Internet Reviews

Joni R. Roberts and Carol A. Drost

Joni R. Roberts is associate university librarian for public services and collection development at Willamette University, email: jroberts@willamette.edu, and Carol A. Drost is associate university librarian for technical services at Willamette University, email: cdrost@willamette.edu

The Art Institute of Chicago—The Collection. Access: https://www.artic.edu/collection.

The Art Institute of Chicago—world renowned for its vast and diverse collections of works from every genre and every corner of the earth—provides thousands of images of its works online, many of which are in the public domain and available for download. The site provides a variety of ways to explore the Institute’s collections, to read about the history and research discoveries behind each work featured, and to take advantage of opportunities to learn about art and architecture in its many forms.

The Collection site consists of three primary pages: “Artworks,” “Writings,” and “Resources.” “Artworks,” the featured page, opens to a gallery of the most well-recognized works in the Institute’s holdings, among them Van Gogh’s The Bedroom, and Seurat’s A Sunday on La Grande Jatte. Approximately 50 thumbnail images fill the page. A row of buttons appears at the top of the page to filter the gallery to curated selections, such as cityscapes, Impressionism, African diaspora, or fashion. Additional filters further refine the displayed images by date, artist, medium, subjects, and more. Click on any gallery image to open a full view, including details such as description, exhibition history, provenance, and educational resources. Many works include multimedia links to audio or video snippets that supplement the viewing experience, often featuring behind-the-scenes analyses of the works. If the work is in the public domain, a Creative Commons Zero designation appears, along with an option to download an image file. The Explore Further section includes related works—by the same artist or from the same movement—providing an easy way to connect with other works of interest in the collection.

For deeper investigation, “Writings” displays a selection of publications by the Institute, including articles from the blog, interactive features, full access to digital publications, and a bibliography of print publications. These selections highlight the wealth of scholarship that is produced by the Institute, providing context for works within place, culture, and history. Finally, “Resources” promotes the Institute’s world-class library, archives, research guides, and educator tools.

This site showcases the Institute’s digital collections, scholarship, and educational resources in a format that is simple to use and entertaining. It is suitable for content creators and designers looking for open access images, researchers, students and teachers, and any user seeking to discover all that the Art Institute of Chicago has to offer.—Sarah-Lynda Johnson, Lewis & Clark Law School, sarahjohnson@lclark.edu

US Energy Information Administration. Access: https://eia.gov/.

The Energy Information Administration (EIA) was created in 1977 as the primary U.S. government agency to collect, analyze, and disseminate a broad spectrum of energy-related information, independent of policy considerations. By law, EIA does not formulate policy or advocate conclusions, and its analytical outputs cannot be subject to prepublication review outside of EIA.

EIA’s data, reports, and projections are considered to be objective, nonpartisan, and also reliable. EIA’s outputs are used by a wide audience of governmental units, economists, corporations, journalists, lobbyists, investors, and citizens at large. EAI’s website offers access to annual, quarterly, monthly, weekly, and even daily data on energy sources, such as coal, natural gas, geothermal, hydro, nuclear, petroleum, solar, wind, or wood.

EIA’s coverage includes retail prices for fuels and electricity, energy consumption by type of user, and measurements of supply/demand/flow. All data elements are collected domestically, with some items also collected globally. EIA also keeps an eye on three gases (carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide) that are emitted as byproducts from electricity generation.

Although EIA is an enormous source of time series data as XLS files, the excruciating level of details offered for thousands of U.S. electric generating plants in ZIP files can become bothersome for first-time users. Luckily this website has a fast search engine and six ways of organizing the underlying resources: “Sources & Uses,” “Topics,” “Geography,” “Tools,” “Learn About Energy,” and “News.” Each of these include an alphabetic A-to-Z index.

The glossary is easy-to-use, and provides meaningful hyperlinked cross-references. The “Geography” tab provides access to both historic and dynamically generated maps such as electricity distribution disruptions, locations of wind turbines, or potential geothermal sites. The wide variety of time series data and reports offered by EIA could be used as raw ingredients for any course in economics, statistics, social trends, public policy, or resource management. The omnibus search engine combined with the glossary and FAQ files makes this information warehouse very accessible to undergraduate students.—Gary Klein, Willamette University, gklein@willamette.edu

World Flora Online. Access: http://www.worldfloraonline.org/.

World Flora Online (WFO) is a fine example of international scientific collaboration, and an impressive botanical resource. Its tagline proudly proclaims it to be an “online flora of all known plants,” and this is no exaggeration: the WFO contains information for more than 350,000 species, including 1.3 million plant names.

This monumental undertaking dates back to a goal set at the 2002 United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity to create an open access scientific portal compiling all known land plant species. The first iteration, The Plant List, was a static list of known plant species.

World Flora Online, its successor, is really two resources in one: first, an expertly curated list of all known species, placed within a taxonomy that reflects current (and ever-changing) scientific consensus on plant taxon classification. Second, a database of data related to those plants, ranging from pictures and descriptions to linked publications. WFO is designed to be an ongoing and frequently updated database that can offer a global, openly accessible resource for information on plant species and related data, such as conservation status and geographic distribution.

The user experience for this database is mixed. It will likely be quickly and immediately relevant to experienced researchers who have a solid foundation of botanical knowledge. For instance, users can browse by plant classification but the “browse” page is simply a list of Latin names in alphabetical order. Some quick lateral research (e.g., copy and pasting into Google) allowed this reviewer to eventually figure out that it was a list of plant orders. Users are more likely to start with the search box on the main page, which invites search “by species, genus or family name, or any words describing the plant.” The site offers a “tour” of search features, with pop-up windows giving short explanatory overview of available search facets, options for sorting or downloading results, etc. This overview was welcome the first time, but irritating when it appeared subsequently. Users may register for a free account to access some features, such as downloading data, but it’s not necessary for casual use.

For experienced plant taxonomists and researchers, this is a clearly valuable resource, with helpful hints for those who are novices when it comes to online databases. Users who are familiar with online database interfaces but are novices when it comes to botanical knowledge, might have a harder time getting full value from WFO. —Eli Gandour-Rood, University of Puget Sound, egandourrood@pugetsound.edu