Fold3: Free Access to Fold3’s Civil War Collection, April 1–15. “To commemorate the beginning of the Civil War in 1861, Fold3 is providing free access (with registration) to our Civil War Collection from April 1–15. This collection currently has 50 titles, with more than 91 million records, so if you’re looking for information on the Civil War veterans in your family tree—or doing other Civil War-era research—now is the perfect time to explore these records on Fold3.”

NEW RESOURCES

Sent to me by Esther S., who is just a busy little bee today. New-to-me is VintageCassettes.com. From the home page: “Here you will find the beatiful pictures of sealed compact casettes. Cassettes from 1970-1990 are covered the most. Collecting vintage cassettes is a great hobby and brings all good memories back. Cassettes are organized by brands and then the years they were produced. We concentrate on the most important brands. This site try to cover three markets: US, Europe and Japan.” These are not band cassettes, but blank cassettes like you’d get at Radio Shack if you wanted to make a mixtape. Yes, I am old.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Digital NC: Over 350 New Photos From The Forest History Society Now Online at DigitalNC. “Over 350 new photos have been digitized and uploaded to DigitalNC, courtesy of our partner, the Forest History Society. Located in Durham, North Carolina, their organization is dedicated to the preservation of materials about forest history and conservation. While their mission is to promote and collect materials about forest and environmental preservation around the world, these photos are specifically about North Carolina’s history of forest and wildlife conservation.”

USEFUL STUFF

Wired: The Wired Guide To Memes. “MEMES AND THE internet—they’re made for each other. Not because they’re digital visual communication (though of course, they are that), but because they are the product of a hive mind. They are the shorthand of a hyper-connected group thinking in unison. And, friends, the web hive mind is a weird (often funny, sometimes dangerous) place.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Montana Standard: Scholars embark on ambitious project archiving historic Butte fashion. “It’s no mystery that Butte is a town rich in mining history – after all, the town’s nickname is the Mining City. Now two scholars from Brigham Young University in Rexburg, Idaho say they’re uncovering a form of Butte history that has literally been hanging in the closet for years.”

Smithsonian Magazine: How Should We Archive the Soundtrack to 1970s Feminism?. “As the historian of Olivia Records, a trailblazing all-women’s recording label that emerged from this movement, I am intimately aware that the artists and producers that were on the forefront of this distinctive cultural turning point are now approaching their 70s, as are many of their earliest fans. With samples of now-historic album art and vinyl beginning to become objects of interest for researchers and the public-at-large, the question becomes: how should Olivia should be remembered, collected and exhibited for those unfamiliar with its legacy?”

France24: Rival India leaders accused of data breaches in social media row. “India’s ruling and main opposition parties on Monday accused each other of using social media dirty tricks to mine and share followers’ personal data. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress party of Rahul Gandhi have seized upon the data breach storm surrounding Facebook and other media to score political points against one another.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

New York Times: Card Data Stolen From 5 Million Saks and Lord & Taylor Customers. “Saks has been hacked — adding to the already formidable challenges faced by the luxury retailer. A well-known ring of cybercriminals has obtained more than five million credit and debit card numbers from customers of Saks Fifth Avenue and Lord & Taylor, according to a cybersecurity research firm that specializes in tracking stolen financial data. The data, the firm said, appears to have been stolen using software that was implanted into the cash register systems at the stores and that siphoned card numbers until last month.”

Wired: Beware The Academic Vanity Honeypot. “A FEW WEEKS ago, I got a direct message on Twitter from one Larry Summers. Yes, the Larry Summers, if that nasty little aquafresh checkmark beside @LHSummers was to be believed…. Yes sirree, Lawrence Henry Summers was just casually DM’ing me, because, well, he’d read an article of mine and found it astute. And now Larry Summers wanted feedback from me on an article of his. See where this is going?”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Medium: When Bots Attack. “Unless you’ve been living under a rock, chances are you’ve read The New York Times’ investigative report, ‘The Follower Factory.’ The piece takes a deep dive into buying fake/bot Twitter followers. I, too, have some experience with fake/bot Twitter followers. I have a story. I have some data.”

The Internet Archive: The Music Modernization Act is Bad for the Preservation of Sound Recordings. “There’s a bill working its way through Congress called the Music Modernization Act (the current bill is a mix of several bills, the portion we are concerned with was formerly called the CLASSICS Act) that has us very concerned about the fate of historical sound recordings. As currently drafted, this bill would vastly expand the rights of performers of pre-1972 sound recordings, without any provision for a public domain for these works or meaningful fair use and library exceptions. After a visit to Washington DC meeting with various Congressional staffers working on this issue, we do not believe that the CLASSICS portion of the bill will be fixed. We therefore oppose the CLASSICS portion of the Music Modernization Act.”

ScienceBlog: Computer Searches Telescope Data For Evidence Of Distant Planets. “As part of an effort to identify distant planets hospitable to life, NASA has established a crowdsourcing project in which volunteers search telescopic images for evidence of debris disks around stars, which are good indicators of exoplanets. Using the results of that project, researchers at MIT have now trained a machine-learning system to search for debris disks itself. The scale of the search demands automation: There are nearly 750 million possible light sources in the data accumulated through NASA’s Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission alone.” Good morning, Internet…

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