NEW RESOURCES

Invision Community: New Website Launched Dedicated to Cosplay. “ReedPop has announced the launch of Cosplay Central – a new multiplatform destination that is designed to be the global voice of the cosplay community and the premier destination for all things Cosplay, including the latest news, special features, videos, advice columns, interviews, tutorials, photo galleries and much more.”

USGS: New Land Cover Maps Depict 15 Years of Alaska Change. “The Alaska data amount to the most up-to-date and comprehensive land cover map ever produced for the largest U.S. state in the Union, offering critical insight into some of North America’s most rapidly- and dramatically-changing landscapes…. As with NLCD 2016’s CONUS data products, the Alaska land cover maps depict 15 years of change, from 2001-2016.”

Asian and African Studies Blog: Digitised East India Company ships’ journals and related records. “Enhanced catalogue descriptions have been created for journals of ships that visited ports in the Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula, and these journals have been digitised and are being made freely available on the Qatar Digital Library website as part of the British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership. They constitute an extraordinarily rich and valuable set of primary sources for numerous areas of research, including: the history of global trade networks; encounters between British merchants and crews and diverse people in different parts of Asia, Africa and elsewhere; the origins of British imperialism; rivalry between European powers in Asia; long-distance marine navigation; the experience of everyday life on board ship, and during lengthy voyages, for members of the crew; and historic weather patterns over the course of more than two centuries.”

Adam Matthew: Adam Matthew Digital announces publication of ‘Nineteenth Century Literary Society: The John Murray Publishing Archive’. “Drawn from the holdings of the National Library of Scotland, AM Digital’s latest collection, Nineteenth Century Literary Society: The John Murray Publishing Archive is an unparalleled resource for scholars and academics interested in the history of the book, literature and nineteenth-century history. From its inception in 1768, the John Murray publishing house worked with influential authors whose famed titles continue to shape literature to this day, including Jane Austen, Sir Walter Scott, Herman Melville and Lord Byron.” If you’re not familiar with Adam Matthew, I’ll let you know it’s not free.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

National Library of New Zealand: Six million pages and counting. “As of today, Papers Past now holds more than 6 million pages of newspapers! We’ve reached this important milestone thanks to the addition of four completely new titles and some additional, early issues of the Wanganui Chronicle (its coverage now extends all the way back to 1860). The other four titles are the Gisborne Times (1901-1937), Hokitika Guardian (1917-1940), Opotiki News (1938-1950) and the Saturday Advertiser (July 1875-1878).”

TechRadar: Facebook and Google will be forced to pay for news content in Australia. “The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has been instructed by the Australian government to create a mandatory code of conduct to instruct tech giants on how to share the revenue they generate from using content produced by news outlets, which Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said seeks to ‘level the playing field’.”

The Mennonite: MC USA Archives joins expanded Mennonite Archival Information Database. “Mennonite Church USA Archives is one of five new partners to join the recently expanded Mennonite Archival Information Database (MAID). The public database now represents 14 partners and features thousands of historic photos and a quickly growing number of entries, including one-of-a-kind letters, diaries, meeting minutes, travel documents, biographies, and audio and video recordings.”

USEFUL STUFF

Towards Data Science: Google Data Studio: 5 Charts for Visualizing your Data. “As the second part of the GDS series, this tutorial will go over specific types of visualizations. With each chart, there are dimensions, metrics, sort, date range, interactions, and style menus that are changeable. In addition to these charts, there is the text you can add, as well as data and filter controls. The dataset below that is used for this tutorial and chart highlight has a filter control to display certain categories over others. The date range filter, also consisting of a drop-down menu, is useful if you want to zoom in or out of your data. The best part of these features is that when you edit a filter in the dashboard view, the data is, therefore, adjusted as well with its respective charts.”

Digital Inspiration: Simple URL Tricks for Google Drive You Should Know. “With Google Drive, you can store files in the cloud and share them easily with anyone. Open any file in Google Drive, click the Share button and you’ll get a URL (link) that others can use to access your file. This is common knowledge but Google Drive has plenty of URL tricks up its sleeve that will make these simple Drive links even more powerful.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

MIT Technology Review: The race to save the first draft of coronavirus history from internet oblivion. “According to Brewster Kahle, the Internet Archive’s founder, his organization is already collecting about 1 billion URLs a day across the web. Archiving the pandemic means trying to identify and collect the pages their ordinary efforts might otherwise overlook, relying on a network of library professionals and members of the public: local and international public health pages, petitions, resources for medical professionals trying to fight covid-19, and accounts from those who have had the virus. It’s not easy. ‘The average life of a web page is only 100 days before it’s changed or deleted,’ he says.

SECURITY & LEGAL

Tom’s Guide: Google Chrome security alert impacts billions: What to do now . “Google last week issued an update to its Chrome web browser that includes a fix for a critical security flaw. But because it doesn’t want evil hackers exploiting the vulnerability, the browser maker didn’t give many details other than that the flaw involves ‘use after free in speech recognizer.’ Thanks to Sophos security researcher Paul Ducklin, we have a somewhat better idea about the fix inside Chrome version 81.0.4044.113 for Windows, Mac and Linux users — and why and how you should check to make sure you have the update.” If you’re using Linux, check to see if you’ve upgraded — I had to reinstall Chrome to get the update.

The Register: Multi-part Android spyware lurked on Google Play Store for 4 years, posing as a bunch of legit-looking apps . “A newly uncovered strain of Android spyware lurked on the Google Play Store disguised as cryptocurrency wallet Coinbase, among other things, for up to four years, according to a new report by Bitdefender.” Good morning, Internet…

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