Iraq’s Cultural Heritage: Preserving the Past for the Sake of the Future
This USIPeace Briefing discusses the continued looting of Iraqi antiquities and measures that have been taken to recover and protect Iraq’s cultural heritage. In addition, it highlights the value of international law and policing to prevent such crimes.
Source: U.S. Institute of Peace
Vintage Cigarette Ad Exhibit Opens at NYPL
After his mother died from cancer, Dr. Robert Jackler of Stanford University worked through his grief by searching out print tobacco ads from the ’20s through the ’50s. Appearing in publications like Life and the Saturday Evening Post, the ads featured such cigarette-smoking luminaries as Rock Hudson, John Wayne, Joe DiMaggio, Ronald Reagan, and Santa Claus. And of course there were plenty of models hired to pose as doctors and dentists for ads with slogans like, “38,381 Dentists Say, ‘Smoke Viceroys.’ They can never stain your teeth.” Because if it was only, say, 38,300 dentists, nobody would have bought it.
Now Dr. Jackler’s vast digitally restored collection is on display through December at a free exhibit called Not a Cough in a Car Load: Images Used by Tobacco Companies to Hide the Hazards of Smoking. At turns hilarious and dismaying, the exhibit is open through December 26th at The New York Public Library’s Science, Industry and Business Library’s Healy Hall (188 Madison Avenue). And there are a lot more from Dr. Jackler’s collection online here.
Source: Gothamist
The Smithsonian Institution will work to digitize its collections to make science, history and cultural artifacts accessible online and dramatically expand its outreach to schools, the museum complex’s new chief said Monday.
Source: AP (via CNN)
National Endowment for the Arts Announces Domestic Indemnity Program
The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) today announced the addition of a domestic component to the Arts and Artifacts Indemnity Program that will provide significant assistance to American museums while increasing opportunities for audiences to view great works of art. For the first time, exhibitions drawn from U.S. collections are eligible for indemnity coverage while on view in American museums. With the program’s history of unqualified success in covering international exhibitions, it is expected that the domestic component will have an equally profound impact on American museums and the publics they serve.
Since 1975, the NEA has administered the Arts and Artifacts Indemnity Program on behalf of the Federal Council on the Arts and Humanities to reduce the costs of insurance for American museums exhibiting collections from abroad or loaning their objects for exhibitions in other countries. The indemnity agreements are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States Treasury in the event of loss or damage. Because of this program, exhibition organizers, mostly non-profit museums, have been spared nearly $250 million in insurance premiums.
+ Arts and Artifacts Indemnity Program: Domestic Indemnity
Source: National Endowment for the Arts
From an email intro:
Ever wonder what our continent was like before Columbus set sail? Now at the Library of Congress you can delve into the early history and cultures of the Americas. “Exploring the Early Americas,” a new exhibition part of the Library of Congress Experience, features rare artifacts like the 1507 Waldseemueller map and 1516 Carta Marina. Paired together in an interactive display, the maps enable you to explore the significance of depicting the world newly enlarged by the presence of the Western Hemisphere. Experience the exhibition both in person and online.
Source: The Library of Congress
Virtual Tour of the National Hurricane Center Available
A virtual tour of NOAA’s National Hurricane Center is now available online. The Web site provides panoramic views of different areas of the facility, accompanied by audio and text descriptions. “This is an especially useful tool for students who are learning about tropical cyclones and weather forecasting,†said Bill Reed, director of the National Hurricane Center. “It also shows how the different branches of our facility work together for the best possible forecasts.â€
Welcome to the virtual tour of NOAA’s National Hurricane Center. With the click of a computer mouse, the online links provide panoramic views of the different rooms of the facility, accompanied by an audio description. Using the mouse, you will be able to move around each room in a circle, stop, back up, and zoom in. A text window is available for the hearing-impaired.
Those rooms included in the virtual tour are the National Hurricane Center operations, the Tropical Analysis and Forecast Branch (TAFB) operations, the Chief Aerial Reconnaissance Coordination All Hurricanes (CARCAH), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) liaison, Media & Seminar Room, NOAA Miami Regional Library, and the NOAA National Weather Service Miami Forecast Office.
Source: U.S. Department of Commerce/NOAA
Old Congressional Web Site Captures
To see how far Congress has come online in the last 15 years, check out this flickr set from Chris Casey (who probably made several of these sites).
I particularly like this one, of the original THOMAS in 1994.
