CGHS Library

Yale Digital Commons

The thing I like best about the internet is that I can access millions of hidden treasures that were never available before. Yale Digital Commons has collected and made freely available all kinds of art and print treasures. I searched "flowers" and found 1457 hits in less than half a second from five separate institutions at Yale including the library, the natural history museum, and two art galleries.

Take a look at this 1971 lithograph by Bardone from the Yale University Art Gallery. Cheerful.

Qwiki

Qwiki is a multimedia encyclopedia containing more than three million entries featuring video, photos, and narration. I watched the Beatles entry and was a bit distracted by the robotic voice reading the text, but it was a solid introduction to the topic and seemed as if it would keep the interest of people with the shortest of attention spans. Registered users can improve existing entries or create their own. I think this site would be particularly useful for brainstorming topics.

Mapping America

As someone who remembers messing around with those huge Statistical Abstracts volumes and later the PDFs available by our Census Bureau, I am blown away with the easy data display possibilities presented by the New York Times’ research tool, Mapping America!

Students and teachers can now access and manipulate local Census data, based on samples from 2005 to 2009. (The Times notes that the data is based on samples and subject to a margin of error, particularly in places with lower populations.)

Maps are available for race and ethnicity, income, housing and families, and education.  Within each category, researchers may filter by a variety of related subcategories.  Data are searchable by address, zip code and city.  Maps are scalable and a simple shift of the mouse allows you to examine patterns and differences among and within communities.

The New York Times offers a Census Topic Page for a wealth of related content as well as this lesson on recent patterns in immigration.

Posted by joycevalenza on December 28th, 2010 on NeverEndingSearch.

Statistics Galore

I suspect the U. S. Census Bureau's publication of The 2011 Statistical Abstract is the kind of thing only a select few get very excited about, but there is a wealth of information right here. Not too long ago, I had to buy a big book containing all these statistics, the book was not that easy to navigate, and it was outdated almost instantly. Now you can discover almost anything you want to know about the social, political, and economic organization of the United States with just a grain of intelligence and a few clicks of your mouse.

Crime and Criminal Resources for Sophomore English

FBI Famous Crimes
John Dillinger. Al Capone. The KKK. John Gotti. Patty Hearst. The Unabomber. Bonnie and Clyde. The FBI has investigated them all… and many more spies, terrorists, and criminals besides. Listed below, grouped according to our top investigative priorities and related categories, are many of our famous and most significant cases over the past century 

About.com's Notorious Crimes and Criminals in History
History's most notorious crimes, including famous murder cases, serial killers, mass murderers, gangsters and outlaws.

About.com's Criminals and Notorious Women
Women criminals - infamous and famous women suspected or convicted of crime through history. Includes Lizzie Bordon, Mary Surratt and others.

Cite your sources with EasyBib.

World Digital Library

The World Digital Library makes available, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from countries and cultures around the world. These cultural treasures include manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, and architectural drawings. The collection is browsable by place, time, topic, type of item, and institution.

 

 

Google Search Options

 

 

Instructables

Instructables is a huge community of do-it-yourselfers who actively engage in creating and sharing well-illustrated, step-by-step how-to articles on everything from building robots to repairing torn clothing to creating 3D anamorphic sidewalk art (really). The guides are written by the extremely vibrant community, and all follow the same, step-by-step illustrated format that make comprehending the information quickly a snap.

Each guide can also be downloaded as a PDF file for easy offline viewing and printing. (Taken from 10 Sites to Learn Something New in 10 Minutes a Day)

Wordnik

One of the [several] curses of being a librarian is that I have a weakness for dictionaries. Wordnik is a particularly nifty online dictionary.

"Launched by Erin McKean, former editor in chief of the New Oxford American Dictionary, Wordnik is a word-feast offering a summary, definitions from dictionaries old and new, related words, pronunciations, real-world usage examples, etymology, synonyms, antonyms, cross references, and usage statistics. One of its great advantages is the example sentences pulled from sources ranging from Twitter to newspaper articles. It even includes photos from Flickr to illustrate words." (taken from Book Patrol)

Kansas Health Online

Kansas Health Online is a new website which aims to empower Kansans to make more informed health and health care decisions by providing information in an easy-to-use and easy-to-understand format.  You will find tools, links, and information to:

-compare hospitals

-find doctors

-compare health plans

-analyze symptoms

-get the latest information on medical conditions

-make healthy lifestyle choices

-learn more about health policy

In late January, 2009, the site will launch GoLocalKansas which will allow you to find health care resources in your neighborhood with the click of a button.