Monday, October 31, 2005

All Hallows Eve

The History of Halloween, traced from its origins in the "ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in)" to modern trick-or-treat, jack-o'-lantern, costume, and party activities. Includes creepy video clips, ghost stories, information about pumpkins, White House hauntings, and recipes.

Sunday, October 30, 2005

Gender Lines

Women's Human Rights Resources, the issues included at this site are education, equality, feminist theory, health, labor and employment, marriage and family, political rights, property law, housing, prostitution, race and gender, religion, and violence. Each topic areas has articles with citations (most are annotated) of published scholarly materials; documents with abstracts (some full-text) of cases, UN publications, reports from nongovernmental organizations, international conventions and treaties, and annotated links.

Saturday, October 29, 2005

Informed Investor

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) protects investors and maintains the integrity of the securities markets. Its site offers the SEC's Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval (EDGAR) database, which contains reports the SEC requires companies to file, and a tutorial for using it. Other sections include ways to check on brokers and financial advisors, news of litigation, online trading and Internet fraud, trading suspensions, regulatory actions, staff interpretations of disclosure practices, and information for small business.

Friday, October 28, 2005

Population Explosion

World Population Data Sheet includes the "latest population estimates, projections, and other key indicators for 200 countries, including births, deaths, natural increase, infant mortality, total fertility, life expectancy, urban population, HIV/AIDS prevalence, contraceptive use, GNI PPP per capita, land area, and population per square mile." Figures available by country or region. The site is produced by the Population Reference Bureau (PRB).

Thursday, October 27, 2005

The Final Frontier

National Space Science Data Center provides access to a wide variety of data from NASA space flight missions for astrophysics, space and solar physics, and lunar and earth sciences. The Photo Gallery has pictures of planets, stars, and spacecraft and the Image Catalog those of planets and comets. The General Public Page leads to a chronology of lunar and planetary exploration and fact sheets on each planet.

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Rockin' Robin

Audubon's Birds of America presents the online version of John James Audubon's Birds of America. It is from an 1840 "First Octavo Edition" of Audubon's complete seven volume text, and presents Audubon's images and original text descriptions. Bird species can be found listed alphabetically, or categorized by family. Audubon's drawings of some species' anatomical features are also included in the "Figures" section.

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Rome Around

The Nolli Map Web Site presents the 1748 Nolli map of Rome as a dynamic, interactive, hands-on tool. The public now has access to cataloged information about the map in both written and graphical form. The map not only provides rich information, but it has the ability to be updated with new data over time to embrace expanding knowledge.

Monday, October 24, 2005

Hot House

The Monthly Climatic Data for the World is a site that "contains monthly mean temperature, pressure, precipitation, vapor pressure, and hours of sunshine for approximately 2,000 surface data collection stations worldwide and monthly mean upper air temperatures, dew point depressions, and wind velocities for approximately 500 observing sites. This is the final quality controlled copy and generally has a 4-6 month time lag." Browsable by date back to 1948. From the National Climatic Data Center.

Sunday, October 23, 2005

Going By The Book

U.S. Government Manual, 2005-2006 Edition. "The United States Government Manual provides comprehensive information on the agencies of the legislative, judicial, and executive branches. It also includes information on quasi-official agencies; international organizations; and boards, commissions, and committees.

Saturday, October 22, 2005

Corporate Takeover

Top 100 Global Brands Scoreboard. "The table that follows ranks 100 global brands that have a value greater than $1 billion. The brands were selected according to two criteria. They had to be global in nature, deriving 20% or more of sales from outside their home country. There also had to be publicly available marketing and financial data on which to base the valuation."

Friday, October 21, 2005

World Demographics

The International Data Base (IDB) is a computerized database "containing statistical tables of demographic, and socio-economic data for 227 countries and areas of the world." Combines data from country sources (especially censuses and surveys) with IPC's estimates and projections to provide information dating back as far as 1950 and as far ahead as 2050 (the amount of information available for each country may vary.) Includes data such as: population, vital statistics, migration, fertility, literacy, ethnicity, religion, languages, and labor force. From the U.S. Census Bureau's International Programs Center.

