AADL Select Sites : Reference Tools

A macabre site for the morbidly curious, Dead or Alive? features the vital status of “reasonably famous people” from all walks of life: sports stars, scientists, politicians, movie stars and more. A mysterious administrator obsessively updates the site, which to date catalogues 7430 people, more of them listed alive than dead. View site statistics and deaths arranged by cause (more “reasonably famous” people have been killed by volcanic eruption (3) than balloon crash (1), for example), or compare the status of people in different fields. If perusing the lists does not prove addictive enough, the site features quizzes that regenerate every 15 minutes.

Should accuracy concern you, the site claims to have made only one confirmed mistake in the status of a person in three years.

AADL Select Sites : Kids

Yahooligans—Yahoo’s site for kids—is packed with news, info pages, links, and, perhaps most importantly, free games kids can play online!

There are loads of links on all kinds of subjects—from Sports and Recreation to Arts and Entertainment, school subjects, and more. Find out which famous artist shares your birthday or what the Peruvian flag looks like.

Kids can Ask Earl, a sort of cyber-librarian, whatever questions they desire, or browse questions others have asked before. Discover, for example, the name of the first video game ever invented, or the height of the famous escape artist, Harry Houdini.

Last, but not least, concerned parents and curious teachers can check out the Parent’s Guide to Safe Surfing or the Yahooligan’s Teacher’s Guide.

Porter Goss (image from Wikipedia)

AADL Select Sites : World

The recent resignation of CIA Director Porter Goss has followed a string of a high-profile personnel changes in the Bush administration. Other changes include replacing the Press Secretary Scott McClellan with Fox News and radio pundit Tony Snow and Joshua Bolten stepping in as Chief of Staff, a position previously held by Andrew Card.

With all these changes, it can be dificult to keep the people in power straight here in the U.S., to say nothing of what's occuring worldwide. That's where Rulers.org, one of our handy AADL Select Sites, steps in. This website details how leadership has changed in countries over their histories. For instance, you can see the powerful people in France throughout history, including its kings, emperor, and presidents.

Rulers.org also tracks recent changes in country officials and royalty. May 2006 has seen not only Goss's resignation, but also new cabinets in Israel and Afghanistan and a reshuffling of the British cabinet. Simply click the the month and year in which you're interested from the Rulers.org homepage.

AADL Select Sites:Art and Art Museums

Just a few more weeks to visit the University of Michigan Museum of Art before it moves into its temporary home on South University. The final exhibition before the move, Rethinking the Photographic Image, presents “a fresh and expansive look” at the history of photography. While the State Street site is renovated, the museum will store many of the objects in its permanent collection, and instead display focused, theme-based exhibitions. Check out the website for information about visiting the museum while it’s under construction, as well as an FAQ about the project as a whole.<--!break-->

The Consumer Price Index [CPI], published by the United States Department of Labor, is the most widely used measure of price changes and inflation. It represents a weighted index of a fixed market basket of goods and services and is published monthly for the Unites States and bi-monthly for the Detroit-Ann Arbor Area. There's a lot more information about the CPI at the government's Bureau of Labor Statistics website. For your convenience, the format of the CPI table on the AADL website enables users to compare price changes over a ten-year period in an easy-to-use one-page format.

AADL Select Sites:Books & Reading

First Lines: “A sort of literacy test.”

Bibliophiles test your memory of hundreds of first lines, from children’s books to murder mysteries. From easier than easy: “We called him Old Yeller;” to a bit more challenging: “Once upon a time there was a Martian named Valentine Michael Smith;” (Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein), First Lines beats another tired game of Solitaire and serves as great fodder for the booklover’s eternal question: “what should I read next?”

AADL Select Sites:Internet Search Engines

Sure, we've all "Googled" when we needed to find something on the internet. But have you ever "Asked," or even "Vivisimoed"? Ask.com and Vivisimo are two of the handy search engine alternatives to Google found in AADL Select Sites. These web tools can help you really find what you're looking for. Coupled with one our helpful guides to internet searching, you'll be a web searcher to be reckoned with!

4000 Women In Science is a site compiled by two astronomers. It features short biographies on some 125 women researchers along with active links to notable 20th Century women in sciences.

from "Website Reviews by John Peters", March 2006 School Library Journal, pg 89

Did you know?
The actress Danica McKellar (better known as Winnie from The Wonder Years television show), graduated with highest honors from UCLA with a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics, and is the co-author of a mathematical research paper published in the Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and General. Her accomplishments in mathematics have been profiled in the New York Times.

Wanna know some more about women in math? The website Biographies of Women Mathematicians features some 200 entries with information on women mathematicians who are not mentioned in standard histories of science. The articles are backed up with links to scholarly research.

from "Website Reviews by John Peters", March 2006 School Library Journal, pg 89

AADL Select Sites:African Americans

Officially incorporated as a Research Library of the New York Public Library in 1972, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture offers several online collections with a focus on primary documents for those scholars of African American history. In Motion: The African American Migration Experience documents 400 years of migrations to, within, and out of the United States; providing extensive commentary as well as primary texts, photographs, maps, and other documents in a searchable, thematically arranged collection. Digital Schomburg contains several databases on the African American experience; such as African American Women Writers of the 19th Century which presents full copies of 52 published works.