NEW RESOURCES

There’s a whole Web site devoted to presidential campaign music. “During the months leading up to the presidential election in November 2016, essays, educational materials, database entries and resources for scholars will continue to be added to the site.”

Bluehost has created a script to update WordPress and released it as open source (PRESS RELEASE). “After determining that a significant number of customers were running outdated versions of WordPress, Bluehost’s development team created a unique Perl script utilizing WP-CLI (WordPress-Command Line Interface) and custom code to update WordPress sites going back to version 1.0.2. Bluehost completed exhaustive tests and reviews to ensure the script resulted in minimal disruptions or site downtime. In this impressive undertaking, 99% of WordPress sites on Bluehost’s platform were upgraded successfully with fewer than 0.007% of customers reporting any issues.”

To celebrate its 50 years, the Montreux Jazz Festival has a new video archive. “Montreux Jazz Live is the culmination of an eight-year project to digitise the festival’s video archive, which goes back to 1967. Currently featuring over 800 videos, Montreux Jazz Live presents a wide range of festival footage in one place, with detailed information about each artist and show, intuitive links and playlists.”

A Web site devoted to documents of the late leader of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, has been launched. “The website features approximately seven thousand documents, including written works, speeches and statements by the founder of the Bolivarian Revolution. Private correspondence that was made public at one point or another is also included.” Currently the documents are available in Spanish only, but translations are planned.

TWEAKS & UPDATES

Google Forms has gotten several updates. “Google Forms, the company’s tool for creating and analyzing surveys, is getting a major update today. Google is adding a slew of new features to the service that range from support for templates to new options for analyzing surveys.”

Facebook has added new features to video ads. “But soon, advertisers will be able to choose to have captions added automatically. A new tool generates captions for video ads and delivers them to the advertiser within the ad creation tool to review. Advertisers can edit the auto-generated captions and save them to their video ads.”

USEFUL STUFF

Sorry to not cover this until February 13th, but you’ve got over half the month left! From WebJunction: 55+ Free February Webinars for Library Staff.

From School Library Journal: 24 Tools for Digital Art and Music Creation | Mix It Up “These new tools have adjusted the way in which we are able to play with, explore, and ‘practice’ our creative impulses, offering unique avenues for original compositions and dynamic, collaborative remixes. We hope you’ll embrace and utilize these tools with vigor in your libraries and classrooms. As you and your students explore, a handy playlist available via Spotify may help encourage some of your own creativity to begin flowing.”

A Library of Congress blog post has an overview of the new GPO site, GovInfo.gov. “FDsys, and now govinfo, provide free public access to hundreds of thousands of official publications from all three branches of government. govinfo is a modern, mobile-friendly website, with a focus on soliciting feedback from users and improving overall search and access to content. Read our Q&A below to learn more.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Hooray! King Arthur has been restored to Facebook.

Michael Best has launched a Kickstarter to make declassified CIA documents more easily available online. “His plan is to head into the archives, print out millions of pages of information, digitize them and upload them to the Internet Archive, a free online digital library. Best claims to have uploaded a full one percent of the content in the Internet Archive, an impressive feat considering the digital repository contains almost 9 million books and millions of audio and video clips.” Considering what he’s going to have to do — print out millions of pages, scan them, and reupload them — this sounds like a logistical nightmare…

Is Wikipedia putting together its own search engine? “Wikipedia developers have sketched out designs for a Wikipedia Search Engine, which would give users a one-click replacement for Google search. The search engine could also be embedded in devices such as the Kindle, or smartphones…. The concepts were revealed after much sleuthing by Andreas Kolbe, board member of Wikipedia’s Signpost and occasional Reg contributor.” Good morning, Internet…

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