People who want to eat healthy and live sustainably have a new way to measure their impact on the environment: a Web-based tool that calculates an individual’s “nitrogen footprint.” The device was created by University of Virginia environmental scientist James N. Galloway; Allison Leach, a staff research assistant at U.Va.; and colleagues from the Netherlands and the University of Maryland.
The calculator is a project of the International Nitrogen Initiative, a global network of scientists who share research and data on the nitrogen dilemma. The project was announced Feb. 19 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington.
New: Free, Hands-On Nitrogen Footprint Calculator
More Libraries Join the Mobile Web, Eight Recently Release Apps/Sites
First, Two Resources From Non-Library Organizations:
1. For Android, iPhone/iPad: “CBC News on your mobile device” (via Canadian Brodcasting Corp.)
2.. Mobile Web Site: Chicago Transporation Authority (CTA) Train Tracker (Rapid Transit)
3. iPhone/iPad Ottawa: Ontario Public Library (Powered by Bibliocommons)
This is the second Bibliocommons library to release a mobile app. Edmonton Public Library released an app in late 2010.
4. Simmons College Library (iPhone/iPad) and Web Site
5. iPhone/IPad: University of Chicago Updates Mobile App, Now With Library Access
6. Mobile Web Site: Maquette University Libraries
7. Multiple Platforms: Louisville Public Libar
8. Mobile Web Site: Northern Iowa University
New From Bing: Virtual Search the Presidents of the United States
In honor of Presidents Day, Bing has placed a new visual search gallery online. Today’s release (the 117th gallery) allows users to find fast facts about each POTUS (President of the United States) with images being returned instead of text.
Direct to POTUS Visual Search Page
Example Search:
1. After arriving at the page look at the filters above the images and interactive filters in the left rail.
2. We selected the youngest in office link. Click. Now you’re looking at images of each president sorted by age at the time of inauguration.
If a user cursors over each image you’ll find a bit more info while clicking on an image will run a search on the name.
3. Using the filters on the left side of the page, we looked for presidents who were members of the Republican Party and were born in California or Illinois or Texas.
Other visual galleries include:
+ Academy Award Winners
+ Cell/Mobile Phones
+ Most Followed Twitter Users
+ Top iPhone Apps (out of 2300 apps)
"A Find of a Lifetime: Jefferson Books Quest Ends at Washington University"
From a Monticello.org/Thomas Jefferson Foundation Blog Post by Ann Lucas Birle and Endrina Tay:
Last week, we had the privilege of being the first Monticello staff to set eyes on the more than 70 Jefferson books that we recently discovered at Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL). We flew to St. Louis early on Valentine’s Day on February 14 to see firsthand the volumes Jefferson once owned in his library at Monticello during his retirement.
A tiny scrap of paper with Greek notes in Jefferson’s hand tucked in a volume of Plutarch’s ‘Lives.’ Washington University Libraries, Department of Special Collections.Our trip was the culmination of three months of intense and thrilling detective work done in cooperation with Erin Davis, Curator of Rare Books at WUSTL. Late last fall, Ann Lucas Birle was putting together the finishing touches on the forthcoming documentary edition of Thomas Jefferson’s Granddaughter in Queen Victoria’s England: The Travel Diary of Ellen Wayles Coolidge, 1838-1839, which she is editing with Lisa Francavilla. The book, a joint publication of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation and Massachusetts Historical Society, and distributed by University of Virginia Press, will be published in October 2011
[Clip]
On January 25, we received the news we were waiting for. Erin [Davis, Curator of Rare Books at WUSTL] had pulled the books from their offsite storage facility, and confirmed that the volumes contained Jefferson’s distinctive ownership mark. Jefferson typically marked his books by adding his initial “T” to the I-quire signature, and his initial “I” (for J in the Latin alphabet) to the T-quire signature. We were thrilled and overjoyed that our suspicions had proved to be true. A few days later, Miranda Rectanwald from WUSTL’s archives found an undated library ledger with “c” annotations next to volumes, indicating that these were likely part of the original 3,000-volume gift to WUSTL. This ledger represents the only known catalog of the Joseph Coolidge Library.
Read the Complete Blog Post
Video: Learn More About the Detective Work That Went Into Finding the Material
Hat Tip and Thanks: Gordon Belt, The Prosperity Project
Another Freebie from MIT Press: A "Video Book" About Using YouTube as an Educational Tool
Last week we posted about this book available to download for free from MIT.
This week news of the availability of the first online-only book from MIT Press.
From a COHE Article:
…MIT Press [has] released Learning From YouTube, a free “video book” that was written by Ms. Juhasz and grew out of her class. It’s the first time the press has published an online-only book, and it helped developers build a new platform for authorship that they hope will be used for more such works. It’s also a test of academic waters: Will similar publications, backed by established presses, count toward tenure?
The YouTube book was peer-reviewed and comes with an ISBN number, but beyond that it has little in common with the books we’re used to seeing. Users get to it by visiting a Web site that consists of about 250 “texteos,” pages that combine text and video. The videos, many of them produced by Ms. Juhasz’s students, encourage readers to reflect on YouTube by learning inside it. The closest thing to chapters are “YouTours,” which guide viewers through related pages. That format also makes the book a test of staying power: Since much of the content isn’t owned by Ms. Juhasz, its owners could take it down, leaving holes in her book.
[Clip]
Learning From YouTube may help simplify things. The work served as the prototype for new software, Scalar, that provides templates to create similar publications. Development of the system, based at the University of Southern California, is part of a growing national effort by scholars, archives, and academic presses to support multimedia scholarship. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has put more than $900,000 into the project, called the Alliance for Networking Visual Culture.
Make Sure to Read the Complete COHE Article (Well Worth Your Time)
Direct to Video Book: Learning From YouTube
A Blog Post About the Video Book from the The Alliance for Networking Visual Culture
Learn More About Scalar
How public is public data? With Public Engines v. ReportSee, new access standards could emerge
How public is public data? With Public Engines v. ReportSee, new access standards could emerge
A recently settled federal court case out in Utah may affect the way news organizations and citizens get access to crime data.
Public Engines, a company that publishes crime statistics for law enforcement agencies, sued ReportSee, which provides similar services, for misappropriating crime data ReportSee makes available on CrimeReports.com. In the settlement, ReportSee is barred from using data from Public Engines, as well as from asking for data from agencies that work with Public Engines.
At first glance, the companies seem virtually identical, right down to their similar mapping sites CrimeReport.com (Public Engines) and SpotCrime.com (ReportSee). The notable exception is that Public Engines contracts with police and sheriff departments for its data and provides tools to manage information. ReportSee, on the other hand, relies on publicly available feeds.
In the settlement between the two websites, a new question arises: Just what constitutes publicly available data? Is it raw statistics or refined numbers presented by a third party? Governments regularly farm out their data to companies that prepare and package records, but what stands out in this case is that Public Engines effectively laid claimed to the information provided to it by law enforcement. This could be problematic to news organizations, developers, and citizens looking to get their hands on data. While still open and available to the public, the information (and the timing of its release) could potentially be dictated by a private company.
Source: Nieman Journalism Lab