The OER Commons exists to help educators "find free-to-use teaching and learning content from around the world." Thousands of primary, secondary and post-secondary activities, labs, lecture notes, assignments and other educational materials are available by searching or browsing the OER site.
posted by cog_nate on Oct 16, 2009 - 7 comments

The NAVIS project is a multilevel international database for ancient ships of Europe. The database has very detailed information and pictures of ships from the 2nd millenium BC to the 12th century AD (found whilst trying to answer this AskMe). [more inside]
posted by tellurian on Jul 16, 2009 - 5 comments

A group of respected British children's authors and illustrators will stop visiting schools from the start of the next academic year, in protest at a new government scheme that requires them to register on a database in case they pose a danger to children.

Canadian War Poster Collection at McGill University. And if that doesn't strike your fancy, the list of digital collections include such time-honoured favourites as Expo '67, and the award-winner for unexpected collection, Gynaecology in Traditional Chinese Medicine. (previously)
posted by flibbertigibbet on Jun 26, 2009 - 7 comments

Graph databases - data 2.0 for Web 3.0?
posted by dabitch on Jun 15, 2009 - 34 comments

The Digital Library of Slovenia has (among other things) music [like this] [previously], posters [like this] and photographs [like this].
posted by tellurian on Apr 14, 2009 - 12 comments

Taser use in law enforcement has been under increased scrutiny in recent years, especially following the death of Robert Dziekanski in a Vancouver airport last year after being Tasered by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (previously). Now the CBC and Canadian Press have sifted through over 5,000 incident reports to create a RCMP Taser use database, tracking use of tasers by Canada's federal law enforcement by province, incident, year or stuns used. [more inside]
posted by Shepherd on Apr 9, 2009 - 36 comments

The US Food and Drug Administration started regulating the labeling of food, beverages, and medicines after the passage of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act, and added food coloring and cosmetics with the 1938 Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. They have just released a new website, the FDA Notices of Judgment Collection, 1906-1963, containing data from thousands of cases of mislabeled or misadvertised products and drugs, available in multiple forms (text, PDF, metadata XML, .TIF image, etc.), with searchable archives. Poking around in the data will yield information on cases ranging from misbranding methamphetamine tablets, to quack "Film-O-Sonic" devices, to bacteria-laden unproven abortifacients sold over the counter, to purported "4-way" cures for baldness, to hunks of radium sold for putting in your drinking water to "stimulate the sex organs" (judged against for stating an unproven use, not for actual danger of product). Organized by the FDA's history office, the new database is a fascinating resource for historians, public safety advocates, researchers, and librarians.
posted by Asparagirl on Apr 6, 2009 - 28 comments

Everything you ever wanted to read about left-wing political theory but were afraid to look up. [more inside]
posted by cthuljew on Mar 23, 2009 - 67 comments

"With Germany arming at breakneck speed, England lost in a pacifist dream, France corrupt and torn by dissension, America remote and indifferent... do you not tremble for your children?" ― Winston Churchill, 1935. The World War II Database connects people, events, photographs, and other elements of history in relational db form to tell the story of the 20th century's 2nd great war.
posted by netbros on Mar 13, 2009 - 13 comments

Ever wondered what comes next, and why? The On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences has the answers. (Previously.)
posted by parudox on Mar 10, 2009 - 33 comments

Planning next spring's garden? Just curious about plants? Then check out Plant Information Online, which "provides access to: Current Plant and Seed Sources for 107,631 plants... from 1,054 North American firms that will ship plants; Contact information and links... for 2,448 North American retail and wholesale seed and nursery firms; Bibliographic details for 377,083 images of 140,104 wild and cultivated plants from around the world in botanical and horticultural books and magazines from 1982 to the present; and links to expert-selected sites on growing plants in your region of Canada or the US." (Description from website.)
posted by cog_nate on Nov 4, 2008 - 5 comments

mySQLgame. Naturally, it's an alpha build. [via]
posted by Smart Dalek on Aug 28, 2008 - 33 comments

