feb07c.indd I n t e r n e t R e v i e w s Joni R. Roberts and Carol A. Drost French Culture. Access: http:// www. frenchculture.org./ Developed and maintained by the Cultural Services Office to the Embassy of France in the United States, this site promotes “the best of French arts, literature, and education to cultural and academic institutions across the United States.” The programs highlighted on the site strongly emphasize contemporary French culture and are offered either directly by the six departments and offices in the Cultural Services or in conjunction with its nonprofit partner FACE (French American Cultural Exchange). Each of the seven sections—“Art,” “Books,” “Cinema,” “Education,” “Music,” “Performing Arts,” and “TV & Radio”—records upcoming events or new publications in the topic area. The “Cinema” section, for example, provides a current listing of newly released feature films and DVDs, upcoming film festivals and retrospectives, along with grants, lectures, and other news specifically related to French cinema. For those interested in greater contact with French culture, the “Education” subdivi­ sion provides a good inventory of internship, language, and study abroad programs avail­ able to American students and teachers. A recent addition to the “TV & Radio” section is a link to Canapé, a monthly streaming video diary of cultural events in the United States that is produced in partnership with City Uni­ versity of New York. Visitors may also sign up to receive an electronic newsletter from the Cultural Services Office as well as enter­ ing to win contest prizes, including tickets to various events around the country. One of the site’s main strengths is its up­ to­date, briefly annotated schedule of cultural events throughout the United States. Visitors Joni R. Roberts is associate university librarian for public ser vices and collec tion development at Willamette University, e-mail: jroberts@willamette. edu, and Carol A. Drost is associate university librarian for technical services at Willamette University, e-mail: cdrost@willamette.edu will appreciate the broad and timely listings, including the interactive calendar that allows users to search for events by state, genre, date, and keyword, as well as being able to add forthcoming events to the database. While many of the exhibits, performances, and lectures highlighted on the site are near Washington, D.C., New York City, and the other eight regional office of the French embassy, visitors will also find a great deal of information, including discussions and interviews, that is not location­specifi c. The site is cleanly designed and easy to navigate, although it appears that additional work is still being done. While the news and events pages are cur­ rent, additional resources pages for each sec­ tion contain “Coming Soon” messages. Once these pages have been updated, the site will be one that not only Francophiles but also students and teachers of French language and culture will enjoy and value for the diversity and currency of offerings.—Linda Frederik- sen, Washington State University-Vancouver, frederik@vancouver.wsu.edu Institute of War and Peace Reporting. Access: http://www.iwpr.net/. In the quest for alternative news sources and news by journalists outside the United States, the Institute for War and Peace Report­ ing (IWPR) Web site is a bright star. Produced by the London­based nonprofit IWPR, the site features news articles by local reporters in Afghanistan, Caucasus, Central Asia, Iraq, Southeastern Europe, Uganda, Southern Africa, Zimbabwe, and The Hague. Begun in the Balkans in the 1990s, IWPR supports and trains local journalists, with a mission “to build peace and democracy through free and fair media.” The site is organized into select regions, reflecting IWPR’s work. Current and past C&RL News February 2007 108 http:http://www.iwpr.net mailto:frederik@vancouver.wsu.edu mailto:cdrost@willamette.edu http:frenchculture.org articles are available, along with “News Briefings,” which provide news analysis, and Afghan and Iraq “Press Monitors,” which feature a collection of stories appearing each day in the major papers of Afghanistan and Iraq. Impressive photo galleries by top photojournalists around the world highlight areas of conflict. The “Training” link provides access to resources and details of IWPR’s training strategies. “Special Reports” includes a series of handbooks and other publications produced by IWPR and third parties. The handbooks cover topics such as investigating war crimes, reporting on political and hu­ man rights issues, and radio journalism, plus a selection of books and reports analyzing conflict and human­rights issues. All news stories and reports are available in English, with select stories or overviews available in applicable local languages. A “Quick Search” of the site is available, as well as an “Article Search” with search op­ tions, including date, language, programme, author, and field. RSS feeds are available for reports and articles published in each region. Funders of IWPR’s work include the Euro­ pean Commission, the Ford Foundation, the U.S. State Department, and the Open Society Institute. Users are encouraged to donate online, as well. Features of potential use to students include the range of news reports from the frontlines, a map and country profi le, and in­depth analysis of international issues. Stu­ dents looking for information on confl ict­torn regions of the world, or students wanting to bring varied voices into their research and writing will find this site insightful and help­ ful.