The Scout Report -- Volume 22, Number 34

In 1973, the University of Kentucky began to collect oral histories from around the Bluegrass state. The project continues to this day. On this website, visitors can browse or search through over 8,000 of these oral history interviews, which are arranged by broad topics including Agriculture, Industries, Diversity, Education, Gender, and Veterans and Conflict. Within each of these categories, visitors will find dozens of oral history projects, which each feature interviews with multiple individuals around a specific topic or theme. Project titles include: Black Life in Mississippi in the 1950s; Midwifery; Immigrants in the Coal Fields; and Beyond Wood, Wires, and Glue: Young Banjo Players of Kentucky. As one can gather from this diverse list, this website features material that will be of interest to history students in a wide variety of fields and areas. Most of these interviews are available in their entirety online, and some include transcripts as well. [MMB]

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The Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) has published journals dedicated to applied mathematics since the 1950s. SIAM publishes sixteen different journals, each one dedicated to a different topic within applied and computational mathematics. In addition, SIAM has digitized numerous previously published articles, allowing visitors to more easily search and access SIAM publications throughout the past six decades. Available journals cover the fields of Financial Mathematics, Imaging Sciences, Scientific Computing, and Theory of Probability and its Application, to name just a few. On this website, visitors can browse through current and past articles in all sixteen journals for free. Some articles are also available for free download; others require a paid subscription. [MMB]

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Henry David Thoreau was a writer, philosopher, activist, and traveler. In fact, Thoreau once wrote, "A traveler! I love this title...Going from to , it is the history of every one of us." Mapping Thoreau County is a project headed by Susan E. Gallagher of the University of Massachusetts Lowell with additional scholarly support from English and History professors around the country and financial support from the University of Massachusetts Lowell and the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities. The project documents the role that travel played in Thoreau's life and writing, introducing readers to maps sketched by Thoreau himself along with information about places that were central to Thoreau's life. In doing so, the site aims to provide English teachers and students with materials that contextualize Thoreau's prose. Dr. Gallagher continues to add to this website and will be including maps and artifacts from Thoreau's visits out of state, including to New York and Minnesota. The team aims to have the site fully updated by 2017, the 200th anniversary of Thoreau's birth. [MMB]

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Part of the extensive BioMed Central collection of journals, BMC Medical Education is an open access, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to issues in all stages of medical education, including undergraduate studies, graduate studies, and continuing education for medical professionals. This journal will be of interest to those in academia as well as those broadly interested in the medical field, as journal articles address a broad array of issues, such as medical school curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment. Recent articles include a discussion about using student questions to identify scientific misconceptions, an analysis about the need to train doctors to prescribe medicine, and an examination of licensing tests used in different countries. Visitors to this website can browse the most recently published and most popular articles, or search for articles by keyword. BMC Medical Education is edited by an international team of scholars and is regularly updated. [MMB]

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The Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion, under the leadership of librarian Charles Bellinger, curates this extensive list of resources for exploring religion online. Visitors can browse for resources by broad topic headings including Best of the Web; Archaeology, Bible, and Classics; and Pedagogy. Visitors can also search for resources by material type, including blogs, online books, maps, language resources, and electronic journals. In 2011, the Wabash Center partnered with the American Academy of Religion to add university syllabi to enhance its collection. Today, visitors can search for and read these syllabi on this website as well. Note that the Wabash Center curates resources to reflect a diversity of religious views for the purposes of research and learning and does not necessarily endorse the views contained in all linked resources. [MMB].

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Founded in 1995, Electronic Book Review (ebr) is a peer-reviewed journal dedicated to "literary studies, broadly defined." Unlike other periodicals, ebr is continually updated through a series of themed threads. Each thread is edited by a content expert; current editors include scholars of cinematic arts, English, and mass communications. Thread topics include Technocapitalism (works that consider technology as a form of capital); Image + Narrative (discussions about how technology and images change the nature of narrative); and Critical Ecologies (explorations of "convergences among natural and constructed ecosystems"). Within each thread, readers will find interviews, critical essays and reviews of novels, nonfiction works, and art. Recently reviewed works include Mark Greif's intellectual history The Age of the Crisis of Man; Pete Townshend's autobiography Who I Am and German studies scholar James McFarland's book Constellation: Friedrich Nietzsche and Walter Benjamin in the Now-Time of History. [MMB]

