july07c.indd I n t e r n e t R e v i e w s Joni R. Roberts and Carol A. Drost Project for Public Spaces. Access: http:// www.pps.org/. With a headline of “Why Libraries Matter More Than Ever,” the Web site for the Project for Public Spaces (PPS) immediately catches one’s attention. Founded as a nonprofi t cor­ poration in 1975, PPS is dedicated to “creat­ ing and sustaining public places that build communities.” Placemaking is the term that appears throughout the organization’s work and Web site, and relates to public places as disparate as city markets, parks, transportation systems, and university and college campuses. The organization, with nearly 30 employees, provides assistance, training, research, and other services, such as planning and design of public spaces, holding workshops, and organizing conferences. The Web site navigation is very logical and easy to use. The left frame contains all the major navigation links, including the main features “About PPS,” “Resources,” “Services,” and “Project Experience.” As the cursor moves over each feature link, sublinks appear to the right of the category. The more signifi cant project categories, such as “Civic Centers” or “Mixed­use Development,” are also promi­ nently featured in the left navigation frame. “Image Collection” is an impressive data­ base of more than 10,000 images, and PPS is constantly adding new images to the collec­ tion. The database is searchable by keyword or by broad categories. Categories include “People,” “Parks, Plazas & Waterfronts,” “Mar­ kets,” “Buildings,” and “Streets & Transit.” The collection is concentrated on North American places, but has a very impressive international component, as well. The images are available as thumbnails, but to view larger images re­ quires registration (which is free). 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 “Resources” provides several good sec­ tions, but the Issue Papers with articles on issues related to places and spaces is particu­ larly interesting. Unfortunately most of these articles are undated and some are unsigned. Footnotes and/or bibliographies are likewise absent in many of these articles. This obvi­ ously diminishes the value of these resources in the scholarly research process. “Special Features” provides access to the organization’s various publications: Making Places Newsletter, Making Places Bulletin, and Places in the News. “Great Public Spaces” is an interactive forum where registered us­ ers can nominate “a great place” and make comments. The Project for Public Places Web site will be primarily of use to students and faculty in public administration, architecture, and urban design. It will also be of interest to those in environmental studies, advocacy, and politi­ cal science.—Susanne Clement, University of Kansas, sclement@ku.edu Smithsonian Archives of American Ar t. Access: http://artarchives.si.edu/. The Smithsonian Archives of American Art provides extensive, user­friendly digital access to its vast collection of primary source material documenting the visual arts in America. Calling itself the world’s largest and most widely used resource on the history of art in America, the archives boasts 12 million visitors to its Web site annually. When visiting the site, one quickly un­ derstands its popularity. Users have access to finding aids, online collections, and im­ ages, as well as oral history interviews and exhibits. More than 6,000 images digitized from photographs, letters, sketchbooks, diaries, and other documents can be searched by key­ word or browsed by artist name, organization name, or event. Finding aids including de­ tailed information about the scope, contents, and arrangement of individual archives are C&RL News July/August 2007 452 http:http://artarchives.si.edu mailto:sclement@ku.edu mailto:cdrost@willamette.edu http:www.pps.org available and can be searched alphabetically or by keyword. “Oral History Interviews,” also searchable alphabetically or by keyword, add a particular richness to this site. Each record supplies a detailed description of the interview and information on the length of the original re­ cording and the printed transcript. Although digital audio files are not available, many of the interviews include an online transcript of the original sound tape reel and can be searched separately. The site offers so much information, it may be considered overwhelming by some visitors. More than one option is available for users who want to quickly learn about and gain access to an individual artist’s work. Follow the link to “Collections Online” on the homepage to find the archives’ complete holdings of selected artists. “Collections On­ line” is part of a six­year project sponsored by the Terra Foundation for American Art to provide electronic access to more than 100 collections from the Archives. These collec­ tions have been digitized in their entirety and include the finding aid and expandable images of every item. The “Currently On View” online exhibi­ tions also offer informative, easily navigable presentations of individual collections. Ar­ chives curators have researched particular collections or themes and created virtual presentations, which include narrative text, images, and descriptive data. Many past exhibitions are available in addition to those “currently on view.” Researchers interested in the history of American visual arts will find the Smithsonian Archives of American Art Web site a valuable resource. It provides information in a variety of formats, making the comprehensive site accessible to a wide community of users. —Sarah Goodwin Thiel, University of Kansas, sgthiel@ku.edu UN-Water. Access: http://www.unwater. org/. Researchers looking for information on global freshwater and sanitation issues would do well to start at the UN­Water site. This comprehensive Web site consolidates and supplements information from all the United Nations (UN) agencies and programs, as well as major non­UN