NEW RESOURCES

American Theatre: Seeking a Director of Color? Now There’s a Database for That. “Among the challenges faced by U.S. theatre directors, both practitioners of color and their white counterparts, is the feeding frenzy that can happen when an in-demand director becomes a hot commodity. Directors who toil in obscurity for years can suddenly get a high-profile regional, Off-Broadway, or Broadway gig, and then everyone wants to hire them, whether it’s Sam Gold or Lileana Blain-Cruz. [Kareem] Fahmy said the BIPOC Directors Database could also be used by fellow directors who want to be able to refer directors to qualified colleagues when they can’t take the gig.”

National Park Service: Find your next adventure with the new National Park Service app. “Created by park rangers with visitors in mind, the NPS App gives the public up-to-date information about all 423 national parks in one easy-to-use app. Visitors can download the NPS App in the iOS App Store and Google Play Store to plan a trip, find interactive maps, download maps and tours ahead of time and find things to do and places to visit during National Park Week and beyond.”

University of Missouri Museum of Art and Archaeology: NEW Online Exhibition: Rarely Exhibited Greek Pottery. “This online exhibit, in two installments, illustrates examples from the Museum’s extensive collection of Greek pottery, most of which has not been exhibited in recent history. The first installment encompasses the Bronze Age to the Orientalizing period, ca. 2700–530 BCE.” The quote is from the PDF announcement.

Spotted via Reddit: PixAll. From the announcement: “PixAll was actually born of frustration. I noticed how often I got invited to diversity and inclusion panels but so rarely to game design ones…. So I decided to create a database that all of us can share with non-marginalized people, hopefully answering the questions they’d ask us and letting us focus on the fun part – making and playing games!” There are links here as well as articles, people to follow on social media, useful groups, etc. Plenty of useful information though I think I would have organized and presented it differently.

SHINE: China releases online database of lunar samples. “Researchers and the public can access the Lunar and Deep Space Exploration Scientific Data and Sample Release System via the website … The Chang’e-5 probe, which returned to Earth on December 17, 2020, retrieved a total of 1,731 grams of lunar samples, mainly rocks and soil from the lunar surface.”

National Library of Wales: The National Library of Wales launches on Google Arts & Culture. “Currently there are 190 items from the National Library’s collections available to explore in an online gallery on the Google Arts & Culture website and app, while more items will be added over the coming months…. The Library has also curated 10 digital stories so that audiences can enjoy the nation’s treasures in their historical context, from early manuscripts to contemporary artworks.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

GovExec: Trump, Defying Custom, Hasn’t Given the National Archives Records of His Speeches at Political Rallies. “In the case of modern presidents, for the official record, we rely upon transcriptions of all their speeches collected by the national government. But in the case of Donald Trump, that historical record is likely to have a big gap. Almost 10% of the president’s total public speeches are excluded from the official record. And that means a false picture of the Trump presidency is being created in the official record for posterity.”

Culpeper Star-Exponent: UVa looks to provide digitized context to historic features on Grounds. “People soon may hear all about Homer’s statue on The Lawn at the University of Virginia with a simple scan of a QR code on their smartphone. In fact, they may hear conflicting interpretations of the statue, The Lawn and UVa as the university seeks to provide context to its memorials, statues, plaques and buildings.”

InsideHook: From Courtney Barnett to Neil Young: The Wild, Wonderful World of Internet Music Archives. “For just about as long as the internet’s been around, there have been websites devoted to archiving a particular band’s touring history. In the early days, most of them were run by fans of jam bands like The Grateful Dead or Phish; for a genre where no two performances of any given song are exactly alike, it made sense that fans would need a place to help them track down a particular live performance, swap bootlegs or peruse decades of setlists. But in recent years, many musicians — including plenty who exist entirely outside of the jam scene — have taken matters into their own hands and launched their own online archives.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Regulatory Review: The Regulation of Stolen Cultural Artifacts. “After the U.S. invasion of Iraq, looters stole thousands of Iraqi artifacts, which may now be purchased online for relatively low prices. Although the United States has returned many of these artifacts, thousands have slipped through the cracks…. A patchwork of laws and international agreements currently governs the transport and sale of illegally obtained cultural artifacts in the United States. The National Stolen Property Act (NSPA) makes it illegal to transport stolen artifacts across state lines but only covers items worth more than $5,000.” Good evening, Internet….

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