Source: The Open House Project
Buried treasure: British Museum’s secret treasures
Deep inside the British Museum, beyond the mummies and the marble, is a secret stash of prints and etchings – and hardly anyone knows they’re there.
Source: The Independent
Footnote.com and the National Archives Launch an Interactive Vietnam War Memorial
From the announcement:
Footnote.com and the National Archives and Records Administration held a press conference at the Archives in Washington, DC, to announce the release of an online interactive photo of the Vietnam War Memorial. In addition to releasing this unique version of the Wall, Footnote.com enables visitors to search the Wall for people they know and pay tribute by adding photos, comments and stories of those who lost their lives during the Vietnam conflict.
Source: NARA
You Spin Me Round – Record Players Exhibition
As well as digitising several thousand sound files, the British Library Archival Sound Recordings project has made multiple digital images of record and music players from its artefacts collections.
This includes gramophones from the 1890s right up to Sony cassette decks from the 1970s.
The players have been photographed from multiple angles, allowing for the objects themselves to be rotated by the user.
Source: BL
Online Exhibits: Exploring the Early Americas
Exploring the Early Americas features selections from the more than 3,000 rare maps, documents, paintings, prints, and artifacts that make up the Jay I. Kislak Collection at the Library of Congress. It provides insight into indigenous cultures, the drama of the encounters between Native Americans and European explorers and settlers, and the pivotal changes caused by the meeting of the American and European worlds. The exhibition includes two extraordinary maps by Martin Waldseemüller created in 1507 and 1516, which depict a world enlarged by the presence of the Western Hemisphere.
Source: Library of Congress
Canada: Online Exhibit: The Men of the North West Mounted Police
The history of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) is the stuff of legend. The red tunic is recognized internationally as a Canadian icon, second only to the maple leaf itself. The legendary courage and perseverance of the force’s members has been an integral part of Canadian popular culture for well over a century.
The history of the RCMP is relatively well known, and there are many good websites devoted to it. In this website, Without Fear, Favour or Affection: Men of the North West Mounted Police, Library and Archives Canada offers a unique online exhibit that will take the visitor beyond the history itself and into the personal lives of the men who made it.
Source: Library and Archives Canada
New Online Exhibit: America by Air from the National Air and Space Museum
+ EXPLORE EXHIBITION +
+ OBJECTS & IMAGES
+ ACTIVITIES STORIES
+ IN THE NEWS
+ Behind the Scene
Source: Smithsonian Institution
New: British Library archives Haemophilia and HIV Life Histories
The unheard voices of the people with bleeding disorders infected with HIV through their treatment, and the often silenced stories of the parents, partners, children, brothers and sisters who played a vital role through all the challenging years, have been recorded as part of two oral history projects Haemophilia and HIV Life History Project and HIV in the Family. The material will be presented to the British Library at a reception on Tuesday 20th November 2007.
Extracts of these incredible stories of survival and loss can be heard on www.livingstories.org.uk and the complete interviews through the British Library Listening and Viewing Service in London.
Source: British Library
Australia: KPMG’s Population Growth Report 2007 & Melbourne set to become largest city
The great Aussie dream of owning a big house in the suburbs is looking shaky as Generations X and Y as well as empty-nest baby boomers take to city living in increasing numbers, according to KPMG’s Population Growth Report 2007.
For the first time in the report’s 18-year history the number of people moving downtown is rivalling the number shifting to leading growth corridors in the suburbs.
“There is no greater measure of how Australian values have shifted in a single generation than in the numbers that track the rise of downtown living,†said the report’s author, Bernard Salt, a partner in KPMG’s Advisory practice.
“We are still enamoured with the beach and the seachange shift continues to grow strongly as evidenced by the Gold Coast’s relentless population boom, but the central core of our largest cities is emerging as a growth area that now competes with the outer suburbs and with parts of the beach as the preferred destination for Australians on the move.â€
“In the funkiest, hippest and most central parts of Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane the number of new residents moving in each year now tops 7,000, 6,800 and 6,300 respectively and exceeds the numbers added to each city’s fastest growing suburbs.â€
You can access a complete summary of the report by contacting the people listed at the bottom of the summary.
Source: KPMG and Australian Broadcasting Corp.
America’s Drought-Riskiest Cities
A new list from livability expert Bert Sperling measures the drought severity for the 100 largest metro areas in the United States. Nearly 200 million people reside in these 100 metros, comprising nearly 60% of the U.S. population.