—Britt Fagerheim, Utah State University, britt.fagerheim@usu.edu In the First Person. Access: http://www. inthefi rstperson.com. In the First Person is a searchable index of Web­based, English­language personal narra­ tives, oral histories, diaries, letters, memoirs, and autobiographies. This free resource is compiled by Alexander Street Press, and indexes more that 3,300 collections located in archives and repositories worldwide, with more than 300,000 individuals’ voices in the collection—and it’s still growing. The site concentrates on personal perspec­ tives, and to this end the editors intentionally exclude speeches, professional interviews, business correspondence, and the like. The quality of the material is consistently high, and content must adhere to established American Oral History Association guidelines and certain bibliographic standards. While the majority of the material is from museums, archives, and educational institu­ tions, it is important to note that this is a dynamic, growing collection, and the edi­ tors are actively seeking submissions from any verifiable source that passes their strict muster. The site is well organized, with a quick search box, a table of contents, and other relevant information easily accessible on the homepage. An advanced search screen allows detailed searching, with links to the extensive subject terms easily available. Full­text, au­ dio, and video limits are also available, and searching specific keywords within available full­text transcriptions is also available. The site provides tables of contents for reposito­ ries, collections, documents, dates, places, historical events, and subjects. Generally, a search returns one of three categories of results. In many instances, the search will take the user directly to full­text transcripts, audio files, or videos of oral his­ tories, delivering the primary document di­ rectly to the user’s screen. In other instances, searching will take the researcher to informa­ tion and finding aids for collections without actual full­text availability, often linking to an archive or collection’s Web site. The third category returns material from fi ve clearly marked subscription databases offered by Alexander Street Press, and this constitutes about 25 percent of the content in this site. The advance search can preclude subscrip­ tion databases and limit to full text only, for users so inclined. (continued on page 117) February 2007 109 C&RL News http:rstperson.com http://www mailto:britt.fagerheim@usu.edu in 1988 as interim executive director and then in 1989 as executive director. Under Webster’s leadership, ARL emerged as a sig­ nificant agent for change in the world of re­ search libraries and in scholarly communica­ tion. Webster also provided the energy and resourcefulness required to reposition the ARL agenda twice. He first led ARL through a strategic planning process in 1988, which called for a much­expanded agenda for the Association, engaging ten key challenges facing the future development of research libraries. The second strategic planning pro­ cess through which Webster led ARL was the 2004 call for a refocusing of association efforts on three strategic directions: schol­ arly communication; public policies affect­ ing research libraries; and the role of re­ search libraries in research, teaching, and learning. Mickey Zemon, executive director of the Emerson College Library since 1983, will re­ tire April 2007. She was awarded emeritus status last year, and she received the Friend of the Faculty award in 2005 and the Alumni Association award in 1996. Zemon was ac­ tive in the ACRL Col­ lege Library Section, serving as chair (2000– 01), member­at­large (1998­2000), secretary (1997–98), and chair of the committee on research for college librarians (1993–96). She was also active in the Boston library community, serving two terms on the NELI­ NET Board of Directors (2000–06) and as chair of the Boston Regional Library Sys­ tem Advisory Board (2004–05), chair of the Fenway Library Consortium (1996–98), and president of Fenway Libraries Online (1992–93). She authored 20 articles in the library literature (1982–2005) and served on nine NEASC reaccreditation teams (1992–2004), the editorial board of College and Undergraduate Libraries (2000–04), Mickey Zemon the ACRL New Publications Advisory Board (1998–2002), and the ACRL CLIP Notes Pub­ lication Committee (1997–99). At Emerson, Zemon was cochair of the Emerson College Reaccreditation and Self­Study (2001–02), chair of the Search Committee for the Dean of the School of the Arts (1997), and chair of the college’s Strategic Planning Com­ mittee (1992–93). Zemon was librarian at Simmons Graduate School of Library and Information Science (1981–83). D e a t h s Margaret Ann Otto, 69, librarian of Dar­ mouth College, has died. Otto became the first woman to head the library in 1979 and the library made a number of advances un­ der her leadership, including establishing a strong customer service ethic among the staff and creating one of the first online library catalogs in the country. A number of ma­ jor library building projects were completed during her tenure, and she is remembered for the growth of collection and access tools at Dartmouth. Prior to joining Dartmouth, Otto was assistant science librarian and later associate director of the Massachusetts In­ stitute of Technology Libraries (1964–79). She was a longtime member of ALA, having served on many committees. She also served on the Executive Board of the Association of Research Libraries Group, was a member of the Board of Governors for the Research Libraries, and served on a number of impor­ tant working groups and committees for that organization. (“Internet Reviews” continued from page 109) There is a wealth of information here, and Alexander Street Press has done a good job of assigning subject terms and providing a user­friendly interface. Users looking for first­person primary resources will fi nd this a valuable resource.—Gene Hyde, Radford University, wehyde@radford.edu February 2007 117 C&RL News mailto:wehyde@radford.edu