Database Machine Drawings - Early modern machine drawings from the late Middle Ages up to 1650. Traced by engineers (or by their order), some are inscrutable, others Escherian.
posted by tellurian on Aug 15, 2008 - 18 comments

If you've ever wondered which guns were used in a movie, which movies a gun has appeared in, or even which guns an actor has ever used, then the Internet Movie Firearms Database (probably) has you covered. [more inside]
posted by jedicus on Aug 7, 2008 - 28 comments

Criminal Searches - Making you feel safer or increasing your fear? [more inside]
posted by tellurian on Jul 24, 2008 - 44 comments

An interesting food web site - enter your ingredients, it tells you what you can make. Even suggests items you'll need for other dishes. Previously questioned in AskMe.
posted by ObscureReferenceMan on May 27, 2008 - 25 comments

StrangeUSA.com - "Consolidating the vast amount of 'Strange Stuff' out there into one easy to use place. Haunted buildings, places, urban legends, cemetaries, weird places, cool places, ghost towns, and anything else that's worth your time to visit." [more inside]
posted by Burhanistan on Feb 7, 2008 - 15 comments

To celebrate the results of this year's IF Comp, why not check out the entries on the new Interactive Fiction Database? [more inside]
posted by flatluigi on Nov 18, 2007 - 7 comments

With a grand prize of $50,000, the Build a Better Burger Contest is the biggest hamburger recipe contest in the world; with the upcoming contest being judged on Sept 29th, you can take a moment to stroll through hamburger history, with recipes for all 17 years worth of prizewinners. Not enough burger for you? Then try making any of the 10 runner ups from 2005 & 2006. Still more, you demand? Peruse the database of over 5,000 contest entries broken out by category, even the most jaded burgermeister is sure to find something original & delicious to try.
posted by jonson on Sep 4, 2007 - 77 comments

Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers is a beta release of the Library of Congress/National Endowment for the Humanities partnership project, the (previously mentioned) National Digital Newspaper Program. In its current state, Chronicling America allows users to search for and read newspaper pages from 36 newspapers published between 1900 and 1910, and search for information on American newspapers published between 1690 and present day.
posted by cog_nate on Aug 13, 2007 - 9 comments

The Library Of Unified Information Sources (LOUIS) is a beta-release project of the previously mentioned Sunlight Foundation, the goal of which is "to create a comprehensive, completely indexed and cross-referenced depository of federal documents from the executive and legislative branches of government." LOUIS currently contains searchable full text documents of Congressional Reports, the Congressional Record, Congressional Hearings, Presidential Documents, the Federal Register, GAO Reports and Bills & Resolutions, going back to 2001. Other interesting Sunlight Foundation projects include Visualizing Earmarks, 3 (non-satirical) Modest Proposals, The Congressional Family Business Project, and Congresspedia.
posted by cog_nate on Jun 20, 2007 - 2 comments

The Global Terrorism Database is now available online. It includes information on more than 27,000 bombings, 13,000 assassinations, and 2,800 kidnappings. With 2D and 3D georeferences for some incidents. The interactive map isn't working for me though.
posted by tellurian on May 24, 2007 - 18 comments

Roger's Mushroom's Visual Key is an image map of major fungi genera that drives a gallery/field guide for a large number of species. It's fairly useful for identifying mushrooms, and the images are for sale. There's also a Mushroom Kitchen, which basically filters the database for edible and choice species, and includes a big page of recipes.

