The Scout Report -- Volume 23, Number 46

AnnoTate is a collaborative, online project that invites citizen and professional art historians alike to review and transcribe the sketchbooks, letters, diaries, and other personal papers that belonged to a number of famous British artists (including both British-born artists as well as those who immigrated to Britain). This project, a collaboration between the Tate Archives and Zooniverse, features over 52,000 items from the Tate Archives. These items include sketchbooks belonging to Eileen Agar, Francis Bacon, Joseph Herman, and Paul Nash, among others. Visitors can explore this collection by artist, and individual items belonging to each artist are accompanied by a short description and date. Those interested in helping with the transcription process may do so by selecting the transcribe button that accompanies items in need of transcription. New to transcribing text and images? No problem: once individuals select "transcribe," they can also view a short tutorial about the process. For all visitors (including those not interested in participating in the transcription project), AnnoTate offers a fascinating collection of primary documents that provide additional insight into a number of influential artists. Those who are interested in transcribing items will also want to check out the talk feature, which allows transcribers to problem-solve challenging transcription issues together. [MMB]

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Originally featured in the May 8, 2015 Scout Report, we've decided to re-feature The Latah County Oral History Collection, which offers a fascinating view into life in northwestern Idaho in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The collection contains almost 600 hours of oral history recordings from 200 individuals. These interviews were collected by Sam Schrager in the 1970s - the project received support from the Latah County Historical Society and is housed in the University of Idaho Library (and made available online by the University of Idaho Digital Initiatives). Visitors can browse this collection by location (either by looking at place names or by exploring a map) or by people. The "people" section includes a detailed list of interview participants accompanied by short biographical descriptions. However, visitors may find that the collection is best explored by subject, where visitors can browse subject tags including railroads, religion, dances, lore, and moonshine. Visitors can listen to each interview in full, and interviews are indexed in detail so that listeners can quickly identify sections of interest. [MMB]

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For science educators looking for ways to engage young learners with the periodic table of elements, Keith Enevoldsen offers The Periodic Table of the Elements, in Pictures and Words. This website includes an interactive periodic table, where users can click on any element in the table to learn additional information about the element. Each element features an illustration (usually depicting a common item that uses the element), a list of characteristics of the element and places one might find it, and information about the group the element belongs to (e.g. noble gases, alkali metals, etc.) The "uses" section offers a helpful table that provides a description of the physical characteristics of each element and their common uses. This website offers a helpful tool for K-12 chemistry classrooms and may be especially useful as a study guide for students to use when completing assignments outside the classroom. Visitors will find a printable PDF of the periodic table, along with other printable educational materials, by navigating to the "home/printables" tab. [MMB]

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Mary Yearl, a librarian at McGill University, created this impressively comprehensive research guide about the history of medicine. While some of the included resources require a university subscription to access, this guide also includes numerous items that are freely available to researchers around the world. In particular, the digital collections section features dozens of websites where visitors will find digitized archival material from around the world, including Canada, the United States, Latin America, and Europe. Additional materials of interest can be found in the image collections list, which features digitized medical illustrations, patient cards, photographs, and more from universities and libraries around the world. This guide also features a section called Osleriana dedicated to materials relating to Sir William Osler, a Canadian physician and McGill University alumnus who was one of the co-founders of John Hopkins Hospital. [MMB]

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Since Time Immemorial is a collection of curricular resources about Washington state and U.S. history that center on the history and perspective of tribal communities. These resources were designed by the Washington State's Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction and the Office of Native Education in collaboration with individual tribes and school districts. These resources include lesson plans for students in elementary, middle, and high school; educational videos; and links to helpful outside resources. While these resources were designed specifically for students in Washington state, some of these resources may be helpful when incorporating tribal perspectives into social studies classrooms across the United States. These lessons plans and resources are aligned with Common Core Standards and are designed to be easily incorporated into existing history and social studies curricula by providing tribal perspectives on topics and themes already addressed in U.S. history and world history classrooms. [MMB]

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The Association of American Colleges and Universities (AACU) recently published this thirty-two-page report about the General Education for a Global Century (GEGC), a recent project of the AACU's Shared Futures Initiative. This initiative, implemented at thirty-two colleges and universities across the United States, aims to "increase the capacity of colleges and universities to help all undergraduates understand and engage the diversities and commonalities among the world's peoples, cultures, nations, and regions" through curriculum development, faculty professional development, and pilot programs. This report investigates the impact of the GEGC initiative at twenty-four of the thirty-two participating institutions. Participating colleges and universities included both public and private schools as well as two-year and four-year institutions. This report, which can be downloaded in full, allows higher education professionals to learn a bit more about how GEGC was enacted at participating colleges and how these participating institutions accessed the value of the initiative. [MMB]

