Google to Make Life Magazine’s Entire Photo Archive Freely Available for Public Viewing

LIFE Photo Archive available on Google Image Search

Earlier this month, Google.com announced that users would soon be able to search through defunct Life Magazine’s photo archive via Google’s image search service. Founded in 1883 Life closed shop in 2006. In those 120 years, Life compiled an enormous photo archive composed of over 10 million images, some of them dating from the 1750s*. It’s estimated that only about 20 percent of those images ever saw publication. Currently, about 20 percent of that collection has been placed online. When the entire archive is online, 80 percent of the materials will be available for the first time ever in any format. That’s 8 million previously unseen images!

Google provides a search page here: http://images.google.com/hosted/life.

You can also search the collection through Google’s regular image search page by entering your search terms followed by the string “source:Life” without quotations, e.g. “horses source:Life” without quotations.

Now, there seems to be a limit of 200 images per search. If you are having difficulty finding an image it isn’t necessarily missing. If you are fairly certain it is in the collection, try this method: instead of using general search terms like “war” or “general”, use more specific terms such as “Vietnam War” or “General Eisenhower.” This helps sneak your results past the 200 photo limit returned by those other, rather broad terms.

*Practical photography did not exist before the early 1820s, images in the collection dated before the 1820s are generally images of drawings and etchings.

Doing Business: Mapping the Global Business Environment

World Bank’s Doing Business

Thinking about starting a business in another country? Then you’d better take a trip there to figure out how to get things started.

But wait! You don’t have the time or money for travel — you’re saving for the business and working hard to get it together! Not to worry. World Bank’s Doing Business interactive mapping site allows you to discover how easy (or difficult) it is to do business in 181 economies worldwide.

This site doesn’t just map the dull stuff like GNP and population — it gives you info on the corruption level you’ll have to deal with when starting a business in another country. You can also find out what the infrastructure issues are; how convoluted the bureaucracy is; how likely it is that your business will be ripped off by employees. This is stuff you don’t usually find in a reference book!!

If you’re serious about business-related expatriation, then you should really start with this site. It’s easy to use and will give you a good foundation for further exploration of your possible new business climate.

Blogging Class

There will be a blogging class offered at the Main Library, this Saturday, November 29.

Blogging is one of the fastest and easiest ways to publish to the web. Learn about blogs and how to create your own blog with the free service from Blogger. In this class participants will learn how to:

• Sign up for a free blog with Blogger*
• Write a blog post and publish it to the web
• Customize their blog
• Blog responsibly and safely

Participants in this class are expected to be familiar with basic internet browsing (such as with Internet Explorer) and basic word processing.

*Participants must have an active email account in order to register with Blogger.

Date: Saturday, November 29, 2008

Time: 9:00 AM – 12:00 PM

Location: Main Library

C-SPAN’s Kennedy Assassination Audio Archive

C-SPAN’s Kennedy Assassination Audio Archive

Today is the 40th anniversary of the assassination of JFK and C-SPAN has assembled an impressive array of audio files documenting that horrific event and its aftermath.

Hear oral histories from politicians who witnessed the event; the White House press secretary’s announcement of the assassination; phone calls made by LBJ as he prepared to take over as president. It’s an exhaustive archive and well worth spending time with if you’re interested in this significant historic event.

BookTour

When and where is Janet Evanovich reading next? Are any romance writers speaking in Baton Rouge in the next month? With BookTour.com, looking for author events is as easy as finding the weather forecast.

BookTour.com is an online directory of author events. You can find authors that are coming to your area soon or in the future. You can also search for your favorite authors and track their tours. If you prefer to narrow your searches to authors of a particular genre (romance, mystery, cookbooks), you can do that too.

A host of features allows you to receive updates in a variety of formats. You can get an email update as well as create an RSS feed for your favorite authors (if you want to get all web 2.0 with it). Amazingly, you can also have the events added to your personal online calendar (depending on which software you use) and even create a widget to display on your blog or website.

So the next time that superstar author visits your local bookstore, talking, eating and signing autographs until well past midnight, you’ll be there, rather than reading about it in the paper the next day.