November 4, 2009
Traveler’s in the Middle East Archive (TIMEA)
Supported by Rice Universty, The Ken Kennedy Institute for Information Technology and The Institute of Museum and Library Services TIMEA includes a collection of images, texts and maps documenting European and American travels to Egypt in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This collection is a good source of primary documents and includes photographs, book illustrations, postcards, stereographs, museum and exhibition catalogues, travel guides, travel narratives and cultural studies of Egypt and Cairo. The site includes difficult to find material that would be useful to students and researchers interested in Western interactions with the Middle East during this time. The site may be searched by title, place name, creator, date range or broad subject categories, such as: Art and Artifacts, History and Politics, and Religion and Festivals.
Check it out! TIMEA
November 3, 2009
American Rhetoric
The American Rhetoric website is a perfect source for a student researching a specific historical speech, or for an orator looking for a speech to present during a competitive performance.
Holding more than 5000 speeches, this resource provides access to all types of documented formal speech including: public and legal oratories, lectures, debates, interviews and various high-profile media events. (for example, Academy Award Speeches).
The speech bank is arranged alphabetically by speaker and contemporary speeches include an audio mp3 of the address, as well as the text in both PDF and Flash formats. Youtube links are often included too.
The top 100 American Political speeches are available and a section for scholars defines rhetorical terms and devices and also lists academic journals and associations.
A few of the notables included in this speech bank are: Malcolm X, Mark Twain, Sarah Palin, Oprah, The Scopes monkey trial, etc.
October 31, 2009
Happy Halloween!!
According to the Library of Congress American Folklife Center, Halloween began as an ancient, pre-Christian Celtic festival of the dead. The Celtic peoples divided the year by four major holidays. According to their calendar, the year began on a day corresponding to November 1st on our present calendar. This date marked the beginning of winter. The date marked both an ending and a beginning in an eternal cycle.
The festival observed at this time was called Samhain (pronounced Sah-ween). The Celts believed that at the time of Samhain the ghosts of the dead were able to mingle with the living, because at Samhain the souls of those who had died during the year traveled into the otherworld. People gathered to sacrifice animals, fruits, and vegetables. They also lit bonfires in honor of the dead, to aid them on their journey, and to keep them away from the living. On that day all manner of beings were abroad: ghosts, fairies, and demons–all part of the dark and dread.
When Christian missionaries arrived, they attempted to put an end to pagan rituals and ceremonies.The Christian feast of All Saints was assigned to November 1st. The day honored every Christian saint, especially those that did not otherwise have a special day devoted to them. This feast day was meant to substitute for Samhain, to draw the devotion of the Celtic peoples, and, finally, to replace it forever. That did not happen, but the traditional Celtic deities diminished in status, becoming fairies or leprechauns of more recent traditions. Check out this page on the Folklore and Fantasy of Halloween at the Library of Congress for more information.
Looking for some ghost stories to read this Halloween? Check out the American Folklore page and find scary stories online.
Are scary movies your thing? Look at this list of the Top 50 Scary Movies, compiled by the Boston Globe.
However you decide to celebrate this Halloween, have a safe and fun Halloween week-end!!
October 30, 2009
Copyright and Plagiarism video tutorials
Northern Kentucky University film students have collaborated with the school’s W. Frank Steely Library to unveil Creative Thinking, an educational copyright and plagiarism website for junior high through
freshman college students.
The Creative Thinking website provides both original film stories and factual expert speaker films to teach students about the complexities of copyright and the ethics of plagiarism.
Check out the Creative Thinking Films. The site also includes student activities to enhance the lessons taught in the videos.
October 27, 2009
Great Issues Forum
The Great Issues Forum is sponsored by the Graduate Center of the City University of New York; the CUNY Chancellor’s Office and the Carnegie Coroporation of New York. This is a FREE! online lecture series and blog for the academic community.
One reviewer states that taken as a whole, this intuitive, efficient site offers quality, in-depth discussions on philosophical questions that relate to the contemporary world. It would be especially useful to college-level faculty members looking for sources of discussion and analysis on one of the highlighted topics [politics, economy, military, education, culture].
Each year, a theme is chosen and several forums are held on this topic. Last year’s theme was power and included forums on educational power, military power, economic power, etc. This year’s theme is religion. The video forums are archived and available for later viewing. If a user registers, it is also possible to view the forum online in real time.
October 21, 2009
Vanderbilt Television News Archive
History students and scholars take note! The Vanderbilt Television News Archive encompasses the world’s most extensive and complete television news archive.
Dating back to 1968, the archive spans the presidential administrations of Lyndon Baines Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. The collection includes evening news broadcasts from ABC, CBS, and NBC (since 1968), an hour per day of CNN (since 1995) and Fox News (since 2004). Special news broadcasts found in the Archive include political conventions, presidential speeches and press conferences, Watergate hearings, coverage of the Persian Gulf War, the events of September 11, 2001, the War in Afghanistan, and the War in Iraq.
Non-subscribers will need to complete a brief registration form to search the database. There is currently no charge for searching the database of news abstracts and broadcast descriptions.
Check it out!
October 20, 2009
New! Encyclopedia of Life
The Encyclopedia of Life is presented as:
“an unprecedented global partnership between the scientific community and the general public.”
The goal of this resource is to make freely available to anyone knowledge about all the world’s organisms. Anybody can register as an EOL member and add text, images, videos, comments or tags to the EOL pages. Expert curators ensure quality of the core collection by authenticating materials submitted by diverse projects and individual contributors. The EOL is a work in progress, but over time will present a comprehensive resource for all of the organisms of the world.
A few things to note:
* The administrators of the EOL site are committed to providing information for free, with as few restrictions on re-use as possible. Therefore all information you shared with EOL must also be shared with the rest of the world under a creative commons license that allows for the creation of derivative works.
* Visitors are urged to cite and visit the original sources and to credit the original source.
Institutional partners in this collaboration include:
The Biodiversity Heritage Library
The Field Museum of Natural History
Harvard University
Marine Biological Laboratory
Missouri Botanical Garden
Smithsonian Institution
And many others.
October 13, 2009
Spezify
Spezify is a search tool presenting results from a large number of websites in different visual ways.
Spezify takes your web search a step further, away from endless lists of blue text links and towards a more intuitive experience.
This can give a more diverse overview of a subject.
Spezify mixes all media types and does not distinguish
between blogs, videos, microblogs and images.
Everything communicates and helps in building the bigger picture.
Spezify works like Google, but instead of returning lists of webpage names and descriptions when you enter a search term, it supplies you with visual results.
Check it out here:
http://www.spezify.com/
Vincent Van Gogh: The Letters
Vincent Van Gogh: The Letters is a digital edition of all extant letters from and to Vincent van Gogh. For each of the 902 letters the site gives a transcription of the original Dutch or French, a translation into English, a full (zoomable) facsimile, comprehensive annotation, and illustrations (about 2000 in all) of the works of art discussed in the letters and annotations. The site includes a searchable list of all of the correspondents, as well as a concordance and a bibliography. You can search the site by time period, correspondent, place or with sketches. A keyword search of the entire site, as well as of each letter, is also available.
Check out the site at this address:
http://www.vangoghletters.org/vg/<a
October 9, 2009
Flickr at Library of Congress
The Library of Congress has added another year’s worth of historic illustrated newspaper pages to the LC Flickr photostream. The New-York Tribune Illustrated Supplement section of 1905, printed on Sundays, includes published images of signature events of 1905, including: Russian peasants in revolt, dog shows, balloon animals, sculpted shrubbery, and more….In Flickr, you can tag it, add a note, share it….and even read more about it! Check it out: