The Scout Report -- Volume 23, Number 42

The Ancient History Encyclopedia offers a wealth of resources that may appeal to teachers and students of ancient history, philosophy, classics, and art. In addition, this highly engaging website is delightful to browse and may also appeal to the generally curious. The Encyclopedia was founded in 2009 by Jan van der Crabben, a former game designer who "realized that the internet was missing a reliable and comprehensive resource for ancient history." As of this write up, visitors can explore this resource in two ways. Under the encyclopedia section, visitors will find a searchable index where entries are sorted alphabetically, from Abu Simel (an ancient Egyptian temple) to the Zhou Dynasty. Individual entries are authored by a variety of authors and scholars and feature images, videos, and embedded links to related entries. Visitors may also browse entries via region or a timeline. The tools section features some interesting maps, a Latin Dictionary, and even a helpful tool that automatically converts standard English measurements to measurements to those originally used in Ancient Greece, Rome, and Egypt. [MMB]

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John Hubbard, a librarian at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, offers the the Library Link of the Day, a website designed for busy librarians who want to keep abreast of news, blogs, and more in the library world. Each day, Hubbard posts a single website link, which visitors can either check out on this website or subscribe to via email. Most of the time, this link will be to a popular news article that relates to library issues. For example, on October 14, 2017, Hubbard linked to an Ars Technica article named, "Library trolls copyright zealots by naming a collection after Sonny Bono." Similarly, on October 3, 2017, Hubbard linked to Jill Lepore's The New Yorker article about the history of debates about free speech. These links come from a wide range of news sources, offering a diversity of perspectives about library-related news. Visitors can browse all previously featured links by month and year. [MMB]

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From the National Science Foundation, the Community for Advancing Discovery Research in Education (CADRE), the Education Development Center (EDC), and the National Academies, comes STEM Smart Briefings. These briefings are designed to offer science educators and policy makers with summaries of research related to STEM curriculum and pedagogy. Many of these briefings are adapted from the National Research Council's 2011 report Successful K-12 STEM Education: Identifying Effective Approaches in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. One briefing in this collection, Connecting Informal and Formal STEM Education, provides examples of successful STEM enrichment programs across the U.S, and may especially appeal to those who work in alternative learning environments, including museums and libraries. Similarly, another briefing, Engineering (emphasizing the "E" in STEM), highlights three exemplary engineering education programs that targets elementary, middle school, and high school students. [MMB]

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Developed by a team of professionals from Folger Shakespeare Library's Early Modern Manuscripts Online (EMMO), the research platform Zooniverse, and the Oxford English Dictionary, Shakespeare's World invites individuals to explore and transcribe a number of handwritten manuscripts created during Shakespeare's lifetime. This project features a number of manuscripts that will be of interest to English scholars and historians, while also providing an opportunity for researchers and students to practice the art of paleography or "the study and interpretation of historical handwriting." The project includes an online tutorial for individuals interested in transcribing, along with a chat board for those who want to communicate with other transcribers. In addition, the project's blog may be of interest to transcribers as well as those who simply want to learn more about the project. Curious about why the Oxford English Dictionary is part of the project? As explained on this site's homepage, "Along the way [of transcribing], you'll find words that have yet to be recorded in the authoritative Oxford English Dictionary, and which will eventually be added to this important resource." [MMB]

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Between 2008 and 2011, Google digitized almost 1 million pages from over 2,000 historical newspapers. Although Google ceased digitizing newspapers in 2011, visitors can still browse a number of newspapers here. Newspapers featured in this collection include issues of the Nova Scotia's Halifax Citizen published between 1863 and 1873 and Acadian Recorder published between 1854 and 1861; issues of the Baltimore Afro-American published between 1794 and 2003; issues of Montreal's Le Journal d'Agriculture published between 1926 and 1936; and issues of Winnipeg's Jewish Post & News published between 1984 and 1996. As this sampling demonstrates, this collection features a wide variety of newspapers published in parts of Canada and the United States, including papers published in English and French. Visitors can browse this collection by newspaper title and conduct a text search on the whole collection to find articles of interest. [MMB]

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For mathematics teachers and students, Graphing Stories is a collection of videos designed to introduce students to the concept of linear relationships and the skill of graphing. This collection was designed by veteran math teacher and blogger Dan Meyer (see the 01-06-2017 Scout Report) and Montreal-based organization Buzzmath. The concept behind this collection is simple: each video presents a relationship between a certain variable and time. For example, one video shows a man walking up the ladder to a slide, then going down a slide, and invites visitors to graph the man's "height of waist off ground" over time. Another video features a man blowing up a balloon to demonstrate the relationship of balloon length over time. This video collection is accompanied by printable graphs for students to use as they engage in the videos. [MMB]

