DrWeb's Domain

HathiTrust Launching Full-Text Library of Books

HathiTrust Launching Full-Text Library of Books
by Barbara Quint
Posted On October 22, 2009

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With all the controversy still swirling around Google Books and its post-settlement offerings, an alternative route to the millions of digitized books and journals supplied by leading Google Book Search library partners has arrived. The HathiTrust (www.hathitrust.org) is a collaboration of 25 research libraries already participating in Google Book Search to produce a shared digital repository for preservation and access to a curated collection. By mid-November, the HathiTrust Digital Library will have a full-featured, full-text search service for 4.3-5 million items. The searches will retrieve bibliographic citations and page references, including those for in-copyright books. Content will extend beyond the digitized copies of books returned to early library partners by Google. HathiTrust is pushing to acquire other digitized special collections from its members, as well as making arrangements for opening access to university press books.

via newsbreaks.infotoday.com

Academic Earth - Video lectures from the world's top scholars

Academic Earth - Video lectures from the world's top scholars.

Academic Earth

"Academic Earth is an organization founded with the goal of giving everyone on earth access to a world-class education.

"As more and more high quality educational content becomes available online for free, we ask ourselves, what are the real barriers to achieving a world class education?  At Academic Earth, we are working to identify these barriers and find innovative ways to use technology to increase the ease of learning.

"We are building a user-friendly educational ecosystem that will give internet users around the world the ability to easily find, interact with, and learn from full video courses and lectures from the world’s leading scholars.  Our goal is to bring the best content together in one place and create an environment in which that content is remarkably easy to use and where user contributions make existing content increasingly valuable.

"We invite those who share our passion to explore our website, participate in our online community, and help us continue to find new ways to make learning easier for everyone."

Source: The site's About Us page

Really amazing site, videos or podcasts (audio) of great universities in the U.S. (so far) like Stanford and Harvard, lectures on general subjects.. there's a fantastic non-classroom education here...

Officer Krupke, You’re Historically Precise - City Room Blog - NYTimes.com

Officer Krupke, You’re Historically Precise - City Room Blog - NYTimes.com.

February 26, 2009, 10:30 am
Officer Krupke, You’re Historically Precise
By Ralph Blumenthal

Here’s a real New York detective story — or actually, more of a police officer story. A sergeant story. Sergeant Krupke, to be exact, and the search for his perfect 1950s uniform. You remember Officer Krupke. He’s the hapless foil for the high-spirited gang of teenagers of “West Side Story” and the target of a celebrated quasi-profane lyric that sent us all into conniptions way back before actual profanity got much of a hearing in public.
...
Next, Mr. Zecker headed for the picture collections of the New York Public Library, where he tracked down some photos of New York’s finest in 1950s garb and proudly brought copies back for the costume designer, David C. Woolard. But his boss “wasn’t pleased,” Mr. Zecker recalled. The photos did not make clear enough exactly where the badge had to be worn and the bars on the collar.

voiceofsandiego.org: Science... Uncovering the Secrets of Kahn, da Vinci and Solomon's Mines

voiceofsandiego.org: Science... Uncovering the Secrets of Kahn, da Vinci and Solomon's Mines.

Uncovering the Secrets of Kahn, da Vinci and Solomon's Mines
By DAVID WASHBURN, Thursday, Dec. 18, 2008

[Photo caption] CISA3 researcher Maurizio Seracini demonstrates the world's highest resolution display, which he uses to digitally pull back the paint on some of Leonardo da Vinci's masterpieces, revealing the sketching beneath them. Photo: Sam Hodgson

Maurizio Seracini stands facing Leonardo da Vinci's "Adoration of the Magi," which is being displayed on a massive bank of 70 flat-screen monitors. Seracini holds what looks like a plastic gun. He points it at the masterwork and begins moving his arm in a circular motion.

On the screens, the brownish veneer of the painting is brushed away, and da Vinci's original drawings of a fight scene come into view. "We just went through the paint," he says. "This is a drawing never seen for 500 years -- this the real work of Leonardo."

Miró, Miró on the Wall - artnet Magazine

Miró, Miró on the Wall - artnet Magazine.

MIRÓ, MIRÓ ON THE WALL
by Charlie Finch

In the Paris of the 1920s, Ernest Hemingway often donned boxing gloves and duked it out with random opponents in a makeshift ring. After a time, a small man volunteered to be Hemingway’s corner man. After a few more bouts, Scott Fitzgerald pointed to the corner man, washing Ernest down with a sponge, and asked Hemingway, "Do you know who that is?"

"No," Hemingway replied.

"It’s Joan Miró."

In 1927 Miró was so destitute that he invited the surrealist Andre Masson over for lunch and fed him radishes and bread. Miró was an unlikely champion of surrealism, but he soon vowed to "take an axe to Picasso’s guitar" and was dubbed "the sardine tree" by Andre Breton. The short period of phrase-based art which Miró embarked upon forms the beginning of "Joan Miró 1927-1937: Painting and Anti-Painting," opening this weekend at the Museum of Modern Art.
...
"Joan Miró: Painting and Anti-Painting 1927–1937," Nov. 2, 2008-Jan. 12, 2009, at the Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53 Street, New York, N.Y. 10019.

