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.

DigiTreaties.org. Access: https://digitreaties.org/.

The Indigenous Digital Archive’s Treaties Explorer, DigiTreaties.org, is a freely accessible digital history resource housed at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, Santa Fe, New Mexico. The museum worked with the US National Archives Office of Innovation and the National Archives Foundation to digitize and make available almost four hundred treaties ratified between Indian tribal nations and American governments from 1722 to 1869. The collection is incomplete—no complete list of treaties exists—but it is comprehensive. The website hosts the full text of these treaties along with interactive features, including maps of cessions (lands ceded in each treaty).

The Treaties Explorer website is visually appealing and easy to navigate. The top navigation bar has five tabs: Treaties, Cessions, Nations, Places, and Trading Cards. Additional pages labeled About, Guide, and Resources give information about the project, historical context, and further reading. The main feature is 374 ratified Indian treaties, each a high-quality scanned document, many of them accompanied by transcriptions. Each treaty’s webpage supplies document title(s), creation dates, named Native nations, descriptions of contents, signatories, US states involved, level of archival description (mostly at the item or file unit level), and other metadata. The PDFs of many treaties are available. A National Archives identifier links to each item’s corresponding entry in the National Archives’ catalog, where users can download each treaty as a TIFF or PDF. There are also hundreds of catalog entries for which the treaty text has not yet been digitized. Users can browse or search for treaties by keyword, Native nation, date range, and other filters.

Maps and “Trading Cards” are unique features. Located under the “Places” tab, an interactive map lets users look up a state, town, or ZIP code to view nearby Indian cessions. Dozens of historical maps of US states showing cessions accompany the interactive map. The trading cards consist of 24 double-sided PDF documents, which print to a standard 8.5” × 11” sheet of paper. Cards have a colorful illustration on the front and information about a notable treaty on the back.

DigiTreaties.org is a unique digital resource that benefits Native community leaders, educators, researchers, students, and others interested in the ancestral lands of Native peoples and their treaty relations with the United States.—Michael Rodriguez, Lyrasis, topshelvr@gmail.com

Equimundo. Access: https://www.equimundo.org/.

Equimundo is an organization with a mission to “engage men and boys as allies in gender equality.” The site is a refreshing contrast to the rise of men’s rights groups who often view gender equality as the enemy of their singular view of masculinity. Tellingly, Equimundo uses the plural “masculinities” in discussing boys and men and their place in society and roles in gender equity work. The group works to create a space for men, primarily cis-identifying men, to advocate for women and people of all gender identities, in collaboration rather than in token gesture.

Equimundo’s website provides users with both a surface overview of the organization and in-depth studies and reports on the work of the organization. Clicking on the “Our Work” link, users can explore the organization’s efforts by theme, audience, and approach. Each tab contains a scrolling page with images and links to more information. Selecting the audience tab, users see the work being done in corporate environments, government, schools, and more. The approach tab seems the most informative, covering the three core areas of their work: research, programs, and advocacy.

The research page features a few studies, including two flagship studies: one on the state of fatherhood, the other a global study on men and gender equity. The studies provide summaries, but also allow interested users to read and download a PDF of the entire study. The highlights of the survey show the necessity of the organization’s work. Findings include the generational nature of partner violence, the persistence of homophobia among cis-identifying men, and the lack of agency among women in many households. The most recent survey did find some positives, including the growing support for reproductive rights among men worldwide. The report is paired well to the advocacy of the organization, ranging from eliminating the stigmatization of mental health care to paid parental leave for all parents.

The current presidential election cycle has included much discussion of masculinity, reproductive care, and gender identities and roles. Equimundo provides an excellent, rigorously researched website to help navigate these discussions, find resources, and advocate. The site may help voters to be better informed in November, but also will help researchers and others when the current election cycle has passed.—Bart Everts, Paul Robeson Library, Rutgers University-Camden, bart.everts@rutgers.edu

Studs Turkel Radio Archive. Access: https://studsterkel.wfmt.com/.

Studs Turkel (1912–2008) is best known for his expertise in oral histories and cultural consciousness. The Studs Turkel Radio Archive is a nonprofit with major funders such as the Library of Congress, Chicago History Museum, and the National Endowments for the Humanities. The archive is an excellent showcase for Stud Turkel’s exploration of the human condition. The website is searchable by general topics, people, date, and keyword.

The works span more than 40 years of interviews that Turkel conducted with myriad leaders, philosophers, authors, celebrities, and everyday world citizens. All the interviews are dated and fully transcribed. Each interview provides unique viewpoints of the interviewee and Turkel.

The genius of Studs Turkel is that he oftentimes interweaves audio quotes from other authors, scholars, and so on, with his interviewee. An example of this would be his Margaret Atwood interview from 1986 about The Handmaid’s Tale, which begins with a chilling quote from social psychologist Erich Fromm. Furthermore, a keyword search for Margaret Atwood yields several other Atwood interviews in which some of her other works are discussed.

The topics from this archive range from travel, sports, education, music, literature, advocacy, and more. The website also offers results for trending and popular searches. The Radio Archive has suggested lesson plans for K-12 educators. Additionally, there is a “Digital Bughouse” space that features unique ways other researchers have used and remixed the media from more than 2,000 programs.

The Studs Turkel Radio Archive is an extraordinary resource for students of journalism, history scholars, and for literary criticism, just to name a few academic disciplines that would find this archive of great interest. For everyone else looking to find a non-podcast that distinctively covers culture, history, art, sports, anthropology, activism, education, and a rich multitude of other topics, the archive will fill this void.—Molly Susan Mathias, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, mathiasm@uwm.edu