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Anna Julia Cooper was a scholar, educator, and author. Born into slavery in 1858, Cooper went on to earn a Ph.D. in History at the University of Paris-Sorbonne and served as the principal of Washington, D.C.'s M Street High School for several years. On Howard University's Digital Howard page, visitors can explore a number of archival materials related to Cooper, including personal correspondence, photographs, and unpublished writings. For visitors less familiar with Cooper, perhaps a good place to start exploring this collection is the Biographical Data section. Here, visitors will find a biographical sketch of Cooper that was published in a 1930 edition of the Parent-Teacher Journal; 1921 job application penned by Cooper; and a short handwritten autobiography, among other items. Other highlights of this collection include manuscripts of Cooper's public addresses; Cooper's poetry, and correspondence with a range of individuals, including W.E.B. DuBois and the editor of The Atlantic. In addition, this collection includes archival material relating to the Grimke family - Cooper was close friends with Charlotte Forten Grimke. [MMB]

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The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps is a weekly podcast by Peter Adamson, a philosophy scholar who teaches at Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich and King's College London. Launched in 2014, the podcast currently features over 300 episodes that chronicle the history of philosophy from pre-Socratic thinkers through the fourteenth century (so far!). Visitors can browse this collection by by category: Classical, Later Antiquity, Islamic World, Medieval, and India. Each episode is approximately 20 minutes in length, and the podcast's title comes from Adamson's chronicling of well-known philosophers, lesser-known individuals, texts, and ideological trends. Adamson, a specialist in ancient, medieval, and Arabic philosophy, hosts all episodes himself. He is joined by Jonardon Ganeri, a professor of Philosophy at NYU's Abu Dhabi campus, in episodes about the history of Philosophy in India. Listeners who enjoy this podcast may also want to check out Adamson's book series of the same title. [MMB]

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The Women's Audio Archive is a project by Marysia Lewandowska. Between 1984 and 1990, Lewandowska interviewed dozens of women artists and recorded their conversations. Lewandowska was born in Poland and had recently immigrated to London before launching this project. As the introduction to the Women's Audio Archive notes, these recordings "began as a way to address the possibilities, as an artist and in everyday life, within a new, unfamiliar environment through observation in gathering knowledge and participation in developing relationships." On this website, visitors can explore recordings from this project, which have been digitized (they were originally recorded on magnetic tape). These recordings, which included private conversations as well as public lectures and discussions, can be browsed via the inventory section. Alternatively, visitors may also choose to explore this collection by keyword tags. Listeners can hear conversations with artists Judy Chicago, Nancy Spero, Jenny Holzer, and John Cage, to name just a few. Each recording is accompanied by a short description, along with information about where and when the original recording took place. [MMB]

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From the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) comes Science Update: a short daily podcast that offers nugget-sized updates about new science research. Although just one minute long in length, the Science Update may pique your interest in a topic that you'll want to explore more. On this website, visitors can also explore previous podcasts by date or topic. As of this write-up, recent podcasts include information about what bird features tell us about air pollution of the past; insight into how oceans may help wind power, and even an answer to the questions "Can spiders get caught in the webs of other spiders?" Individuals (and classrooms) are also welcome to submit questions to Science Update via the Contact page. [MMB]

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As the team behind the Daily Overview write, the term overview effect refers to the "sensation astronauts have when given the opportunity to look down and view the Earth as a whole." The Daily Overview offers overview photographs that show our world in a number of new ways. As of this write up, one recent overview (as the team calls these photographs), shows an aerial view of agricultural development in Calipatria, California which, at 180 feet below sea level, has the lowest elevation of any place in the western hemisphere. Another overview shows Morocco's Ouarzazate Solar Power Station, which includes thousands of mirrors. Yet another overview reveals the intricate, symmetrical design of Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Fans of the Daily Overview can sign up to receive an email when new photographs are added to the collection. In addition, visitors won't want to miss the Juxtapose section, which places two overviews next to one another to show how spaces change over time. For example, one juxtapose feature compares a tulip field in Lisse, Netherlands in March (just before the tulips bloom) and April (with the colorful flowers are in full bloom). [MMB]

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BOMB Magazine was founded in 1981 to publish conversations between artists and writers. Today, in addition to their quarterly print magazine, art and literature fans can access essays, interviews, literature, reviews, and more on the magazine's website. In BOMB Daily, readers will find new material every weekday. Recent daily features have included a conversation between novelist Jessie Chaffee and and essayist Minna Zallman Proctor; an interview with French New Wave director Agnes Varda and street artist J.R.; and original poetry. Visitors can also check out material from the quarterly print magazine, including an interview with painter Lisa Sanditz by fellow painter Kanishka Raja (accompanied by images of Sanditz's art); new poetry by Ben Lerner; and an interview with George Saunders by fiction writer Sam Lipsyte. Perhaps best of all, visitors can conduct a text search through the magazine's extensive archives, or explore by issue or subject filters (Architecture, Art, Dance, Film, Literature, Music, and Theater). [MMB]

