april11b.indd C&RL News April 2011 240 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 Child Welfare League of America. Access: http://www.cwla.org/. The Child Welfare League of America (CWLA) has been a strong advocate for child welfare since 1920 and continues to serve children and families through its member network of nearly 800 public and private agencies across the United States. Its mission has been to “lead the nation in building public will to ensure safety, permanence, and well- being of children, youth, and their families by advancing public policy, defining and promoting practice excellence and delivering superior membership services.” In that vein, its Web site provides a kind of clearinghouse of information and contacts for the general public as well as a members-only resource center for agencies that give direct support to children and families. On the main Web page, the left sidebar conveniently links to the major content of the site by category, including special initiatives, advocacy, practice areas, publications, news, conferences, culture/diversity, training, and consultation. The heart of the page promotes the organization with scrolling images in the middle, stable “news” on the right, and contact information readily available below. A Google search allows entry to the content by basic keyword. In addition, the sitemap helpfully di- vides the content into portals for the interested constituents: the public (parents, relatives, friends), child welfare professionals, media representatives, supporters, and advertisers. For the general public, this Web site may provide useful background, research, legisla- tion, activity, and links to related agencies in any of the practice areas, such as adoption, baby abandonment, family foster care, parent- ing, sexual orientation issues, and domestic violence, just to name a few. Practitioners may also find the conferences, consultation, and training links useful. Unfortunately, the currency of available content is spotty and unpredictable. Many of the sections link to dated publications, indi- cating perhaps this site had more relevance a few years back. For instance, a Juvenile Justice section lists Facts & Figures from 2007 and the “Hot Topic” under “Pregnant and Parenting Adolescents” points to a 1998 Standards of Excellence on the subject. Still, certain areas under “Advocacy” and the “News & Media Center” offer announcements of recent ac- tivities and include conference and training sessions into the future. Despite some shortcomings, CWLA seems to be a well-connected organization, with a long history of navigating and supporting the political, legal, and social networks of the child welfare system. Practitioners, families, and social services researchers will find this a good place to start for information, includ- ing plenty of leads in relevant directions off site.—Barbara Valentine, Linfield College, bvalen@linfield.edu Napoleon.org. Access: http://napoleon.org /en/home.asp. The first and second Napoleonic empires comprise the years 1804 to 1815 and 1852 to 1870. It was a time of dramatic political, social, and cultural upheaval and transition in Europe. The imperial Bonaparte dynasty founded by Napoleon I and carried on by his nephew Louis-Napoleon, along with the ages they inspired, continue to fascinate research- ers, students, and history enthusiasts alike. This Web site is the public face of the Fondation Napoleon, a charitable organization headquartered in Paris that is devoted to the preservation and study of the two empires. The portal provides access in French and in English to primary, secondary and tertiary source material that includes some digitized text and images along with teaching tools, April 2011 241 C&RL News a newsletter and magazine, and a variety of other supplementary material related to the era. A digital library, which can be searched by author, title words, or language, contains more than 5,000 documents that are labeled “Napoleonic” in nature, including Adolphe Thiers’ definitive 20-volume work, Histoire du Consulat et de l’Empire. The high-quality digital images are searchable and can be configured for size. This section also includes a selection of full-text theses written by past winners of the Fondation Napoleon’s research grant awards that encourage scholarship re- lated to the two empires. Finally, external links to Napoleonica La Revue, an online history journal, and Napoleonica-Archives Online, a Web site of digitized primary source material, are provided. Although there is unique content here, the site suffers from a general lack of focus and organization. For example, in one section, visitors will find key dates in Napoleonic his- tory, a copy of the Republican calendar, an image database, some selective topical bibli- ographies, and information on how to use the Fondation Napoleon’s physical library. A “Kids’ Corner” offers quizzes, games, interactive maps, and short animations for children from 3 to 10 years of age. Yet another area contains directories of people and places dedicated to the sale, collection, and exhibition of the era’s art, memorabilia, and other cultural artifacts. Discovery of primary source documents of research-level quality requires both patience and perseverance. Despite a selection of some distinct and informative material, the site will appeal more to history buffs interested in the period than to serious scholars.—Linda Frederik- sen, Washington State University-Vancouver, lfrederiksen@vancouver.wsu.edu World Digital Library. Access: http://www. wdl.org. The World Digital Library (WDL) is an online collection of primary materials repre- senting countries and cultures from around the world. A collaborative effort between Library of Congress; United Nations Educa- tional, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO); and major libraries in Brazil, Russia, Egypt, and scores of other countries, WDL is an easily navigable, content-rich, and extremely diverse online collection of cultural materials created by curators and librarians from around the globe. The Web site is well designed and pro- vides numerous access points. The homepage includes a map of the world divided into nine geographic areas. Selecting a specific area, such as Oceania and the Pacific, opens a screen with various images related to the re- gion. Included are 19th-century photographs, 18th-century French travelogs, illuminated Javanese documents, various maps, photos from the Japanese occupation of the region in the 1930s, and more. A menu bar on the left of the page provides ways to narrow by place, time, topic, type of item, and host institution. Researchers can also use the timeline along the bottom of the map to limit their choices to a particular century or centuries. Each item is rich in graphic detail and includes extensive metadata. And what a beautiful collection this is! One randomly selected example is an 18th-century copy of Umar al-Sufi’s 10th-century astronomy text, Book of the Constellations, in Arabic. The text is beautifully scanned and a delight to navigate—you can easily flip pages and zoom in to see the detail of the drawings. The metadata provides historical information about the text, provenance of the item, and a physical description. There is also a video by Library of Congress curator Christopher M. Murphy that describes the various Arabic texts in the collection, and links to the other items in the collection. WDL is an extraordinary online collection, notable for both its content and its online pre- sentation. It includes maps, books, documents, photographs, etchings, drawings, and other materials that represent materials from every UNESCO country. Millions of dollars from international public and private sources went into the development of this site, and it was clearly money very well spent.—Gene Hyde, Radford University, wehyde@radford.edu