The Scout Report -- Volume 24, Number 25

During the nineteenth century, a number of individuals and organizations from around the globe advocated abolishing slavery and the international slave trade. Between 1808 and 1896, international authorities began to seize and detain ships suspected of participating in the slave trade. Once these ships were seized or detained, a network of international courts "decided the fates of the survivors." In total, these courts secured the freedom of 250,000 enslaved Africans - approximately 6% of the total number of Africans forced into slavery during this time period. The Liberated Africans project aims to uncover the story of these individuals, as well as the stories behind "the world's earliest international courts dedicated to the humanitarian effort to stop human trafficking." To do so, this project provides access to archival materials relating to this court case, including records held in the British National Archives and the Sierra Leone National Archives. Researchers can explore these archival materials by court (including the Sierra Leone Vice-Admiralty Court and the Havana Slave Trade Commission), cases, people, or by document ("source"). The Liberated Africans project is headed by historian Henry Lovejoy of the University of Colorado Boulder and contains contributions from numerous researchers and other specialists. [MMB]

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Founded in 1999, Wisc-Online is a non-profit organization that offers a "repository of high-quality educational learning materials FREE to learners and educators." These materials are created by educators in the Wisconsin Technical College System (WTCS) in partnership with instructional design experts at Fox Valley Technical College. One highlight of this collection is a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) designed to teach computer skills. This course, which covers basic skills such as using a mouse, navigating an operating system, and using a word processor, may especially appeal to adult educators and adult services librarians. On the Basic Computer Skills MOOC page, visitors can play interactive computer games by navigating to the play games tab. Games are organized by category, including career clusters, manufacturing and engineering, math, and social studies. In addition, Wisc-Online also offers a number of game templates for educators interested in creating their own games. [MMB]

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Educators and librarians play a crucial role in helping young researchers learn how to understand and critically evaluate sources, including scholarly articles and websites. The New York City Department of Education's (NYC DOE) Office of Library Services has created this helpful guide of resources related to information literacy. This guide includes resources, created by a number of educational institutions, related to topics such as plagiarism, proper citation, website evaluation, and the research process. The Online Test and Tutorials section of this website is especially helpful, highlighting a number of interactive activities or presentations that educators can use when teaching information literacy classes. The reading section of this guide offers online tutorials and tips for reading critically and tackling scholarly articles. The writing process section contains links to resources about grammar and note taking. [MMB]

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Launched in 1947 by Denis Glover and Charles Brasch, Landfall is a New Zealand literary and art magazine that is still in publication today. The journal is currently published by the Otago University Press. For readers interested in the history of this journal, Otago University Press has digitized all issues of the journal published between 1947 and 1966. Collectively, these issues include work by over 500 authors, poets, and artists. Researchers with a specific writer or artist in mind may conduct a text search by using the creator facet in the advanced search section of this website. Visitors may also search by a number of other categories, including title, genre, and contributor. Alternatively, visitors may download past issues (available in PDF format) by navigating to Browse Landfall PDFs in the bottom reading pane. By selecting an individual issue, visitors can view information about the specific contributors, editors, and titles featured in that issue. [MMB]

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This new video lesson plan from MIT BLOSSOMS is designed to help physics students understand Newton's laws of motions and to help physics educators think about how to incorporate Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) into the classroom. This lesson is taught by high school physics teacher Francis Lenox. During this lesson, students learn how to create a force diagram (also known as a free body diagram) by observing what happens to a weight that is suspended by a thread when one pulls on the thread beneath the weight with differing degrees of force. During this activity, learners also apply Newton's laws of motion to make sense of their observations. As with all MIT BLOSSOMS lessons, this lesson comes complete with a video that physics instructors may use to teach this lesson, along with a detailed teacher's guide and links to additional resources that may be of interest. [MMB]

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Boise State University in Boise, Idaho makes faculty and student scholarship freely available to the general public via their ScholarWorks repository. ScholarWorks contains books, journal articles, data sets, conference presentations, student dissertations, and more. Visitors may browse this collection by performing a general keyword search on the homepage. A more in-depth search can be done by navigating to advanced search, where visitors may search by collection, discipline, or author facets, for example. One highlight of this rich collection is BOGA: the Basque Studies Consortium Journal: "a multi-disciplinary, peer-reviewed, open-access academic publication dedicated to the scholarly study of all aspects of Basque culture." Another highlight is the "Interdisciplinary Explorations: the Idea of Nature" lecture series. Since 2011, this annual lecture series has invited scholars to discuss a variety of topics related to the intersections of nature and science, literature, art, and more. Interested visitors can stream video recordings of past lectures in the Interdisciplinary Explorations collection. [MMB]