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2017 marks the tenth anniversary of the Public Library of Science's (PLOS) Neglected Tropical Diseases, which was "the first open access journal devoted to highlighting research and commentary on the forgotten diseases that affect the world's most neglected people." In honor of this anniversary, this open-access journal has published this collection of retrospective articles that highlight research about twenty different tropical diseases and how this research has evolved over the past decade. Readers may want to start by checking out a short history of the journal authored by Peter Hotez and Donald Bundy. From here, readers can find articles about topics including research into parasite genomics, challenges in treating mycetoma, and efforts to eradicate guinea worm. Other articles more broadly address research into tropical diseases, such as Bruce Lee and Sarah Bartsch's "How to determine if a model is right for neglected tropical disease decision making" and Dirk Engels's "Neglected tropical disease: a proxy for economic development and shared prosperity." [MMB]

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As noted when we first featured this site in the March 25, 2016 Scout Report, chemistry educator Andy Brunning's website Compound Interest impressed us because Brunning was extremely skilled at designing visuals that clearly illustrated chemical processes. For educators and others looking for infographics about a specific topic, the infographics index allows visitors to browse Brunning's impressive collection of infographics with ease. Here, infographics are organized by topic, including Alcohol Chemistry (which includes the "Chemistry of cocktail gelification" and "The chemistry of a hangover"), Cosmetic Chemistry (including the "Chemistry behind antiperspirants vs. deodorants" and "The science behind anti-aging creams-- do they really work?"), Sport Chemistry ("A brief guide to doping in sports"), and much more. Each infographic can be downloaded for free and is accompanied by a short description and links for further reading. [MMB]

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November 11, 2017 marked Remembrance Day/Veteran's Day in a number of countries, including Canada. Historica Canada's Memory Project offers this powerful collection of over 2,800 oral histories and 10,000 images from or about Canadian veterans who served throughout the twentieth century. In addition to oral history recordings, this collection includes handwritten letters, photographs, and official documents. Items are organized into four categories: World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and Peacekeeping. This last collection highlights the service of Canadians who served in United Nations peacekeeping missions since the 1940s. Within each category, visitors can browse materials by theme (such as Civilian Life, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and Bravery) to find stories and items of interest. Each category also includes an editor's choice selection of especially powerful or eye-opening materials. For example, in the World War I section, visitors will find a handwritten letter that Thomas Marion wrote to his mother from a hospital in Brighton, England. Marion poignantly wrote, "many a mother's heart is breaking for her boy who will never return." In the World War II category, veteran William Adelman describes his decision to enlist and his combat experiences in Italy; as he notes, one reason he enlisted was because he felt that, "...being a Jewish person, I felt I had to do something because we were being persecuted there." [MMB]

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On October 4, 1957, Sputnik 1 was launched into space, marking the beginning of the Space Age. In Space We Trust is an interactive timeline and art project dedicated to the recent history of space exploration. This project invites visitors to "travel" along with a timeline of the Space Age, accompanied by a soundtrack composed by Alexander Ananiev. Along the way, one will encounter descriptions of pivotal events and can click on each event to learn more. These events include Yuri Gagarin's orbit around Earth in 1961; the 1964 Mariner 4 mission to Mars; Apollo 11's 1969 mission to the moon; the 1974 Pioneer 10 mission to Jupiter; and the recent Cassini-Huygens Mission (2004- 2017). This project received support from Russian space agency Roscosmos and garnered a Webby Award for Best User Experience. [MMB]

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From Stanford University, in collaboration with McGill University (Montreal, Quebec), Ecole de Technologie Superieure (Montreal, Quebec), and Groningen University (Groningen, Netherlands) comes Global Currents, an ongoing digital humanities project dedicated to twelfth-century British manuscripts held at the Parker Library. More specifically, this project investigates the visual cues that these texts employed in order to guide and engage readers. Visitors of this web page can explore these manuscripts in the visual hierarchy section, available via the discovery tab. Here, visual features are sorted into categories including capital letters, illustrations, marginal images, intertextual space, and more for book history fans to explore. As the team behind this website notes (in the medieval scribes section), these manuscripts were hand-written by individuals known as scribes. The project plans to add a section dedicated to the scribes who created these manuscripts, so stay tuned. [MMB]

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Based out of Kentucky, Lost Art Press is a publishing company founded by Christopher Schwarz and John Hoffman that is dedicated to the "lost art" of hand-tool woodworking. In addition to publishing a number of books and instructional videos, the Lost Art Press also runs this regular blog written by and for amateur and professional woodworkers. This blog is updated almost daily and offers commentary about a range of issues relating to woodworking. One recent entry, from November 5, 2017, discusses the trestle table, which can be collapsed in a manner similar to a folding table. Another recent entry includes an excerpt from the Lost Art Press book The Woodworker: the Charles H. Haywood Years that discusses the importance of back irons in woodworking. Other posts examine different styles of woodwork, reflections on the practice of woodworking, and more. [MMB]

