NOAA Historical Hurricane Tracks Web Site Helps Users Prepare for Big Storms

As the U.S. coastal population continues to grow, so do the hazards when big storms approach. Now, an on-line tool, Historical Hurricane Tracks, helps users get a quick picture of coastal areas with the greatest frequency of hurricanes and tropical storms — and that historical “snapshot” can help community members and local emergency managers develop better plans for storm preparation and recovery.

NOAA’s Historical Hurricane Tracks includes data on storm strikes through 2007. Current hurricane activity can be followed at the National Hurricane Center Web site.

Source: National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration

From the news release:

From 10,000-year-old American Indian tools and weapons to 20th century African masks, more than 26,000 artifacts in the Wake Forest University Museum of Anthropology’s collections will be accessible online in a searchable database.

Beginning Sept. 9, the public will be able to search the online database, www.wfu.edu/moa/database, and find a photograph and description of each object, including information about where it was collected.

The digital collections of the Library of Congress contain a wide variety of material associated with Ulysses S. Grant.

Source: Library of Congress

History Engine

The History Engine is an educational tool that gives students the opportunity to learn history by doing the work—researching, writing, and publishing—of a historian. The result is an ever-growing collection of historical articles or “episodes” that paints a wide-ranging portrait of life in the United States throughout its history and that is available to scholars, teachers, and the general public in our online database.

Source: University of Richmond

See: The Little Engine That Can (Inside Higher Ed)

From the announcement:

Library and Archives Canada (LAC) is pleased to announce the launch of a new online database, Second World War Service Files: Canadian Armed Forces War Dead.

Through this online database, researchers can access references to the service files in the Department of National Defence Fonds (RG 24) for the members of the Canadian Armed Forces who lost their lives during this conflict. Over 1,159,000 men and women served in the Canadian Armed Forces during the Second World War (1939-1945) and 44,093 people lost their lives. The database is available at: www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/databases/war-dead/index-e.html

Read brief summaries of past Democratic and Republican National Conventions.

PDF files.
Source: Humanities and Social Sciences, Library of Congress

NEH Awards $27.6 Million for 222 Humanities Projects

Today the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) announced $27.6 million dollars in grant awards and offers to 222 successful applicants. By offering diverse and competitive grant opportunities to teachers, scholars, and filmmakers as well as to museums, historical societies, and libraries, NEH strives to promote excellence in the humanities and increase the public’s awareness of their vital role in our national life.
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The funding announced today will help institutions improve and secure long-term support for their humanities programs and resources; enrich humanities education; support educators’ professional development; and help scholars use digital tools to enhance scholarship and make humanities resources more accessible. Funding also will provide high-quality media, library, and museum programming for public audiences at local, national, and historic sites; and will support state humanities council programs exploring significant events and themes in American history.

This award cycle, institutions and individuals in 48 states, the District of Columbia, and three U.S. territories received support from NEH. A complete state-by-state listing of total grants and offers of matching funds is available below:

• Alabama to Kentucky (11-page PDF),
• Louisiana to North Dakota (11-page PDF), and
• New York to Wyoming and U.S. territories.(13-page PDF).

Source: National Endowment for the Humanities

New Genealogy Program Started By Feds

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service are making it easier to find your family’s immigration history. The agency started a new Genealogy program to streamline the process of finding information.

USCIS has records dating back to the late 1800’s documenting the arrival and naturalization of millions of immigrants. The agency also has records of those people who were naturalized citizens between 1906 and 1956.

The new program replaces a Freedom of Information Act process that was required to get the information. USCIS reported receiving over 40,000 requests for historical records in the last four years.

There will be a charge to use the program of 20 dollars. If you need a copy of a file on microfilm it will add 20 dollars to the fee, and if you need a copy of text file, that’ll tack on another $35.