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Thomas Shannon at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Center for Limnology has created this website dedicated to the diatoms one can find in Wisconsin's Lake Mendota (and, by extension, other lakes in the region.) Diatoms are a type of algae that play a crucial role in the ecosystem: they are an important food source for zooplankton and insects and, through the process of photosynthesis, create a good portion of the oxygen we breathe. Interestingly, diatoms have an outer shell of silicon dioxide - otherwise known as glass. Visitors can learn more about diatoms and learn how to identify different types of diatoms by navigating to the Diatoms by Shape section. This website contains lucid descriptions and an extensive glossary of terms. For these reasons, science educators may find Mendota Diatoms to be an especially useful resource to use with students. Those with limited to no familiarity with diatoms or Wisconsin algae can learn quite a bit by visiting the Learn, Shape, and Identify sections. [MMB]

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The Pew Research Center recently released this extensive report that illuminates religious beliefs and practices in 106 different countries and territories. This 96-page report, which was based on data culled from thirteen different Pew surveys, investigates how religious beliefs vary by age around the globe. As this report reveals, "adults ages 18 to 39 are less likely than those ages 40 and older to say religion is very important to them in 46 out of 106 countries surveyed by Pew Research Center over the last decade." In contrast, younger adults were more likely to say religion was important to them in just two countries: Ghana and Georgia. In the remaining 58 countries, there was no significant difference in age. In general, the largest age gaps in religious beliefs were found in European, North American, and Latin American countries. Visitors can download the report in full through the link above. [MMB]

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The Tropics of Meta is an interdisciplinary blog that "aims to offer a fresh perspective on history, current events, popular culture, and issues in the academic world." Launched in 2010, Tropics of Meta is authored by a team of scholars and writers and is currently edited by three history scholars: Alex Sayf Cummings, a professor at Georgia State University; Romeo Guzman, a professor at California State University; and Joel Suarez, a doctoral candidate at Princeton University. The website contains two sections aimed specifically at historians and history graduate students: Videri (a historiography wiki launched in 2004 at Columbia University) and Career Resources. However, the rest of Tropics of Meta consists of essays that may more broadly appeal to anyone interested in the historical roots of contemporary issues. For instance, in one recent post, Guzman interviews historian Josh Nadel (author of Futbol! Why Soccer Matters in Latin America) along with his uncle, Manuel Guzman. Visitors can browse previous posts by topic, including music, foreign policy, and military history. [MMB]

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From the Scott Polar Research Institute comes this online exhibit of drawings and paintings by Edward Adrian Wilson. Wilson (1872-1912) was a physician, naturalist, and artist. Between 1901 and 1904, Wilson joined Robert Falcon Scott's Discovery expedition to Antarctica, where he served as a doctor, zoologist, and expedition artist. He returned to Antarctica with Scott on the Terra Nova expedition and tragically died in a blizzard, alongside Scott and Lt. Henry Robertson Bowers, in March 1912. Although Wilson created a number of paintings capturing the Antarctic and its fauna during his expedition, the Scott Polar Research Institute expedition features Wilson's older work, which includes watercolor paintings of British birds, hand-drawn maps, and a variety of sketches. In total, this collection features 242 items. [MMB]

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In 1882, Congress passed a law that barred Chinese immigration to the United States. In addition, the law prevented Chinese nationals already living in the United States from becoming U.S. citizens. The Act was not repealed until 1943, following the advent of World War II. PBS recently aired this two-hour episode of American Experience dedicated to the Chinese Exclusion Act and its impact on Chinese-American individuals in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The entire episode is currently available for streaming on PBS's website. This episode, which features interviews with numerous renowned historians, traces the history of Chinese immigration to the United States throughout the nineteenth century. The episode also examines the growth of that racism and xenophobia that eventually culminated in the 1882 law. One of the most powerful segments of this episode documents the horrific violence that targeted the Chinese community, including the 1871 massacre in Los Angeles. Another powerful portion of the documentary documents the resistance of Chinese Americans who bravely challenged their treatment under the act through civil disobedience and challenges in court. [MMB]

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The Quilt Alliance is a non-profit organization that aims to "document, preserve, and share our American quilt heritage by collecting the rich stories that historic and contemporary quilts, and their makers, tell about our nation's diverse peoples and their communities." The alliance was founded in 1993 by Karey Patterson Bresenhan, Nancy Puentes O'Bryant, Shelley Zegart. One way the Quilt Alliance preserves this heritage is via the quilt index, featured in the 10-24-2003 Scout Report. In addition, the Quilt Alliance also hosts a project called Quilters' S.O.S (Save Our Stories): a collection of recorded interviews with quilters. Visitors can explore these interviews via the QSOS gallery, which features photographs of quilts created by interviewees. Alternatively, visitors can browse these interviews in the archive by categories, such as interviewee and location. These interviews, along with accompanying photographs, are held in the Library of Congress's American Folklife Center. [MMB]

