General Interest
http://tinkering.exploratorium.edu/
The Tinkering Studio website from the Exploratorium in San Francisco is billed as "Experiments with art, science, technology, and delightful ideas." It does not disappoint, and visitors may wish to make a special trip to San Francisco to see the Exploratorium in action after some time on the site. A good place to start is the Artists area. Visitors can learn about artists who've been inspired by the Tinkering Studio, such as Ana Serrano, who works with discarded cardboard and Andrew Lyndon, an Oakland-based videographer and animator. Visitors young and old must visit the Activities section as well. Here they can learn about marble machines, circuit boards, and light painting. Finally, interested parties shouldn't miss the site's fun blog, which includes entries on how to make your own potato head toy at home. [KMG]
What do Tom Brokaw and the National Music Museum (NMM) have in common? The University of South Dakota! It happens to be Brokaw's alma mater and the home of this fine museum, which has more than 15,000 musical instruments in its collection. Visitors interested in the spaces housing the instruments will enjoy the Virtual Tours link, which has at least a dozen tours of the galleries, including a tour of the outside of the NMM building. There are photos of how it has changed from 1910 to the present, complete with a wonderful photo taken on a cold winter's night in 1987. Visitors keen on seeing some of the collections, not all of which are online, should check out the Collections and Archive link in the Collections section. Here visitors will be able to read about the acquisition of the collections, who collected each item, and why items were selected for inclusion. Finally, curious parties can see the instruments in the collection by clicking on the links in the text. [KMG]
Created by dedicated staff members at the World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Center at the University of Pittsburgh, Supercourse is "a repository of lectures on global health and prevention designed to improve the teaching of prevention." The group's network of experts includes over 56,000 scientists in 174 countries who have produced well over 5,000 lectures in 31 languages. It's quite impressive, and first-time visitors may wish to click on the Lecture of the Week on the homepage. Visitors can also search the lectures, where they will find a range of topics from "Urbanisation and spatial inequalities in health in Brazil and India" to "A Simple Model for Improving Global Health Education." Researchers and others can use the Publications area to find out where some of the work offered here has been published over the years. Visitors shouldn't miss the Special Lectures area. Here they can look over some of the Supercourse Golden Lectures, which include talks in Chinese, Arabic, Croatian, and Albanian. [KMG]
Bequeathed to the city of Baltimore in 1931 by Henry Walters, the Walters Art Museum now contains 28,000 works of art spanning 55 centuries. Henry's father, William, started the collection, and first brought his art to the public in the spring of 1874 by opening his home every Wednesday for two months, charging the public 50 cents for admission, and giving the proceeds to charity. The Works of Art tab near the top of the homepage provides multiple ways of viewing the thousands of works of art from the museum that are available online. Many of the pieces are accompanied by detailed descriptions. The Artwork of the Day allows visitors to read about the details of a highlighted piece simply by clicking on its image. Visitors may also view past artworks of the day by clicking on the back arrow above the image. Another way for visitors to see the collection, through the eyes of public curators, is by checking out the Community Collections feature, which shows the collections that people have created themselves from the works of art online. Diamonds, babies, and pointing fingers are some of the themes. [KMG]
http://www.chipublib.org/images/examiner/index.php
William Randolph Hearst was a titan of the 20th century newspaper world, and he purchased and started papers in dozens of American cities. One of his morning papers was the Chicago Examiner, which began its run in 1902. The Chicago Public Library has an impressive archive of the Examiner from 1908 to 1918. Although the collection is incomplete, it remains the longest run of the paper still available. First-time visitors should take a look at the Highlights area. Here they will find images and newspaper articles that cover the Plan of Chicago, the Chicago Cubs, and the Eastland Disaster. Visitors can also use the Images By Subject area, which features thematic collections about labor issues, Jane Addams, and mayoral elections, among other subjects. Urban planners and historians should not miss the Plan of Chicago area, as it features the beautiful renderings by Jules Guerin that dramatized this masterful work from the City Beautiful moment in urban planning history. [KMG]
http://www.americanantiquarian.org/Exhibitions/Ridgway/enter.htm
On a September day in 1822, Staffordshire Pottery owner John Ridgway left Liverpool on a ship bound for Boston, Massachusetts. The purpose of his visit was to view major American cities and also to start new business relationships with American ceramic merchants. During his two months in the United States, he kept a detailed journal of his activities. Upon his return to England, Ridgway began creating his Beauties of America dinner service. The dinner service was produced between 1825 and 1829 and soup bowls, cups, and plates featured views of places like the "new" State House in Boston and the Custom House in Philadelphia. This delightful site, created by the American Antiquarian Society (AAS), gives interested parties the opportunity to view twenty-two pieces of Ridgway pottery, look at photographs from a talk on the collections, and read an introduction Ridgway's journey by site curator Ruth Ann Penka. [KMG]
http://pudl.princeton.edu/collections/pudl0076
In 2009, Sid Lapidus, an alumnus of Princeton University, gifted over 150 books, pamphlets, and prints related to the intellectual origins of the American Revolution to the Princeton University Library. The items here also cover the early years of the republic, efforts to abolish the slave trade in Great Britain and the United States, and the Revolution itself. These materials have been digitized and are available on this site. On the left hand side of the site, visitors will find listings of these documents organized by topic, creator, genre, and language. Visitors should not miss the exquisite edition of Thomas Paine's celebrated "The age of reason: being an investigation of true and fabulous theology," printed while Paine was imprisoned in 1794. It is a remarkable collection, and the site also features a link to additional supportive materials for school curricula offered courtesy of the Gilder Lehrman Institute for American History. [KMG]
New York City's Department of Parks & Recreation oversees 29,000 acres of land, and more than 1,700 parks, playgrounds, and recreation facilities located throughout the five boroughs. Their website provides a great starting point for a virtual visit undaunted by weather. Take a virtual tour along the Bronx River, watch video clips from "It's My Park" (also aired every weekday at 11:00 a.m. on NYC life (channel 25)), and browse the photo gallery, which includes selections from the Parks Photo Archive, dating back to 1856, and the Parks' Flickr Group, with visitor-contributed photos. There are also seasonal features: for February, Black History Month, there's an events listing, an inventory of permanent sculptures honoring African-Americans in the Parks, African–American Namesake Parks, and a photo gallery entitled The African American Experience. And of course, there's a Groundhog Day page, presenting the history of weather prediction by rodent in the NYC Parks. [DS]
