The National Endowment for Financial Education (NEFE) is dedicated "to improving the financial well-being of all Americans." Their website is a veritable cornucopia of resources around this very subject, including help for high school students, consumers, and educators. A good place to start is the "Help for Consumers" area. Here visitors can use the "Smart About Money" resources to get practical...

Founded in 1973, the Northeast Document Conservation Center (NDCC) was created to address the rapid deterioration of older paper-based documents in a number of institutions across New England. On their website, visitors can learn about their conservation and imaging services, and also examine some of their fine resources intended for members of the preservation community. The "Resources" area is a...

The mere mention of the US Department of Labor's Occupational Outlook Handbook may remind some individuals of those infamous high school vocational surveys. Some may even remember that such surveys indicated that they would go on to careers in forestry, animal husbandry, or even as a particle physicist. Recently, the Department of Labor issued this tremendously useful Handbook in its online...

Most people have probably heard about the recent troubles with mad cow disease, but they might not know much about the broader changes that have occurred with meat production over the past fifty years. This compelling 124-page report, released in April 2008, takes a close look into the nature of industrial meat production in America. The report was funded by a grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts...

From crochet machines to the uses of acrylic yarn, the Textile Exchange website has rather fine comprehensive coverage across the nooks and crannies of the textile industry. Visitors to the homepage will find a search engine and a very thorough products directory which includes topical headings like "Textile Products", "Fibers, Yarns & Threads", and "Textile Chemicals". After looking over a few of...

Textile World is a website for textile industry professionals, manufacturers, investors, as well as those who would like to offer students, young or old, a glimpse into the world of textile production. This website is the perfect vehicle to see all that the textile industry encompasses. One look at the menu on the left hand side of the page informs visitors of several different areas of textile...

The Textile Collection at Indiana University Purdue University Indiana (IUPUI) was founded by the Lilly family, of Eli Lilly pharmaceutical fame. The digitized items here offer a great way to learn about an oft-ignored area of the art world. Visitors will find the introduction to the collection to be brief, but informative. It explains the multiple reasons behind the decrease in creation of...

While the era in which most people sewed their own vestments has long passed, sewing is a skill and an art that some find relaxing and worthwhile. A number of trade organizations promote this craft, and the Home Sewing Association is one of these groups that has been thoughtful enough to also create a website that contains helpful information about all aspects of this activity. The “Sewing...

Inspired by “…the courage, industry and intelligence required of the American working man”, two colleagues from the Harvard Business School (Donald Davenport and Frank Ayres) sent out a call to leading businesses in order to develop a visual collection that could be used in the classroom. During the 1930s, they received over 2,100 photographs that documented “the human factor” embodied in the...

Some of our readers may wonder, "What exactly is industrial design?" Fortunately The Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) is well-positioned to provide such an answer. On their site, they define Industrial design (ID) as "the professional service of creating and developing concepts and specifications that optimize the function, value and appearance of products and systems for the mutual...