JTA - Jewish News Archive

 

JTA - Jewish News Archive

 

The JTA Jewish News Archive is a powerful reference tool that offers a perspective on current events and modern Jewish history that is not available anywhere else. With free access to nearly a century of reporting about global events affecting world Jewry, the Archive will not only serve as a rich resource for both the casually curious as well as students and scholars of modern Jewish history, it will also transform the way the next generation of Jewish leaders and activists learn about their heritage.

Until now, there has been no authoritative site that provides a comprehensive chronicle of modern Jewish history, as seen through the eyes of journalists. From the aftermath of World War I, to the rise of Nazi Germany, through the Holocaust, the creation of the modern State of Israel and right up to today, JTA journalists have been reporting on stories and issues affecting Jews around the globe. The JTA Jewish News Archive holds over a quarter-million articles They provide a unique lens through which to view world events that no other news organization provides.

“The JTA Jewish News Archive has the potential to spark an interest in the past that will transform the future,” says Jonathan Sarna, the Joseph H. & Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History at Brandeis University and director of its Hornstein Jewish Professional Leadership Program. Professor Sarna, a member of JTA’s Board of Directors, chaired the project.

It has long been JTA’s mission to document the narrative of modern Jewish history. JTA was founded in the waning days of World War I by Jacob Landau as a mechanism for transmitting vital information about what was happening in Jewish communities in various parts of the world. Orginally named the Jewish Correspondence Bureau, it was, in fact, the first news agency that not only gathered but also disseminated news in every part of the world.

The tag line on the logo, "Writing the first draft of Jewish history since 1917" reflects the reality that the correspondents reported what they could confirm at that time. It is possible that some of the facts in these articles were proven erroneous when more deliberate research became possible . As a news service, though, JTA reported events that would have otherwise not been documented. That is the nature of news reporting, particularly during times of war or political repression.

Throughout our long history, JTA has earned its reputation for journalistic integrity, outstanding reporting and insightful analysis. Over the years, the Jewish community has come to rely on JTA as the single most credible source of news and analysis available about events and issues of Jewish interest anywhere in the world.

Headquartered in New York, JTA is a not-for-profit corporation governed by an independent Board of Directors. It has no allegiance to any specific branch of Judaism or political viewpoint. We receive funding from a diverse array of sources.

National Jukebox LOC.gov

 

National Jukebox LOC.gov

 

About the National Jukebox

The Library of Congress presents the National Jukebox, which makes historical sound recordings available to the public free of charge. The Jukebox includes recordings from the extraordinary collections of the Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation and other contributing libraries and archives. Recordings in the Jukebox were issued on record labels now owned by Sony Music Entertainment, which has granted the Library of Congress a gratis license to stream acoustical recordings.

At launch, the Jukebox includes more than 10,000 recordings made by the Victor Talking Machine Company between 1901 and 1925. Jukebox content will be increased regularly, with additional Victor recordings and acoustically recorded titles made by other Sony-owned U.S. labels, including Columbia, OKeh, and others.

Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution

 

Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution

 

“…a repository of inestimable value, like the art world’s Fort Knox.”– contemporary art collector and friend of the Archives

Founded in Detroit in 1954 by Edgar P. Richardson, then Director of the Detroit Institute of Arts, and Lawrence A. Fleischman, a Detroit executive and active young collector, the initial goal of the Archives was to serve as microfilm repository of papers housed in other institutions. This mission expanded quickly to collecting and preserving original material and, in 1970, the Archives joined the Smithsonian Institution, sharing the Institution’s mandate—the increase and diffusion of knowledge.

The Archives today is the world’s pre-eminent and most widely used research center dedicated to collecting, preserving, and providing access to primary sources that document the history of the visual arts in America.

Our vast holdings—more than 16 million letters, diaries and scrapbooks of artists, dealers, and collectors; manuscripts of critics and scholars; business and financial records of museums, galleries, schools, and associations; photographs of art world figures and events; sketches and sketchbooks; rare printed material; film, audio and video recordings; and the largest collection of oral histories anywhere on the subject of art—are a vital resource to anyone interested in American culture over the past 200 years.

Yet the Archives is still growing! Each year, our curators travel the country seeking the papers of today’s artists, dealers, and collectors, and once new collections are acquired, professional archivists preserve the materials and create easy-to-use guides.

Founded on the belief that the public needs free and open access to the most valuable research materials, our collections are available to the thousands of researchers who consult original papers at our research facilities or use our reference services remotely every year, and to millions who visit us online to access detailed images of fully digitized collections.

