Internet Reviews

Joni R. Roberts and Carol 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.

Eudora Welty Digital Archives. Access: https://da.mdah.ms.gov/series/welty.

The Eudora Welty Digital Archives is sponsored by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History (MDAH). It contains “drafts, revised copies, and printer’s versions of Welty’s works, including stories, books, essays, reviews, lectures, speeches, and drama,” as well as correspondence, photographs, and video/audio recordings. Welty began donating material to the MDAH in 1957, when she identified it as her preferred archive. The Welty portion of MDAH is divided into four sections: correspondence, manuscripts, photos, and other. The manuscripts include Welty’s handwritten notes on her short stories, novels, and lectures. The photos are of her, her family, her travels, and Mississippi. The “other” consists of several videos of Welty reading and commenting on her works.

Much of the content relates to Eudora Welty the writer rather than her works. Even the manuscripts provide insight into her thought process. The website’s difficulty is with its formatting. The manuscripts are watermarked throughout, so one must maximize the manuscript page and zoom in to see the written text. Even pages without handwriting are covered with the watermark to the point of being difficult to read. The photos are the worst example of extreme watermarking. Photos are so obnoxiously watermarked that it is very difficult to see details or use them for any purpose other than curiosity. In reviewing MDAH’s other collections, they do not seem to be as heavily watermarked (or watermarked at all) as the Welty collection.

While the website may fill some research needs, MDAH does itself a disservice presenting the material as it does. The website is difficult to navigate, and the collection’s search box is hidden as a gray box on a gray bar with light gray writing. A scholar would have to travel to the MDAH to see the original documents and photos rather than relying on high-quality scanned editions. Isn’t the point of digital archives to bring material to a wider population? Researching Eudora Welty on this site requires myopia and fortitude.—Delores Carlito, University of Alabama at Birmingham, dcarlito@uab.edu

Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. Access: https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/.

The Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment is a multidisciplinary research institute under the London School of Economics and Political Science, which focuses on research and policy related to climate change and the environment. The institute works toward a vision for “a sustainable, inclusive and resilient world” through research, education, and promoting informed policy decision-making. Their website hosts a strong collection of related resources in a variety of formats. A portion of resources are original to the institute’s website, while others are authored by Institute staff or affiliates but aggregated from external journals and news sources.

The website’s content is navigable from the tabbed menu at the top of the page as well as through a site search. There are three main approaches to browsing. One is to use the tabs associated with specific information formats in the upper menu: “Publications” for policy white papers and research articles; “Explainers” for basic information for a general audience, similar to encyclopedia entries; “News & commentaries” for press releases, news articles, and commentaries; and “Events” for links to register for or view past in person and online lectures or workshops.

The second approach to browsing the institute’s website is to use the “Research areas” menu tab, which allows readers to navigate to landing pages curated around 13 environmental subject areas. Research area pages provide a brief description of their subject coverage and links to related resources, including Institute research projects and data, publications, news, “explainers,” and a list of institute staff affiliated with the given subject area. Browsing is also possible using the “People” tab in the upper menu to navigate web content by individual authors. Institute staff member pages feature a brief biography and list of publications. Information on the website is also indexed by research areas and keywords.

Overall, the institute’s website provides a simple starting place for inquiries related to climate change and environmental research and policy information. With a range of publications from general level “explainers” to scholarly research articles, the website is likely to be useful for students, researchers, policymakers, and practitioners. Of particular note, the institute’s original policy white papers are unique practical resources that are unlikely to be indexed by most library catalogs and literature databases.—Amy Jankowski, University of New Mexico, ajankowski@unm.edu

Global Health Observatory. Access: https://www.who.int/data/gho.

The World Health Organization (WHO) is an agency of the United Nations working “to promote health, keep the world safe and serve the vulnerable.” One of WHO’s many functions is to monitor and assess health trends among its 194 member states. In doing so, WHO produces and compiles data on priority health topics and indicators. The data collected by WHO is publicly available through a data repository, the Global Health Observatory.

The Global Health Observatory website can be searched using the “Data Search” feature, or browsed by sections: “Indicators,” “Countries,” “Data API,” “Map Gallery,” and “Publications.” “Indicators” and “Countries” are the two main sections of the website.

The “Indicators” section collates datasets related to the main health indictors monitored by WHO. For example, clicking on the health indicator “Oral Health” opens a list of related topics. Clicking on the first result in the list, “Affordability of fluoride toothpaste,” opens a table of country names and lists whether fluoride toothpaste is affordable or unaffordable in each location. The data in this table can be filtered within the table and downloaded in CSV, PNG, or JPEG formats.

The “Countries” section is an alphabetical list of countries, each linking to a health data overview. Each country’s overview page compiles graphs related to the country’s population, average life expectancy, leading causes of death, and more. The graphs are clear and colorful, and many are interactive. All data sources are linked and can be downloaded for further use.

The “Data API” section provides two options for querying WHO’s data: OData (Open Data Protocol) and Athena API. Instructions are provided for both API options. The “Map Gallery” section is a large collection of maps on major health topics. Maps are first browsed by topic and then can be narrowed to country, if country-level data are available for the topic. The “Publications” section provides access to reports on health trends and situations, the annual World Health Statistics reports, statistical reports from WHO programs (by health topic), and more. All publications are available for download.

The Global Health Observatory is a fascinating portal for worldwide health data. The maps, graphs, and tables, though occasionally slow to load over highspeed internet, are visually compelling and easy to manipulate or filter on the website. This resource is essential for locating country-level health data and for researching and monitoring health indicators.—Emily Hamstra, Network of the National Library of Medicine, Region 5, ehamstra@uw.edu