200 Notable Days: Senate Stories, 1787-2002http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/senate/notabledays/index.html"There are stories reflecting all areas of Senate activity, from its important constitutional prerogatives—such as confirmation of presidential nominations—to historical milestones of decidedly less importance. An example of the latter occurred in 1930 as senators confronted the choice of continuing with traditional operator-assisted telephones or accepting a daunting new product of communications technology—the dial phone. From the well-known and notorious, to the unusual and even whimsical, these stories are presented to enlighten, inspire, amuse, and inform. Each story amplifies the narratives that precede and follow it. Read collectively, they provide clear impressions about the forces, events, and personalities that have shaped the
Senate of the 21st century.
Ri chard A. Baker, Senate Historian"
Climate of 2006--in Historical Perspectivehttp://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2006/ann/ann06.htmlBlue Book 2006 A Look at the Statistics That Define the Multichannel Industryhttp://www.multichannel.com/index.asp?layout=nocclamp&articleid=CA6350305AF: Acronym Finderhttp://www.acronymfinder.com/"Acronym Finder describes itself as "The world's largest and most accurate human-edited dictionary of acronyms, abbreviations, and initialisms." It currently contains over 475,000 entries covering fields such as information technology, business & finance, slang & pop culture, military & government, organizations & schools, and science & medicine. Searching by acronym or browsing by broad subjects are both available. It is possible to expand your search to Acronym Attic, containing almost 3 million entries. However, these have not been edited. This is a very useful resource for anyone trying to discover what particular acronyms represent."
American Rhetorichttp://www.americanrhetoric.com"American Rhetoric combines THE ONLINE SPEECH BANK and THE TOP 100 SPEECHES into one easy-to-use, searchable reference database for all ages. According to the website, the online speech bank is an index to and growing database of 5000+ full text, audio and video (streaming) versions of public speeches, sermons, legal proceedings, lectures, debates, interviews and other recorded media events. There are approximately 604 active links and are arranged alphabetically by first name and checked for errors at least once every two weeks. According to leading scholars of American public address, the top 100 speeches in this web site are an index to and partial database of full text transcriptions of the 100 most significant American political speeches of the 20th century."
The Big Cartoon Databasehttp://www.bcdb.com"Produced since 1998, The Big Cartoon Database currently features 70,298 cartoons from film and television, 4,965 series, 26,294 registered users and 4,210 reviews. Cartoons can be accessed by studio, an Academy Award® winning classic cartoon link or by a basic or advanced keyword search area. Detailed entries include a brief history of the cartoon, a synopsis, cast and crew, production notes, user reviews and a cartoon forum for registered users to discuss a particular cartoon. Although it does provide a cartoon pictures link, original cartoons, however, are not available for viewing or downloading on this web site. The Big Cartoon Database is the definitive web compendium for anyone interested in the history of animation."
Constitution Finderhttp://confinder.richmond.edu/index.phpUniversity of RichmondReviewed March 17, 2006
"Easy to use and up to date, "this database offers constitutions, charters, amendments, and other related documents. Nations of the world are linked to their constitutional text posted somewhere on the Internet." Constitution Finder’s simply designed web site features a well placed pull-down index to over 200 countries ranging from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. Constitutions are offered in original languages and English (and sometimes Spanish) translations. Though not exhaustive, historical constitutions and related documents are also available."
Documenting the American Southhttp://docsouth.unc.edu/"Documenting the American South is a large-scale digital publishing initiative that features primary resources in history for the study of the history, literature, and culture of the American South. It is an indispensable resource for study of the Civil War and the Antebellum South, African-American history, and Southern literature. It includes public domain full-text books, pamphlets, personal correspondence, slave narratives, diaries, and oral histories. Documenting the American South remains an essential electronic research tool for anyone seeking original and scholarly documentation about this region."
In the first person: An index to letters, diaries, oral histories, and other personal narrativeshttp://www.inthefirstperson.com"The In the first person web site describes itself as an “In-depth index of more than 3,350 collections of personal narratives in English from around the world. It lets you keyword search more than 650,000 pages of full-text by more than 15,000 individuals from all walks of life. It also contains pointers to some 3,500 audio and video files and 30,000 bibliographic records.” What makes this resource particularly useful is the depth of indexing, allowing searches by personal characteristics, time frame, even witnesses to particular events. About 25 percent of the full-text content is restricted to paid subscribers but it also pulls together content from hundreds of authoritative free sites."
Metacritichttp://www.metacritic.com/"Metacritic is a searchable database of individual reviews of film, video/DVD, television, music, books and games. The database can be searched by the title of a specific work, the name of an individual involved, a genre, or by "metascore," a number derived by Metacritic from a weighted formulation of rankings by individual reviewers. Metacritic takes into account the prestige of individual critics and publications in calculating weighted averages. Metascores are color-coded green (favorable), yellow (mixed or average), or red (unfavorable). Added features in the site allow easy determination of new releases with the most favorable reviews. Coverage of individual works includes a synopsis, information about its creator, publisher, distributor, or producer, technical information such as running time or number of pages, and excerpts from individual reviews."
POTUS: Presidents of the United Stateshttp://www.ipl.org/div/potus/"The POTUS site is part of the Internet Public Library (IPL) and is a quick biography source for all the presidents of the United States. Individual links to the different presidents provide basic biographical information, election results, cabinet member biographies, and notable events that occurred in each of these administrations. Additional links are provided for resources dealing with particular presidents and historical events that occurred during particular presidencies. This site is good for librarians in all settings that need to find fast information on U.S. presidents."
The Pulitzer Prizeshttp://www.pulitzer.org/"Beginning in 1917, and continuing to the present day, the Pulitzer Prize is generally awarded in 21 different areas of journalism and photography, including published books and music. Users can search or browse each year’s winners using the timeline at the top of each page, discover how the Prize winners are determined, and learn about the influential creator of the Prizes, Mr. Joseph Pulitzer. The home page is divided into four categories, Resources (with contact information), the Archive (of winners and finalists), History, and Forms (guidelines and entry forms). This well-designed page is useful for anyone interested in the Prizes or winners."
SchoolMattershttp://www.schoolmatters.com"The Schoolmatters site allows “parents, educators and leaders to research information about public schools.” The site provides a simple to use interface to search for information and compare schools at the local, state, and national level. The results include tables and colorful graphs of school performance, staffing, and safety information as well as community demographics. Also included is a benchmarking tool, called Better Performers, which “allows you to find schools or districts in the state with higher performance than your school or district in the subject, grade level, and among the group of students you specify." A particular strength is the inclusion of numerous visually appealing graphs. This is an excellent place to start for anyone interested in comparing schools and communities."
Urban Legends Reference Pageshttp://www.snopes.com"This searchable archive/repository offers insight to urban legends, “common fallacies, misinformation, old wives’ tales, strange news stories, rumors, celebrity gossip, and similar items”. Access is via a broad variety of topical headings or by basic keyword searching. Records include detailed descriptions of the item’s origin (sometimes including original text and images), its status (e.g., true, false, multiple, undetermined), and an evaluation. A brief bibliography is usually included with entries for support. Free access is also available to the site’s message boards. The site is fun to browse and great for checking the hoax status of many a forwarded e-mail message."
