The Scout Report -- Volume 23, Number 22

In the mid-nineteenth century, Charles Pfaff ran a beer cellar in Manhattan affectionately known as "the Vault." Here, authors, poets, journalists, and writers gathered to share ideas and camaraderie, along with no shortage of alcoholic beverages. In an unpublished poem, Walt Whitman described "The vault at Pfaffs where the drinkers and laughers meet to eat and drink and carouse." This digital humanities project, edited by English professor Edward Whitley and librarian Rob Weidman (both of Lehigh University), allows visitors to explore a number of primary and secondary materials about the remarkable individuals who frequented the Vault. Visitors interested in learning more about antebellum Bohemian culture may want to start by exploring the extensive Timeline and Map available in the Bohemian New York section. Others may want to browse or search literary and artwork by Vault patrons via Works, where materials are organized by Artwork, Books, Periodicals, Theater, and Manuscripts. In addition, visitors can learn more about the social networks of Bohemian New York and read biographies of dozen of individuals in the People section. [MMB]

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From the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) comes Nanotechnology 101, a helpful introduction to nanotechnology and its many uses. This website may be of interest to science instructors as well as other members of the general public looking for an accessible, yet detailed, overview of this rapidly growing field. In the What It Is And How It Works section, visitors will find a twelve-page pamphlet that illustrates the many uses of nanotechnology, from water filtration to medicine. Meanwhile, the Nanotechnology Timeline traces historical uses of nanotechnology all the way back to the 4th Century (when early nanotechnology was employed to create the dichroic glass in the Roman Lycurgus Cup). To learn about more contemporary uses of nanotechnology, visitors can check out the NNI Accomplishments Archive that highlights reports from agencies participating in NNI, including the National Institute of Health and the Department of Energy. As the site notes, these reports date from 2009 and earlier; readers will need to browse external sites for more recent materials. [MMB]

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Instructors looking to incorporate digital tools and learning into their classrooms will want to check out the Pedagogy Project, an initiative from the the Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory (HASTAC, pronounced "Haystack"). The project features a collection of classroom activities and assignments along with tips about how to utilize digital tools in instruction and assessment. These resources have been developed, contributed, and organized by HASTAC Scholars, a community of graduate and undergraduate students, representing a range of disciplinary backgrounds, who are dedicated to honing their digital pedagogy skills and developing projects "at the intersections of technology and the arts, humanities, and sciences." The Pedagogy Project is organized into nine sections, including Collaborative Digital Projects, In-Class Activities, Multimedia Projects, and Writing Assignments. Through these sections, instructors will learn about ways to "teach rhetorical pathos through playlists," find ideas about how to incorporate Wikipedia and Pinterest into the classroom, and how digital tools can aid in grading student work. While aimed specifically at college level instructors, many of these ideas may also be of interest to all educators. [MMB]

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What can legal documents reveal about about daily life and social structures throughout history? This project, a collaboration between scholars at the University of Nebraska Lincoln, Indiana University, and the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities, centers on court records from Washington, D.C. between 1800 and 1862. Court cases were pulled from the Circuit Court for the District of Columbia, Maryland state courts, and the U.S. Supreme Court. The primary focus of this collection are petitions for freedom by enslaved African-Americans, which visitors can explore in detail via the Cases section of this website. In addition, this project includes records from civil, criminal, and chancery cases. New visitors may want to start by exploring the Stories, which offer five essays that contextualize the legal documents and legal structures that shaped the realities of slavery during this time. From here, researchers, can search for individual cases by attorney, plaintiff, or defendant in the People section and learn about the families that were especially central to these cases. Collectively, this project provides insight into law, slavery, and the everyday life of both free and enslaved blacks in early Washington, D.C. [MMB]

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Mathematics instructors and tutors looking for ideas and inspiration will want to check out the Teaching Tidbits Blog from the Mathematics Association of America (MAA). Started in 2016, this blog is authored by a team of mathematics scholars from colleges and universities across the United States. Aimed at fellow college level mathematics instructors, this blog addresses topics that will be of interest to math educators of all levels. Recent entries feature ideas about incorporating reflective writing into the mathematics classroom, ideas about how to best structure office hours, and insights about helping learners with math anxiety. Teaching Tidbits also includes links to a number of external mathematics resources, including free digital tools and other websites of interest. In addition, this blog offers instructors a way to keep abreast of conferences and other networking or learning opportunities. [MMB]