Thoughtfully, Roger also provides information about mushroom poisoning.
posted by owhydididoit on Nov 10, 2006 - 25 comments

The Grand Comics Database is aiming to become the IMDB of comic books cover art. I only tested a couple from memory, but they seem to have a pretty deep reservoir of content, and fairly large scans of the results. Searchable by series title, character appearance, writer, illustrator and a number of other criteria.
posted by jonson on Oct 19, 2006 - 21 comments

Japanese Ant Database Group.
posted by hama7 on Oct 15, 2006 - 7 comments

What is the world reading? The UNESCO Index Translationum database has over 1.6 million bibliographical entries of translated works. Interesting stats such as: The worlds Top 50 translated authors. The Top 10 translated Norwegian authors (or other languages). Number of translations for any given book. Some surprising results, lots to explore, and an interesting lesson on what sells.
posted by stbalbach on Jun 21, 2006 - 13 comments

The Aria Database is a diverse collection of information on over 1000 operatic arias.
posted by Gyan on May 4, 2006 - 6 comments

The UCLA Folkmed Database A searchable database of over 200,000 distinct folk medicine remedies for ailments of all kinds. The entries are pretty barebones, but -- oh, oh ick.
posted by cog_nate on Feb 14, 2006 - 4 comments

Find out what's in it before it's in you ... using free software provided by the US Department of Agriculture's database. The information, which can be kept on a PC (Windows) or PDA (Palm OS), provides a detailed listing of nutrients (calories, protein, fat, carbs, sugars, vitamins, minerals) on almost 7,000 foods, including processed and fast foods.
posted by crunchland on Jan 21, 2006 - 19 comments

U.S. Congress Votes Database The Washington Post's U.S. Congress Votes Database has every vote in the U.S. Congress since 1991. The votes are sliced and diced in a variety of ways, including late-night votes in the House and Senate, and lists of congresspeople and senators who've missed votes. Each member of Congress has a web page and RSS feed. There's also an RSS feed of the 10 most recent votes. (More info, and details from the developers).
posted by kirkaracha on Jan 20, 2006 - 17 comments

Games games games! Board games have under gone a renaissance, spurred by games like Settlers of Catan. Because users are rewarded for contributing content, the site has some real depth. In addition to exhaustive lists of games, sorted by rank (with Bayesian averages and standard deviation), there are a gajillion reviews and player aids. You can even search for games based on criteria such as weight, game mechanism, ranking, or even game mechanics. The site is a great example of organically-generated user data.
posted by craniac on Nov 15, 2005 - 36 comments

The National Archives recently announced a new phase in the ongoing project called the Electronic Records Archives (ERA) whose vision is to catalog and make available online electronic documentation produced by the Federal government (E-mails, Word Documents, etc), which otherwise could disappear entirely or at least be very difficult to locate. Funded with over 300 million and set to debut in 2007 and be complete by 2011 it is a project of unusual scope and complexities but promises to make government more transparent to researches and the general public.
posted by stbalbach on Sep 10, 2005 - 5 comments

we may not know where they are - but here's where they've been... An incredible amount of information - current and historical - well indexed and with about a billion options for searching through it. pretty impressive for what is at least unofficially a quasi-federal government site despite protestations to the contrary.
posted by ab3 on Aug 17, 2005 - 6 comments

Chicagocrime.org takes the Chicago Police Department's Citizen ICAM and puts it into an easily searchable -- by crime type, street, date, district or location type -- format, along with a Google Map. Who knew police station parking lots were so dangerous?
posted by me3dia on May 19, 2005 - 10 comments

The Eggcorn Database . A previous post noted the lack of a "proper repository" for examples of these bemusing, off-repeated folk etymologies. Until now, finding the latest news in eggcorns has merely been a French benefit of pouring over the new posts at LanguageLog. The Eggcorn Database puts them all at your beckoned call. Another words, the days of getting balked down in other stupid ideas while looking for the latest finds are over. The Eggcorn Database already catalogs over 100 examples, replete with antidotal usages and collaborating evidence for eggcorn status. An overview for the lame man is here.
posted by casu marzu on Feb 24, 2005 - 15 comments

In California, a registered sex offender uses the Megan's Law database as a source for potential dates. He searched for men in the database, and then sent several men a letter looking for sex or friendship, explaining how they could look up his profile in the same system. Turns out that it is illegal for a registered sex offender to access the database of registered sex offenders. (first FPP for me)
posted by stevil on Feb 4, 2005 - 64 comments

