New Beginnings

I started this blog when I was a librarian at RPI and served as Science Sciences & Humanities subject specialist. I stopped writing when I was laid off in December 2008. However, I have found that I enjoyed the research that went into identifying news items, and I enjoyed writing the posts. In short, I missed publishing the blog.

Spring and Easter is historically a time of new beginnings, and so I take this opportunity to resume the blog. The title will change, but the posts will continue to highlight resources and news of interest to educators, researchers and other professionals in the social sciences and humanities. As before, I will include posts on the relationship of technological innovation to these disciplines.

It’s Been Great….

I have really enjoyed the past two months, as I’ve posted information to this blog. The blog itself was an experiment, to see if I could identify enough news to make it worthwhile and to see if there were a critical mass of readers interested in that information. The answer to both questions has been “Yes,” and I thank you readers for your support.

If you are a member of the Rensselaer community, you know that the Institute is in severe financial difficulty, and as announced last week, staff reductions would be forthcoming. Today, I learned that the reductions were headed my way, and effective today. I will leave this blog online through the end of the month, but this will be my last post.

To quote a favorite author, “So long, and thanks for all the fish.”

Fashion My Firefox

Mozilla has released Fashion Your Firefox, giving Firefox users an easy way to discover and install add-ons and customize the browser based on their interests and online activities.

Fashion Your Firefox presents add-ons in activity-based categories that make them easy to find and install. Add-ons are tiny pieces of software that add new features or functionality to Firefox, letting people customize their browser to meet their tastes. There are currently more than 1 billion downloads of Firefox add-ons.

Categories to choose from in Fashion Your Firefox include:

• News Junkie: Get the most up-to-date news and weather
• Digital Pack Rat: Keep track of favorite sites, bookmarks and blogs
• Social Butterfly: Share, bookmark, and e-mail web pages via an array of social networking & bookmarking sites
• Finder and Seeker: Find and make information on the Web more relevant
• Executive Assistant: Organize online activities

Fashion My Firefox asks you to confirm all your choices, then downloads and installs the lot of them in one fell swoop. This approach is perfect for someone new to Firefox and the whole idea of extensions (add-ons). Even experienced Firefox users could uncover some hidden gems they hadn’t noticed out of the thousands of available add-ons.

More information about Fashion Your Firefox and how it can help customize your browser is available at www.fashionyourfirefox.com.

Social Science Information A-Z: Alternative Press Index

“The Alternative Press Index (API) was born with the New Left of the 1960′s. It was launched in 1969 to provide access to the practices and theories of radical social change. The Index is international and interdisciplinary, spanning the social sciences and humanities, with its central focus on the practice and theory of socialism, national liberation, labor, indigenous peoples, gays/lesbians, feminism, ecology, democracy, and anarchism. It strives to be as comprehensive as possible.”

The Alternative Press Index continues to index alternative, radical and left periodicals, newspapers and magazines. The Index is produced by the Alternative Press Center, and the Libraries provide access through the FirstSearch interface. There are two files for the Index, 1969-1990 and 1991-current. The Libraries have created a single search box on FirstSearch entitled Alternative Press Complete.

The web site of the Alternative Press Center, publisher of the Index, provides a news blog, a directory of the publications covered in the Index, and a comprehensive list of links to organizations, agencies, and sites with similar interests, philosophies and political leanings.

From the Center web site.

Social Sciences Information A-Z: Academic Search Premier

Academic Search Premier (EBSCOhost) is a multi-disciplinary database that contains indexing and abstracts for more than 8,300 journals, with full text for more than 4,500 of those titles, including more than 3,700 peer-reviewed titles. PDF backfiles to 1975 or further are available for well over one hundred journals, and searchable cited references are provided for more than 1,000 titles. With full text coverage in subjects including biology, engineering, physics, psychology, religion, literature, and sociology, this database is recommended as a starting point for much undergraduate research, as well as a primary tool for interdisciplinary research.

The Global Remittances Guide

“Remittances are among the most tangible links between migration and development. Officially recorded flows totaled over US$280 billion worldwide in 2006. Nearly three-quarters were sent to developing countries. In 22 countries, remittances were equal to more than 10 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2006; in six countries they were equal to more than 20 percent of GDP.

Learn about remittance trends and patterns of the world, six regions, and the top remittances-receiving countries in terms of the volume and the share of GDP, by selecting the geography of interest.”

Technical terms are linked to definitions, and a full glossary is available.

This data tool is a project of the Migration Policy Institute’s Migrants, Migration, and Development program.

From the MPI web site.

State Responses to Immigration: A Database of All State Legislation

“State Responses to Immigration: A Database of All State Legislation is a free, searchable data tool designed to generate information about all immigration-related bills and resolutions introduced in state legislatures. Classified by state, region, subject area, legislative type, and bill status, this is the only database that allows users to find out, for example, the status of enforcement initiatives introduced in their state, compare the number of bills regulating employment, or evaluate the passage rate of health-related bills across the nation.

State Responses to Immigration is a joint project of the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) and a research team at the New York University School of Law (NYU). We encourage you to read about the methodology we employed to gather and classify immigration-related legislation before using the tool.”

At present, the database contains all immigration-related legislation for 2007. Data for 2008 and historic 2001-2006 data will be added in the coming months.

From the MPI web site.

Now Search and Find Magazines on Google Book Search

“Today, we’re announcing an initiative to help bring more magazine archives and current magazines online, partnering with publishers to begin digitizing millions of articles from titles as diverse as New York Magazine, Popular Mechanics, and Ebony. Are you a baseball history fanatic? Try a search for [hank aaron pursuing babe ruth's record] on Google Book Search. You’ll find a link to a 1973 Ebony article about Hank Aaron, written as he closed in on Babe Ruth’s original record for career home runs. You can read the article in full color and in its original context, just as you would in the printed magazine. Scroll back a few pages, for example, and you’ll find a two-page spread on 1973′s fall fashions. If you’d like to read further, you can click on “Browse all issues” to view issues from across the decades.”

Explore other publications, like Popular Science, New York Magazine, or (for you physics enthusiasts) the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, to rediscover historical interviews, do-it-yourself articles, and even a piece on canine eyewear. In many cases, these magazines aren’t just history as history, but history as perspective — a way of understanding today.”

From the Official Google Search Blog, 12/09/2008

Best Book Covers of 2008

With a twist on the popular end-of-year activity of creating “Best of” book lists, the Book Design Review blog has posted its Best Book Covers list. The Book Design Review blog is dedicated to the best, and sometimes the worst, of book design, book covers and book jackets. An admittedly subjective exercise, this year’s winners exhibit a handsome array of graphic design styles.

Previous years’ lists, including 2007, 2006, and 2005, are also online.

German National Archive Will Post 100,000 Historical Photos to Wikipedia

The German National Archive announced on Thursday that some 100,000 digitalized historical photos were available for the internet encyclopedia Wikipedia in a dual project that will eventually make about 11 million photos available for public use.

The archive decided which photos to release first based on their experience of the most popular requests and also worked with the Federal Press Office on the project. Images include documentation of the Holocaust, Weimar Republic era, public demonstrations and other important events in contemporary history.

The digital photos will be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, where users will then be able to attach them to corresponding entries on Wikipedia.

From story in “The Local” German news site.