theguardian: “Tests show billions of people globally are drinking water contaminated by plastic particles, with 83% of samples found to be polluted. Microplastic contamination has been found in tap water in countries around the world, leading to calls from scientists for urgent for health. Scores of tap water samples from more than a dozen nations… Continue Reading
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Monthly Archives: September 2017
More Americans now say they’re spiritual but not religious
Pew Survey – “…the survey did not directly ask respondents whether the label “spiritual but not religious” describes them. Instead, it asked two separate questions: “Do you think of yourself as a religious person, or not?” and “Do you think of yourself as a spiritual person, or not?” The results presented here are the product… Continue Reading
World Economic Forum’s Global Shapers Annual Survey 2017
“Young people feel that they’re not being listened to by global decision makers. But with over half of the world’s population under the age of 30, it won’t be long before they will be making their voices heard. Almost 25,000 people aged between 18 and 35 from 186 countries and territories took part in the… Continue Reading
DHS – Hurricane Harvey Response Site
Hurricane Harvey Response – Using the Power of Partnerships to Help Impacted Communities: Homeland Infrastructure Foundation-Level Data (HIFLD) – “This site provides geospatial data from authoritative sources where possible that can be useful to support community response and recovery to Hurricane Harvey. The data is available for download as CSV, KML, Shapefile, and accessible via… Continue Reading
Modified U.S. Copyright Office Provisional IT Modernization Plan
“The U.S. Copyright Office has prepared a Modified U.S. Copyright Office Provisional IT Modernization Plan at the direction of the House Committee on Appropriations. See 163 Cong. Rec. H4033 (daily ed. May 3, 2017). The Committee directed the Register to modify the Provisional Information Technology Modernization Plan and Cost Analysis (Provisional IT Plan) published by… Continue Reading
Five recent studies on fact checking
Alexios Mantzarlis – Poynter: “The fake news phenomenon led to an explosion in media coverage of fact-checking in the final months of 2016. Now academia, with its slower publication process, is catching up. Since November, studies have failed to replicate the backfire effect and tested the power of corrections on partisan voters in both the… Continue Reading
Report to the President on Federal IT Modernization
“Executive Order (EO) 13,800 tasks the Director of the American Technology Council (ATC) to coordinate a report to the President from the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and the Administrator of the General Services Administration (GSA), in consultation with the Secretary of… Continue Reading
When you have a few free minutes – Judge books by their covers.
“You judge books by their covers. Then we judge you. Cool? Cool.” Continue Reading
August/September 2017: Hurricane Harvey
National Geodetic Survey damage assessment imagery available online. “From August 27-September 4, the National Geodetic Survey (NGS) collected damage assessment imagery in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey. The aerial imagery was collected in specific areas identified by FEMA and the National Weather Service. You can access all of the images collected online. Select the round… Continue Reading
The State of the Web – A guide to impactful performance improvements
Karolina Szczur – via Medium: “The Internet is growing exponentially, and so is the Web platform we create. Often though we fail to reflect on the greater picture of connectivity and contexts the audience of our work might find themselves in. Even a short glance at the state of the World Wide Web shows that… Continue Reading
Shifting Gears: Gearing Up to Get into the Flow, Second Edition
OCLC – “In 2007, directors, administrators and curators of special collections in libraries, archives and museums came together for a forum—Digitization Matters: Breaking Through the Barriers—to discuss how to advance digitization of primary sources, in light of efforts at the time toward mass digitization of books. The report Shifting Gears: Gearing Up to Get into… Continue Reading
The Transformation of Academic Library Collecting: A Synthesis of the Harvard Library’s Hazen Memorial Symposium
“In October 2016, a group of eminent library leaders, research collections specialists and scholars gathered at Norton’s Woods Conference Center in Cambridge, MA, to commemorate the career of Dan Hazen (1947–2015) and reflect upon the transformation of academic library collections. Hazen was a towering figure in the world of research collections management and was personally… Continue Reading