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The Warren Anatomical Museum at the Harvard Medical School was founded in 1847 by John Collins Murray with the aim of teaching students about human anatomy. Today, Harvard's Center for the History of Medicine has made a number of items featured in the museum available through this online exhibit. This collection includes illustration lithographer Oscar Wallis, who was commissioned by surgery professor Henry Jacob Bigelow to create a number of works for the school between 1848 and 1854. In addition, the collection features work by William Jurian Kaula, who is also known for his landscape paintings. In this exhibit, visitors can read more about Wallis and Kaula and look at a number of their medical illustrations. These illustrations are organized into categories, which include diagrams, surgical procedures, microscopic views, bones, and digestive tract. Collectively, these items offer insight into nineteenth-century medical practice and the intersections of art and science. [MMB]

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Longform, a publication of the University of Pittsburgh, is a website dedicated to compiling some of the best long-form essays and journalistic reports from a wide variety of online publications. Check out the 05-22-2015 Scout Report to learn more. Fans of long-form nonfiction writing will also want to check out the Longform Podcast, which features weekly interviews with contemporary writers about their work and their writing process. The podcast is hosted by Aaron Lammer, Max Linsky, and Evan Ratliff of Atavist (the company co-produces the podcast). Episodes are approximately thirty minutes to an hour in length. Recent episodes have featured novelist and New Yorker staff writer Elif Batuman, Motherhood: A Novel author Sheila Heti, and This American Life producer Chana Joffe-Walt. Each episode is accompanied by links to works discussed in the podcast. Interested listeners can check out all episodes on this website. Alternatively, listeners may subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Pocket Cast, Stitcher, or Overcast. [MMB]

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Europeana Migration is a new online exhibit that documents the history of migration "to, from, and within Europe." The collection, which currently contains 200,000 items, is part of the European Commission's European Year of Cultural Heritage. As explained on this website, "Europeana will run a series of collection days and events involving museums, libraries, archives and audiovisual collections across Europe that specialise in or are interested in the theme of migration." As of this write-up, visitors can explore this growing collection in a few different ways. The exhibit currently features a Famous Migrants Gallery, which features portraits, photographs, and sculptures of famous Europeans including Camille Pissarro and Frederic Chopin. Visitors can browse items in this collection by format (text, image, video) and filter results by language. Alternatively, visitors can conduct a keyword search on the site's homepage. Readers are also invited to share their own migration histories in the stories section. [MMB]

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Anki is an intelligent flashcard system designed to help users quickly learn new information. Cards can contain nearly anything, including audio, video, images, text, and LaTeX formatted scientific markup. Anki schedules cards for review using the SuperMemo spaced repetition algorithm, which is based on academic research on learning and retention. The Anki website suggests a few sample uses, from learning new languages to practicing guitar chords. Roger Craig used Anki to prepare for his 2010 appearance on the quiz show Jeopardy! in which he set the record for highest single-day winnings. By using the AnkiWeb service, users can synchronize sets of flashcards and their learning statistics across all their devices. Anki can be downloaded for Windows, macOS, Linux, iPhone, and Android. Anki is distributed under the GNU Affero General Public License version 3, with source code available via GitHub. [CRH]

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Open Live Writer is a Windows application for creating and editing blog posts. It provides What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) content editing and photo uploading that can be configured to work with WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, Movable Type, and several other blogging platforms. Their website describes it as being "like Word for your blog." Open Live Writer is an open source continuation of Microsoft's popular but now discontinued Windows Live Writer. When Windows Live Writer was first released, ZDNet described it as "Microsoft's first live killer app" and suggested that it could become "the default editor of choice for people who write blogs." Open Live Writer is distributed under the MIT License, with source code available on GitHub. [CRH]

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Featured in July 2016, The Qatar Digital Library features thousands of digitized archival items and dozens of excellent essays by historians and archivists.

The Qatar Digital Library is the product of an ongoing collaboration between the Qatar Foundation, the Qatar National Library, and the British Library. Together, these organizations are digitizing and curating hundreds of thousands of archival materials relating to Middle Eastern and Indian history - including maps, newspapers, scientific manuscripts, and photographs - thereby making these cultural collections accessible to both researchers and the general public alike. Researchers can search or browse the archives, which are filtered by geographic location or time. The library also contains over one hundred articles by experts designed for anyone looking to learn more about the history of the Gulf region. These essays, along with all commentary on the site, are available in both English and Arabic and provide context and insight into archives. One such article describes the career of Omani musician and singer Salim Rashid Suri, who was known as "The Singing Sailor," and links to audio clips of Suri's music. Another article provides context for the library's collection of over 5,000 personal papers of British personnel who worked in the India Office between 1750-1947.

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