Highlighting Digital Collections

In an effort to provide greater accessibility and wider access libraries, museums, and historical sites are frequently digitalizing their collections. This provides access worldwide to specialized resources and allows for archival documents to be viewed without handling or environmental damage.

National Museum of American History: Stories of Freedom and Justice
http://americanhistory.si.edu/freedomandjustice/
In 1960, a group of four African American men sat at the lunch counter in the Woolworth's store in Greensboro, North Carolina and refused to leave when asked. It was an important moment in the growing civil rights movement, and it is the event which serves as the inspiration for this site created by the National Museum of American History. The theme of the site is "Freedom and Justice", and the site contains a frequently updated blog, webcasts, news updates, and an event calendar.

British Museum: A catalogue of the Russian icons in the British Museum
http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/online_research_catalogues/russian_icons/catalogue_of_russian_icons.aspx
The British Museum has been beefing up their online research catalog offerings as of late, and this work contains 72 of the Museum's Russian icons. To gain a sense of the context and history of this collection, start by reading the short "Preface". Searching the "All objects" area will reveal thumbnail sketches of all the icons.

NYPL Digital Gallery: Turn of the Century Posters
http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/explore/dgexplore.cfm?topic=printing&col_id=212
Anna Palmer Draper collected hundreds of posters during her lifetime, and when she passed away in 1914, her will indicated that they would go to the New York Public Library. They did, and in the 1930s and 1940s library staff members mounted the posters on card stock and bound them into large volumes, alphabetically by artist. Many of them are now available on this site, and they represent a broad pastiche of magazine, book, and newspaper posters from the 1890s into the early 20th century.

Nickel Weeklies
http://drc.library.bgsu.edu/handle/2374.BGSU/744
A century or so, a nickel could buy a lot of entertainment. One such form of entertainment was the nickel weekly, which featured tales of detectives, Wild West characters, and evil villains. Bowling Green State University has created this thoroughly delightful digital collection of nickel weeklies for consumption by the general public. This collection includes 221 nickel weeklies, and visitors can browse these offerings by title, date, or author. Visitors can zoom in on the cover page of each weekly, or they may also download each title and view them at another more convenient moment.

New Mexico Museum of Art
http://www.nmartmuseum.org/
Renamed in 2007, the New Mexico Museum of Art (NMMoA) has built a collection of more than 20,000 works of art in its 1917 Pueblo style building in Santa Fe. The Museum's collecting focus has always been art of the Southwest in general and New Mexico in particular, by artists who have worked, lived, or been influenced by travel through the area. The Southwest is widely known as an area of great natural beauty, inspiring artists from all over the world. A variety of cultures have collided and commingled in New Mexico; Native Americans, settlers of European descent, more recently established landowners and tourists - and this cultural heritage is all apparent in the NMMoA collection.

>From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2010. http://scout.wisc.edu/

Websites of Note

Envisioning Climate Change Using a Global Climate Model
http://serc.carleton.edu/eet/envisioningclimatechange/
How do climatologists and others model climate change? This educational activity is offered as part of the Earth Exploration Toolbook, which is an initiative of the Science Education Resource Center (SERC) at Carleton College. This interactive "chapter" from the Toolbook was added in January 2010, and it allows users to "visualize how temperature and snow coverage might change over the next 100 years." Through these activities users will "gain a greater understanding and appreciation of the process and power of climate modeling."

Playing to Win: American Sports & Athletes on Stamps
http://arago.si.edu/flash/?slide=1|eid=411|s1=6|
The Smithsonian National Postal Museum has profiled a wide swath of American life on stamps over the years, and this latest online exhibit looks at American sports and athletes on stamps. The collection was created by Alexander Haimann, and it features dozens of unique and compelling stamps, including the 3-cent stamp issued to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the creation of baseball by Abner Doubleday in Cooperstown, New York. There is complete information for each stamp, including material on when the stamp was issued.

Looking Glass for the Mind: 350 Years of Books for Children
http://content.lib.washington.edu/childrensweb/exhibit.html
The University of Washington Digital Collection of children's books touches on the beloved memories children's books bring back for so many. Children's books can teach printing and book illustration history, the "study of the gradual changes in familiar tales to reflect changes in societal acceptance and sensibilities," social and ethnic history, the historical role of women, and shifting views on education. The "Index" of topics that the books cover includes "Fables", "Grammar, Spelling, Elocution & Rhetoric", "Math & Money", "Activity Books", and "Prejudice & Bigotry".

>From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2010.http://scout.wisc.edu/

Recommended Sources Online

College costs are rising and this US News & World Report article outlines how to budget for these costs and includes a list of institutions that claim to meet student's financial needs.
Bigger Tuition Bills and Student Loans Coming in 2011

Large Black Hole Discovered in Another Gallery. See photos at Science Oxford Online.

What do math and Alice in Wonderland have in common? Read the American Mathematical society's Math in the Media. >From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2010. http://scout.wisc.edu/

Vancouver 2010

The games are on in Vancouver! Check out information about the Olympics with this Winter Olympics Trivia by Gerry Brown, John Gettings, Mike Morrison, and Catherine McNiff of InfoPlease.com, or through materials at PCL.

Freestyle Skiing
The word "mogul" comes from the Austrian word "mugel," which means "small hill" or "mound."

Figure Skating
The men's 2006 gold medal winner, Russian Yevgeny Plushenko, is the first skater in history to successfully land a quad-triple-triple jump combination in competition. Canadian Kevin Reynolds, 17, achieved the feat in 2008.

Curling
Curling is one of four winter Olympic sports contested indoors. The other three are hockey, figure skating, and speed skating.