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The Daily Victorian is an eclectic collection of magazine prints, portraits, advertisements, steel prints, fashion plates and other images from the Victorian era. This collection will especially appeal to people interested in the history of fashion, as the Daily Victorian features seven different collections dedicated specifically to the topic. One collection features 15 sewing patterns, each taken from the Godey's Ladies Book, which offer templates for a sun bonnet, a hoop crinoline, and "gentleman's traveling dressing-case." Another collection features Victorian bathing suits. In addition to exploring by collection (this collection features some, but not all, items in the Daily Victorian), visitors can also explore the Daily Victorian by subject tags, including photography, illustration, civil war era, textile, diagrams, and much more. [MMB]

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National Geographic offers this resource page dedicated to natural disasters. This resource may be a helpful aide for understanding news stories about natural disasters, preparing to deal with them personally, and supporting those impacted by natural disasters. This resource includes information about tornados, hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, wildfires, and more. For each type of natural disaster, visitors can read a fact sheet and view a short "101" video. The resource also includes a series of safety tips. In addition, visitors can learn more about recent news headlines about natural disasters in the In the News section, which offers updates about new research or developments that may help readers better understand natural disasters. [MMB]

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Rauner Special Collections Library at Dartmouth College is home to a number of rare books, manuscripts, and other archival material - ranging from Babylonian clay tablets to original work by Theodor Geisel, aka "Dr. Seuss," Dartmouth class of 1925. For those of us who can't make the trip to Hanover, New Hampshire, the Rauner Special Collections Library offers this frequently updated blog dedicated to its eclectic collection. One recent entry highlights Gardner's Photographic Sketch Book of the War, which was published in 1866 and documented the American Civil War. Another recent entry, published on October 13, 2017 (Oct. 9 is celebrated in various parts of the Americas as either Columbus Day or Indigenous People's Day), calls attention to the Bartolome De Las Casas's 1558 book A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, a text that documented the violence of sixteenth century colonialism in the Caribbean. Individual entries include photographs of rare items and are tagged by subject to enable easy browsing. [MMB]

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The Yale Digital Humanities Lab presents Neural Neighbors, a project intended to enable users to "identify visual similarity at scale across collections of photographs and videos." Currently, the project uses a subset selected from the Beinecke Library's Meserve-Kunhardt Collection, which was assembled by Frederick Hill Meserve, who collected photographs between 1897 and his death in 1962. This large collection documents United States history, especially the American Civil War, and also includes portraits of some 6,500 individuals such as Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, U.S. and Confederate military and governmental personnel, cabinet members, and authors, poets, clergy, actors, actresses, and other entertainers. When Neural Neighbors loads, viewers first see a screen full of images. Mousing over any image brings up additional, visually related images. For example, an untitled, familiar-looking portrait of Lincoln in a seated position is associated with similarly posed portraits of (among others) George Armstrong Halsey (1827-1894) and P. T. Barnum (1810-1891). The experimental nature of the project is revealed at this point, however, because it's not possible to retrieve more information about the images without leaving Neural Neighbors and searching Yale's collections, which can be a frustrating exercise. [DS]

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Password management remains one of the more annoying features in the modern IT landscape. Password management software can make this a much more tractable problem. However, many of these tools use their own proprietary data storage to keep your passwords synchronized across devices. Not so with Enpass, which gives users a choice about how their data will be synchronized. Alternately, users may also opt not to use any cloud service to synchronize data, instead keeping their devices synchronized over local Wi-Fi or even just using a USB stick. No matter how password data is (or isn't) synchronized, Enpass keeps passwords secure using industry-standard AES-256 encryption. Additionally, Enpass includes a password generator. The Enpass desktop application is available for free on Windows, macOS, and Linux. A companion mobile app is also available for purchase for iOS, Android, and Blackberry devices. [CRH]

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Among the least wonderful properties of the modern web is the way it allows strangers to execute JavaScript code on your computer. While this facility is responsible for the very existence of rich web applications like Google Docs, many more curmudgeonly users (the author included) often wish for a bit more control about what code their own computer executes. uMatrix is a browser extension that provides this control. It allows users to build a per-site whitelist specifying which scripts and plugins can be run, which cookies can be set, which images and media can be loaded, and which other requests to other sites are allowed. The "Walkthrough for first time users" on the uMatrix wiki describes how to build these rules. As the uMatrix github page notes, the plugin is "definitely for advanced users" and most sites will be broken before the user adds the necessary whitelist entries. uMatrix is available for Chrome, Firefox, and Opera. [CRH]

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