• General Information
• Mar 07
• Issue: 210

What's Up on the Web?

It's March which means, among other things, that we're entering that final push of the school year. As librarians, we're helping students at all levels in our school, academic and public libraries with their research papers, projects and other learning activities. If you haven't looked at The Scout Report http://scout.wisc.edu/ in a while, this might be a good time to do so. Since 1994, this weekly publication from the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Internet Scout Project has highlighted high-quality resources on the Internet and Web that serve academic, professional and personal learning interests. Each issue categorizes resources as follows: "Research and Education," "General Interest," "Network Tools," and "In the News."

Below is a sampling of the eclectic array of resources highlighted in two recent issues (February 9, 2007, and February 16, 2007). You'll notice that many of these resources happen to originate from educational and cultural institutions in New York State!

Aviation: From Sand Dunes to Sonic Booms http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/travel/aviation/: Thinking about places to visit on your summer vacation this year? The Scout Report provides some ideas with its review of this National Register (of Historic Places) Travel Itineraries site, produced by the National Park Service. The aviation site lists destinations throughout the United States that relate in some way to the history of aviation. Numerous other itineraries are available on a variety of topics, and can be located by geographic region, state and topic from the itineraries home page at http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/travel/.

Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, Educator Resource Center http://www.educatorresourcecenter.org: This online resource offered by the physical museum located in New York City provides detailed lesson plans for K-12 educators that address a variety of design topics, school subject areas and learning standards. Lists of books, articles and curriculum guides, and web-accessible resources are also available.

Ending Oil Dependence http://www.brookings.edu/views/papers/fellows/sandalow20070122.pdf: This is a 27-page paper by David Sandalow, Energy and Environment Scholar at The Brookings Institution, and it's available in PDF format from the Brookings web site. To read The Scout Report summary and review, go to http://www.scout.wisc.edu/Reports/ScoutReport/2007/scout-070216-re.php#4.

GeroNurseOnline.org http://www.geronurseonline.org: From the American Nurses Association (ANA) and the John A. Hartford Foundation Institute for Geriatric Nursing at the New York University College of Nursing, this web site primarily serves the needs of nursing educators, students and practitioners, but it could also be informative for those with a personal interest in geriatric care. The Scout Report specifically focuses on the assessment tools section of GeroNurseOnline.org, accessible in the "Resources" area of the web site, which offers numerous PDF documents that help with evaluating various conditions (e.g., nutrition, hearing, caregiver strain).

Met Archives: The Metropolitan Opera http://www.metoperafamily.org/metopera/history/: Would you like to know how many times Luciano Pavarotti has performed at New York's Metropolitan Opera? Would you like to hear sound clips of Met performers? These resources and more, including opera plot summaries, cast lists and reviews, are available via this multimedia archive.

NYPL Digital Gallery: Turn of the Century Posters http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/explore/dgexplore.cfm?col_id=212: The Scout Report chose to highlight this particular section of the New York Public Library's Digital Gallery that contains digitized images of American posters from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. However, once in the gallery, you can't help but browse the entire site which contains over 500,000 digitized images from NYPL collections. The gallery is searchable via a variety of ways including broad subject areas that group various NYPL collections (e.g. Ellis Island photographs in the "History and Geography" section). The images are freely downloadable for personal, research and study purposes. You can also purchase prints of the images and even buy coffee mugs, mouse pads, note cards and t-shirts that have images imprinted on them. The home page for the NYPL Digital Gallery is http://digitalgallery.nypl.org.

Privacy Rights Clearinghouse http://www.privacyrights.org/: This is a nonprofit consumer information and advocacy organization based in San Diego, Calif. The web site is contentrich with fact sheets, speeches, articles and other types of information covering such topics as background checks and other workplace privacy issues, financial privacy, Internet privacy, and medical records.

The Scout Report also offers weekly "Network Tools" and "In the News" sections that can help you keep abreast of emerging technologies and timely online resources. In addition, The Scout Report provides links to all previous issues back to its origins in 1994 and offers a searchable archive as well.

[Ann Gunning, Member Services Librarian, Nylink]