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Originally created as a traditional exhibit in 1999 by the University of Virginia Library in collaboration with Religious Studies scholar Trent Pomplun, UVA's Online Library Environment team built this online version of the exhibit in 2013. Here, visitors can explore the historic role of the Bible's Book of Revelations via numerous interesting primary documents. Organized chronologically into twelve different topics, this exhibit explores how the Book of Revelations influenced how white settlers viewed Native Americans (The Lost Tribes of Israel); the text's influence on Thomas Jefferson (Thomas Jefferson's Apocalyptic Influences); and William Miller's prediction of the Second Coming (The Second Coming 1843). Each section is accompanied by images, newspaper articles, pamphlets and books. [MMB]

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Published by the Knight School of Communication at Queens University of Charlotte, the Journal of Digital and Media Literacy is an academic, peer reviewed journal dedicated to "examin[ing] the ways people use technology to create, sustain, and impact communities on local, national and global levels." Launched in 2013, this journal is edited by an international team of journalism and communications scholars and is aimed at researchers, students, and members of the general public. With this aim in mind, the journal includes traditional text based articles as well as multi-media features. In the most recent issue, contributors investigate digital inclusion and equity initiatives in a number of different U.S. cities. This particular issue may be of special interest not only to communications scholars, but also to policy makers. Readers can access all previously published articles via the Archives section of the site. [MMB]

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For K-12 educators, the North Carolina Museum of Art offers this extensive collection of classroom activities and lesson plans centering on objects that can be found at the museum. Although these classroom resources were created with North Carolina Art educators in mind, many may appeal more broadly to art, social studies, and language arts educators around the world. In Works of Art, visitors will find images of various works from the museum accompanied by a short description and tags of major themes invoked by the piece (e.g. Family, Identity, Environment). In addition, some paintings are accompanied by lesson plans. For example, Ralph E.W. Earl's portrait of Andrew Jackson is accompanied by a lesson centering on the portrait itself as well as a lesson about the Trail of Tears. In the Concept Maps section, teachers can check out how other teachers have annotated a variety of works of art at the museum. These annotations can be used to spark classroom discussions or writing assignments about the meanings and stories behind famous artworks. [MMB]

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Persuasive cartography is defined as "maps intended primarily to reinforce opinions or beliefs - to send or reinforce messages - rather than to communicate objective geographic information." P.J. Mode has collected such maps for years, and recently donated his collection to Cornell University's library. On this website, courtesy of Cornell University Library's Digital Collections, visitors can explore this fascinating collection, which includes over 800 maps, and learn more about how maps have been used throughout history for a variety of political, cultural, and satirical purposes. Visitors may want to start by checking out the the About section, which includes an overview of the collection and a video recording of a lecture P.J. Mode gave in May of 2016 to the Grolier Club of New York and the New York Map Society. These resources provide insight into the history and evolution of persuasive maps. From here, visitors can perhaps best browse this collection by subject. Subjects include Advertising and Promotion, Conduct of Life, Ethnocentrism, and Imperialism, to name just a few. [MMB]

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Originally featured in The Scout Report in 2002, the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Heilbrunn Timeline of Art recently garnered a Webby award for Best Art Website. In the fifteen years since we originally featured the Timeline, the team behind this resource has continued to add essays and works of art to this project. The result is an astonishingly extensive interactive timeline that highlights art history from 8,000 BCE to the present day. Visitors are invited to explore by essay or by work of art. By entering this timeline via the Essays link, visitors can check out a number of short essays by Time Period, Geographic Region, or Thematic Category. Each essay includes links to related essays along with links to related art works. Similarly, visitors can browse this collection by Works of Art (also organized by time, geography, and theme) and check out detailed object descriptions and links to related essays. Items are tagged and organized by Keywords (e.g. Religious Art, Metal, etc,). Finally, visitors interested in exploring the history of art in a specific region can do so via Chronologies. [MMB]

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The New York Times recently published Antarctic Dispatches, an engaging multimedia feature about ongoing scientific research on the history and future of Antarctica. This series features reporting by climate reporter Justin Gilles accompanied by animated maps, photography, and four virtual reality (VR) films. To create this feature, Gilles was joined by VR specialists Graham Roberts and Evan Grothjan along with graphic editor, Jonathan Corum. Together, this team traveled to Antarctica in late 2016 and visited the McMurdo Station, a scientific research station on Ross Island. The team also worked closely with Columbia University scientists involved in the Rosetta Project, an initiative that seeks to map out the Ross Ice Shelf. As Gilles notes, "The Ross shelf helps to slow the flow of land ice from Antarctica into the ocean. Compared with other parts of Antarctica, the shelf seems stable now, but computer forecasts suggest that it might be vulnerable to rapid collapse in the next few decades." To learn more about this research and the impact of climate change on this continent, check out the full series. [MMB]