Thursday, October 20, 2005

Hazardous Area

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA): Enviromapper. This tool "allows you to generate maps of your geographic area that contain environmental information stored in EPA's Envirofacts Warehouse. The type of environmental information includes: Superfund sites, drinking water, toxic and air releases, hazardous waste, and water discharge permits. You can also view this information in context by adding map features to your map," such as churches, schools, and hospitals.

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Return On Investment

"The Doing Business Database provides objective measures of business regulations and their enforcement. The Doing Business indicators are comparable across 155 economies. They indicate the regulatory costs of business and can be used to analyze specific regulations that enhance or constrain investment, productivity and growth." Use dropdown menus to generate a report about the business environment in a specific country or how countries compare on variable such as starting a business, hiring and firing employees, taxation, contracts and more.

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

Witch Hunt

Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive. The Salem witchcraft events began in late February 1692 and lasted through April, 1693. All told, at least twenty-five people died: nineteen were executed by hanging, one was tortured to death, and at least five died in jail due to harsh conditions. Over 160 people were accused of witchcraft, most were jailed, and many deprived of property and legal rights. Accused persons lived in the town of Salem and Salem Village (now Danvers) and in two dozen other towns in eastern Massachusetts Bay Colony. Nearly fifty people confessed to witchcraft, most to save themselves from immediate trial.

Monday, October 17, 2005

20/20 Search

The WebLens Search Portal provides easy access to almost 5,000 Internet research tools and resources! WebLens features links to thousands of popular search engines, metasearchers, guides and directories. We've got beginner's tutorials and Net search tips & tricks. Resources for fighting viruses and for locating music, images, and recipes. Tools for finding people, companies, and jobs. Aids for researching travel, health, investing, and more. Links to dozens of online reference tools like dictionaries, encyclopedias, thesauruses, and more. Canadian sites. Resources for writers, women and seniors.

Sunday, October 16, 2005

The Da Vinci Codex

Search and analyze the Leonardo Da Vinci Notebooks in a free searchable eBook. Da Vinci's Notebooks contain thoughts, ideas, and tips from this amazing thinker. The Notebooks are over 1,500 pages filled with all sorts of information. It's not a page-turning novel, but a fascinating glimpse into the mind of one of history's great figures.

Saturday, October 15, 2005

Sociological Redistricting

The CommonCensus Map Project is redrawing the map of the United States based on your voting, to show how the country is organized culturally, as opposed to traditional political boundaries. It shows how the country is divided into 'spheres of influence' between different cities at the national, regional, and local levels. The first map has been produced, based on the first 4,000 votes.

Friday, October 14, 2005

Billions And Billions Of Stars

An Atlas of the Universe consists of nine main maps of the universe, ranging from the nearest stars to the sun, out to the limits of the visible universe. Each main map page contains a description of the map, as well as other, related maps. The main map images can be printed. There are extensive annotated links to related Web sites and a glossary.

Thursday, October 13, 2005

By Any Other Name

With the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names you can search over a million place names, representing approximately 900,000 physical or political entities, including continents, rivers, mountains, empires, nations, states, districts, townships, cities, and neighborhoods. Includes vernacular, English, and historical names; variant names in other languages; coordinates; and additional information. Many place names feature short notes describing when the name was used (for example, in medieval or Roman times).

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Your Huddled Masses

The UC Atlas of Global Inequality "The Atlas explores the interaction between global integration (globalization) and inequality and provides maps, graphics and data." The site is searchable by keyword; and browsable by country and region, topic (economy, education, gender, health, population, technology and media), and year (1960 through 2000). The Atlas includes a glossary of related terms, and a bibliography. From the Center for Global, International and Regional Studies (CGIRS), University of California, Santa Cruz.

Tuesday, October 11, 2005

Womens Work

Women Working from 1870-1930 this site "Provides access to digitized historical, manuscript, and image resources selected from Harvard's library and museum collections. The collection explores women's roles in the US economy between the Civil War and the Great Depression. Working conditions, conditions in the home, costs of living, recreation, health and hygiene, conduct of life, policies and regulations governing the workplace, and social issues are all well documented." Thousands of items are searchable, or browsable by topic, individual, dates and events, or organization.

