The Council on Foreign Relations provides a number of services for the general public, and in the past they have offered up public discussions, forums, and other outreach activities. In addition, they offer the "Backgrounders" series, which offer succinct explanations of current political and economic issues. First-time users can visit the "Most Recent" area to peruse the latest piece, or they can...

The tagline for the Bata Shoe Museum is "For the Curious". It's an appropriate motto, as this provocative museum in Toronto contains over 10,000 shoes within its prodigious holdings. The museum opened in 1995, and visitors to this site can traipse through sections such as "Exhibitions" and "Collections" to learn more about their interpretive mission and their thematic areas. Most visitors will...

This website from the BBC and the British Museum takes another important step into moving the museum experience online. People usually go to museums to see historic objects, and that's exactly what A History of the World makes possible, via the web. For example, one week's theme was status symbols, and the object of the day was the David Vases, two Chinese blue-and-white porcelain vessels, named...

Brain Pickings is the creative artifact of Maria Popova, a reader, writer, and critic with a polymath's passion for literature, arts, advertising, communications, and a virtual truckload of other subjects. Recent articles have outlined the meaning of life according to civil rights activist Rosa Parks, showcased the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art's compilation of 11 different writer's advice to...

The British Library is one of the world's great libraries and its blogs are quite excellent as well. These streams of thought and commentary are crafted by curators, subject specialists, and guest bloggers and on any given day might include "Jokes for David Frost," "Dogs: Medieval Man's Best Friend," and thoughts on Shakespeare's "Measure for Measure." All told, there are over a dozen blogs here...

In the life and cultural landscape of northern Nevada in the 20th century, the Ninety-Six Ranch looms large. It seems quite appropriate that the ranch forms the core of this very fine online collection from the Library of Congress' American Memory project. The collection includes 41 motion pictures and 28 sound recordings that tell the story of life and work on the Ninety-Six Ranch from the 1940s...

In this online gallery of the British Library, they have taken an interesting approach to highlighting one of their collections. They asked Mike Phillips, an author and historian born in Guyana, to comment and react to their large British West Indies collection. There are illustrations, maps, and pages of text from books written during the period of colonization, all with explanations and...

Cartoons for the Classroom is an excellent resource for high school educators who are looking for ways to use the visual rhetoric of political cartoons to highlight issues in current American politics, civics, and cultural life. Lessons are published every week or two. Each tackles a particular issue, featuring two cartoons on the topic and a list of Talking Points. These usually include...

The Center for Civic Education is a non-partisan educational corporation started in 1969 in Calabasas, California, to educate America's citizens about democratic principles. Their website's "About Us" section has a powerful quote by Thomas Jefferson that sums up their rationale and goals for starting the Center: "I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of society but the people...

Based at the University of New Mexico, the Center for Southwest Research and Special Collections (CSWR) brings together interdisciplinary subjects relating to New Mexico, the southwestern United States, Mexico and Latin America. In the About the CSWR area, visitors can learn more about the collection's strengths, how to use the collection, and fellowship opportunities. Visitors can also look over...