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In 2001, the BBC created Skillswise, a free online tool developed to assist adult learners and adult educators on topics of English literacy and math. On this website, visitors will find resources that may be of interest to Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) instructors, mathematics instructors, General Equivalency Diploma (GED) or High School Equivalency Test (HiSET) instructors, and instructors in certain community college programs. Resources include videos, dictionaries, online quizzes, worksheets, and interactive online activities. Visitors can browse sources by topic. In the Job Skills section, instructors can find resources about the English and math skills needed for job interviews and searches, as well as resources about specific vocations, including Nursing, Child Care, Construction, Manufacturing, and IT work, to name just a few. [MMB]

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Over the last 25 years or so, the majority of large research libraries has transitioned from owning miles of shelves of bound volumes containing scholarly journal back issues, to subscribing to that same content in digital format. This has made archiving and preserving these digital files, or e-journals, of critical importance to scholars. The Keepers Registry is a collaborative effort committed to doing just that. Currently there are 12 participating agencies, including the Library of Congress, the British Library, Cariniana Network, National Science Library, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the HathiTrust, among others. The aim of the registry is to make it easier to see which archiving organization is taking responsibility for which e-journals, and to make it possible for librarians and policy makers to more easily identify e-journals that might be at risk. Since the beta version of the registry launched in 2011, over 32,000 journals have been archived by at least one of the participating archiving agencies. Follow The Keepers Registry blog at http://thekeepers.blogs.edina.ac.uk for more news and updates. [DS]

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Vintage software can provoke distinct memories from the early days of personal computing. Perhaps you remember typing up documents using a 1981 version of WordStar or entering data into VisiCalc. Alternatively, you may have childhood memories of honing your budding math skills by playing Number Crunchers in your elementary school classroom. The Historical Software Collection allows you to to again relive these experiences by providing an open archive of early software. Curated by Jason Scott of the Internet Archive Digital Library, the Historical Software Collection includes dozens of vintage software packages, including the programs highlighted above. (Gaming fans will also want to note that the site includes Pac-Man and a number of other early Atari games.) Thanks to browser emulators, visitors can use featured software just as they did in the 1980s and early 1990s. While the Historical Software Collection can make for an enjoyable afternoon for anyone looking to nurse some nostalgia, it also provides a useful, accessible online archive to preserve this important pioneering work. [MMB]

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Cosmos is the "leading literary science magazine." Published out of Austrailia, Cosmos is dedicated to covering all areas of science (Biology, Physics, Space, Technology, Paleontology, etc.) in a way that any member of the general public can engage with and understand. Many of the magazine's features are available for free, and visitors to this website can read three Premium articles without a subscription. New articles are published almost daily, and recent articles include news about how geneticists have identified the genes that influence face shape; updates from Juno's exploration of Jupiter; and the recent development of food packaging made entirely from milk casein and fruit pectin. Visitors can check out the latest or most popular articles when they visit this website, or browse for articles by science discipline. Visitors may also want to check out some of the magazine's Video collection and its photo Gallery. The latter highlights one spectacular science photograph each week. [MMB]

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"Perhaps more than any site outside of Europe, the history of Bauhaus is linked intimately with the history of Harvard." So state the authors of the Harvard Art Museum's extensive online collection dedicated to Bauhaus, the art school that led German art, architecture, and design from the dawn of the Weimar Republic in 1919 until the republic's demise in 1933. In 1930, a group of undergraduate students at Harvard organized an exhibit of Bauhaus works at Harvard, the first Bauhaus exhibit in the United State. Today, the Harvard Art Museum is home to over 30,000 archival resources, including photographs, paintings, textiles, and class notes. Readers looking to learn more about the history of Bauhaus may want to start by checking out the website's Chronology section, a multi-media annotated timeline of Bauhaus. Visitors can browse through the museum's digitized items in the Holdings section, where the collections organized into twelve categories. [MMB]

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Avery Classics, part of Columbia University's library, is a collection of archival materials related to architecture. The complete Avery Classics archives includes rare books, photographs, and architectural manuscripts. The collection also includes a variety of ephemera: including trade catalogues, a collection of souvenir postcards, promotional brochures, and a variety of other items. On this website, visitors can explore some of these fascinating items in depth on this online exhibit curated by Brooke Baldeschwiler. This website highlights a few remarkable items and notes that interested individuals can search the full collection through Columbia University's online catalogue. Items featured on this website include a postcard of former mining town Jerome, Arizona, dubbed "The Largest Ghost City in the World" and a photograph of a 1851 tunnel book depicted Regent's Park in London. Fans of this website will also want to check out the Avery Architectural Novelties Page, which is linked to in the Novelties section of this website. [MMB]