The Fate of The Sentence: Is the Writing On the Wall? - washingtonpost.com

The Fate of The Sentence: Is the Writing On the Wall? - washingtonpost.com.

The Fate of The Sentence: Is the Writing On the Wall?
By Linton Weeks, Washington Post Staff Writer, Sunday, June 15, 2008; Page M01

The demise of orderly writing: signs everywhere.

One recent report, young Americans don't write well. In a survey, Internet language -- abbreviated wds, :) and txt msging -- seeping into academic writing.

But above all, what really scares a lot of scholars: the impending death of the English sentence.

Librarian of Congress James Billington, for one. "I see creeping inarticulateness," he says, and the demise of the basic component of human communication: the sentence.

Chapel Hill and Other Freshmen: A Look at the Classes of 1980 and 1981.

Chapel Hill and Other Freshmen: A Look at the Classes of 1980 and 1981..

ERIC #: ED167026
Title: Chapel Hill and Other Freshmen: A Look at the Classes of 1980 and 1981.
Authors: McCulley, P. Michael
Descriptors: College Freshmen; Educational Status Comparison; Higher Education; Institutional Research; Intercollegiate Cooperation; Research Projects; Statistical Studies; Student Attitudes; Student Characteristics; Surveys
Source: N/A
Peer-Reviewed: N/A
Publisher: N/A
Publication Date: 1978-04-00
Pages: 37
Pub Types: Reports - Research
Abstract: Data on freshmen at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are presented and compared to data of comparable institutions as part of the research of the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP). The study deals with the class of 1980 (enrolled, fall 1976) and the class of 1981 (enrolled, fall 1977). The two classes of entering freshmen are profiled using data submitted on state and federal reporting forms. The CIRP Freshman Survey data are presented in selected areas as a series of tables that allow comparisons of the class by sex with other freshmen populations entering in the same year. Data are shown by sex for each of the following groups: Chapel Hill freshmen, freshmen entering highly selective public universities, freshmen entering highly selective private universities, and freshmen entering all universities. Some brief highlights of the survey are noted in the text along with some comparisons between the classes of 1980 and 1981, and possible implications of the data for planning and decision making at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are presented. Suggestions for futher campus uses of the data obtained through the annual surveys are also offered. (SW)

Pretty nice to see this one, from my days at UNC Chapel Hill, working in South Building at the Office of Institutional Research (OIR).. I had two articles listed at ERCI, see the next post.. a trip down memory lane...

Pew Internet: Writing, Technology and Teens

Pew Internet: Writing, Technology and Teens.

Reports: Family, Friends & Community
Writing, Technology and Teens 4/24/2008

Teens write a lot, but they do not think of their emails, instant and text messages as writing. This disconnect matters because teens believe good writing is an essential skill for success and that more writing instruction at school would help them.
View PDF of Report
View PDF of Questionnaire

Library of Congress Announces 2007 Preservation List - Cinematical

Library of Congress Announces 2007 Preservation List - Cinematical.

Library of Congress Announces 2007 Preservation List
Posted Jan 1st 2008 2:02PM, by Richard von Busack
Filed under: Classics, Newsstand

Forget the Oscars, the new list is up of the 25 films inducted into the Library of Congress's National Film Board for 2007. Since 1992, the Library has been taking up 25 worthwhile films a year for preservation. Early reports focus on the more well-known, deserving films: Back to the Future (above), Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Oklahoma!, and Grand Hotel. Also on the list is 12 Angry Men, an early one by Before the Devil Knows Your Dead's Sidney Lumet, and the George Stevens/Laurence Olivier Wuthering Heights. Dances With Wolves and Days of Heaven, two American-as-all-get-out films, will now be safe in the vaults down in Culpeper, Virginia.

Another cool list of movies preserved forever, one hopes.. Loved seeing "Back to the Future" here, and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind".. check the list for one of your favorites...

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year 2007 | Merriam-Webster Online

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year 2007 | Merriam-Webster Online.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year 2007

Thousands of you took part in the search for Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year for 2007, and the vast majority of you chose a small word that packs a pretty big punch. The word you've selected hasn't found its way into a regular Merriam-Webster dictionary yet—but its inclusion in our online Open Dictionary, along with the top honors it's now been awarded—might just improve its chances. This year's winning word first became popular in competitive online gaming forums as part of what is known as l33t ("leet," or "elite") speak—an esoteric computer hacker language in which numbers and symbols are put together to look like letters. Although the double "o" in the word is usually represented by double zeroes, the exclamation is also known to be an acronym for "we owned the other team"—again stemming from the gaming community.

Merriam-Webster's #1 Word of the Year for 2007 based on votes from visitors to our Web site:

1. w00t (interjection)
expressing joy (it could be after a triumph, or for no reason at all); similar in use to the word "yay"

    w00t! I won the contest!     Submitted by: Kat from Massachusetts on Nov. 30, 2005 23:18

Click on each of the other words in the Top Ten List for their definitions in either Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary or Merriam-Webster's Open Dictionary:

2. facebook
3. conundrum
4. quixotic
5. blamestorm
6. sardoodledom
7. apathetic
8. Pecksniffian
9. hypocrite
10. charlatan

PopMatters Visual Arts Feature | The Lost Generation and the Art of Living

PopMatters Visual Arts Feature | The Lost Generation and the Art of Living.

