VLMA: a tool for creating, annotating and sharing virtual museum collections

The Virtual Lightbox for Museums and Archives (VLMA) is a tool for collecting and reusing, in a structured fashion, the online contents of museums and archive datasets. It is not restricted to datasets with visual components although VLMA includes a lightbox service that enables comparison and manipulation of visual information. With VLMA, one can browse and search collections, construct personal collections, annotate them, export these collections to XML or Impress (Open Office) presentation format, and share collections with other VLMA users. VLMA was piloted as an e-Learning tool as part of JISC’s e-Learning focus in its first phase (2004-2005) and in its second phase (2005-2006) it has incorporated new partner collections while improving and expanding interfaces and services. This paper concerns its development as a research and teaching tool, especially to teachers using museum collections, and discusses the recent development of VLMA.

Obesity and diabetes, the built environment, and the ‘local’ food economy in the United States, 2007

Obesity and diabetes are increasingly attributed to environmental factors, however, little attention has been paid to the influence of the ‘local’ food economy. This paper examines the association of measures relating to the built environment and ‘local’ agriculture with U.S. county-level prevalence of obesity and diabetes. Key indicators of the ‘local’ food economy include the density of farmers’ markets and the presence of farms with direct sales. This paper employs a robust regression estimator to account for non-normality of the data and to accommodate outliers. Overall, the built environment is associated with the prevalence of obesity and diabetes and a strong local’ food economy may play an important role in prevention. Results imply considerable scope for community-level interventions.