Our resources serve as reference for countless dissertations, exhibitions, catalogues, articles, and books on American art and artists, and preserve the untold stories that, without a central repository such as the Archives, might have otherwise been lost.

Through collecting, preserving, and providing access to our collections, the Archives inspires new ways of interpreting the visual arts in America and allows current and future generations to piece together the nation’s rich artistic and cultural heritage.

Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity — Home

 

Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity — Home

The Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity is a non-profit research and public policy organization devoted to improving the world’s diet, preventing obesity, and reducing weight stigma. The Rudd Center serves as a leader in building broad-based consensus to change diet and activity patterns, while holding industry and government agencies responsible for safeguarding public health. The Center serves as a leading research institution and clearinghouse for resources that add to our understanding of the complex forces affecting how we eat, how we stigmatize overweight and obese people, and how we can change.

What We Do

Our charge is to reverse the global spread of obesity; to reduce weight bias; and to galvanize community members, public officials, and advocacy groups to achieve positive, lasting change.

How We Do It

The Rudd Center pursues our bold goals through: strategic science; interaction with key players in media, industry, and government; and mobilization of grassroots efforts. The Center stands at the intersection of science and public policy to develop innovative and effective measures to combat obesity and improve global health.

 

Includes publications, podcasts, policy statements, image gallery and seminar series.

The Pop History Dig - a collection of short stories about popular culture - its history, its people, and its power

 

The Pop History Dig - a collection of short stories about popular culture - its history, its people, and its power

Welcome to The Pop History Dig.

     In today’s world, busy people often miss or by-pass important historic and cultural events when they first occur.  Others have completely forgotten older events or know little of their significance.  The Pop History Dig is offered as a place to revisit some of that cultural history, whether decades old or occurring just last week.  It is also a place to consider and reconsider the importance and meaning of these events – and their impact on society.

     What you will find here is a collection of stories that probe the history and power of popular culture – its people, its businesses, and its politics.  Everything from Thomas Edison’s inventions to Oprah Winfrey’s political endorsements is fair game at this site – and more.  Music, sport, film, and television are all part of the mix.  Media and entertainment, quite obviously, figure prominently in  make up of popular culture, and these are a primary focus.  History is covered, yes, but it’s history with a difference; political, cultural, and business history; history that helps explain, for example, how media and entertainment have become such a pervasive part of our daily lives.

 

     All of this is served up in a short- to medium-length story format – stories that are somewhat longer than a typical blog, but in-depth enough to provide thorough coverage of a particular subject or offer some new arrangement of  information.  Each story typically includes period photos, sidebars, and other graphics.  Some will contain music files, and some will link to videos on YouTube and elsewere.  There is also biography, business history, and a share of nostalgia found here.  Some stories are serious and conven- tional, others less so.

     Jack Kennedy’s politics are covered, as well as Mickey Mantle’s home runs and Madonna’s music.  Warner Brothers’ film history is included, along with John Steinbeck’s novels and the power of 1930s’ radio.  Walt Disney’s empire and how Ted Turner built CNN are also covered. Jack Kennedy’s politics are covered, as well as  Mickey Mantle’s home runs and Madonna’s music. And other stories to come might focus on the product endorsements of basketball phenom LeBron James, the history of MTV, or a Ray Charles song.

     These are all stories of a kind; part of the mix of people and events sometimes called “popular culture.”  But they are also more than that.  They are stories of money, politics, and power, too – and also, the longer timeline of history.  They tell us something about who we are, where we have come from, and what we value.  Some are significant in business or the arts; others have become historic milestones and landmarks; and still others have become woven into the social fabric over time.  Some are embedded in our personal lives and emotional memories – from music and film, or a good book or memorable sporting event.  And whether personal marker or cultural milestone, many of these events have come to us by way of the media and entertainment industries.

Digital Library on American Slavery

Digital Library on American Slavery

The Digital Library on American Slavery offers data on race and slavery extracted from eighteenth and nineteenth-century documents and processed over a period of eighteen years. The Digital Library contains detailed information on about 150,000 individuals, including slaves, free people of color, and whites. These data have been painstakingly extracted from 2,975 legislative petitions and 14,512 county court petitions, and from a wide range of related documents, including wills, inventories, deeds, bills of sale, depositions, court proceedings, amended petitions, among others. Buried in these documents are the names and other data on roughly 80,000 individual slaves, 8,000 free people of color, and 62,000 whites, both slave owners and non-slave owners.

One of the inherent tragedies of slavery is the fact that the masses of black people often remain nameless in the historical record. The 1850 and 1860 United States Population Slave Censuses, for example, recorded the age, gender, color, and owner's name for approximately 7.2 million slaves, but failed to record the names of individual slaves.