Monday, October 10, 2005

A Day Like Any Other

BBC: On This Day is a site that highlights worldwide historical events using audio and video clips from the archives of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). You can browse events by date, year (1950 to present), or by themes such as conflicts and wars, disasters, science, and royalty. The site also includes access to eye witness accounts and reports from specific BBC correspondents.

Sunday, October 09, 2005

By The Bay

The ABAG Data Center provides "selected data from ... reports from the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG), along with data from other government sources." The site includes maps, U.S. Census data, and other resources for San Francisco Bay Area population and demographics. The data examines jobs, trade, real estate and housing, retail sales and cost of living, and land use.

Saturday, October 08, 2005

Find Your Voice

The Play Database contains over 12,000 plays, 5,000 writers, and 300 monologues "that can be searched realistically — not just by title or author, but by the parameters that count — cast size, length, synopsis, and more." Profiles of plays feature a synopsis and details such as genre, number of characters, and royalty costs. The play profiles are submitted by users.

Friday, October 07, 2005

X Marks The Spot

The complete collection of maps from Deadly Arsenal: Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Threats by Joseph Cirincione, Jon B. Wolfsthal, and Miriam Rajkumar is now available online. Included in the collection are maps that reflect the worldwide proliferation of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and their missile delivery systems. Additionally, country maps show the major nuclear installations, both civilian and military, in each country.

Thursday, October 06, 2005

Show Me The Money

SourceWatch, a collaborative project of the Center for Media and Democracy to produce a directory of the people, organizations and issues shaping the public agenda. SourceWatch's primary focus is on documenting public relations firms, think tanks, industry-funded organizations and industry-friendly experts that work to influence public opinion and public policy on behalf of corporations, governments and special interests. SourceWatch began as the "Disinfopedia" in February 2003. In January 2005 the name was changed to SourceWatch. Contributors are now working on 7,846 articles. In the last twelve months SourceWatch has served approximately 15 million pages to users.

Wednesday, October 05, 2005

CineFiles

Pacific Film Archive (PFA) contains calendar and notes on films currently being screened as well as CineFiles, a "database of reviews, press kits, festival and showcase program notes, newspaper articles, and other documents from the Pacific Film Archive Library's clippings files. The files contain documents from a broad range of sources covering world cinema, past and present." Also has the Past PFA (Pacific Film Archive) Film Notes which contains "Over 14,000 critical and historical texts about films shown at PFA from 1979 to the present, many ... constituting unique documentation of rare films." This information is from the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, University of California, Berkeley.

Tuesday, October 04, 2005

Neither Confirm Nor Deny

The National Security Archive is an independent non-governmental research institute and library located at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The Archive collects and publishes declassified documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The Archive's holdings include more than two million pages of accessioned material in over 200 separate collections. National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Books provide online access to critical declassified records on issues including the subject areas of Europe, Latin America, Nuclear History, China and East Asia, U.S. Intelligence, Middle East and South Asia, The September 11th Sourcebooks, Humanitarian Interventions and Government Secrecy.

Monday, October 03, 2005

Text Editor

The Classic Computer Magazine Archive presents the full text of early personal computing magazines, including images and advertisements. Includes dozens of issues from the 1970s to the early 1990s from Antic, STart, Hi-Res, Creative Computing, Creative Computing Video and Arcade Games, Compute!, and Tandy Computer Whiz Kids. Also includes brief biographies of Antic and STart writers.

Sunday, October 02, 2005

Gold Mine

Online Archive of California (OAC) is "a digital information resource that facilitates and provides access to materials such as manuscripts, photographs, and works of art held in libraries, museums, archives, and other institutions across California." This includes a searchable database of finding aids such as "detailed descriptions of collections, their intellectual organization and, at varying levels of analysis, of individual items in the collections".

Saturday, October 01, 2005

Central American Biodiversity

Between 1879 and 1915, two editors published a series they called Biologia Centrali-Americana, a catalog of the plants and animals of Mexico and Central America. Over fifty volumes with over 50,000 descriptions and 18,000 images, this astonishing work "contained nearly everything known" of the region's biodiversity at the time of its publication.