McGill web gems

Sites offer gridiron history and free software

By Mark Shainblum | Come explore the hidden gems and secret places on the websites of McGill University and its affiliated institutions.

Football at McGill, 1874-2000

www.archives.mcgill.ca/public/exhibits/football/

McGill and the Birth of Football

www.mcgill.ca/news/2005/summer/epilogue/

These two websites are beautifully complementary: The first is a virtual exhibit hosted by McGill University Archives, documenting over 125 years of McGill football teams in an amazing series of photos. The photos were collected in an album by Charlie Baillie, head coach of the McGill Redmen football team from 1972-2001, and later generously donated to the McGill Archives. The second is a fascinating McGill News article which gives voice to the silent faces of the athletes in the archive. Written in 2005 by Edward Percy, BSc'49, MDCM'51, MSc'54, DipSurg'57, and Hugh Brodie, BSc'49, MDCM'51, it details how the modern North American game of football —as distinct from soccer, rugby and other variations—came into existence during an 1874 game played between McGill and Harvard. The rest, as they say, is history. Touchdown!

McGill e-Academy Software Centre

https://elms04.e-academy.com/mcgill/

Access to e-Academy is a little-known but great fringe benefit of belonging to the McGill community. Faculty, staff and students are authorized to download both free and commercial software from this website.

Most of the product mix consists of highly specialized applications (unless you're in architecture, for instance, the Autodesk Architectural 2007 Building Bundle isn't going to be of much use to you) offered at site-licensed discounts.

If you search carefully, you'll find a few cool software packages offered gratis, including:

• StarOffice from Sun Microsystems, an excellent Microsoft Office alternative, with word processor, spreadsheet, presentation tool, database and drawing tool.
• Camtasia, a screen video recorder/editor that lets you create your own video presentations.
• SnagiIt, Camtasia's sister-product, a screen-capture and editing utility.
• EndNote and ProCite, sophisticated academic tools that automate the process of creating bibliographies and citations.

Two small notes:

(1) To access this site, you'll need to be logged into an on-campus computer or a remote computer with McGill's Virtual Private Network installed and running.

(2) Always use Internet Explorer to download software from this site, it gets a little wonky with Firefox.

Do you have a favourite McGill website mystery-place? Please send it to mark.shainblum@mcgill.ca.