NEW RESOURCES

Space.com: How Far to That Galaxy? Thousands of Cosmic Distances Now Catalogued. “One of the most basic questions in astronomy is how far away something is. Now, a new catalog of objects will help scientists answer that question for tens of thousands of objects that are so far away they date back to the beginning of the universe. The catalog is part of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED), an online database containing information on more than 100 million galaxies, and is called NED-D. ”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

New issues of the Wake Forest University magazine Wake Forest Student have been added to its online digital archive. “These issues are from 1900-1906, and join the previously digitized issues from 1892-1900. The Wake Forest Student is a literary magazine that was started in 1882 by the Euzelian Society at Wake Forest University. This magazine contains stories, poems, and essays by local authors, reprints of well-known stories and poems, and editorials and news items specific to Wake Forest University.”

Residents of Wisconsin will find access to public records a bit easier now. “All Wisconsin register of deeds offices may issue birth, death, marriage and divorce records regardless of the county in which the event occurred, so long as the event occurred in Wisconsin, according to a news release from the Rock County Register of Deeds Office. This is possible because of a statewide database that allows all offices to access the records, according to the news release.”

The New York State Supreme Court will start offering webcasts of oral arguments. “The New York State Supreme Court is moving toward a greater level of transparency. Starting Jan. 9, oral arguments of cases before state Supreme Court in the Fourth Judicial Department will be broadcast over the internet on the Appellate Division website.”

The Illinois Digital Heritage Hub has gone live on DPLA. “Our newest hub from Illinois represents a collaboration between the Illinois State Library, the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI), Chicago Public Library, and, previously a Content Hub partner, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Welcome to the Illinois lead partners and all of the institutions represented in the rich new collections now discoverable in DPLA.” Please be sure to read the announcement because I can’t summarize all the great material in this new hub.

USEFUL STUFF

Good stuff from Harvard: Announcing The Transparency Toolkit: Reporting Guide & Template. “The Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University and New America’s Open Technology Institute are proud to announce the publication of the Transparency Reporting Toolkit: Reporting Guide & Template, which builds off our survey of best practices, released last year. Our Reporting Guide & Template aims to provide companies the tools they need to publish transparency reports that are more consistent, easier to understand, and more effective.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

From The New York Times: Centuries of New York History Prepare for a Move. “…for the records, the building has become anything but cutting edge. And soon, thousands of boxes of documents will be moved in an effort to preserve the records and make them more easily accessible. Some records, which had moved no more than a mile over hundreds of years, will be transported in the coming weeks to the New York State Archives in Albany. Many others are expected to head to the city’s Department of Records, moving downstairs in the courthouse to more modern accommodations in the Municipal Archives.”

From Inside Higher Education: The Shrinking Mega-Journal. “PLOS ONE, the largest scholarly journal in the world, continues to shrink. The open-access mega-journal’s output, measured by how many articles it publishes a year, last year fell to 22,054 — its lowest since 2012 and down about 30 percent since its peak in 2013. Last year brought the most precipitous drop yet. PLOS ONE published 6,052 fewer articles in 2016 than it did the year before — a drop of about 22 percent.”

What were the most-read articles on Wikipedia in 2016? “In 2016, people around the world turned to Wikipedia for facts about all kinds of things, but especially celebrities who died, television shows, and Donald Trump, who commanded unprecedented attention in both the media and on the English-language Wikipedia.”

Recode: Mark Zuckerberg shares Facebook’s secrets with all his employees, and almost none of it leaks. “On a Friday afternoon in July 2015, Mark Zuckerberg stood in front of a couple hundred employees at Facebook’s Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters, a video camera there to record his words for thousands of other employees around the globe. Zuckerberg, usually calm and a natural introvert, was uncharacteristically angry.”

SECURITY/LEGAL ISSUES

A new strain of ransomware wants you to get educated. “Instead of demanding a large amount of money from victims, it will only ask the victim to read two articles regarding computer security and staying safe on the internet. One of these is Google’s ‘Stay safe while browsing’ blog post, while the other is Bleeping Computer’s ‘Jigsaw Ransomware Decrypted: Will delete your files until you pay the Ransom.'”

Albawaba News: Jordan to track, sue social media users who mock victims of Istanbul attack. “A source from Jordan’s Public Security Department (PSD) on Tuesday said that the department’s anti-cybercrime unit has already started tracing social media accounts of people who insulted Jordanian victims killed in the Istanbul terrorist attack.” Good morning, Internet…

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