+ USCIS Genealogy Program

Source: cbs4.com

National Endowment for the Arts Announces 13 Fellowships for Literary Translation Projects

Today the National Endowment for the Arts announced that it will award 13 literature fellowships totaling $200,000 to support projects by literary translators. These fellowships are available to published literary translators for specific translation projects. The grants are for $10,000 or $20,000 depending on the scope and merit of each project. (The amount of the awards is pending Congressional approval of the NEA’s FY 2009 budget.) The grants will support the translation of six works of prose, including a play, and seven works of poetry. These works will be translated from nine languages including Japanese, Czech, Portuguese, and medieval Cretan Greek. The NEA also announced significant changes to the guidelines for the Literary Translation fellowships, to foster more translations of world literature into English.

Source: NEA

CDC Releases 1918 Pandemic Flu Storybook

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released today an online storybook containing narratives from survivors, families, and friends about one of the largest scourges ever on human kind – the 1918 influenza pandemic that killed millions of people around the world. The storybook provides valuable insight for public health officials preparing for the possibility of another pandemic sometime in our future.

This year marks the 90th anniversary of the 1918 influenza pandemic. The internet storybook contains about 50 stories from individuals from 24 states around the country as well as photos and narrative videos from the storytellers.

+ Pandemic Influenza Storybook

Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

From the guide:

The digital collections of the Library of Congress contain a wide variety of material associated with Woodrow Wilson. This resource guide compiles links to digital materials related to Wilson such as manuscripts, broadsides, government documents, images, sheet music, and films that are available throughout the Library of Congress Web site.

Source: LC

Originally posted: March 22, 2008

A must for all sports fans follows.

Search, review, and read (free!) more than 54 years of Sports Illustrated content including full text stories, images (including covers), video, and more. Search by keyword. An advanced interface is available but you cannot limit by date or date range before you run a search.

HOWEVER, you can refine a search by date and/or date range via an interface found at the top of all results pages. You can also click to refine by type of content (articles, photos, galleries, video, and covers). Finally, you can also refine results to material from Sports Illustrated (the magazine), SI.com (the web site) and/or both publictions. It’s also possible to sort results by date or relevance.

Be prepared to spend some time here. Yes, once again, it’s all free.

This is the 2nd massive archive Time has made available for free online. Time magazine offers a searchable archive of covers and content here (back to 1923).

From the announcement:

For the first time you can now search and download the medal index cards of more than 20,000 soldiers who served in the Indian Army during World War One. The cards record the soldiers who were entitled to, or made a claim for, campaign medals - in particular the British War Medal and the Victory Medal.

&

For the first time you can now search and download service records of officers who served in the Royal Navy. These records were kept by the Admiralty from the 1840s and record service for warrant officers joining the Royal Navy up to 1931 and commissioned officers joining the service up to 1917.

Source: National Archives, United Kingdom

From the AP article:

Famed chef Julia Child shared a secret with Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg and Chicago White Sox catcher Moe Berg at a time when the Nazis threatened the world.

They served in an international spy ring managed by the Office of Strategic Services, an early version of the CIA created in World War II by President Franklin Roosevelt.

The secret comes out Thursday, all of the names and previously classified files identifying nearly 24,000 spies who formed the first centralized intelligence effort by the United States. The National Archives, which this week released a list of the names found in the records, will make available for the first time all 750,000 pages identifying the vast spy network of military and civilian operatives.

NEH Announces Second Picturing America Application Period

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) announced today that a second round of applications for Picturing America will be accepted online through October 31, 2008. Picturing America is a free educational resource that helps teach American history and culture by bringing some of our nation’s greatest works of art directly to classrooms and libraries. In June, the NEH awarded Picturing America to over 26,000 schools and public libraries nationwide.

At no cost, recipients will receive a set of large, high-quality reproductions of 40 pieces of great American art (each approximately 24″ x 36″) and an illustrated teachers resource book with information about the artists and artwork and lesson ideas for all grade levels to facilitate the use of the reproductions in core subject areas. Delivery of these materials is scheduled for spring 2009. Additional educational resources are also available through the Picturing America Web site, PicturingAmerica.neh.gov.
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Public, private, parochial, and charter and home school consortia (K-12), as well as public libraries in the United States and its territories, are eligible to receive Picturing America materials.

Source: National Endowment for the Humanities