UNC Asheville / Ramsey Library / Special Collections


Being a list of
ONLINE RESOURCES, BIBLIOGRAPHIC TOOLS,
and other necessary RESEARCH AIDS,


Not unworthy the occasional perusal of most Luddites and Technophobes.


“Simon Peter said, I go a Googling: and they said, We
also wil go with thee.”


**With apologies to Messrs. Izaak Walton and Charles Cotton


Tackle Box Basics

Browsing the River (internet browsers)

Casting a Wide Net

  • OMEKA - The next-generation research tool that makes it easy to gather, organize, annotate, search, and cite materials you find online and off. "Omeka is a web platform for publishing collections and exhibitions online. Designed for cultural institutions, enthusiasts, and educators, Omeka is easy to install and modify and facilitates community-building around collections and exhibits. Omeka is free and open source. Learn more." Recently OMEKA released a package that will assist small historical societies and museums to develop interactive web sites for their patrons.  See: 
      The Center for History and New Media <chnm.gmu.edu> is excited
       to announce the release of our Object of History/Omeka software
       package--a free, open-source, web publishing application for
       museum educators and curators.
     
       OOH/Omeka is based on the successful museum education site, The
       Object of History: Behind the Scenes with the Curators of the
       National Museum of American History <objectofhistory.org>.
     
       Created for small museums and historical societies,
       OOH/Omeka is designed to help those institutions create online
       exhibits and educational websites. OOH/Omeka allows curators and
       museum educators to build meaningful learning experiences
       focused on key items from institutional collections, using
       primary sources, expert interviews, and other assorted
       materials. Most importantly, the OOH/Omeka minimizes the cost
       and technical expertise needed to reach students, teachers, and
       members of the interested public through the web.
     
       The OOH/Omeka package includes all of the software and structure
       that curators and museum educators need to create their own
       Object Lesson sites, as well as a step-by-step guide to using
       the software and crafting Object Lessons that convey content
       knowledge as well as emphasize historical thinking skills.
     
       Download the OOH/Omeka Package: <objectofhistory.org>

  • ScholarPress -ScholarPress is a developing hub for educational WordPress plugins - bridging the gap between technology and pedagogy.

  • Syllabus Finder -Find and compare syllabi from thousands of universities and colleges on any topic.

  • Prof Hacker - Tips and tutorials for higher education

  • Tools Center - Browse a collaborative Wiki resource spanning any and all tools that might be applicable to the practice of online history.

  • Survey Builder - A tool that builds online surveys, especially applicable to oral histories.

  • Poll Builder - Build customizable polls and include them on your web site for free.

  • CHNM Labs - Center for History and New Media. View upcoming tools and programs to help you collect, and interpret history in new and imaginative ways. Current projects include H-Bot, Site Builder, Timeline Builder, and WordPress Courseware.

Scheduling you Fishing

Landing Your Catch

  • Zotero - "The next-generation research tool that makes it easy to gather, organize, annotate, search, and cite materials you find online and off."[WE NEED TO RE-WORD?]
     

  • EndNote - See Web of Science for UNCA faculty, students and staff.
     

Lures - Snagging the best quotes

  • Scribe - A notetaking application designed with historians and other Humanities types in mind.
     

  • Notebook - Clip and collect information as you surf the web
     

  • EndNote - See Web of Science for UNCA faculty, students and staff.
     

  • Diigo  - A social networking site that allow for the save and distribution of quotes, citations, and web-pages. Afree premium account especially designed for educators is available. Learn More
     

Spinners - Putting your images into action

  • Vertov - Vertov is a free media annotating plugin for Zotero, an innovative, easy-to-use, and infinitely extendable research tool. Both are Firefox extensions. Vertov allows you to cut video and audio files into clips, annotate the clips, and integrate your annotations with other research sources and notes stored in Zotero.
     

  • YouTube - the ubiquitous source of streaming video
     

  • animoto - the end of slideshows  Create your own video show with still images and music

  • PRISMAprepare by Oce -  Created in the Netherlands this program is a print shop software that is one of the ten best web tools endorsed by the The Nielsen Norman Group.

  • FotoFlexer - Describes the program as the "worlds best photo editor" on the Web.  Developed by Arbor Labs, this free program allows extensive manipulation of images.

Pod-Casting

Of Fish-ponds, and how to oreder [sic] them ?

Location, Location, Location!

  • GPS Trackstick (http://www.gpstrackstick.com) can be carried in your pocket or in your car. It tracks and records the path it travels.  The recorded data, or "geo tagging" information, can then be uploaded "to create custom maps of walking or driving routes, hiking trails, or points of interest."

