Make Your Friends Into Action Figures!

This week's Featured Online Resource is Shape Me Miniatures from a company called Shapeways.

First, about the company and its services. They provide 3D printing--say you'd like a small sailboat for a knicknack. About three inches long, four or five ounces. You'd like to design your own. Use CAD or some sort of design software, send them the design, and via 3D printing they fabricate the boat or whichever item you choose and ship it to you. Futurist Ray Kurzweil has predicted that in the future all objects we own, we'll make ourselves by this method, and we're now beginning to see the technology in play.

As for the Shape Me Miniatures, they are little dolls (though busts are also available) in the image of your mother, grandmother, friends, etc. You send in a photo from the front and one in profile, pay your fee, and get back a little doll.

Please excuse the way in which this post sounds like a commercial. I'm not interested in generating business for this company, but providing information. The fact that 3D printing is now afoot and seemingly relatively accessible , is to me, an epochal happening in the world of information. It is another way in which the line between creator and consumer is blurred.

So, while we usually include websites that provide free information, this one's an exception, and I think just looking at the website is enlightening and inspiring.

Featured Online Resource, African American History Month website from Library of Congress and National Archives

This week’s Featured Online Resource is the website http://www.africanamericanhistorymonth.gov/index.html, a joint website from the Library of Congress, National Archives, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution, and other agencies. The site contains links to online exhibits and collections available from these different government agencies. It also contains an online exhibit “Slavery at Jefferson’s Monticello: Paradox of Liberty” which looks at the lives of six of the slave families living at Monticello around the time of his drafting the Declaration of Independence.

The site also contains links to the Veterans History Project, “African Americans at War: Fighting Two Battles” and photos from the Harlem Renaissance.

Every week, the Ort Library brings you a new and outstanding resource from the Web or from one of the library's databases. To get an archive of all FOR entries, click here. Also, you can suggest a website that provides well-organized access to useful info.

FOR: Sonja Haynes Stone Center Guide to the Web

This week's FOR (Featured Online Resource) is the Sonja Haynes Stone Center Library for Black Culture and History Guide to the Web. From the University of North Carolina, this annotated guide indexes web sites on many topics relevant to African-American issues, with subcategories such as Harlem Renaissance, Engineering, Physics, and Mathematics, Labor and others.

More than 600 websites, in all, are indexed. See you next week!

Ort Library joins Maryland AskUsNow!

The Lewis J. Ort Library is thrilled to announce that we have joined with Maryland AskUsNow! to offer students, faculty and staff a 24/7 chat reference service. This chat service allows the library to offer access to reference help whenever and wherever you may need it.

If you are working on a paper late into the night and you need some extra assistance finding information, you can now use Maryland AskUsNow! to chat with a librarian for that help. Librarians from the Ort Library chat only during certain hours, so you may be helped by a non-FSU librarian. Even though you may be chatting with someone from outside FSU, they still have access to information about the library and can help you use the library catalog or the library databases. Providing a valid e-mail address will also allow a librarian from the Ort Library to follow up on your question.

Try the service out by clicking on the Maryland AskUsNow! link on the library’s home page or by clicking on the icon above.

Featured Online Resource, American Presidency Project

This week’s Featured Online Resource is the American Presidency Project from University of California Santa Barbara. This project contains a large archive of documents, including State of the Union messages, Inaugural addresses, press conferences, executive orders, and many other documents. It also contains an audio/video archive where you can listen or watch video of events of different presidents. For example, you can watch the inaugural address of Bill Clinton from 1993 or the inaugural address of Ronald Reagan from 1981.

The project also contains election data going back to 1789. The election information includes a breakdown by state, including the total votes for each candidate and the number of Electoral College votes they received.

Every week, the Ort Library brings you a new and outstanding resource from the Web or from one of the library's databases. To get an archive of all FOR entries, click here. Also, you can suggest a website that provides well-organized access to useful info.