NEW RESOURCES

JSTOR Daily: Introducing American Prison Newspapers, 1800-2020: Voices from the Inside. “Since 1800, people incarcerated in America have penned articles and organized layouts for hundreds of in-house publications of all sizes, shapes, and lifespans. The American Prison Newspapers archive reflects this diversity. The more than 900 items (and counting) available for open access use include five issues of J-A-B-S, the oldest publication in the archive to date.”

National Archives: Civil War Maps from the Army Corps of Engineers Now Digitized. “Civil War era and related maps from the Army Corps of Engineers have been digitized and are available to view and download from the National Archives Catalog. The records are part of the Civil Works Map File series from Record Group 77, Records of the Office of the Chief of Engineers. The records make up the Z file unit.”

Safety+Health: New website offers health and safety resources for farmers and ranchers. “Launched by the AgriSafe Network, an international nonprofit representing health and safety professionals, the website combines the organization’s learning management system, which includes fact sheets, webinars and safety information, with health topics such as COVID-19, heat-related illness, opioids and mental health.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNBC: Facebook says it’s pausing effort to build Instagram for kids. “The pause comes after an explosive Wall Street Journal report showed Facebook repeatedly found its Instagram app is harmful to a number of teenagers. The Journal cited Facebook studies over the past three years that examined how Instagram affects its young user base, with teenage girls being most notably harmed. One internal Facebook presentation said that among teens who reported suicidal thoughts, 13% of British users and 6% of American users traced the issue to Instagram.”

USEFUL STUFF

TechRadar: Best PDF merger tool of 2021: Free and paid, for Windows, Mac, Android and online. “The best PDF merger tool makes it simple and easy to merge multiple PDF files into a single PDF file, or an otherwise smaller number of files. There are many situations in which you need to combine multiple PDFs into a single file. Maybe you’re sending multiple invoices to accounting and want to keep them bundled together. Maybe you’re collating several reports to send to a colleague. Or maybe you’ve printed multiple web pages to PDFs and need to join them together.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Digital Photography Review: Historik app uses AR to combine the modern world with historical events, landmarks. “Augmented reality (AR) may be modern technology, but entrepreneur Chris Whalen wants to use the tech and a new app, Historik, to bring back the past. Using a smartphone with AR capabilities, Historik can recreate historic buildings and objects at specific markers and let users learn more about the past, swipe through artifacts and even explore an old area in full 3D. Users will even be able to set up self-guided tours.”

ProPublica: Facebook Grew Marketplace to 1 Billion Users. Now Scammers Are Using It to Target People Around the World.. “It hit 1 billion users a month this spring, and the company recently told investors that it’s one of its most promising new sources of revenue. That growth has been built, in part, on the company’s assurances about the safety of its platform…. That confidence may be misguided. Facebook says it protects users through a mix of automated systems and human reviews. But a ProPublica investigation based on internal corporate documents, interviews and law enforcement records reveals how those safeguards fail to protect buyers and sellers from scam listings, fake accounts and violent crime.” You mean Facebook’s oversight of its Marketplace platform is as ineffective as the oversight of its main product? I’M (not really) SHOCKED!

Arizona State University: ASU works with Google, US-Mexico Foundation to highlight Latino history . “‘Hey Google, what happened today in Latino history?’ Thanks to a collaboration between Arizona State University, the U.S.-Mexico Foundation (USMF) and Google, this is a question you can now ask any Google Assistant-enabled smart speaker, display or phone. For each day of the year, ASU and the USMF worked together to curate a fact celebrating the achievements, culture and impact of the Latino community in the U.S. and the world.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: Google, in Fight Against Record EU Fine, Slams Regulators for Ignoring Apple. “Alphabet unit Google on Monday criticised EU antitrust regulators for ignoring rival Apple as it launched a bid to get Europe’s second-highest court to annul a record 4.34-billion euro ($5.1 billion) fine related to its Android operating system.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

British Library Digital Scholarship Blog: Computing for Cultural Heritage: Trial Outcomes and Final Report. “Staff at collecting institutions like the British Library and the National Archives, UK are engaging in computationally driven projects like never before, but often without the benefit of data skills and computational thinking to support them. That is where a program like Computing for Cultural Heritage can help information professionals, allowing them to upskill and tackle issues – like building new digital systems and services, supporting collaborative, computational and data-driven research using digital collections and data, or deploying simple scripts to make everyday tasks easier – with confidence.”

Wolfram Blog: Analyzing Episode Data for The Office Series with the Wolfram Language. “Which episode was best for laughs? How did the episodes vary over the course of a season? Which season is the best? (According to Kevin, while every season thinks it’s the best, nothing beats the cookie season.) So here, I endeavor to present that additional analysis.” I have never seen the show so I didn’t get some of the explanatory references. I need a find a version of this for Monty Python or MST3K.

Michigan Daily: Messy on Main: The life and death of finsta. “I appreciate the candidness of the people I follow. Their mains are messy in a way that a room is lived in. Sometimes you don’t make your bed, and that is okay. Sometimes you have pit stains when taking a selfie, and that is also okay. Your pit sweat shouldn’t kill your happiness just like the assortment of cups that adorn your room isn’t clutter, but chic. I mean, my room right now is college-core, raccoon-eye chic; interior design is not my main concern. The spaces we exist in shouldn’t be ready-made store displays. Instagram shouldn’t feel like the dorm room shown to you during a campus tour. Social media is not the room where all your dirty clothes, mismatched socks and retainers are thrown in the closet. That is so 2015.” Good morning, Internet…

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