NEW RESOURCES

TexLibris: “Knowledge”: Online Exhibit Celebrates Benson Centennial And Diversity Of Thought In The Americas. “A new online exhibition, A Hemisphere of Knowledge: A Benson Centennial Exhibit, accessible in English, Spanish, and Portuguese, explores the implications of [Cuban poet and philosopher José] Martí’s words across time and cultures, using a wealth of resources available at the Benson Latin American Collection.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Library of Congress: Library of Congress and NPR Announce National Book Festival Podcast Series. “NPR and the Library of Congress are proud to announce a collaboration between the National Book Festival and several of NPR’s most popular podcasts. NPR journalists always interview authors at the Festival and will continue to do so, but this year for the first time, there will be an interview series with National Book Festival authors publishing across NPR’s podcast feeds as part of the Festival.”

USEFUL STUFF

My Ancestors and Me: Use Google Books to Search Google News Archives. “After changes at Google News Archive a number of years ago it became almost impossible to perform an OCR search of a particular newspaper. I resorted to waiting till I knew a date for a birth, death, marriage, or other event, then looked at the newspaper for that date and a few days after, hoping to see more information, knowing, of course, there was always a chance I would miss something. But there’s another way to search Google’s newspaper collection, learned from Lisa Louise Cook’s post, 10 Surprising Things You Can Find at Google Books.” This is amazing! The interface is 500% better than Google News.

Lifehacker: You Can Turn Your Live Photos Into Long Exposures, Loops, and Boomerangs. “Live Photos are the little moving pictures you never knew you needed. Just like in Harry Potter, these little videos capture the essence of the moment, something that just can’t be captured in a still photo sometimes. Unlike GIFs though, they also record a snippet of sound, making them like micro-short videos of a moment. But there’s even more to Live Photos.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Laughing Squid: An Explanation of Medieval Art Memes. “The Archivist at Curious Archive digs into the origins of some of the oddest art images from the Medieval era that have since become popular as modern memes. He notes that while a number of pieces reflected such trends as ‘homunculus’ (‘little man’), the ‘Danse Macabre’ (‘Dance of Death’), and ‘The Vitalis of Milan’, many others were created with a sense of humor, perhaps to make their audience laugh.”

The Daily Star: Library of Congress to archive local family’s WWII photos. “A collection of nearly a thousand wartime photographs from one local soldier are headed to the Library of Congress next month for permanent archival. Demart Carl Chamberlain, a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division who jumped thrice into combat during World War II, carried with him a handheld Kodak in his deployments across Italy, France and northern Africa.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

New York Times: Biden Moves to Declassify Some Documents Related to Sept. 11 . “Making good on a campaign promise, President Biden directed the Justice Department and other federal agencies on Friday to oversee the review and declassification of documents related to the F.B.I.’s investigation into the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. In an executive order, Mr. Biden instructed Attorney General Merrick B. Garland to publicly release the declassified documents over the next six months.”

TechCrunch: ProtonMail logged IP address of French activist after order by Swiss authorities. “ProtonMail, a hosted email service with a focus on end-to-end encrypted communications, has been facing criticism after a police report showed that French authorities managed to obtain the IP address of a French activist who was using the online service. The company has communicated widely about the incident, stating that it doesn’t log IP addresses by default and it only complies with local regulation — in that case Swiss law. While ProtonMail didn’t cooperate with French authorities, French police sent a request to Swiss police via Europol to force the company to obtain the IP address of one of its users.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Conversation: Your smartphone is not making you dumber — digital tech can enhance our cognitive abilities . “Conventional wisdom tells us that over-reliance on technology may take away from our ability to remember, pay attention and exercise self control. Indeed, these are important cognitive skills. However, fears that technology would supplant cognition may not be well founded.”

MIT News: Study: Crowds can wise up to fake news . “In the face of grave concerns about misinformation, social media networks and news organizations often employ fact-checkers to sort the real from the false. But fact-checkers can only assess a small portion of the stories floating around online. A new study by MIT researchers suggests an alternate approach: Crowdsourced accuracy judgements from groups of normal readers can be virtually as effective as the work of professional fact-checkers.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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