Saturday Sharing (My Finds Are Yours)

Today's edition of Saturday Sharing sends you to an electronic tour guide to Smithsonian Institution museums, tells you where to go for The Straight Dope, introduces you to list-making at Book Riot, gives a hoot to bardowl's audiobook app, travels through a Ploughshares's series on literary boroughs, looks into date-inspired posts at The American Literary Blog, and leads you to a site that will stretch the boundaries of your knowledge.

✦  Friends coming to the Washington, D.C., area for the first time often include the Smithsonian Institution museums on their itinerary. Given the number of museums, a little advance planning can help make the visit more memorable. Where to start? Check the Smithsonian Tour Guide and Visitors App at iTunes.

✦ The site The Straight Dope aims to stamp out ignorance by providing need-to-know answers to your most pressing questions.

✦ The bardowl will stream audiobooks directly to your iPhone. Go here to see a video of how the app works, or here for a text and image tour. (My thanks to Paris Review Daily for the link.)

✦ Like lists? Book Riot, dedicated to all things about books and reading, offers a weekly round-up. Here's an example.

✦ The blog for the literary magazine Ploughshares is running a series called Literary Boroughs. The "little-known and well-known" literary communities explored to date include Washington, D.C.,(#11) Philadelphia (#7), Brooklyn (#5), and Berkeley, California (#9). The series continuess until the next AWP conference in Boston next year.

Ploughshares on FaceBook, Twitter, Tumblr, and YouTube

✦ Nineteenth Century American literature is the focus of Rob Velella's The American Literary Blog. Each post, according to Velella, a self-described literary nerd, is inspired by an anniversary (birthday, death, publication date, etc.). Velella has a particular affinity for obscure writers, and what he uncovers is often fascinating.

American Literary Blog on FaceBook and Twitter

✦ Computer science tutorials and thousands of other educational videos are available through the nonprofit Khan Academy, whose mission is "providing a free wold-class education for anyone anywhere." All of the site's resources (there's a lot to explore online) are available free of charge. Content is available in more than 50 languages. Whether you're a student, a home-schooler, an education professional, a coach, a parent, or a life-long learner, you'll find something of interest, I'm sure. (Do you live in the D.C. area? Salman Khan, who founded the nonprofit, will be talking with the Smithsonian Institution's secretary Wayne Clough on October 2. Details on the interview and the signing of The One World Schoolhouse: Education Reimagined, Khan's book, are here.)

Khan Academy on FaceBook, Twitter, and YouTube

Khan Academy Blog