NEW RESOURCES

The Library of Congress has released new student discovery sets for iPads. “The Library of Congress Student Discovery Sets bring together historical artifacts and one-of-a-kind documents on a wide range of topics, from history and science to literature. Interactive tools let students zoom in for close examination, draw to highlight interesting details and make notes about what they discover. The Library’s latest Student Discovery Sets are available now for the iPad and can be downloaded free of charge on iBooks. These sets cover the Industrial Revolution, Jim Crow and Segregation, and Children’s Lives at the Turn of the 20th Century.”

The American Library Association has joined a new copyright initiative. “Librarians know that copyright has a broad purpose—to advance learning and creativity for all people—but, too often, policy and law makers focus on the needs and interests of entertainment companies and other industry players who are determined to preserve old business models through enforcement rather than by innovating in the new economy. An important purpose of Re:Create is to ensure that the copyright debate respects and reflects the full range of legitimate views and needs of every part of our economy and society.”

I’m not sure how new this is, but it’s odd and interesting: the Connecticut Digital Archive has collection of Barnum Circus Posters.

The city of Edinburgh has started collecting the memories of its citizens. “Members of the public have been invited to add their photographs to an online archive set up to grow the digital collections held in Edinburgh’s libraries and museums. The Edinburgh Collected website has been jointly funded by the City of Edinburgh Council and Nesta, through the Open Data Scotland project, as a new way to collect digital assets.”

USEFUL STUFF

Interesting list: smart glasses and the enterprise. I do think Google Glasses and their ilk have plenty of industrial users.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

You can now hashtag with emoji on Instagram. I love writing sentences that less than ten years ago would have been gibberish.

Google Now has gotten support for 70 more apps. “Google first added support for third-party apps to Google Now back in January. At launch it had 40 partners, including companies such as Lyft, AirBnb, Pandora and Duolingo. Although Tuesday’s update is a significant expansion of the feature, the company did not provide an update on when Google Now integration would become available to more developers.”

Google is apparently testing a new feature for Google+. “The basic idea behind Collections is curated content sets – like Pinterest boards or Dribbble buckets, users could curate pieces of content into their collection, with others viewing, sharing, and following those collections as they please.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

This is the downside of picking up answers from Web sites: Google showing irrelevant blog comments in its answers. I remember writing about something Ask was doing where it was trying to answer questions via Web site content. I asked a question about Japan and got an answer with a slur in it….

Twitter’s earnings were leaked early — by a ‘bot.

Periscope apparently had over a million sign-ins in its first ten days. I haven’t enjoyed an app so much in years. And it’s still evolving.

RESEARCH AND OPINION

Using an online fact-checking tool to verify some of the reports from Nepal. Good morning, Internet…

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