The Enchiridion or Manual of the eminently quotable Epictetus contains many words of austere comfort. (more inside)
posted by mono blanco on Dec 28, 2004 - 10 comments

Worried that the new guy might tip off the feds about your "concrete company?" The internet gives you the perfect research tool.
posted by drezdn on Dec 25, 2004 - 11 comments

Sacco and Vanzetti et al. The amazing Famous Trials website, compiled as a labor of love by University of Missouri law professor Douglas Linder, is a motherlode of information on historically significant trails, ranging from Galileo to the Amistad to Lenny Bruce. It features not only official transcripts, but also equally intriguing details such as a map of the railroad cars in the Scottsboro Boys trial, Klan documents from the Mississippi Burning case, and opinion polls related to the My Lai courts martial.
posted by foxy_hedgehog on Nov 30, 2004 - 8 comments

Rate My Professor! A searchable database of student ratings of their college professors. In what must be a wonderful reflection of the current status of the American and Canadian higher education systems, the ratings include entries for how easy the professor is and, of course, how hot they are. So click around, visit your alma mater, and let that jerk who almost flunked you in freshman comp feel your wrath!
posted by robocop is bleeding on Nov 22, 2004 - 74 comments

"...I should like someone to remember that there once lived a person named David Berger"
posted by PenDevil on Nov 22, 2004 - 99 comments

The British Library has an unmatched collection of fine and historic bookbindings. Hundreds of western European bindings have been digitized and made available to the public. The Database of Bookbindings is a searchable, high resolution collection. Search by binder, ownership mark, country, material, and more. If you have the whole weekend free, you may find this glossary of binding terms a useful resource on your journey of discovery. If your interest is seriously peaked check out these bookbinding models used to exemplify and demonstrate the various mechanisms of books. For a more American experience of bookbindings, the Redwood Library has created this exhibit. Tomorrow our journey continues inside the books
posted by Grod on Oct 29, 2004 - 4 comments

dvdloc8, the "Internet DVD Database", a cool little work-in-progress thing I found via doom9.
posted by WolfDaddy on Oct 28, 2004 - 2 comments

Voter Vault versus Demzilla
Compare and contrast the voter databases of the major political parties. Open source or proprietary? Locally operated or offshored? Paid staff or volunteers? Do these attitudes and/or methods reflect a more general mindset of the parties? Are there other distinctly different ways in which the national party organizations do business that may reflect wel or poorly on them?
posted by nofundy on Sep 27, 2004 - 5 comments

Malaspina Great Books. A biographical database on culture, in categories.
posted by plexi on Sep 2, 2004 - 2 comments

WordNet: "an online lexical reference system whose design is inspired by current psycholinguistic theories of human lexical memory. English nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are organized into synonym sets, each representing one underlying lexical concept. Different relations link the synonym sets." What does one do with WordNet?
posted by archimago on Aug 9, 2004 - 16 comments

Homicide in Chicago: 1870-1930
July 25, 1899 Murphy, James, 28 years old, shot dead, saloon 1210 Wabash Av., by Lorezo Sodini, proprietor. Murphy refused to pay for drinks and ran out of saloon and threw stone through window. Sodini ran out and fired at him, killing him instantly. Harrison St. Station. Held by Coroner's Jury, July 29. Acquitted Dec. 9, 1899, by jury in Judge Baker's court. Case number: 1498
posted by tcp on Jul 2, 2004 - 1 comment

The Bush administration is offering a novel reason for denying a Freedom of Information Act request seeking the Justice Department's database on foreign lobbyists: Copying the information would bring down the computer system.
posted by wsg on Jun 30, 2004 - 19 comments

They Work For You was launched at yesterday's NotCon '04 by the people who brought you Fax Your MP. It makes Hansard accessible, via search facilities (by MP or by topic), with each individual speech presented as a separate, linkable entry. Get an RSS feed of your own MP's speeches, hold them to account over their special interests, but most of all, don't forget to vote this week!
posted by cbrody on Jun 7, 2004 - 5 comments