C&RL News October 2010 500 Joni R. Roberts is associate university librarian for public services and collection development at Willamette University, e-mail: jroberts@willamette.edu, and Carol A. Drost is associate university librarian for technical services at Willamette University, e-mail: cdrost@ willamette.edu I n t e r n e t R e v i e w sJoni R. Roberts and Carol A. Drost Environmental News Network. Access: http://www.enn.com. If you are looking for an aggregator of en- vironmental news, the Environmental News Network (ENN) might be for you. ENN has existed for more than 16 years as an organiza- tion that pulls together a variety of environ- mental news into one site. The information is delivered in a blog-like format, with the most current news listed on the homepage. Between one and five new articles are posted daily, most of which are high qual- ity, with links to original news sources. For example, some of the most recent articles are originally published in Discovery News, Ecologist, ScienceDaily, Reuters, and Oil- price.com. While the majority of the content comes from shared external sources (an “Affiliated Network” of 57 members), ENN also publishes original stories. It recently in- creased its number of partner organizations to deliver its cutting-edge environmental news even faster. The simple navigation bar at the top of the screen categorizes news into major en- vironmental topics: “Environmental Policy,” “Climate,” “Energy,” “Green Building,” “Pol- lution,” “Ecosystems,” “Wildlife,” “Agricul- ture,” “Sci/tech,” and “Health.” Information about the organization and its partners is conveniently displayed on the left of the screen. ENN supports traditional functions, such as a search box, RSS feeds for its news cat- egories, and the ability to share individual posts via Facebook, Twitter, and numerous other social networking tools. One detracting feature is the abundant ad- vertising displayed throughout the site. ENN uses Kontera, an advertising company, which highlights random words throughout the text of articles. This can be a little deceptive and make articles look richer in content than they really are. When one clicks on a hyperlink, it often displays advertising in a new box that is unrelated to the topic at hand, as opposed to displaying definitions or linking out to additional related information. On the positive side, the related articles included with each post make it easy for users to locate further readings. Overall, this site is recommended to environmentalists looking for a pure environmental news source. For a comparable but broader environmental news distributor, try the environmental section of ScienceDaily.—John Repplinger, Willamette University, jrepplin@willamette.edu Feeding America: The Historic American Cookbook Project Access: http://digital. lib.msu.edu/projects/cookbooks. Interest in recipes and cooking are not just a recent trend as seen in the growth of food-related programming on television and an increasing number of cookbooks published each year. The cookery collec- tion at Michigan State University (MSU)’s Special Collections is evidence of this with more than 7,000 items in the collection. Comprising a representative sample of this collection, Feeding America illustrates the variety of cookbooks and manuals published from the late 18th century to the early 20th century. Hosted by MSU’s library, special collections, and museum, Feeding America has 76 fully digitized books that were among the most influential and popular of their day. The intent is to “highlight an important part of America’s cultural heritage for teachers, students, researchers investigating American social history, professional chefs, and lifelong learners of all ages.” There are several features to Feeding America that users will enjoy. Researchers should find “Introductory Essay” useful October 2010 501 C&RL News with its select bibliography of American cookbook history. Under “Browse the Col- lection,” creators of Feeding America sup- ply suggestions for use of the collection by listing areas of interest such as ethnic influences, social issues, diet and nutri- tion, economy and frugality, homemaking, regional, and the pertinent cooks. Links to the appropriate passage follow each entry. Because the language and tools of cookery have changed drastically in 200 years, the glossary of cooking terms, ingredients, and tools is both necessary and helpful. The site is user-friendly; one can browse the books either by author, date, interest, or alphabetically. Users can view images, transcripts or PDFs of the pages; even the pages from the oldest book in Feeding America (1798) are surprisingly clear and easy to read. There is also a basic search option allowing for searches by author, book title, recipe name, or ingredient. The only disappointing aspect of Feed- ing America is the difficulty finding recent additions to the site. The individual pages list the most recent update as 2005, but a 2008 interview with the head of special collections about the site is linked to the main page. It is not clear if the digital ar- chive has reached completion or if more titles will be added. Feeding America should have wide ap- peal to users with a casual interest in early American recipes and cooking methods as well as to researchers in academic areas, including social history, ethnic studies, women’s studies, and the history of mar- keting or publishing.—Kimberly Bartosz, University of Wisconsin-Parkside, bartosz@ uwp.edu The British Museum. Access: http://www. britishmuseum.org/. If you are interested in the history of Great Britain, then look no further than the British Museum Web site. The British Museum site is a portal into the collections of one of the great museums of the world, designed for all ages and levels of interest. The designers of this site have created an online resource that provides access to the world’s history in a convenient manner for all researchers. The main menu of this site is located at the top of each Web page. The menu includes links to several pages, including “Explore,” “Research,” and “Learning.” The “Explore” page contains information related to the museum’s themes, highlights, cultures, online tours, galleries, young explorers, and a history of the world. One can explore online tours related to the continents or various countries from around the globe. For example, clicking on the “Europe” link takes you to information and images of ob- jects ranging from Michelangelo’s drawings to coins used by the Vikings. The “Research” page is a useful starting point for any user of this site. It includes a link to “Search the collection database.” This database provides access to more than 1.8 million objects in the museum’s collection. Of these, more than 500,000 are represented by one or more images within this database. The “Learning” page is valuable for stu- dents of all ages, providing resources for teachers, adults, and children. The resources for teachers include a page with ideas for the classroom and visits to the museum. The page even breaks down the resources by primary and secondary students. “Web resources” offers access to excellent sites on ancient civilizations, including Egypt, China, India, and more. The site’s overall design is easy to navi- gate, considering the breadth of resources that it contains. A search box located at the top-right corner of the Web site’s banner allows one to start a search from any page on the site. In addition, there is a “site map” link located within the footer of each page to allow easy searching across the site. The British Museum’s Web site’s ease of use and access to an extraordinarily rich variety of information makes it a premier online resource for world history.—Tom Sommer, University of Nevada-Las Vegas, thomas.sommer@unlv.edu