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John Neilson of Esri Story Maps has created Seismic Illumination, a project that illustrates what earthquake activity reveals about earth's tectonic plates and the Pacific Ring of Fire. Utilizing earthquake data from the U.S. Geological Survey and satellite images from NASA Visible Earth, Neilson depicts individual earthquakes throughout history as a single illuminated dot. Over time, these dots begin to form an outline viewers will recognize as contemporary continents. These dots also illuminate the Pacific Plate, the largest tectonic plate. In a series of visualizations in this story map, the dates of famous earthquakes along the Pacific Plate are labeled within the map of earthquakes. As a whole, this story map demonstrates how single events like earthquakes can help scientists understand phenomena when viewed in aggregate: "One bit of data, like a pinprick of light, is itself an interesting and useful construct. But individually, and out of context, it is of limited utility and fails to reveal a bigger picture. When these small (in a global sense) seemingly-independent entities are seen from the perspective of vast scales, both geographically and temporally, they begin to take their true form, illuminating the foundational structure to which we would be otherwise blind." [MMB]

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From the Institute of Modern Russian Culture at the University of Southern California comes this collection of satirical magazines published in Russia between 1905 and 1907 (and a few published after this time period). As historians of Russia will recognize, these years marked a tumultuous time in Russian history: the massacre of 500 unarmed protesters on "Bloody Sunday" in January of 1905, which ushered in the Russian Revolution of 1905. As noted in the introduction to this collection, the freedom of the press increased as a result of the revolution and enabled materials such as these satirical journals to be created. On this website, visitors can explore a select collection of these journals that have been digitized. While visitors with a reading knowledge of Russian will be able to enjoy these journals in full, all visitors can enjoy the many intricate illustrations and cartoons featured in these publications. [MMB]

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Why do we sometimes believe things that aren't true or aren't entirely true? Why do we remember things that didn't happen or didn't happen exactly the way we think they did? What factors might contribute to our willingness to change our minds? This podcast, hosted by former journalist David McRaney, is dedicated to exploring the psychology behind our beliefs, biases, and the things that shape them. Each forty minute episode is dedicated to a single issue or question. For example, topics explored in recent podcasts include the "optimism bias" in which we underestimate the likelihood that bad things will happen to us; why fiction is a powerful tool for changing people's opinions; and new research that reveals that access to Google and other search engines can make us feel smarter than we really are. Many episodes feature an interview with an expert researcher, offering listeners a diversity of perspectives. The link included here takes readers to McRaney's blog, which includes a link to all episodes along with transcripts of interviews featured in past shows. [MMB]

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Providing digital and physical access to the impressive Barnes Collection, assembled by Dr. Albert C. Barnes between 1912 and 1951, has a long and complicated history that is far beyond the scope of this annotation. (Those interested may wish to view the 2009 documentary "The Art of the Steal.") With the recent launch of its new collection website, the Barnes Foundation is using twenty-first-century technology to further Dr. Barnes' aim to teach people to understand and appreciate art, regardless of their prior training in the arts. Barnes believed in exhibiting artwork grouped by formal elements and visual similarity, rather than by artist or movement. This belief is implemented on this website by giving users the ability to conduct visual searches using colors, lines, light, or space. For example, if the colors tab is clicked, a bar of colors is presented from which to choose. Selecting dark red retrieves works including Henri Matisse's Two Young Girls in a Red and Yellow Interior, 1947; Picasso's Standing Nude in Front of a Red Arch, 1906; or an anonymous quilt block from the early twentieth century with prominent red triangles. These works can then be viewed in the original ensemble as Barnes arranged them or with more visually related works that can be sorted once again on a scale from more similar to more surprising. In addition, over 1,400 high-resolution images of public domain works are available for download. View the details tab from the full display of any painting or object record to see if it can be downloaded. [DS]

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Tableau Public is a free data visualization suite. It can import and process data from a wide variety of sources, including online sources like Google Sheets or sites that provide Web Data Connectors. Created visualizations can be shared via email, over social media, or embedded in a website. When embedded in a website, visualizations can be both interactive and dynamic. They can update in real time as new data is published. They can also be set up to allow users to filter and explore the data that is displayed. Tableau Public is available for Windows and macOS. [CRH]

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When a citation to a web resource no longer works, it's referred to as "link rot." This phenomenon can be a serious problem for scholarly and legal works. For example, over 50% of links cited in US Supreme Court opinions no longer refer to the intended content. Perma.cc provides a web archiving framework designed to mitigate this problem. In addition to citing an original source URL, authors may use Perma.cc to create an archival copy of the page they were viewing. This archival copy will be preserved both immutably and indefinitely. Individuals without an institutional affiliation can create a free account that can archive ten links per month. Accounts with no quota are available to faculty members, journal publishers, and courts. Perma.cc works in any modern browser. [CRH]

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