American Institute of Biological SciencesThe American Institute of Biological Sciences is a non-profit scientific organization federally chartered to “advance research and education in the biological sciences.” AIBS serves as an umbrella organization for professional scientific societies and organizations in providing services, support, and a voice for research and education in biology. The AIBS site includes links to news, meetings, classifieds and articles of interest.
Animal Diversity Web"An online database of animal natural history, distribution, classification, and conservation biology at the University of Michigan"
Archival Sound Recordings, from the British Library"Archival Sound Recordings gives full access to its content to licensed UK higher education institutions. The left sidebar lists larger categories of the collections, most of which are available only in the UK. Where copyright permits, users in the US may listen to nearly 12,000 items in the following collections: British wildlife recordings; Decca West African recordings; early spoken word recordings, ethnographic wax cylinders, Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, Millennium Memory Bank (oral history project recorded by BBC local radio stations), music from India (emphasizing folk, devotional, and ritual music of rural India), Peter Cooke Uganda recordings, soundscapes (mechanical, natural, urban sounds), survey of English dialects, and traditional music in England.
License agreements for content are in various stages of negotiation, with details available. Metadata derived from the British Library Sound Archive catalog is encoded in METS (XML) and will be compliant with the Protocol for Metadata Harvesting from the Open Archives Initiative by the end of the project. Users may view notes and tags added by others to make the collection user-friendly. A Search Tips link is available, along with a button that allows one to restrict a search to recordings everyone can play. Recent blog topics include "Sound in Space" and "Recording of the month"--featuring George Martin from the Oral History of Recorded Sound. This particular interview begins in the early 1950s, documenting Martin as he records classical music, then comedy, followed by the Beatles; it ends with a discussion of emerging technologies (circa 1983) for digital sound recording and synthesizers. This Web site's strength is in its diversity, and a wide audience should find it appealing." from Choice Oct. 2009.
Biodiversity Heritage Library"Ten major natural history museum libraries, botanical libraries, and research institutions have joined to form the Biodiversity Heritage Library Project. The group is developing a strategy and operational plan to digitize the published literature of biodiversity held in their respective collections. This literature will be available through a global 'biodiversity commons.'"
BioEd OnlineBiology teacher resources from Baylor College of Medicine.
Everglades Digital Library"The Everglades Digital Library (EDL) is hosted by the Digital Collections Center at Florida International University (FIU) Libraries in Miami. The EDL was established in 1996 to make information resources about the Everglades more accessible to researchers, educators, and decision makers in this region. Several scholarly organizations and government offices throughout south Florida house historical information about the Everglades, so the EDL works closely with these groups to bring these resources together.
The EDL is subdivided into three separate collections: Everglades Education Consortium; Everglades Online; and Reclaiming the Everglades: South Florida's Natural History, 1884 to 1934. Additional special features include a selection of links to other historical, research, educational, and cultural sites, which contain photographic images or PDF files of the documents. One can browse the individual collections or browse by subject classification. The Advanced Search feature offers options to limit to resource type, language, audience, format, and education level. The Ask an Everglades Librarian link allows site visitors to pose additional questions via e-mail. Anyone can create an account from either the Browse or Search section on the site. Once a user is logged in, however, it is no longer possible to access some of the resources that are linked from the original home page. Visitors can post comments on the site, but this reviewer found this feature to be extremely problematic because every document she looked at contained myriad unrelated posts with questionable content or advertisements. The information resources found in the Everglade Digital Library are very useful and valuable to both undergraduate and graduate students." Choice April, 2010.
Freshwater and Marine Image Bank"The Freshwater and Marine Image Bank is a digital collection from the University of Washington Libraries. The images are scanned and maintained specifically by the staff of the Fisheries-Oceanography Library. The site currently contains 21,000 photos related to worldwide ocean and limnological environments from the 18th- through early-20th centuries. The site is fairly easy to navigate, with logical links. However, there can be some confusion since entering one digital collection site gives a user access to all other collections; visitors need to make sure that they remain in the Freshwater and Marine Image Bank when clicking on links.
There are expected collections of images such as Fish Species, Shellfish, and Water Birds. One of the surprising sets of photos is under Stereoscopic Views, which contains some spectacular images of Niagara Falls, the Chicago River, and the Panama Canal, to name a few. Metadata for each photo includes the image date, subject, publication information, copyright, and ordering information. A search option allows users to perform subject or title searches. One nice feature is the Other Sources section, which provides links to related image sites. It is not apparent how often updates are performed, but users can register to receive updates through the feed reader of their choice. The site appears to work well using both Internet Explorer and Firefox. This site offers a useful way to view images from publications that may be too fragile to handle. It is valuable for any student, teacher, or researcher who needs access to historical images related to freshwater and marine subjects." Choice February 2010.
Inside ScienceInside Science is a science news organization that provides editorially independent research news and information on science, engineering, mathematics, and related fields for general audiences through television, print and the web.
ScienceBlogs"ScienceBlogs provides access to more than 70 blogs by selected leading bloggers from a wide variety of scientific disciplines. The scope is quite broad; topics range from women in science to bisphenol A. ScienceBlogs was launched in January 2006 by Seed Media Group, which also publishes the scientific magazine Seed. Seed Media Group was founded in 2005 by Adam Bly (formerly, National Research Council of Canada). Bloggers are selected 'based on their originality, insight, talent, and dedication.' Selected bloggers include professors in scientific disciplines, a freelance science journalist, and more. ScienceBlogs staff do not edit the bloggers' work.
Excellent site organization enables users to easily browse or search for blogs, which are organized by ten channels of content: Life Science, Physical Science, Environment, Humanities and Social Science, Education and Careers, Politics, Medicine and Health, Brain and Behavior, Technology, and Last 24 Hours (most recent posts). Special features include Top 5 Readers' Picks, direct links to the science news section of The New York Times online, RSS feeds including 'ScienceBlogs posts analyzing peer-reviewed journal articles,' e-mail notification of specific blogs or channels, Page 3.14 Editorial Musings, Ask a Science Blogger, and ScienceBlogs Weekly Recap (a newsletter that can be mailed to users' inboxes). The site loads fairly quickly and features only a few advertisements." from Choice, May 2009.
