Markmedia

Australian Newspapers beta Historic Australian Newspapers, 1803 to 1954

The National Library of Australia has launched a public beta of its 'Australian Newspapers' site. The site will offer access to scanned images and text from historic Australian newspapers dating from 1803 to 1954.

The site looks awful at the moment. Clutered and not pretty. But it is a beta and the information is interesting and useful.
It will only get better

Chronicling America Update: 73,000 newspaper pages added - now includes papers published 1890-1910 and 2 new states - Nebraska and Texas

On August 1, more than 73,000 newly digitized newspaper pages were added to the Chronicling America Web site at www.loc.gov/chroniclingamerica/, including content from 2 new states - Nebraska and Texas - and expanding coverage in the 1890s.

With this update, the site now provides access to more than 642,000 digitized newspaper pages, published between 1890 and 1910, and representing 74 newspapers from California, the District of Columbia, Florida, Kentucky, Nebraska, New York, Texas, Utah and Virginia.
Chronicling America is a project of the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP), which is a partnership between the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

NewspaperDirect

 NewspaperDirect is a centralized global repository for content of daily newspapers. It has agreements to receive content from publishers around the world and make it available in the original design and page layout to readers globally.

The first page is free, but you have to pay to access the entire publication.

legacy of slave trade

The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization UNESCO has launched an interactive educational resource African Passages on the legacy of the trans-atlantic slave trade. Using visuals, music, scholarly commentary and educational activities;

African Passages

• connects the history of the Ashley River Corridor in South Carolina with its roots in Barbados and Africa;
• links the past to the present with the voices and images of the descendants of slaves; and
• reveals the persistence of African cultural heritage through practices and traditions handed down through generations.

UN documents: a starting point

The UN publishes a large amount of documents. A good starting point for searching for them is the United Nations Dag Hammarskjöld Library Research Guide.

The guide is designed for researchers and information professionals with an interest in United Nations documentation. It presents an overview of the various types of documents and publications issued by the Organization (e.g, reports, resolutions, meeting records, sales publications, press releases) and gives guidance on how to work with them.

The Research Guide also provides information on actions taken by the General Assembly as well as the Security Council and introduces researchers to major fields of UN activities: human rights, international law and peacekeeping.

World Demographic Trends

World population is expected to reach 6.6 billion in 2007 according to a report of the Secretary-General entitled, World Demographic Trends (E/CN.9/2007/6).

The report presents an overview of demographic trends for the world, its major areas, the development groups and selected countries. The topics covered include population size and growth [Africa has the biggest growth rate at 1.21, Europe has negative growth], fertility and contraception, mortality [life expectancy in North America 82.7 yrs, in Africa 65.4], international migration, population aging and urbanization.

The report also includes information on population policies and summarizes the concerns and views expressed by Governments with respect to major population trends. Learn more about the UN's activities related to Population from the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and the Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

Tsunami lessons

The report (A/61/699-E/2007/8) of the Joint Inspection Unit entitled, 'Towards a United Nations Humanitarian Assistance Programme for Disaster Response and Reduction : Lessons learned from the Indian Ocean tsunami disaster' has been released. Find out more about the UN's response to the tsunami disaster.

16th- Early 20th Century Maps of Africa

This site features digital copies of 113 antique maps of Africa and accompanying text dating from the mid 16th Century to the early 20th Century. All scanned maps are authentic and originally collected by the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies (or the Africana Library) at Northwestern University.
Searchable, or browse by title, cartographer, date, country or African region, or place of publication.

Google patent search

Google Patent Search only has US stuff at present but can be a hugely usefull tool to track the intended products of your local industry.

From the Googleblurb:

Q. Where does this patent data come from?  
A. All patents available through Google Patent Search   come from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Patents issued in the United States are public domain government information, and images of the entire database of U.S. patents are readily available online via the USPTO website.  

Q. What types of patents are available?  
A. Google Patent Search covers the entire collection of   patents made available by the USPTO—from patents issued in the 1790s through those   issued in the middle of 2006. We don’t currently include patent applications,   international patents, or U.S. patents issued over the last few months, but we   look forward to expanding our coverage in the future. 

Q. How many U.S. patents are there?  
A. To date, the USPTO has issued approximately   7 million patents.  

Q. How does it work?  
A. Using the same technology that powers Google Book Search,   Google has converted the entire image database of U.S. patents into a format that’s easy   to search. You can search the full text of U.S. patents from the Google Patent Search   homepage, or visit the Advanced Patent Search page to search by   criteria like patent number, inventor, and filing date.  

Report on the representation of women in print media in six Eastern European countries.

Have a look at a recent report on the in print media in six Eastern European countries.
Stereotyping: Representations of Women in Print Media in South East Europe is published by Mediacentar, Sarajevo and contains analysis of research conducted in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia and Serbia.

The report concludes that although media and political freedoms have improved greatly in the region, views associated with gender have remained static. The full report (PDF) can be downloaded from:
http://www.media.ba/compiled/p1424.htm