WebliminalBlog

The Internet Scout is an excellent, long standing publication on the Web. It has been published every Friday since 1994. Each week a number of sites are reviewed. The emphasis is often on sites that are appropriate for research. Here are a few from the August 7, 2015 report.

• The Webby Awards

  ·http://www.webbyawards.com/winners/2015/

  The Internet is big. Really big. In fact, as of the time of this writing, there are over 900 million websites to navigate on the World Wide Web. So how do you choose the best, the most innovative, the most useful, the most beautiful? Every year, the Webby Awards does just that. Readers will find much to explore on the Webby Awards’ website. The site can be scouted by category, including Special Achievement, Websites, Online Film & Video, Advertising & Media, Mobile Sites & Apps, and Social. Within each category, awards are meted out by subcategory. For instance, within Websites, there are awards for Art, Best use of Photography, Best User Experience, and many others. For a trip down memory lane, the site can also be searched by year, all the way back to 1997. While not all winners of the Webby Awards are equally academic, there are plenty of interesting and educational website recommendations for Scout Readers on the site. [CNH]

• Community Service Society Photographs

  ·http://css.cul.columbia.edu/

  With almost 1,400 images ranging from the 1880s to the 1950s, the Community Service Society Photographs at Columbia University’s Rare Book & Manuscript Library “offer representations of urban poverty, unsafe tenement housing, inadequate hygiene in public areas, and other pressing social issues in late-19th and early-20th century New York.” Readers may like to begin with the Featured Topics tab, where they can explore the collection through categories such as Children, Girls, Boys, Women, Men, Interiors, Buildings, House Furnishings, and Streets. In addition, the Places tab offers images from over two dozen locations, with the bulk of them orbiting the Lower East Side, Red Hook, Saugerties, and Little Italy. Readers may also scout the dozens of Topics, which include everything from Abandoned Buildings to Memorials to Plumbing. [CNH]

• The Museum of Imaginary Musical Instruments

  ·http://imaginaryinstruments.org/

  In the Museum of Imaginary Musical Instruments – which exists only online, under a Creative Commons license – readers will find a panoply of imaginative inventions, from the Torturetron (from the film script of the Adventures of Baron Munchausen) to Les Paul’s Les Paulverizer. Readers may like to begin with the About section, which includes a fascinating exegesis of the site’s undergirding assumptions, before moving on to the exhibitions. These include spectacles in the general categories of Abstract Resonators, Acousmatic Instruments, Auditory Extensions, Giganticism, and others. Each instrument is accompanied by the textual or visual reference from which it was drawn and a concomitant image or explanation. This imaginative site must be seen to be believed. [CNH]