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Podcast fans and history lovers may enjoy How it Began, a new podcast that aims to offer "a cinematic like emergence into the stories behind some of our species greatest achievements." Hosted by Brad Harris, who recently earned a Ph.D. in the History of Science from Stanford University, How It Began centers on innovations and inventions that have profoundly reshaped human life. For example, one episode explores how people domesticated wolves into dogs. Another episode explores the history of medical surgery. Launched on March 30, 2017, new episodes of How it Began are released every two weeks; each episode is approximately 30-40 minutes in length. Interested listeners can check out all current and past episodes here, along with Harris's blog. [MMB]

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What kinds of books caught the attention of bookworms in seventeenth-century England? Thanks to archivist Claire Boreham, contemporary readers may explore this question with this online exhibit dedicated to a bookseller in Newcastle-upon-Tyme named William Corbett. When Corbett died in 1626, someone created an inventory of all the books in his shop, which numbered over a thousand. This inventory, along with Corbett's will, now reside in Durham University's Special Collections. On this website, created by Boreham, visitors can explore these archival materials alongside insights into Corbett's shop and, more broadly, seventeenth-century book trading. Visitors may want to start by checking out the Printing and bookselling in seventeenth-century Newcastle exhibit. This exhibit highlights the network of individuals that brought books to Newcastle. From here, visitors can browse 94 archival items related to Corbett's bookshop. These include Corbett's will and inventory records from his bookshop along with digitized versions of some of the books that appeared on his bookshelves. [MMB]

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Daily Art Fixx is a blog dedicated to introducing members of the general public to art "for education and inspiration." Created in 2009 by Canadian-based artist Wendy Campbell, this blog features profiles of artists of all genres and mediums, contemporary and historical. New profiles are posted approximately every month, and visitors are welcome to browse artist profiles by genre (including Drawing, Mixed Media, Photography, Video, and Art Quotes). Each profile includes a short description of the artist's life, often accompanied by images of her or his artwork. One unique feature of Campbell's blog is that she includes both well-known artists alongside names that may be less familiar to readers. In doing so, she invites art enthusiasts to discover new favorites as they revisit art icons. In addition to profiles, Daily Art Fixx also includes some thematic posts of interests. For example, one recent entry, Images of Lovers in Art: 50 Ways to Paint Your Lover, features 10 famous artworks that portray a kiss. [MMB]

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Roger Hayward (1899-1979) is perhaps most famous for his skill in scientific illustrations, especially his work in Scientific American and his work on science textbooks. Yet his list of accomplishments does not end there. Early in his career, Hayward achieved modest fame and renown for his paintings. In the 1920s, Hayward also became a successful architect. Trained in the field at MIT, he designed the Los Angeles Stock Exchange as well as the Doherty Library at the University of Southern California. After he was laid off from his architecture firm during the Great Depression, he co-founded a successful puppet company with his wife, Betty, and his brother, Julian Hayward. In addition to his artistic and architectural skill, Hayward is also an important figure in the history of optical science; he collaborated with Caltech associate John Strong to patent a projection screen and served as a physics consultant at the National Technical Laboratory in 1939. With this detailed online exhibit, courtesy of Oregon State University, visitors can learn more about Hayward's remarkable and versatile career. This exhibit is accompanied by a number of illustrations and artwork by Hayward, revealing the breadth of his talents. [MMB]

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Firefox users who find themselves dissatisfied with recent changes to Firefox's user interface and corresponding reductions in customizability may be interested in Pale Moon. Originally forked from Firefox in 2009, Pale Moon initially focused on improving browser performance. Since then, customizability has largely eclipsed performance as Pale Moon's primary distinguishing feature, as reflected by the project's motto, "Your browser, your way." Pale Moon has retained the fully customizable user interface from Firefox 3-28. It will also continue support for extension types that Firefox is currently working to remove (XPCOM, XUL) and for the NPAPI extensions that Firefox has already removed. Official installers are available for Windows and Linux. An unofficial, experimental installer is also available for Macintosh. [CRH]

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Open access journals are making research findings more accessible within and beyond academia. However, these journals are relatively young and few in number, representing just a drop in the flood of research findings currently being published. As such, publication-quality research in many fields is only available within the pages of traditional fee-for-access journals. These journals frequently allow authors to upload and distribute pre-publication versions of their papers to promote the published versions, and many authors do, but these are often difficult to locate. The Unpaywall browser extension addresses that problem. The extension uses data aggregated from PubMed Central, the DOAJ, Crossref, DataCite, GoogleScholar, and BASE to alert users when a free version of a paper is available. The Unpaywall FAQ estimates that free full text versions can be located from 50-85% of publications depending on topic and publication year. The plugin and the data driving it are provided by Impactstory, a 501(c)(3) non-profit with funding from the National Science Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Unpaywall is available for Chrome and Firefox. [CRH]

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