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C&RL News April 2014 216

Joni R. Roberts is associate university librarian for public 
services and collection 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 

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

Cultural Survival. Access: http://www.cultur-
alsurvival.org/.
According to its homepage, Cultural 

Survival partners “with indigenous peoples 
to defend their lands, languages, and cul-
tures.” The organization arose in the 1960s 
when the Amazon basin in South America 
was opened to economic development. In 
the 1970s, Cultural Survivor partnered with 
Harvard University’s Peabody Museum and 
ten years later founded a nonprofit trading 
division, spearheading the Fair Trade Move-
ment. The tool bar at the top of the page 
is self-explanatory and easy to navigate. 
Three prominent sections are featured on 
the homepage: “News & Articles,” “Take Ac-
tion,” and “Latest Issue.” The board and staff 
members of the organization are identified 
and contact information is plainly listed at 
the bottom of the page.

Cultural Survivor sponsors several pro-
grams, including the Community Radio Proj-
ect, which promotes indigenous rights and 
voices on community radio, and Endangered 
Languages, which seeks to preserve the 139 
native languages spoken today in the United 
States. On the Endangered Languages page, 
searchers will find a link to “Our Mother 
Tongues,” a language map of Native Ameri-
can language programs, including the Uni-
versity of Minnesota’s Department of Indian 
Studies, which provides scholarship informa-
tion for studying the Dakota language. 

Cultural Survival publishes an open access 
quarterly magazine searchable from the web-
site. Users entering the search term Chiapas 
will find several articles from the July 2008 
issue dealing with the civil unrest in that re-
gion. The most recent issue of the magazine 
(December 2013) includes articles such as 

“Celebrating Heritage Traditions in Alaska’s 
Indigenous Communities,” “Maintaining the 
Ways of our Ancestors: Indigenous Women 
Address Food Sovereignty,” and “Suffering 
for the Mistakes of Others: Climate Change 
and Indigenous Peoples.”

Visitors to the site must keep in mind that 
Cultural Survivor is a nonprofit advocacy 
organization that mounts letter-writing cam-
paigns and initiates other efforts to “thwart 
the environmental destruction of the rights 
of Native peoples.” The organization seems 
most concerned with the western hemisphere 
(Central, South, and North America), although 
other regions of the world are also repre-
sented on the site. With these caveats in mind, 
the librarian may safely recommend Cultural 
Survival to lower-division undergraduates 
doing research in anthropology, sociology, 
or writing persuasive papers for speech or 
communication classes.—Wendell G. John-
son, Northern Illinois University, wjohnso1@
niu.edu

Global Voices. Access: http://globalvoiceson-
line.org.
Global Voices provides an outlet for voices 

from international nonmainstream media. 
Bloggers and translators contribute written and 
video news stories to this truly international and 
multilingual site.

Founded in 2005 as a project of the Berkman 
Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law 
School, the website is funded by donations, 
grants, and sponsorships (funders include John 
D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, 
Open Society Institute, and Omidyar Network). 
The site’s stated mission is advocacy for, and 
protection of, free speech.

Global Voices recruits volunteer translators 
through their Project Lingua and 35 languages 
are represented. The volunteer team approach 
produced more than 13,000 translations in 
2013 alone.

In addition to its news projects, the site 
features several other current and past projects. 



April 2014 217 C&RL News

Started in 2012, Global Voices Books has a goal 
of compiling Global Voices articles into eBooks. 
As of this review, only two titles are available, 
both of which have been translated into other 
languages. The project now uploads its books 
to other platforms, such as Google Books and 
Open Library.

Current projects also include the RuNet 
Echo project, which tracks the Russian-
language Internet and focuses on cultural 
trends, Internet security issues, and online 
political communities. The Technology for 
Transparency Network project documents 
“the use of online and mobile technology 
to promote transparency and accountability 
around the world.”

Global Voices is easy to navigate via a 
Google Custom Search with basic search 
functionality or geographic, language, and 
topic menus that are useful for browsing. 
Searches may be limited to video content with 
links to the Global Voices YouTube channel. 
The site’s Creative Commons license allows 
for use of content with proper attribution and 
includes examples of citations. 

While Global Voices is not an academic 
site, it is an excellent resource for tracking 
grassroots media. With its global coverage, 
students will find it an excellent tool for 
monitoring current world events. The news 
stories in other languages may also be useful 
for language learners.—Ann Flower, Monterey 
Institute of International Studies, aflower@
miis.edu

Miller Center. Access: http://www.millercenter.
org.
Thomas Jefferson founded the University 

of Virginia in 1825; in his first inaugural ad-
dress as president in 1801, he famously said 
that Americans were all Federalists and all 
Republicans (the two dominant political par-
ties at the time). The university continues this 
tradition at the school’s Miller Center, which, 
in their words, is “a non-partisan institute that 
seeks to expand understanding of the presi-
dency, policy and political history, providing 
critical insights for the nation’s governance 
challenges.” 

The center’s website contains a vast, 
comprehensive and balanced array of presi-
dential information, events, and policy in 
an easily navigable site. By simply rolling a 
mouse over the various links at the top of the 
web page, researchers will find numerous 
events listed and links to papers and articles 
dealing with presidential domestic policy, 
foreign policy, and institutional presidential 
scholarship. 

Of special interest is the U.S. presidents 
link on the homepage, which contains in-
depth histories and facts about all 44 presi-
dents and their administrations. These profiles 
include numerous oral histories on current 
presidents, an image gallery, and transcrip-
tions of formerly secret presidential taped re-
cordings. The “Riding the Tiger” blog contains 
news items, book reviews, and interviews. 
Another great feature is the “Presidential 
Speech Archive,” which provides access to 
key presidential speeches; the archives offers 
transcripts and, in some cases, audio and 
video recordings of the speeches.

“Events” takes the user to an archive 
of recorded symposia and lectures dating 
from 2003 to the present on a wide array 
of foreign and domestic topics. Prominent 
speakers from both major political parties are 
featured including U.S. Attorney General Eric 
Holder, former U.S. Senator Evan Bayh, and 
former Mississippi Governor and Republican 
National Committee Chairman Haley Barbour. 
The user can also find a list of upcoming con-
ferences, including ones with live webcasts. 
Finally, “U.S. Policy” contains a broad list 
of links from various scholars dealing with 
many aspects of presidential domestic and 
foreign policy.

For the presidential scholar, as well as 
anyone interested in learning more about 
all facets of the American presidency, the 
University of Virginia’s Miller Center provides 
a balanced, thorough, and extensively re-
searched portal. Highly recommended for re-
searchers and those interested in all aspects of 
the American presidency.—Larry Cooperman, 
University of Central Florida Libraries-Orlando, 
Lawrence.Cooperman@ucf.edu