The Lost Generation and the Art of Living
12 October 2007, by John Davidson

Sara and Gerald Murphy inspired an astonishing array of the century’s greatest writers and artists; they helped float, inspire, and otherwise sustain the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Picasso, Ferdinand Leger, Man Ray, Cole Porter, John Dos Passos and Dorothy Parker, to name but a few.

Think Making It New: The Art and Style of Sara and Gerald Murphy     Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts (8 July – 11 November 2007)
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut (26 February – 4 May 2008)
Dallas Museum of Art (8 June – 14 September 14 2008)

These days Sara and Gerald Murphy are best known as the models for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s protagonists in Tender Is The Night, while few, beyond the immediate realm of art critics, are familiar with Gerald’s career as a painter. Now, as its title suggests, Making It New: The Art and Style of Sara and Gerald Murphy at Williams College Museum of Art, in Williamstown, Massachusetts, seeks to recall the art and extraordinary lives of a golden expatriate American couple who stood at the centre of modernist European culture in the ‘20s and ‘30s.

In fact, Sara and Gerald Murphy inspired an astonishing array of the century’s greatest writers and artists. While indulging Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald’s childish antics, providing encouragement and financial assistance to Ernest Hemingway (who later rewarded them with paranoid vitriol in A Moveable Feast), they helped float, inspire, and otherwise sustain the likes of Picasso (whom Sara sketched at Cap d’Antibes), Ferdinand Leger, Man Ray, Cole Porter, John Dos Passos and Dorothy Parker, to name but a few.

Maps lead to a public jewel - The Boston Globe

Maps lead to a public jewel - The Boston Globe.

Maps lead to a public jewel
Donor's $10m gift lets library display priceless collection
By Thomas C. Palmer Jr., Globe Staff  |  September 6, 2007

Retired Boston developer and map aficionado Norman B. Leventhal is contributing $10 million for a permanent endowment of the Boston Public Library's map center, the library's largest gift ever.

In an announcement to be made at the library today, Leventhal, who built a significant piece of Boston's skyline and who last week turned 90, is also making a long-term loan to the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center of 178 of his most valuable historic maps of Boston, New England, and the world.

Leventhal and library executives created the center, now in several rooms open to the public only by appointment, about three years ago.

The Questia Online Library

The Questia Online Library.

The Questia Online Library
Over 5,000 free eBooks available online from Questia

From the publisher's site: "Read more than 5,000 books - for free. There's no doubt Questia is a world-class research tool, but our library is filled with some terrific classic and rare books.

"We figured our subscribers weren't the only ones interested in reading them, so we've made more than 5,000 books available for Free."

Top 10 Free Books

• A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
• Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
• The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
• Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
• Up from Slavery by Booker T. Washington
• Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
• The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Why libraries should offer popular fiction—in both print and e-book formats | TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Why libraries should offer popular fiction—in both print and e-book formats | TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home.

Why libraries should offer popular fiction—in both print and e-book formats
August 11, 2007 at 6:33 pm, by Isabelle Fetherston

In the 1890s, libraries were debating whether to provide fiction to their patrons. William Stevenson, the head librarian for the Carnegie Free Library of Allegheny, Pennsylvania, went to great lengths to remove popular fiction titles from his library.

“It is certainly not the function of the public library to foster the mind-weakening habit of novel-reading among the very classes—the uneducated, busy or idle—whom it is the duty of the public library to lift to a higher plane of thinking,” he said.

Horatio Alger tales weren’t “high” enough for him.

Even classics controversial in the 1890s
During Stevenson’s time, it was controversial for libraries to provide even classic works of literature.

As libraries moved into the 20th century, libraries offered fiction books but considered genre fiction to be inferior. Librarians often tried to convince people to read books that the librarian believed were either “good books” (classic literature) or of an educational nature.

Summer of Love: Art of the Psychedelic Era

Summer of Love: Art of the Psychedelic Era.

Summer of Love: Art of the Psychedelic Era
On view May 24-September 16, 2007

Summer of Love revisits the unprecedented explosion of contemporary art and popular culture brought about by the civil unrest and pervasive social change of the 1960s and early 70s, when a new psychedelic aesthetic emerged in art, music, film, architecture, graphic design, and fashion. The exhibition includes paintings, photographs and sculptures by Richard Avedon, Jimi Hendrix, and Andy Warhol, among others. As well as a rich selection of important posters, album covers and underground magazines.  A special emphasis is placed on environments as well as on film, video and multimedia installations. The art in the exhibition is conceptualized through a wealth of documentary material highlighting events, people and places; from the 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival to Timothy Leary to the UFO nightclub in London.

Great trip down memory lane.. and don't miss the music podcast, about 9 minutes, on the site.. this site was spotlighted originally in the Scout Report issue here...