The Information Commons in Library West

New Online Archives:

The archives of Gala, Miner’s and Crystal, three prominent cosmetics companies operating during and after the Second World War, are held at London College of Fashion and have been digitised and made freely accessible through VADS (Visual Arts Data Service):  http://www.vads.ac.uk/collections/LCFGALA

VADS is an amazing online resource that has made available over 100,000 visual arts images for educational use:  http://www.vads.ac.uk/collections/index.html in addtion to providing access to other valuable educational resources: http://www.vads.ac.uk/resources/index.html

Their site also offers a great “lightbox” function to help users organize images chosen from the collections.

Model in suit wearing hat and gloves applying Lip Line lipstick.
Straw bowler by Jean Desses. Used in Ford Family April/May 1952.

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Collaborative Translation Project: Encyclopedia of Diderot & d’Alembert

University of Michigan has set up a database containing translations of the Encyclopedia of Diderot and d’Alembert.  Users can browse or search English-translated articles from this encyclopedia as well as view links to the original French versions of the translated articles.  They’ve also conveniently included hypertext cross-referencing .

First published over the course of more than twenty years (1751-1777), the 32 volumes of the Encyclopédie include 21 volumes of text with more than 70,000 articles on subjects ranging from asparagus to zodiac. The remaining 11 volumes contain beautifully engraved plates illustrating many of the articles. The Encyclopédie was the major achievement of the French Enlightenment whose aim, in Diderot’s words, was to “change the common way of thinking” through the expansion of knowledge and the development of critical modes of thought.

Want to help out with this project?  They’re looking for translators.

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FIRST PRIZE = $10,000!!!

Programming savvy??  Bored and need something to keep you busy this summer before the Fall semester begins??

Why not create a client or web based application, or an application that uses the Adobe AIR platform, iPhone apps, Java applications (or whatever other kind of platform you’d like to write it in) to help users gain easy access to data from Data.gov!

About Apps for America:

Apps for America is a special contest to celebrate the release of Data.gov! They’re doing it alongside Google, O’Reilly Media, and TechWeb and the winners will be announced at the Gov 2.0 Expo Showcase in Washington, DC at the end of the Summer.

Why They’re Holding This Contest:

Just as the federal government begins to provide data in Web developer-friendly formats, they’re organizing Apps for America 2: The Data.gov Challenge to demonstrate that when government makes data available, it makes itself more accountable and creates more trust and opportunity in its actions.

The contest submissions will also show the creativity of developers in designing compelling applications that provide easy access and understanding for the public, while also showing how open data can save the government tens of millions of dollars by engaging the development community in application development at far cheaper rates than traditional government contractors.

See the Apps for America Contest Website for Contest Rules and more details.  HURRY! SUBMISSION DEADLINE IS AUGUST 07, 2009!

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Just Launched Today - Data.gov

Earlier today, the federal government launched Data.gov.   This new site was created to allow users to search large data sets of government information.

from the home page:

The purpose of Data.gov is to increase public access to high value, machine readable datasets generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government. Although the initial launch of Data.gov provides a limited portion of the rich variety of Federal datasets presently available, we invite you to actively participate in shaping the future of Data.gov by suggesting additional datasets and site enhancements to provide seamless access and use of your Federal data. Visit today with us, but come back often. With your help, Data.gov will continue to grow and change in the weeks, months, and years ahead.

Currently the site is in Beta with only a few data sets to experiment but that will change quickly as they continue to load new sets daily.    Give it a whirl here:  http://www.data.gov/

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White House Continues to go 2.0

On Friday (05/01/09), the White House added three more social networking accounts to it’s bag of web 2.o tools: MySpace, Facebook and Twitter.

You can also follow the Official White House Photostream on Flickr, where official White House photos “are being made available for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photographs.” 

The White House has also sported an official White House Blog as well as an official YouTube page since January 20, 2009, and as of this blog post, their YouTube channel has over 47,000 subscribers and over 1.1 million channel views.

Thanks to Dr. Dilger for the White House Flickr reminder.

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TinEye – a “reverse search engine”

Got a picture?  Want to see where else it’s used on the web?  Maybe you want to find similar images?  Maybe you’re just trying to identify it?   Well, TinEye can help you with that.

TinEye is a reverse image search engine.  You search for images using images, not words to find out where the image came from, how it’s being used, if modified versions exist, or to find higher resolution copies. 

TinEye searches billions of sites in seconds and is really easy to use.  You can upload an image or insert a URL that contains the image you are using to search.  It’s the first image search engine on the web to use image identification technology rather than keywords, metadata or watermarks.  

For those of you who need to know ALL the details first, you can watch a short, three minute video tutorial on their FAQ page.

For the rest of you who just want to start playing right away, go for it!  :D

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Cool New Resource: The World Digital Library

The World Digital Library, launched by the United Nation’s cultural agency, offers FREE access to rare manuscripts, books, films and maps from around the world, AND in your choice of seven different languages!

There are some great film and audio recordings in this collection. You can stream original footage shot by the famous Lumière brothers  as well as view footage of immigrants arriving at Ellis Island.

Some of the contributions are old (as in 8,000 BC old!) and among the many artifacts are a 1,000-year-old Japanese novel and the earliest known map to mention America by name.

If you see something you like and want to bookmark it or share with your friends, they offer a HUGE list of web 2.0/social networking options so you can easily post the item to your Facebook, blog,  FriendFeed, etc.:
 

They just launched in April, but expect to see this collection grow quickly. Now that they’re live, interest will grow and more institutions will certainly want to jump on board.

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Reluctant to leave the comfort of your “study nest?”   

Why not instant message a librarian your questions instead?!

You can instant message a librarian during the libraries’ extended hours:   
Sunday, April 19  through Friday, April 24
from 9 am – 3 am

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Library West and Marston Science Library are running extended hours from 8am – 4am.  

The expanded hours for the weeks prior to and during final exams are 8am – 4am and will run from Saturday, April 18 through 4am Thursday, April 30.   Regular hours will resume Friday, May 1.    More Information here.

and no need to panic… 

 Starbucks WILL remain open during Library West extended hours.  ;D

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WOW!  You MUST check out JURN, a cool, new (and free!) online resource!

JURN (www.jurn.org)  allows users to search 2,248 scholarly/intellectual eJournals in the arts & humanities.   It runs on a Google Custom Search so you can use it just like you would Google, only JURN searches reputable, hand-picked ejournal lists. 

“JURN is meant primarily as an index of English-language eJournals, but some non-English journals are also indexed. Not all journals or magazines indexed are entirely full-text – but the vast majority offer significant free full-text content, without the need for registration. Journals that only offer tables of contents and/or abstracts are not indexed.”

You can view a list of of JURN’s indexed eJournals in PDF format.

Be sure to check out the great guide to searching for FREE academic search engines too.

JURN also has a blog where the developers post updates and list new journals that are added to the mix.  Oh hey, looks like a JURN FireFox plug-in has been developed as well! Excellent!

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