The Arts Council of Northern Ireland has created a digital archive of artistic works produced during the Troubles. (For a definition and overview of the Troubles, see this Wikipedia article.) “The pioneering website, compiled by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, includes close to 500 examples of work by over 100 artists relating to the Troubles between 1969 and 1999. It covers key areas of the arts, including visual art, literature, theatre, music, TV and film. Containing artist’s biographies, authoritative essays, analysis, film and audio clips and a timeline of key events, the Troubles Archive builds on a successful pilot programme at the Ulster Museum. ”

Converse — yes, the shoe company — has launched a free online library of audio samples. “The Converse Rubber Tracks Sample Library was created as the next phase in the global Converse Rubber Tracks program, compiling previous musical contributions from more than 125 artists spanning genres and the globe made in the Converse Rubber Tracks studios.”

The IRS has launched a library of federal tax return preparers. “The directory is a searchable, sortable listing featuring: the name, city, state and zip code of attorneys, CPAs, enrolled agents and those who have completed the requirements for the voluntary IRS Annual Filing Season Program. All preparers listed also have valid 2015 Preparer Tax Identification Numbers (PTIN).”

Yahoo grabbed a little more search share in January (PRESS RELEASE). “StatCounter Global Stats reports that in January, Google took 74.8% of US search referrals followed by Bing on 12.4% and Yahoo on 10.9%, its highest US search share for over five years.”

Researchers at Cornell are using Twitter to experiment with persuasive language. “As countless political orators have demonstrated, it’s not just what you say, it’s how you say it. Using automated text analysis, Cornell researchers have identified an array of features that can make a message more likely to get attention…. Twitter enabled the researchers to conduct a controlled experiment to eliminate the effects of the popularity of the poster or the topic: Many posters will tweet on the same topic more than once, with different wording. The researchers collected and compared thousands of these pairs, and after taking into account the effect of repetition, the experiment showed that wording still matters.” This article also includes a list of what the researchers found to be most effective in getting retweets (which I’m not going to reproduce here as it’s rather extensive.)

Speaking of Twitter, the National Library of Medicine has launched a new Twitter account aimed at K-12 science educators.

Google Image Search has gotten more related images. I’ve found lately that the Google Images reverse search has gotten a lot better too.

NARA (The National Archives and Records Administration) is livestreaming its “Know Your Records” lectures on YouTube – for free! The next one will be 50th Anniversaries of Voting Rights, on February 12.

Web Design Ledger has a roundup of 15 free photography ebooks, if you want to brush up your skills a bit.

Three professors, two at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and one at Indiana University Bloomington are working on a digital archive of comics fandom (and they managed to name it CoBRA.) “GSLIS Associate Professors Kathryn La Barre and Carol Tilley are collaborating with John Walsh, associate professor of information and library science in the School of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University Bloomington, on a new project called The Comic Book Readership Archive, or CoBRA. In this pilot project, Tilley, La Barre, and Walsh will build a digital archive of materials related to comic book readership and fandom, focusing initially on materials collected from Marvel Comics publications from 1961-1973. The archive will include content and data gathered from fan mail, fan club publications and membership rolls, contests sponsored by publishers and fan clubs, fanzines, and programs and attendee records from comic book conventions and similar events.”

Are you tired of patching your Flash yet? I hope not, becuase you’ve got to do it again. Good morning, Internet…

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