question of its benefit. [AA]


General Interest

Columbia Spectator

·http://spectatorarchive.library.columbia.edu/

Crafted by the Columbia University Library, this remarkable digital collection brings together hundreds of issues of the Columbia Spectator that document student life and academic activity from 1877 to the present day. The goal of this project is "to provide public resources for Columbia University history and to preserve the Spectator's past work." On the site, visitors can make their way through sections that include Browse by Date, Most Popular, and Behind the Scenes. The Most Popular area includes some remarkable front pages, including those from the riotous late 1960s and the graduation of the last all-mall college class, which actually included President Barack Obama. The Behind the Scenes area contains a bit of background and research suggestions for those seeking to use the archive. [KMG]


Ralph Fasanella: Lest We Forget

·http://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/archive/2014/fasanella/

American artist Ralph Fasanella is noted for his celebration of urban working life and the common man. Through his colorful and detailed works he critiqued many complex issues in postwar America. This beautiful and evocative online exhibit is designed to complement a lovely in situ exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Fasanella's story is fascinating; he started painting in his early 30s and often incorporated themes such as endurance and struggle into his art. On this site, visitors can look over a slide show of his work, view an archived webcast featuring his son discussing his work, and also read commentaries by noted art experts, Leslie Umberger and Ron Carver. First-time visitors should check out the cut-away view of urban living in, "Pie in the Sky,? 1947, and his remarkable 1966 work, "Modern Times.? [KMG]


Brooklyn Historical Society Blog

·http://brooklynhistory.org/blog/

What's the Brooklyn Historical Society doing these days? One way to find out is via the this excellent blog. Here, the generally curious can find everything from topical maps documenting the expansion of this celebrated borough to musings on neighborhood change from Park Slope to Red Hook. The Photo of the Week feature is a great place to start as it contains a weekly selection culled from their voluminous collection of over 100,000 photos. Recent installments have featured ice wagons, kosher restaurants, and more. Each post also includes a range of digital and offline resources that can be utilized to enhance visitors' understanding of various matters. [KMG]


George and Frank C. Hirahara Photograph Collection, 1943-1945

·http://content.libraries.wsu.edu/cdm/landingpage/collection/hiraharag

This collection from George and Frank C. Hirahara is considered the largest private collection of photographs documenting Japanese American incarceration during World War II and daily life in the Heart Mountain, Wyoming internment camp. All told, the collection contains over 2,000 images taken between January 1943 and November 1945. The photos were taken by George and his son and capture high school life, engagement celebrations, and day-to-day camp life. Visitors can browse through these items at their leisure and they might also do well to sign up to receive updates about new items as they are added. The titles of each photograph are quite descriptive and include "A baby leaning on an ottoman in a barrack? and ?A crowd gathered at the bus station waiting for men in military uniforms to depart.? [KMG]


Pullman Digital Collection

·http://collections.carli.illinois.edu/cdm4/index_nby_pullman.php?CISOROOT=/nby_pullman

Founded in 1867, the Chicago-based Pullman's Palace Car Company manufactured a wide range of railroad cars at their facility for decades. By 1899, the Pullman Company had a virtual monopoly as it had absorbed its last competitor, the Wagner Palace Car Company. This lovely digital collection brings together images of over 1,200 Pullman car drawings from 1870 to 1969, with the majority of these items created for heavyweight and lightweight cars. The drawings are mostly of floor plans, but they also include duct layouts, heating pipe diagrams, and a few side elevations. Visitors can browse through items at their leisure and may also wish to look around by keyword or date of original issue. Railroad fans will find much to delight in this collection and those with a general interest in the history of technology will also be amazed. [KMG]


San Francisco Public Library: Golden Gate International Exposition

·http://sfpl.org/index.php?pg=2000036601

Opened on February 18, 1939 the Golden Gate International Exposition was designed to celebrate the completion of the Golden Gate Bridge and the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. The theme of this exposition was "Pageant of the Pacific,? and offered a gauzy Pacific Rim influence to the art, architecture, and landscape design at the fairgrounds while blending in modernism and technological innovations. Originally running through October of 1939, it was brought back for a second round from May 25 - September 29, 1940. This digital collection from the San Francisco Public Library brings together 130 plus photos that document the built environment of this grand exposition, including shots of the Danish Pavilion, sculptors working on the various monuments around the fairgrounds, and some rather elaborate molds of the Bay Bridge. [KMG]


Winona Newspaper Project

·http://www.winona.edu/library/databases/winonanewspaperproject.htm

What is the story of a small town if not the one told by its newspaper? For much of the past couple of centuries, small towns around the United States have celebrated life, death, anniversaries, new developments and much more in these modest broadsheets. This digital collection from the Darrell W. Krueger Library at Winona State University brings together three newspapers from the late 19th and 20th centuries: the Winona Argus, the Winona Daily Republican, and the Winona Republican Herald. This collection includes over 150,000 pages of text and visitors can use the search interface for particular topics, browse around at their leisure, or perform a detailed search across various dates and subjects. [KMG]


Colossal

·http://www.thisiscolossal.com/

Since its inception in 2010, Colossal has lived up to its name, populating the Internet with over 3,000 posts on all things visually stimulating. Every week the blog provides 15-25 new posts, videos, photographs, and art installations that embody the ?visual culture? of the modern world, while also paying homage to science and the natural world. Guests of the blog can peruse the collections by specific category, such as ?Sculpture,? search specific topics, or use the Random feature for an arbitrary post from the Archives. Colossal also has an online store in which viewers can purchase quirky and whimsical goods that epitomize the site?s visual culture, as well as the works of featured artists. The site also invites its users to submit their own work, creating a dynamic online community of artists and designers. [AA]