SoCal the driest, Texas the wettest
Los Angeles tops the list of drought-plagued cities, with its recent annual rainfall only 25% of normal. Other top-ten driest cities include
Salt Lake City, Nashville, and Birmingham.At the other end of the list are cities suffering from too much water. Cities in the central Texas region such as San Antonio, Dallas, Houston,
and Oklahoma City have been afflicted by flood conditions this summer. Ironically, these floods which have caused deaths and property damage in Texas are the product of abnormal climate patterns that prevented the moisture-laden clouds to be carried northward to the already-parched Deep South.Top cities in various categories can be found either in the news release or via the new DroughtScore.com database.
See Also: Methodology
Source: Sperling’s Best Places
Ancient Mesopotamia: This History, Our History
…explores the everyday lives of people who lived thousands of years ago in the area now called Iraq. Learn about the “cradle of civilization” through lessons and artifacts organized around 14 themes: archaeology, prehistory, the first farmers, the first cities, daily life, religion, the role of women, the invention of writing, literature, law and government, mathematics and measurement, science and technology, art and architecture, and warfare and empire.
Source: The Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago, Institute of Museum and Library Services)
From the announcement:
The History of Medicine Division (HMD) of the National Library of Medicine is pleased to announce the launch of a new website featuring historical literature on cholera.
Cholera is an acute, painful, and often fatal disease which ravaged populations all over the world in several pandemics during the 19th century. News of its spread and impending approach often sent panic into entire nations, and health professionals were largely at a loss as to how to treat or prevent it until modern epidemiological and laboratory techniques were developed later in the century.
The National Library of Medicine has so far scanned over 100 English language pamphlets dating from 1817 to 1890 dealing with the cholera pandemics of that period. The selection of cholera was in part inspired by the 315-page “Bibliography of Cholera” compiled by John Shaw Billings in 1875 for the report by John M. Woodworth’s Cholera Epidemic of 1873 in the United States. This extensive bibliography by Billings meant to include all published monographs and journal articles “which relate mainly or entirely to cholera.” The bibliography was a precursor, perhaps a “pilot project,” to the great Index Catalogue of the Library of the Surgeon General’s Office, which began coming out in 1880.
Altogether, the Library plans to scan nearly 400 English language items on cholera from its collections, making it one of the most comprehensive online collections of cholera literature available anywhere.
Source: National Library of Medicine
The Canadian State: Documents & Dialogue
The Canadian State Web exhibition encourages you to define, discuss, and document your own ideals for this complex country. By thinking critically about Canadian government, democracy, identities, law, and our role in the world, you can add to the history of “peace, order, and good government” aspired to in the Constitution Act, 1867.
Drawing on the rich documentary heritage collection at Library and Archives Canada, The Canadian State is an educational resource that offers both classroom activities and primary historical materials to support a broader understanding of government and politics in Canada.
Source: Libraries and Archives Canada
Web Resources for National Hispanic Heritage Month
The event begins on September 15th.
+ National Hispanic Heritage Month: Library of Congress Portal
Visit this inter-agency portal to find the rich resources the Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum have provided to pay tribute to the generations of Hispanic Americans who have positively influenced and enriched our nation and society.
+ Hispanic Americans – Themed Resources
+ Primary Source Set: Hispanic Exploration in America
This “ready to download and use” Primary Source Set includes maps, images, documents and a sound file to help teach about the age of exploration, specifically, the contributions and interactions of Hispanic peoples in America.
See Also: Fast Facts about Hispanic Americans (via U.S. Census)
Stats include:
44.3 million
The estimated Hispanic population of the United States as of July 1, 2006, making people of Hispanic origin the nation’s largest ethnic or race minority. Hispanics constituted 15 percent of the nation’s total population. (This estimate does not include the 3.9 million residents of Puerto Rico.)
3.4%
Percentage increase in the Hispanic population between July 1, 2005, and July 1, 2006, making Hispanics the fastest-growing minority group.
27.4 years
Median age of the Hispanic population in 2006. This compares with 36.4 years for the population as a whole.
4.7 million
The Hispanic population of Los Angeles County, Calif. — the largest of any county in the nation
1.6 million
The number of Hispanic-owned businesses in 2002.
32.2 million
The number of U.S. household residents 5 and older who speak Spanish at home. Spanish speakers constitute nearly one in eight U.S. household residents. Among all those who speak Spanish at home, more than one-half say they speak English very well.
59%
The percentage of Hispanics 25 and older who had at least a high school education in 2006.
Much more on the web page.
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