One of the unique aspects of the Digital Library is the information on individual slaves that will be made available along with additional data on their owners stretching over time. For each slave, other data, when included in the documents, will be added: an alternate name, name extension (Jr., Sr.), age, gender, color, dates of ownership, as well as economic and family information. Free black data will include name, name extension, age, gender, color, occupation, how and when freed, names and status of family relations. Despite these unique profiles, the total number of names in the database, compared with the millions of slaves and free blacks over time, is small. Even so, no other online database connects slaves with their owners in such a manner.

The Digital Library is a rich resource in other ways as well. The list of subjects reveals the variety of "causes" or "bills of complaint," in the language of the courts, that petitioners brought, or defendants raised, in their civil suits. The general topics include slave ownership, slave management, freedom suits, crime and punishment, health, death, social and civic life, marriage, women, and family, among others. In addition, all of the petitions relate in one way or another to a broad range of legal issues and state laws concerning race and slavery.

Encyclopedia of Chicago

 

Encyclopedia of Chicago

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF CHICAGO

The World Wide Web has influenced The Encyclopedia of Chicago from its inception in 1994. As we mapped out the project, we came to realize that the form of the encyclopedia–with its emphasis on multiple pathways through a complex body of knowledge rather than on a single narrative–resembled the structure of the Web. Of course, Web publication also appealed to us for other reasons rooted in our encyclopedic ambitions: by publishing on the internet, we could reach a potentially enormous worldwide audience; we could expand the work's size beyond the limitations defined by a single printed volume; and we could complement narrative and interpretation with audio and video primary sources in addition to text and still images. But the possibilities didn't stop there, for as the project grew, so did the Web; this brave new world soon featured interactive maps, split screens, and zooms. We hope these features will make the encyclopedia as lively and various a place to visit as the city itself, and tempt readers to explore its back alleys as well as its grand boulevards. But most importantly, we hope that the electronic version of The Encyclopedia of Chicago, like the print version (University of Chicago Press, 2004) will stimulate readers to think differently about Chicago–by walking new paths through its history.

City & County Information, Town & Community Information - ePodunk

 

City & County Information, Town & Community Information - ePodunk

ePodunk provides in-depth information about more than 46,000 communities around the country, from Manhattan to Los Angeles, Pottstown to Podunk. Our listings also include geocoded information about thousands of parks, museums, historic sites, colleges, schools and other places across America.

ePodunk was launched in 1999 in Ithaca, NY, just east of the real Podunk, a community so small it doesn't appear on the U.S. Census Bureau's list of places. ePodunk was founded by journalists with years of experience in newspapers, online publishing and demographics.

Los Angeles-based Internet Brands acquired ePodunk in July of 2007. Internet Brands' sites deliver superior content, consumer insight and have received dozens of "best-in-class" awards.

Internet Brands’ home category websites span the lifecycle of home-related activities including housing selection, financing, purchasing, leasing and home improvement. With the acquisition of ePodunk, Internet Brands also provides valuable, traditionally hard-to-find information about individual neighborhoods to help people choose the best community for a vacation or a relocation.

American Community Survey

 

American Community Survey

The American Community Survey (ACS) is an ongoing survey that provides data every year -- giving communities the current information they need to plan investments and services. Information from the survey generates data that help determine how more than $400 billion in federal and state funds are distributed each year.

To help communities, state governments, and federal programs, we ask about:

• age
• sex
• race
• family and relationships

• income and benefits
• health insurance
• education
• veteran status

• disabilities
• where you work and how you get there
• where you live and how much you pay for some essentials

All this detail is combined into statistics that are used to help decide everything from school lunch programs to new hospitals.

Global Gateway: World Culture & Resources (Library of Congress)

Global Gateway: World Culture & Resources (Library of Congress) 

The Library of Congress Global Gateway: World Culture & Resources Digital Collections Collaborative Digital Libraries Digital Collections Centers for International Research The Library's 21 reading rooms provide access to unparalleled global information About the International Collections Information about comprehensive international print and electronic resources available at the Library Featured Presentations Selected items of international, cultural or historic importance from the Library's collections International Exhibitions Many exhibits on international themes are accessible through the Library's Exhibitions Web site Portals to the World Electronic resources on the nations of the world selected by Library of Congress subject experts Research Guides and Databases Search country studies, foreign law materials, specialized catalogs, digitized books and journals Research Opportunities Fellowships to pursue research in the collections of the Library of Congress administered by the Kluge Center International Cybercasts Videos of many public programs on international issues are available through the Cyber LC Web site

Global Gateway: World Culture & Resources (Library of Congress)