may19_b.indd


May 2019 299 C&RL News

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 
ser vices at Willamette University, email: cdrost@
willamette.edu 

I n t e r n e t  R e v i e w sJoni R. Roberts and Carol A. Drost

The News Literacy Project. Access: https://
newslit.org.
The Internet and social media apps are 

alive with trolls, hackers, “fake news,” hoaxes, 
rumors, and suspect posts and personas. The 
News Literacy Project (NLP) provides a teach-
ing resource to help students skillfully navigate 
this uncertain digital world.

NLP is a national education nonprofit that 
reinforces the efforts of librarians to teach 
students to actively evaluate online informa-
tion. NLP offers both free and subscription 
services. 

The site renders a clean, responsive interface 
with a visually appealing and engaging homep-
age. A sitewide menu affords access to internal 
pages, and a background graphic leads to an 
article update about NLP or a current news 
literacy topic. Further down the homepage, 
informative “cards” take the visitor inside the 
site to the “Get Smart About News” page. The 
cards highlight shareable news literacy tips  
(#NewsLitTip) and facts (#DidYouKnow) or 
link to a quick news literacy quiz or informative 
stories on dubious sources. 

Visit the “For Educators” page to sign up 
for the weekly email newsletter, “The Sift,” 
which shares examples of misinformation 
found online for the preceding week. The 
examples alternate between memes, social 
media posts, websites, and other online for-
mats. Classroom activities and suggested dis-
cussion questions are often presented along 
with the examples. “For Educators” also puts 
forward upcoming educator trainings, a blog 
on civic engagement instruction, and details 
on “Checkology,” a subscription-based virtual 
news literacy classroom. Three of the foun-
dational “Checkology” lessons are available 
to use without subscribing. “Checkology” is 

now partnering with libraries for user access 
and professional development activities. 

Lastly, download the 2019 PDF “Give 
Facts a Fighting Chance: the Global Playbook 
for Teaching News Literacy.” The Resources 
section alone is enough to keep one busy 
discovering new tools for information literacy 
instruction. 

Librarians and professors across the cur-
riculum will find this site, along with “The 
Sift” newsletter and civics blog, a boon for 
staying abreast of current questionable online 
information and how best to incorporate this 
information into information literacy lessons. 
Although the emphasis is on news literacy, the 
tools and techniques shared on the site help 
students practice and develop essential online 
information-seeking behaviors and skills.

Keep an eye on this site. The John S. and 
James L. Knight Foundation recently awarded 
the group a $5 million dollar grant to support 
and expand news literacy education.—Viv-
ian Linderman, Long Beach City College,  
vlinderman@lbcc.edu

Research Institute of Economy, Trade and In-
dustry. Access: https://www.rieti.go.jp/en/.
The Research Institute of Economy, Trade 

and Industry (RIETI) is a think tank that is 
grounded in public policy research with a goal 
of informing policy decisions in Japan. As an 
incorporated administrative agency, RIETI is an 
independent agency of the Japanese govern-
ment, which provides research in support of 
investigating new approaches to economic and 
industrial policy. Headquartered in Tokyo, the 
organization’s website is a portal to research 
conducted by its team of fellows.

RIETI’s site features research papers and 
shorter articles authored by fellows who are 
primarily based at Japanese universities with 
topics ranging from industrial innovation and 
management to investment and trade. Partner-
ships and collaborative projects with a variety 
of organizations, including the International 
Monetary Fund and the UK-based Centre for 



C&RL News May 2019 300

Economic Policy Research, bring more inter-
national perspective to the website’s large 
selection of papers and commentary.

The interface may be set to Japanese, Eng-
lish, or Chinese. While some publications are 
available in both Japanese and English, it ap-
pears that many are available in one language 
only. A more limited selection of papers are 
available in Chinese. The site provides no 
information about decisions relating to which 
publications are available in translation or a 
timeline for availability of translated versions. 
Additional publication—books and series—
have publication information and tables of 
contents only.

In addition to research papers and articles, 
RIETI’s website provides access to datasets 
relating to Japanese and Chinese industrial 
productivity, trade, foreign exchange, foreign 
direct investment, and aging and retirement in 
Japan. These are not searchable databases, but 
datasets available as downloadable Excel files. 

Navigation aids include dropdown menus, 
new content browsing by publication category, 
and a basic Google site search. A more targeted 
search is available specifically for discussion 
papers with title, author, keyword search op-
tions, and date and language filtering. Using 
the dropdown menus for searching the site 
requires some deciphering of the categories 
given to various content.

With its highly specialized focus, RIETI’s 
site is a good recommendation for graduate 
students studying international trade and eco-
nomic policy of Japan and the Asian region. 
Students and faculty who are looking for per-
spective from the region and academic content 
in Japanese will find this site of value.—Ann 
Flower, Middlebury Institute of International 
Studies, aflower@miis.edu

The Shelley-Godwin Archive. Access: http://
shelleygodwinarchive.org/.
The purpose of The Shelley-Godwin Ar-

chive is to bring together in digital form the 
primary manuscripts of works by four authors: 
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley; her parents, Wil-
liam Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft; and 
Percy Bysshe Shelley. The project is the result of 

a collaboration between the New York Public 
Library, the Maryland Institute for Technology 
in the Humanities, and Oxford’s Bodleian 
Library, with additional contributions from 
several other notable libraries and museums. 

Though its short-term goal is to provide 
access to the original drafts and manuscripts of 
these writers’ works under open licenses, the 
long-term goal is to create a digital commons, 
where many shareholders, including academics 
and the general public, can contribute schol-
arship. Originally funded by a grant from the 
National Endowment for the Humanities, at 
present the archive houses 12 works by “Eng-
land’s First Family of Writers”: Mary Shelley’s 
Frankenstein; Godwin’s novel Caleb Williams 
and his philosophical work, An Enquiry Con-
cerning Political Justice; and several works by 
Percy Shelley, including poems and a transla-
tion of Plato’s Ion. As yet, no works by Mary 
Wollstonecraft have been included.

The site boasts a robust search feature, as 
well as clear documentation on how to best 
navigate the archive, and useful information 
on the digitization and metadata standards 
and tools used in the project. The included 
writings may be organized as either a work or 
a manuscript. Organized as a work, the writ-
ing is presented in logical, linear sequence, 
as it would be in publication. Organized as 
a manuscript, the writing is presented in the 
order in which it was originally handwritten 
by the author—potentially useful for scholarly 
study, though not necessarily in sequence. 
For most works, a digital copy of the original 
page is presented next to a transcript. Several 
versions of the transcript can be viewed: a ver-
sion in which line edits, additions, and changes 
are preserved from the original; a reading 
copy, which incorporates the aforementioned 
changes into a “final version”; and an XML 
Markup version. A landing page for each work 
includes historical context for that work.

Though it only contains 12 works at present, 
the future potential of this project is consider-
able, and its goals and adherence to open 
access are admirable. Scholars are encouraged 
to check it out.—Patrick Wohlmut, Linfield 
College, pwohlmut@linfield.edu