NEW RESOURCES

Centenary College: Centenary Archives partners to digitize Louisiana United Methodist Women publications (1884-2014). “The Centenary College of Louisiana Archives and Special Collections has completed a collaborative project to digitize its collection of publications by the Louisiana United Methodist Women and their predecessor organizations. The digitized material includes annual reports (1884-2014) and newsletters (1963-2006) – 12,000 pages in total.”

Fort Wayne Business Weekly: Health data now accessible through state web portal. “Local health officials and residents can now assess the health of their counties through Stats Explorer, a new database for public health data in Indiana.”

The State Library of South Australia has a new online portrait collection of “old colonists”. “For most of last century portraits of over 1,000 ‘Old Colonists’ were on display in the State Library. In 2017 they have returned as facsimiles (along with new indexes and online catalogue records) – funded by the Friends of the State Library.”

The Eskenazi Museum of Art is closing for renovations until the fall of 2019, so it’s started a new online archive with highlights from its collections. “Online, patrons can visit a new website called ‘Highlights of the Eskenazi Art Museum” that displays about 1,000 objects from the collection… There will also be news updates on the website for people who want to follow how the renovation.’

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Telegraph: Facebook closes in on two billion users. “Facebook is on the verge of reaching 2bn members, with the social media giant closing in on a milestone that will move it into a select group of global companies.”

USEFUL STUFF

This is from last December, but a) I think it’s important and b) it was blogged by someone whose interest is in disaster prep and response: a basic twitter geocode search how-to. “I just re-wrote and simplified my instructions for creating a fast, simple twitter geocode search, as my previous blog post has links in the instructions that don’t work anymore.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Lifehacker: Secure Messaging App Showdown: WhatsApp vs. Signal. “So, you’re interested in secure, encrypted chat apps. You have a few different choices, but as with any chat app, what all your friends are using is important. To that end, Signal and WhatsApp are easily the most popular. Here’s how they compare.”

SECURITY/LEGAL ISSUES

Egypt Independent: Parliament considers social media draft law, would refer unmonitored Facebook users to trial. “Paving the way for state surveillance over social media networks in Egypt, writer of the social media draft law MP Rayed Abdel Sattar told Egypt Independent on Sunday that 60 MPs have approved its potential discussion in Parliament.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

TechCrunch: Algorithmic accountability. “Algorithms are sets of rules that computers follow in order to solve problems and make decisions about a particular course of action. Whether it’s the type of information we receive, the information people see about us, the jobs we get hired to do, the credit cards we get approved for, and, down the road, the driverless cars that either see us or don’t see us, algorithms are increasingly becoming a big part of our lives. But there is an inherent problem with algorithms that begins at the most base level and persists throughout its adaption: human bias that is baked into these machine-based decision-makers.” Really extensive article. Good afternoon, Internet…

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