jan11b.indd C&RL News January 2011 50 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 Birmingham Civil Rights Initiative. Access: http://www.bcri.org. The Birmingham Civil Rights Initiative (BCRI) is a public history institution in Alabama whose online presence is updated anonymously and irregularly. At time of writing, the site is fully accessible with an updated Web browser, including Flash, with an additional application for viewing PDF files. BCRI’s research resources fall within the field of United States History, particularly the regional history of the South and of African Americans. K–12 students, as well as the general public, constitute the pri- mary audience for these materials. Sources such as digitized newspapers and recorded interview fragments include neither the documentation that would help students assess their validity nor the comprehensive- ness expected at the college level or above. Academic librarians will be most concerned with resources located in the Learn portion of the site, in particular the “Archives” and the “Resource Gallery,” but neither is recommended. The Archives pages offer an aggregate plain text list of collections, many of which contain brief folder level descriptions, which is useful for those planning a research visit. The “Search Our Collection” keyword interface currently does not deliver on its claim to allow visitors viewing access to “nearly every item” in their collection.” Instead, search results allow users to see surrogates of items in the physical collection without uploaded text or visual files. In the Resource Center Gallery, a brief timeline between 1954 and 1968 does not allow two parallel narratives (local and national) to be compared directly. The Oral History Project offers a series of two- to-three minute video interview fragments (totaling 25 at time of review) that lack documentation and clear categorization. More complete transcripts are available in the brick-and-mortar archives. The site is beset with idiosyncrasies and quality control concerns that further limit its usefulness in a scholarly setting. Contrary to best practices, audio and video files play automatically, repeat in a loop, and cannot be turned off. Spelling errors have not been corrected, and navigation is cumbersome. Academic librarians have better options for this general subject mat- ter, including Charlottesville’s “Race and Place.”—Joshua Lupkin , Southern Method- ist University, jlupkin@mail.smu.edu Freebase. Access: http://freebase.com. Freebase is a community-driven struc- tured data repository that brings a little authority control to the Internet. Freebase is part of the semantic Web movement to make data on the Web more descriptive. Anyone can add information to the 13 million available topics, and one can start a new topic if it’s not available. This is similar to Wikipedia, but the main differ- ence is that Freebase uses structured data to describe topics. Each topic has a unique ID to help differentiate entities that may have the same name, but different meanings. An example they give is the name “Boston,” which could refer to a location, a sports team (e.g., Boston Celtics), or the musical band. All instances would have a unique record within Freebase that people can link to for information. For example, a content creator can start a Web site about “Boston” rock band, and link to the Freebase entry about “Boston” rock band. This allows content creators to clarify the term “Boston” used in their Web content, and help search January 2011 51 C&RL News engines’ accuracy in finding content about the “Boston” rock band. Freebase users can also find content linked to the “Boston” rock band ID and find more content about the same topic. This allows someone to dy- namically create content based on a topic found within Freebase, and all associated content linked to the Freebase ID for the topic. This could include content from the official Web site, as well as updates from social networks that can automatically be retrieved and integrated into Web content. Freebase also allows users to develop custom data schemes to describe different kinds of information. For example, the Architect schema in- cludes the base schema to describe a Per- son and Topic, but also includes “Structures Designed,” “Architectural Style,” and other custom fields that would help describe an architect. Librarians can theoretically add library-specific fields like subject headings, MARC fields, or other data that can make Freebase records compatible with library systems. Freebase might have an ambitious goal of cataloging the Internet, but it shows a lot of promise and is supported by Google. Librarians, especially those with catalog- ing experience, can play a central role in the Freebase community and help shape the information architecture of the Inter- net.—Ken Fujiuchi, Buffalo State College, fujiuck@buffalostate.edu Go For Broke National Education Center. Access: http://www.goforbroke.org/. On February 19, 1942, President Frank- lin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which paved the way for the removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans from their homes, farms, schools, and businesses in areas deemed militarily sensitive. Despite this, within the year, many Japanese American men were allowed to volunteer for service in that same military, and served honorably and heroically de- spite the treatment that their friends and families continued to undergo back home. In 1989, the Go For Broke National Edu- cation Center (from the motto adopted by the Nisei, or second generation, Japanese American soldiers) was created to establish a monument honoring Japanese Americans who served overseas during World War II. Once the monument was erected in down- town Los Angeles, the focus of the center changed to that of an educational center, offering programs to educate students and teachers about the history of Japanese American soldiers in World War II, the Japanese American incarceration, and the civil liberties issues raised by these events. The Web site provides a variety of resources accessed from a ribbon of but- tons near the top of the page. One may learn about the organization itself from the “About Us” section, and see lesson plans and other teaching materials useful for classroom instruction from the button labeled “Learning Center.” These resources support history and social studies curricula required in California and Hawaii at the secondary level. “History” provides a link to information about the veterans, campaigns, maps, and a timeline, with a second drop down provid- ing a link to the Resource Center, which offers services and resources, including an extensive listing of related online sites. “Oral Histories” leads to the Hanashi Oral History Video Archive, which cur- rently contains 700 video interviews with veterans. One must register to access many of these interviews, but some shorter sample interviews are accessible without registration. Also included are FAQs for potential volunteers and those interested in the Hanashi Oral History Program. Contact options and a site-wide search box are provided, as well. This site is recommended for students, teachers, and others interested in an often forgotten facet of World War II lore, 20th- century American history, and American Ethnic Studies.—Ford Schmidt, Willamette University, fschmidt@willamette.edu