Celebrate the freedom to read – Banned Books Week – Sep 30 – Oct 6

  Everyday in America someone tries to ban a book. The American Library Association reports 326 challenges in 2011. A challenge is more than a person being annoyed with a book, it is a person telling the library they don’t want anyone else to read the book. That is censorship in its most basic form. …

The recession hits Harvard…with interesting changes – more money to undergrads, less to books

Harvard isn’t belt-tightening everywhere. Since 2007, its investment in financial aid to undergraduates has risen by more than 78%, which Harvard said is “significantly outpacing increases in tuition.” Undergraduate tuition for the 2012-13 year climbed 3.5% to $54,496. *** As it looks to economize, Harvard has turned some of its attention toward the more than …

Adventure playground is open! – mud slide, rafting, fort building, rope bridge

The kids will get dirty. At this Central Park adventure, kids will hammer, saw wood, make forts, push themselves around in the shallow water on a raft and do all sorts of climbing, jumping and whatever they choose. Kids can raft on a small pond, navigate a rope bridge, use a cable slide, go down …

New App, Leafsnap, lets you identify a tree species by photographing a leaf

If you’ve ever wondered what type of tree was nearby but didn’t have a guide book, a new smartphone app allows users with no formal training to satisfy their curiosity and contribute to science at the same time. Scientists have developed the first mobile app to identify plants by simply photographing a leaf. The free …

Historical and Recreational Map of Los Angeles – by Jo Mora, 1942

“Historical and Recreational Map of Los Angeles,” designed by Jo Mora in 1942 and dedicated to his “buen amigo” Charles Lummis. The map squeezes in an extraordinary amount of historical facts and figures onto its 23- by 30-inch surface, depicting almost the entire history of Los Angeles up to that point, while looking toward the …

Isaac Newton Digital Library – 4,000 pages of his notebooks, drawings, and manuscripts

The largest collection of Isaac Newton’s papers has gone digital, committing to open-access posterity the works of one of history’s greatest scientist. Among the works shared online by the Cambridge Digital Library are Newton’s own annotated copy of Principia Mathematica and the ‘Waste Book,’ the notebook in which a young Newton worked out the principles of calculus. “Anyone, wherever …

UCLA turns to social media as a means of researching the Middle East

I love that they are calling the project the “International Digitizing Ephemera Project.” Ephemera – (1) something of no lasting significance, or (2) paper items that were originally meant to be discarded after use but have since become collectibles.   The UCLA Library announced last month a new project aimed at recording and cataloging all …

C-SPAN video online, digitized and shareable, is this C-SPAN 2.0?

Something amazing has happened over at C-SPAN. In their Archives division they have put online 25 years worth of video covering American culture and politics. Even better the website was done by JESS3, which means that it is top-notch. This includes best videos of the day, month, and forever (by views). Plus, most shared videos, …

Historical Baseball Photos (1880-1915)

Baseball has it roots far back in history. A manuscript from France in 1344 has an illustration of monks and nuns playing a game of bat and ball. The modern beginnings most likely date back to the early 1700s in America. In 1744, the term “base-ball” was printed in an English book and in 1791 …