Luge
German luge master Georg Hackl is the only athlete to medal in the same event in five straight games.

Nordic Combined
Nordic combined is one of two current Olympic Winter Games events in which the United States has never won a medal. (Biathlon is the other.)

Snowboarding
According to the National Sporting Goods Association, U.S. consumers spent $309 million on snowboarding equipment in 2008. That's more than hockey and football equipment combined ($249 million).

Skeleton
American Jennison Heaton won the first skeleton gold medal in 1928, beating his brother John, who took the silver, by one second. John Heaton, at age 39, went on to win the silver again in 1948, finishing second to Italy's Nino Bibbia. American Jim Shea, Jr., won the men's gold in the 2002 return of the sport to the Olympics. The 2002 Salt Lake City Games also witnessed the debut of women's skeleton.

Ice Hockey
Ice hockey made its Olympic debut at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp, Belgium. The first Winter Olympics didn't take place until 1924.

Speed Skating
At the 2006 Turin Olympics, American Shani Davis became the first African-American athlete to win gold in an individual event, the 1,000 m. He also took home silver in the 1,500 m event. Davis is the tallest American speed skater, standing at 6'2" tall.

Alpine Skiing
American skier Lindsey Vonn was awarded a cow by local dairy farmers for her World Cup win in Val D'Isere, France, in 2005. She had a choice between the cow or an additional $1,200 in prize money. She went with the cow.

Biathlon
The first known biathlon competition took place between two Norwegian guard companies in 1767.

Bobsled
It's been 22 years since the Jamaican bobsled team made its debut at the Olympics.

Ski Jumping
The oldest man to receive a Winter Olympics medal is 83-year-old Anders Haugen. The Norwegian-American actually received his ski jump bronze medal 50 years after he competed in 1924 when a scoring error was discovered in 1974.

Winter Olympics Through the Years
The Shea Family of Lake Placid, New York, is the first to produce three generations of Olympians. Father Jack, 91, was a double-gold medalist in speed skating, son Jim, Sr., was a U.S. ski team member at the 1964 Innsbruck Games, and in 2002 grandson Jim, Jr., won a gold medal in skeleton.

All-Time Medal Standings
Only two countries south of the equator have ever won medals at the Olympic Winter Games—Australia and New Zealand.

Wisconsin
Legends Eric Heiden and Dan Jansen , as well as current stars Chris Witty and Casey FitzRandolph, are from the same U.S. state, Wisconsin.

Norway
Norway has won more gold medals at the Winter Games than any other country.

Olympic Materials at PCL
A basic guide to skiing and snowboarding
Figure skating's greatest stars
Snowboarding : learning to ride from all-mountain to park and pipe
A basic guide to ice hockey
The boys of winter : the untold story of a coach, a dream, and the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team
The complete book of the Winter Olympics

Research Tips

Written by two college professors,Lynn F. Jacobs & Jeremy S. Hyman, this list of research strategies and techniques explains the many types of information resources available at the library.

http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/professors-guide/2010/02/10/writing-a-paper-try-these-7-research-tips.html

Notable web pages for this week

FRONTLINE: Digital Nation

Frontline has created a fascinating website to accompany its television broadcast of the documentary Digital Nation. The website includes a producer's blog, as well as the ability to "Watch Online", the 90-minute video, and then read a roundtable discussion by some of the participants in the film. The topics include "Living Faster", "Waging War", and "Virtual Worlds". Notable is the brief video called "Your Brain on Google", which compares a brain scan of a person when reading a book to when they are using Google. The results are surprising.

The Secrets of Tomb10A: Egypt 2000 BC

The Museum of Fine Arts Boston offers a virtual tour of Tomb10A in Deir-el-Bersha, the final resting place of Djehutynakht, a provincial governor in Middle Kingdom Egypt, the period from 2010 - 1961 B.C. In 1915, archaeologists associated with the Museum spent a summer excavating the tomb and discovered possibly the largest assemblage of burial artifacts from the Middle Kingdom period. The find included jewelry, walking sticks, a huge collection of model boats, architectural miniatures, Djehutynakht's coffin, and a mummified head, that might be Djehutynakht's. This web exhibition includes contemporary and historic photographs of the tomb site and the results of CT scans of the head. There is also a section of zoom-able images of the coffin and the boats.

The summaries of the above two sites have been provided by the Internet Scout Project

Another site which may be valuable to readers in light of the present economy is GoBankingRates.com. Current rates can be easily compared and links are provided to many financial institution sites. Information is available on topics such as banking, investments, mortgages, investments, credit cards, loans, retirement, and debt. Especially useful at this time of year are the writings offered on filing taxes.

Recommendations from the Internet Scout Project

Online Resources courtesy of the Internet Scout Project

Cool Science
(http://www.hhmi.org/coolscience/index.html)-a resource from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute contains educational science activities sorted by subject matter and academic level.

U.S. Geological Survey Photographic Library
http://libraryphoto.cr.usgs.gov/
Contains 30,000 photographs taken by the U.S. Geological Survey from 1868 to the present, many of these images never published. Subject areas include "Earthquakes", "Mines, Mills, Quarries", and "Mount St. Helens". Visitors can also perform basic keyword searches, and they might wish to try out words like "dolomite", "karst", or "Colorado". Also, the site has an excellent "Portrait Gallery” containing images of famed geological pioneers.

Nature Online Video Streaming Archive
http://www.nature.com/nature/videoarchive/index.html
Nature is an international, interdisciplinary, weekly peer-reviewed journal of science that has an impressive website that conveys its information in written, audio or video formats. The video offerings here "feature interviews with scientists, behind the research, and analysis from Nature editors."