The Brummer Gallery Records

·http://libmma.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/landingpage/collection/p16028coll9

The Brummer brothers, Joseph and Ernest, were art dealers with galleries in New York and Paris who collected decorative arts from the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, Pre-Columbian America, and the Baroque period. After Ernest's death in 1964, his widow, Ella Bache Brummer, donated The Brummer Gallery records to the Metropolitan Museum of Art which has made this digitized collection available. The majority of the collection is object cards, over 16,000, that describe items that the Brummers bought and sold. Cards include thumbnail photographs, buyer and seller names, purchase and sale prices, and some condition information. While this highly specialized collection is primarily of interest to art scholars, historians, and museum curators, the information on the cards is fascinating even for a lay audience. For example, card #N6040, a French Gothic chimney-piece, was purchased in 1944 from William Randolph Hearst for $7,500, and sold to the Metropolitan Museum in 1946 for $40,000. [DS]


Network Tools

Ravel

·https://www.ravellaw.com/

The Ravel app is designed for lawyers and legal professionals looking for key law review materials in a timely fashion. First-time visitors should start with the Take Tour tab to get used to how it works. Additionally, the in-house blog is a great source of information and there is a great word cloud feature that can be most useful. This version is compatible with all operating systems. [KMG]


Marco Polo

·https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/marco-polo-find-your-phone/id866937080

If you yell out Marco Polo, will your phone appear? It might if you elect to download this attractive, interactive app. Designed by Matt Wiechec, users can simply shout "Marco!" and wait for their phone to reply "Polo!? from wherever it is hiding. It's quite easy to use and it is compatible with Apple devices running iOS 7.0 or later. [KMG]


In the News

Summer travel season is well under way in the United States

American, Southwest See Strong Start to Summer Travel
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-06-09/american-southwest-see-strong-start-to-summer-travel

STR Predicts Strong Summer Performance for U.S. Hotel Industry
http://www.hotelnewsresource.com/article78063.html

Five U.S. Summer Trip Ideas
http://www.travelandleisure.com/articles/five-us-summer-trip-ideas

8 Best Cheap Summer Vacations
http://travel.usnews.com/Rankings/Best_Cheap_Summer_Vacations/

Nantucket Among Best All-American Summer Trips
http://www.boston.com/travel/new-england/2014/06/10/nantucket-among-best-all-american-summer-trips/e018OtgqxjtEZjtGf1OSOK/story.html

National Park Service: Travel Itinerary Series
http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/

As parts of the United States are still adapting to weather higher than 45 degrees Farenheit, Americans are getting ready to travel from Pismo Beach to Plymouth Rock via trains, planes, automobiles, and even segways. After a bustling Memorial Day weekend, travel professionals and policy folks are predicting a strong travel season over the next three months. On Monday, Business Week reported that American Airlines and Southwest Airlines are forecasting a stronger than average travel season. This is quite a turnaround from a fairly lackluster spring and winter and reflects increased gains in the job market as well as wage gains. The consulting group STR is also predicting that occupancy for hotels will rise by 1.8 percent to reach 71.2 percent during the summer, which is welcome news. For the casual traveler just looking for a good time, many deals still remain, including a number of staycations for those looking to get away, but not too far. [KMG]

The first link will take visitors to the aforementioned piece from Business Week on increased air travel during these upcoming summer months. The second link will take interested parties to a link from the Hotel Resource website about increased occupancy rates across the United States. Moving along, the third link will take visitors to a fine piece from Travel & Leisure with some great summer trip ideas. The fourth link will take vacationers to an insightful piece from US News & World Report highlighting eight budget destinations. The generally curious will enjoy the next link featuring a lovely piece from Boston.com about the enduring popularity of Nantucket. Finally, the last link will take users to the very cool travel itineraries offered up free of charge from the National Park Service.





Below are the copyright statements to be included when reproducing annotations from The Scout Report.

The single phrase below is the copyright notice to be used when reproducing any portion of this report, in any format:

From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout 1994-2014. https://www.scout.wisc.edu

The paragraph below is the copyright notice to be used when reproducing the entire report, in any format:

Copyright © 2014 Internet Scout Research Group - https://scout.wisc.edu
The Internet Scout Research Group, located in the Computer Sciences Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, provides Internet publications and software to the research and education communities under grants from the National Science Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and other philanthropic organizations. Users may make and distribute verbatim copies of any of Internet Scout's publications or web content, provided this paragraph, including the above copyright notice, is preserved on all copies.

Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, or the National Science Foundation.




To receive the electronic mail version of the Scout Report each week, subscribe to the scout-report mailing list. This is the only mail you will receive from this list.

To subscribe to the Scout Report, go to http://archives.internetscout.org/subscribe.
To unsubscribe from the Scout Report, go to http://archives.internetscout.org/unsubscribe

The Scout Report (ISSN 1092-3861) is published every Friday of the year except the last Friday of December by Internet Scout, located in the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Department of Computer Sciences. Funding sources have included the National Science Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Libraries.

Internet Scout Team
Max Grinnell [KMG] Editor
Catherine Dixon [CBD] Managing Editor
Edward Almasy [EA] Director
Rachael Bower [REB] Director
Kendra Bouda [KAB] Metadata and Information Specialist
Sara Sacks [SS] Internet Cataloger
Elzbieta Beck [EB] Internet Cataloger
Corey Halpin [CRH] Software Engineer
Kyle Piefer [KP] Web Developer
Zev Weiss [ZW] Technical Specialist
Tyler A. Stank [TAS] Technical Specialist
Debra Shapiro [DS] Contributor
Chris Wirz [CW] Administrative Coordinator
Annie Ayres [AA] Administrative Assistant
Adam Schwartz [AS] Administrative Assistant

For information on additional contributors, see the Internet Scout staff page.