NEW RESOURCES

STV News: National Museum of Scotland galleries made available online. “New technology will allow visitors to view the National Museum of Scotland’s collections from the comfort of their own homes. The Edinburgh museum’s galleries were captured digitally in partnership with Google for its Museum View service. Users can move through the exhibits in a similar manner to Google Street View, viewing around 20,000 objects on display.”

Seven Days: Out in the Mountains Now Out Online. “In February 1986, the first issue of Out in the Mountains: Vermont’s Newspaper for Lesbians and Gay Men hit mailboxes, corner stores, coffee shops and other rural newsstands. The free monthly newspaper would continue to serve Vermont communities for more than 20 years, folding in 2007 due to financial difficulties. Now, thanks to the University of Vermont’s Center for Digital Initiatives, the entire Out in the Mountains archive can be accessed online.”

University of South Florida: Unveiling of La Florida: The Interactive Digital Archive of the Americas to Revolutionize Early American History. “Through short videos, interactive maps and digital reconstructions, La Florida brings to life the diverse melting pot of people that made up early Spanish Florida, from Spanish conquistadors and Native Americans to free and enslaved blacks and Europeans from Germany, Ireland and Eastern Europe. It weaves together in fascinating detail the lives and critical events of America’s earliest beginnings – such as the founding of the first permanent European settlement in the continental U.S. at St. Augustine in 1565; the original St. Patrick’s day celebration that was discovered through this project to have taken place in Florida in 1601; and the first free black settlement anywhere in the colonies at Fort Mose in 1738.”

Cleveland .com: Who is donating to Ohio political candidates? Searchable campaign database. “We have gathered all of the 2017 contributions to candidates for governor, attorney general and other state offices. (The database does not include federal offices, such as U.S. Senate.) Donors range from political parties, political action committees and companies to your neighbors and colleagues. You can also trace where the money is coming from. Are these politicians receiving most of their money from in-state or out-of-state donors?”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Google Blog: Get more useful information with captions on Google Images. “People around the world use Google Images to find visual information online. Whether you’re searching for ideas for your next baking project, how to tie shoelaces so they stay put, or tips on the proper form for doing a plank, scanning image results can be much more helpful than scanning text. Today, we’re sharing more about new changes to Google Images to provide even better visual discovery with more context on the image results page.”

TechCrunch: Firefox can now block those annoying notification requests. “Virtually every random site you go to these days wants you to subscribe to its push notifications. It’s one of the many small annoyances on the open web, but thankfully, those pop ups may not be for long — at least if you are a Firefox user. With the release of Firefox 59 for the desktop, Mozilla is adding a useful little feature to its browser that lets you stop websites from asking to send notifications.”

Digital NC: More than a Decade of Watauga Democrat Newspapers Now Up. “More than a decade of the Watauga Deomcrat has been added to DigitalNC courtesy of our partner, the Watauga County Public Library. Started in 1888 and still operating today, the Wautaga Democrat is published in Boone N.C., and serves Western North Carolina. This batch covers the years 1950-1963 and joins previously digitized issues spanning 1923-1949.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The New Yorker: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet. “It might be most helpful to compare a social network to a party. The party starts out small, with the hosts and a few of their friends. Then word gets out and strangers show up. People take cues from the environment. Mimosas in a sun-dappled atrium suggest one kind of mood; grain alcohol in a moldy basement suggests another. Sometimes, a pattern emerges on its own. Pinterest, a simple photo-sharing site founded by three men, happened to catch on among women aspiring to an urbane life style, and today the front page is often a collage of merino scarves and expensive glassware. In other cases, the gatekeeping seems more premeditated. If you’re fourteen, Snapchat’s user interface is intuitive; if you’re twenty-two, it’s intriguing; if you’re over thirty-five, it’s impenetrable. This encourages old people to self-deport.”

Hindustan Times: Music for the archives: AIR travels deep into India in a race to document dying folk music . “The village of Haransingha is a once-notorious Naxal stronghold in the densely-forested hills rolling upwards past Dumka, Jharkhand. The Santhals — a dominant scheduled tribe that have lived here for centuries — are preparing for some unusual guests, in the days before their blossom festival, Baha, in the end of February. A team of three All India Radio (AIR) personnel, with a suitcase full of recording equipment, have travelled for the better part of a day from Bhagalpur, Bihar, to this extremity of their listening zone.”

Taiwan News: Sri Lankan government urged to lift block on social media. “After a week-long shutdown of popular social media networks, journalists and rights activists are demanding the Sri Lankan government lift the censorship after anti-Muslim violence. Freddie Gamage of the Professional Web Journalists’ Association said the government could have used existing laws to prevent spreading of hate speech and punished those instigating violence, instead of blocking sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Viber and WhatsApp.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Govtech: Will Florida’s Data Collection Bill Make It the Most Transparent State in the Nation?. “Florida will have the most transparent criminal justice system in the nation following new legislation aimed at improving data collection. The legislation establishes a framework for a new database that will track a defendant’s experience at each step of the criminal justice system — from arrest and bail proceedings to sentencing — and compare those outcomes through a searchable website available to the public.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Sixth Tone: China to Build Gene Database for Diagnosing Rare Diseases. “China launched its first major project aimed at diagnosing rare children’s diseases on Saturday. The country’s pediatric experts will use a technique called whole genome sequencing (WGS) to begin building a database of rare and undiagnosed conditions, including mental disorders and physical deformities.” Good morning, Internet…

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