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Curious about how the practice and attitudes around beer brewing have changed throughout U.S. history? If so, you'll want to check out The Reflection of Technology in Brewing, an online exhibit curated by Meg Morrissey at the University of Michigan Library. Here, readers can learn about American beer brewing, including home brewing during the colonial era; the growth of commercial brewing as a result of Industrial Revolution innovations; beer marketing following the repeal of Prohibition; and the recent resurgence of home brewing. Readers will find a variety of primary documents that illuminate the ever-shifting role of beer and brewing in the United States. Readers may browse eighteenth century home brewing manuals or read parts of F.W. Salem's 1880 treatise, Beer, its History and its Economic Value as a National Beverage , in which Salem, responding to the growing temperance movement, argues that beer was a preferable alternative to hard liquor that brewers were, in fact, the "real, though perhaps unconscious, promoters of the great and glorious cause of genuine temperance." [MMB]

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The Creative Language Learning Podcast is an hour-long podcast, released once every two weeks, designed to provide insights and tips to anyone - of any age - who is studying and practicing a new language. The podcast is hosted by Kerstin Cable and Lindsay Dow, who both work as language tutors and blog about language study and acquisition. Recent episodes include a discussion about how Snapchat can be used to aide in learning a new language; tips for identifying your personal language learning style and using this knowledge to optimize your learning; and an exploration of British languages other than English. Cable and Dow frequently invite other language-learning experts onto their show for interviews, giving voice to a diversity of insights. On this website, visitors will also find related links and resources for each episode. Interested listeners may subscribe on iTunes. [MMB]

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It can be challenging to conceptualize the vastness of the universe. The team behind Lightyear.fm have created this highly hypothetical multimedia website to help. The site uses Billboard Top 40 rankings to imagine what songs one might hear if they ventured away from earth. For example, an inhabitant 50 light years away would be able to hear the Monkees' 1966 chart-topping hit "I'm a Believer" for the first time. Well, they wouldn't really. In reality, as the architects behind this site acknowledge, radio broadcasts can only travel a few lightyears. Nevertheless, this website provides a highly engaging way for visitors to visualize the size and proportion of the universe. As visitors "travel" through space listening to an increasingly dated soundtrack, they are able to simultaneously view an artistic imagining of what the universe might look like from each distance from earth, complete with labeled stars. For example, star GJ 2005 appears 25 light years away - or right around the time Mariah Carey's "Visions of Love" starts to play. [MMB]

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The Guardian hosts a regular Neurophilosophy blog dedicated to news stories and research related to Neurophilosophy. Authored by neurobiologist Mo Costandi, the Neurophilosophy blog covers a wide range of topics, including new research about the relationship between gut bacteria and the brain; research about the relationship between both conscious and unconscious thoughts and the experience of pain; and the development of artificial skin that can recognize heat and touch. Costandi writes in an engaging, accessible style and covers topics that will be of interest to anyone fascinated by human biology. There are also reference links for those who want to further pursue a given topic. Neurophilosophy contains all of Costandi's most recent articles; but visitors may want to check out Costandi's personal blog (which readers can find a link to by clicking on his name at the top of the page) for information about his other writing endeavors. [MMB]

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Released in the United States on August 16, 2016, Google Duo provides a new option for video chatting, joining the ranks of Skype, FaceTime, and Google Hangouts (to name just a few). This free application is available for both iOS and Android devices, however, to use Google Duo, both parties will need to download the application. A unique feature of this simple video-calling service is that it allows those you contact to see a video of you when they check your incoming call - allowing users to show off, say, a new pet or an acceptance letter as they "call" the other party. [MMB]

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Canvas is an online collaborative tool that allows individuals to share ideas by editing documents from separate computers. The tool's utilization of Markdown sets this tool apart from other file sharing and collaborative editing devices. As a writing and notetaking tool, Markdown allows users to quickly and easily incorporate special text forms (i.e. bold or italics), bullet points, to-do lists, hyperlinks, or code blocks using only keyboard commands. (To learn more about Markdown, check out the 10-02-2015 edition of the Scout Report ). Canvas users can invite others to view or edit their document - or "canvas" - by sending an email invitation or by passing along a security key. [MMB]

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