partners concerned with freshwater and sanitation. UN­Water was launched in 2003 to follow­up on the water­ related decisions that came out of the Mil­ lennium Development Goals in the 2000 UN Millennium Declaration and the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development. The main content of the UN­Water site is the “World Water Development Reports” (WWDR). These reports, published every three years, are a collaboration of the 24 UN agencies working together with governments and other stakeholders. Currently there are two reports, 2003 and 2006. A related link from the 2006 WWDR2 goes to the 4th Water Forum Report, which has extensive thematic and regional docu­ ments covering progress toward the goals. This is not a site on which to fi nd current news regarding freshwater issues. However, these online publications bring together the work of many agencies covering history, statistics, policy decisions, and challenges of freshwater issues. The real problem with this Web site is navigation. There is no search engine. There are buttons at the top of the page that link to information about the page and UN­Water mem­ bers, as well as resources, water policies, and a thematic index. The resource links seem a bit random, so browsing is the only way to deter­ mine the usefulness of the resources, which is time consuming. It would help to have short an­ notations for these links because of the diversity of content among them. For example, the links range from comprehensive full­text documents published by the World Health Organization, to a publishers’ Web site for purchasing publica­ tions. “Water Policies” links to a short list of UN water policy frameworks. The thematic index includes alphabetical links to the water­related pages of outside organizations. The links are not annotated, but the organization source is listed for most of these resources. (continued on page 455) July/August 2007 453 C&RL News http://www.unwater mailto:sgthiel@ku.edu and relevant literary extracts to accompany his travelogue. $21.95. Roaring Forties Press. ISBN 978­0­9766706­7­4. The Lincoln Highway: Coast to Coast from Times Square to the Golden Gate, by Michael Wallis and Michael S. Williamson (291 pages, July 2007), follows America’s fi rst transconti­ nental highway 3,000 miles from east to west, salting the trail with curious facts and historical tidbits. Not a mere traveler’s guide like Brian Butko’s Greetings from the Lincoln Highway (Stackpole, 2005), this book also highlights the owners and proprietors of some of the restau­ rants and roadside attractions still in business along the route. The illustrations were pro­ vided by Pulitzer Prize–winning Washington Post photographer Williamson, who not only snapped current pix but also dipped into his collection of historic postcards and nostalgic printed ephemera. $39.95. W. W. Norton. ISBN 978­0­393­05938­0. My Name Is Anne, She Said, Anne Frank, by Jacqueline van Maarsen (176 pages, June 2007), contains the reminiscences of the woman whom Anne Frank described in her diary as her “best friend” at the Jewish Lyceum school in Amsterdam from 1941 until July 1942, when Anne and her family went into hiding. Van Maarsen describes her life in Amsterdam through the rest of the war and how she came to learn that Anne had not gone to Switzerland as she had been told. This memoir was origi­ nally published in the Netherlands in 2003. $24.95. Arcadia Books (London), distributed by Independent Publishers Group. ISBN 978­ 1­90514­710­6. The Spanish Civil War: Reaction, Revolution, and Revenge, by Paul Preston (381 pages, June 2007), is the paperback edition of an expanded version of Preston’s Concise History of the Spanish Civil War (Fontana, 1996). The complexity of the Spanish confl ict requires multiple treatments, and this overview is ev­ ery bit as enlightening as those by Anthony Beevor, Helen Graham, Hugh Thomas, and Peter Wyden. Preston covers the conditions in Spain leading up to the war, the mish­mash of political parties and federations, the battles and atrocities, and the war’s legacy on con­ temporary Spain. An extensive bibliographical essay takes the place of endnotes. $16.95. W. W. Norton. ISBN 978­0­393­32987­2. Splendid Failure: Postwar Reconstruction in the American South, by Michael W. Fitzgerald (234 pages, June 2007), summarizes the efforts from 1865 to 1877 to transform the South from a vanquished society based on slavery to a reformed and economically developed region with African American suffrage, free schools, a free press, interracial juries, black officeholders, and improved railways. Fitzger­ ald explains what an impossible task this became for Radical Republicans in federal and local government who, in grappling with an unprecedented population of 4 million newly emancipated citizens, made a series of poor policy decisions and miscalculations despite their lofty goals. Renewed white supremacist terrorism, economic depression, and rampant corruption led to the end of Reconstruction in 1877 and the enactment of Jim Crow laws that persisted for nearly a century. $26.00. Ivan R. Dee. ISBN 978­1­56663­734­3. The Virtual Reference Handbook, by Diane K. Kovacs (132 pages, January 2007), is a practical guide to the technical, communication, and reference skills you need to deliver fl uent chat and e­mail reference services. Tips and anec­ dotes from other virtual reference librarians are scattered throughout. $65.00. Neal­Schuman. ISBN 978­1­55570­598­5. (“Reviews” continued from page 453) Despite the navigational problems, under­ graduate students and anyone interested in the extensive involvement of UN agencies in freshwater issues will find much information in the reports including country, regional, and global information. The consolidated links to other organization’s sites available under the thematic index will be useful to researchers, as well.—Carol McCulley, Linfi eld College, cmccull@linfi eld.edu July/August 2007 455 C&RL News