~ Early Web Links ~

The Alex Catalogue of Electronic Texts, created by Eric Lease Morgan in 1994, is a curated collection of public domain and open access documents focused on American and English literature and Western philosophy, designed to support a liberal arts education. Visitors can browse thousands of texts by author, title, or tag, with links to repositories like Project Gutenberg, HathiTrust, and the Internet Archive.

Stephen Downes is a Canadian researcher at the National Research Council specializing in e-learning, networked learning, and educational technology, and this hub collects his extensive publications, newsletters, presentations, and commentary spanning decades. Best known as co-originator of the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) concept and author of the widely-read OLDaily newsletter, Downes covers topics from connectivism and open access to AI in education.

Jamie McKenzie's article-based resource makes a passionate case for preserving school librarians and teacher-librarian positions at a time of widespread nationwide cutbacks. Drawing on research data, case studies from districts across the country, and arguments about information literacy, it serves as both an advocacy piece and a practical guide for educators and library supporters.

A massive database of over 20,000 names from cultures and languages spanning the entire globe, organized by country, language, and meaning with detailed etymologies included. Visitors can browse everything from Aztec and Anglo-Saxon to Vietnamese and Yiddish names, plus themed categories like Dragon Names, Shadow Names, and Warrior Names for creative use in stories, games, and pet naming.

Howtopedia is a collaborative wiki dedicated to practical knowledge and simple, accessible technologies for sustainable and ecological living. Its breadth is impressive, covering everything from agroforestry and water sanitation to food processing, energy, and emergency preparedness, making it a kind of Wikipedia for appropriate technology.

A curated library guide from Illinois Institute of Technology's Galvin Library, collecting recommended physics websites, databases, and journals for students and researchers. The guide covers major organizations like AIP, APS, CERN, and Fermilab, along with educational resources such as the Feynman Lectures, HyperPhysics, and historical archives like the Einstein Papers Project.

Dr. Jian Wu is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Old Dominion University whose research focuses on digital libraries, scholarly document analysis, open science, and natural language processing. The page chronicles his lab's latest accepted papers at top venues like JCDL and ACM Hypertext, lists collaborators from institutions worldwide, and links to his publications, teaching, and the LAMP-SYS Lab.

Professor Michael Fowler of the University of Virginia presents a comprehensive physics course tracing the scientific revolutions sparked by Galileo, Newton, and Einstein, from Babylonian mathematics through relativity. The site includes full lecture notes, homework and exam questions, applets, flashlets, and supplementary teaching materials originally developed for high school physics teachers.

InternetSlang.com is a comprehensive dictionary of internet slang, acronyms, and abbreviations drawn from chat rooms, SMS, Twitter, blogs, and online forums, browsable by letter or searchable by term. Running since 2002, it covers thousands of entries and even allows users to submit new acronyms, making it a living reference for the ever-evolving language of the web.

Leon Byford, a London-based software developer, shares a concise technical tutorial on how to download full-resolution LINE sticker image files directly from LINE's servers using product IDs. The post covers both static and animated sticker formats, including tips for Mac users and how to convert APNG files to animated GIFs.