The best free resources include images from social movements, the European rail schedule, and documents on disaster medicine and public health.
Disaster Lit Resource Guide for Disaster Medicine and Public Health A carefully curated collection—updated daily—of links to documents on disaster medicine and public health (research reports, guidelines, fact sheets, websites, etc.) from noncommercial sources. Users can also sign up for the Listserv to receive email updates.
EconBiz Created by the German National Library of Economics and the University and City Library of Cologne, this resource offers access to business- and economics-related literature, a calendar of scholarly conferences, a virtual reference desk, and more.
European Rail Schedule from Deutsche Bahn From Germany’s National Railroad, this user-friendly site offers travelers a timetable for trains all over Europe—don’t leave home without bookmarking it.
Europeana Radio Part of Europeana Collections, which offers access to digitized artwork, books, and more, Europeana Radio lets users stream more than 200,000 tracks, taken from archives from 12 European nations. Listeners are encouraged to aid classification efforts by tagging tracks by genre.
Global Edge Michigan State University’s International Business Center offers a resource with an international focus. Users can seek statistical information on 202 nations and each of the 50 states, plus material on a variety of different industries, and much more.
IKEA Place, Augmented Reality Furnishing iOS only. Wondering how that chair or ottoman will look in your living space? There’s an augmented reality app for that. IKEA Place lets prospective buyers insert a 3-D, true-to-scale model of a piece into a photo of their room—taking the guesswork out of furniture shopping. Similar apps include Apple’s ARKit and Target’s See It in Your Place.
NHL.com The National Hockey League marks its centennial by (how else?) digitizing its statistics archives—an endeavor six years in the making. Sports fans will be delighted with, for instance, stats on individual players, box scores for every game in history, and advanced searching and filtering.
NPR’s Fresh Air Available on WorldCat Through a grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources, WHYY-FM recently created a digital archive of episodes of
Fresh Air (with streamable audio), the phenomenally popular radio show. Users can access this rich cultural trove, available via WorldCat.
PEN America’s Digital Archive The organization known for defending freedom of expression and celebrating literature has launched an online archive with more than 1,500 hours of audio and video going as far back as 1966. These recordings of meetings, debates, and panel discussions offer a wealth of literary and cultural discourse.
Price the Vineyard The University of California (UC)–Davis Library has digitized more than 200 catalogs from wine distributor Sherry-Lehmann, dating from the 1930s to the 1950s. Users are invited to transcribe the digitized data, making it more searchable. The library was also responsible for another crowdsourced wine-related project, Label This, a collection of wine labels from Maynard Amerine, a UC-Davis professor of viticulture and ecology.
Sanborn Maps at the Library of Congress Last year, the Library of Congress (LC) made available approximately 25,000 Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps. These detailed historical documents contain information such as street names, building materials, and property boundaries and are a boon to genealogists, historians, urban planners, and many others. LC will continue to add maps every month until 2020.
The Social Welfare History Image Portal History lovers, rejoice. Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries and seven partner institutions present a new resource that curates ads, pamphlets, placards, and other ephemera from social movements such as women’s suffrage.
WanderU Those with wanderlust have a new tool—this site (also available as an app for Android and iOS) lets users find and book trips by bus, train, or airplane. Specifics on hotels and car rentals is included. The “explore” option lets the intrepid see all trips available from a given location.