  • Google Maps (http://maps.google.com), "offers a one-button way to overlay public, geotagged media onto the relevant section of a map as you view it; photos or videos tagged with the location in question simply fall into place on the map."

  •  Google Earth’s 3D display, similar to Google Maps feature, offers the ability to place media directly on the map.

  • Flickr Maps (http://www.flickr.com/map),provides the tags for any location in a region of the world. Use the tags to geo-locate your work.

"Cleaning the Catch" (Formatting your Bibliography & Refining)

  • Citing Sources from Duke University Libraries
     

  • Tiny URL - TinyURL was created as a free service to make posting long URLs easier, and may only be used for actual URLs.
     

The Trophy Room  - Showing off your catch

  • Slideshare - SlideShare is the best way to share your presentations with the world. Let your ideas reach a broad audience. Share publicly or privately. Add audio to create a webinar.
     

  • Web Scrapbook - Store all kinds of media items—URLs, images, text, and movies—and collaborate with others in a scrapbook manner.
     

  • Flickr - Free limited storage and share of your image collections.  Unlimited storage for a fee.  " ...We want to get photos into and out of the system in as many ways as we can: from the web, from mobile devices, from the users' home computers and from whatever software they are using to manage their photos. And we want to be able to push them out in as many ways as possible: on the Flickr website, in RSS feeds, by email, by posting to outside blogs or ways we haven't thought of yet. What else are we going to use those smart refrigerators for?"

  • The main difference with the image annotation tool in Flickr (Magic Studio ) is the abiblity to annotate images, video, and audion with text. Access is free for individual users. http://www.magicstudiostart.co.uk/.

  • Institutions can use the service for free, as well, through the 'Gateway' service. By establishing a 'content channel' other users can be added so other users can access the service. Includes image annotator.

  • Image Studio tools can be embedded into the active web site.

  • Image Studio works with Flickr, Picasa, YouTube, and other APIs and VLE's (educational institutions). The interactive material created in Magic Studio can be published on the Web.
     

  • Magic Studio Start  - Magic Studio™ Start is a free online service for teachers to access, build and share interactive learning materials and activities , without needing to learn specialist software skills.

  • Snapfish - "Today's photo sites pack in a whole lot of extra features beyond just print ordering, including the now customary album-creation, sharing, and editing functions...HP's Snapfish offered the best prints for the least money, and as a result earned our Best Bet award." - PC World, January 2007.
     

  • Fotonotes  - FotonotesTM is an standard, specification, and collection of scripts for annotating images.
     

  • Google Docs & Spreadsheets - Create, store and share documents and spreadsheets on the web
     

  • PBwiki.com -  "Lets you quickly set up your own free, hosted, password-protected wiki to edit and share information. It's as easy as a peanut butter."  [I like this tool.  It is "Moodle-like," easy to learn, and flexible, but without paying a bit more, not particularly good for image projects..]
     

  • MediaWiki - a free software wiki package originally written for Wikipedia. It is now used by several other projects of the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation ...
     

  • ResearcherID.com  - Citations of work in progress or recently accomplished.
     

  • IDIDWORK  - ididwork allows users to keep a work log. You can jot down what you've been doing at work so none of your accomplishments are forgotten. See exactly what your teammates are up to in real-time.
     

  • YAMMER - Yammer is a tool for making companies and organizations more productive through the exchange of short frequent answers to one simple question: “What are you working on?”

Web Authoring software

  • OPENEDIT_DAM - Loacated in Cincinnati, Ohio, this open-source editing program is a JAVA based, open source software used to build powerful, yet lightweight web applications. It is licensed under a royalty free, perpetual and transferable GNU LGPL license. The open source framework provides freedom on setting systems as desired. The program is built with Velocity and has a Pluggable Database Storage module that uses Hibernate, if a database is required. The use of AJAX enabled pages and previews allows a dynamic web interface. Also, includes JAVA Servlet and runs well with other applications and uses XML metadata, nested layouts, and server side scripting and again Velocity/JSP.  Can be installed on Windows, Linus, Solaris and OSX.
     

Rummaging in Other Tackle Boxes

A FORM for Every Fish

  • WuFoo - The award-winning HTML form builder.  A free (sort-of) source for templates for creating forms for almost any situation.

Course Authoring software

Cleaning Up After Yourself!

Collection Management

  • Collective Access (formerly Open Collection) - an open access collection management system
  • CMSBox - a content management system created by a Swiss team

File Management

  • SugarSync - will synchronize files across your system and multiple computers. Will assist in online backup, Multi-computer sync, remote access, mobile phone access, music & photos, file sharing, data security, and more. Not all features are free.
**See the original Walton and Cotton, Compleat Angler
2008-04-08 Sinclair ; Wykle