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Resources and News for Information Professionals
ResourceShelf is Compiled & Edited By Gary Price, MLIS Librarian Director of Online Information Resources, Ask.com Editor and Compiler, The ResourceShelf Editor and Compiler, DocuTicker
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Saturday, May 31, 2003
Special Libraries--Health Source: Rocky Mountain News Why Do We Need Librarians? Isn't It All Electronic? The article reports that the Denver Health Medical Center is likely to close its library and fire its librarians in about a month. I don't need to make the case about the value of a library professional. If you do need some, Lynne Fox, president-elect of the Colorado Council of Medical Librarians shares her thoughts about the situation. What I want to highlight from this article is the following, "Chief Executive Officer Patricia Gabow would not confirm the closure. But she said that because of the availability of electronic journals, closing the library, which has been under discussion for some time, is likely." Unfortunately, this is the belief that many people (the ones that pay the bills) have about the need for info professionals. Why pay someone? It's all electronic and just a click away. Oy!
Libraries Scholarly Publishing Six Library Organizations Want Justice Department to Block Cinven and Candover Purchase of BertelsmannSpringer From the announcement, The Information Access Alliance, a group of six library organizations, is urging the U.S. Department of Justice to block Cinven and Candover's proposed purchase of BertelsmannSpringer. The Alliance is concerned that this transaction will bring about a reduction in access to critical research information. Cinven and Candover, a partnership of UK-based private equity firms, has announced its intent to acquire BertelsmannSpringer, the academic publishing arm of Bertelsmann AG. The partnership also announced its intent to merge BertelsmannSpringer with Kluwer Academic Publishers, which Cinven and Candover acquired in January, to form the second largest publisher of scientific journals in the world, trailing only Elsevier Science. The Information Access Alliance, comprised of the American Association of Law Libraries, American Library Association, Association of College and Research Libraries, Association of Research Libraries, Medical Library Association, and SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), was created because of a shared concern about the effects of mergers among publishers of science journals and legal serial publications.
Resources, Reports, Tools, and Full-Text Documents (2 Items) U.S. History New, JFK Library Releases Newly Declassified Content from 1963 You're able to download excerpts of the material in RealAudio format. -- Refugees Source: U.S. Committee for Refugees New, Full-Text Report, 2003 World Refugee Survey Includes country reports and numerous statistical tables/graphs. Friday, May 30, 2003
Public Libraries--United States Source: The New York Times A City's Hard Choice: New Tax or No Library From the article, "Because of an unusual confluence of events, voters will be asked to approve a new tax to pay for a library system that the city budget had always financed. Voters twice rejected the new tax, and unless they vote to approve it Tuesday, the city's two libraries will have to close July 1." (UPDATE 6/4/03): Good News, Library Will Remain Open! From the article, In a strong show of support for an institution most people take for granted, voters in New Rochelle passed their library budget last night, thus averting a shutdown of the library system this summer.
Electronic Discussions IFLA Launches E-Discussion Group About Women's Issues in Librarianship From the site, The WOMENISS mailing list is for librarians and information professionals who are interested in sharing information about the status of women in librarianship.
Industry Briefs CQ..."Congress Collection" Added to Electronic Library Product CQ...Now Available: Perpetual Electronic Ownership Option for CQ Researcher
Resources, Reports, Tools, and Full-Text Documents (4 Items) Education--United States--Statistics Source: NCES Full-Text, The Condition of Education 2003 -- Real Estate--United States--Statistics 1) Full-Text Report: Home Values: 2000 Summary/Fast Facts ||| Full-Text -- 2) Housing Costs of Renters: 2000 Summary/Fast Facts ||| Full-Text Both reports contain charts and top 10 rankings. -- Selected Recently Updated Congressional Research Reports * Full-Text, Budget for Fiscal Year 2004 * Full-Text, Cuba: Issues for the 108th Congress * Full-Text, China's Economic Conditions * Full-Text, Africa: U.S. Foreign Assistance Issues * Full-Text, Campaign Financing
ERIC AP's ERIC Article, A Fundamental Error It's good see in the mainstream media (Associated Press) an article about ERIC's funding situation. Particularly one that focuses on the useful and important resources (including ERIC Digests) and services the ERIC Clearinghouses offer. Nevertheless, the writer, Steve Giegerich, confuses the ERIC Database with the Clearinghouses. He writes, "the databases — known as clearinghouses — are operated by independent government contractors, located at colleges and universities around the country." Huh? The database is the database and the Clearinghouses are the Clearinghouses. The ERIC Database is secure but as Barbara Quint's Info Today article points out, "Specifications for the new contract omit requirements to support most of the customer services conducted by the clearinghouses, including the production of the popular digests, toll-free phone assistance, and the 6-million-hits-a-week AskERIC service." The ERIC database will go on. Databases are wonderful, important, and essential tools, to help satisfy a user's info need but PEOPLE and INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION are also essential and need to be part of the ERIC service. Research is more than typing a few words into a database. Often asking an expert a question (eg. Clearinghouses) or reading an expert written ERIC Digest can allow you get an authoritative answer in a very timely and efficient manner. Thursday, May 29, 2003
Resource of the Week SEC Info Continues to Impress SEC Info has been around for a couple of years and has been mentioned many times on ResourceShelf but has never been included as a Resource of the Week. This searchable and browsable database of SEC EDGAR documents as well as Canadian SEDAR documents is more than deserving of a place on the ROW list. Here are a few of many reasons SEC Info.Com is a fave. 1) It's available at no charge! 2) SEC Info's Alert Service is Also FREE! Select the companies you want to monitor and as new docs are filed, an email with a direct link to the filing is sent to you. Yesterday, I got an email alerting me to a new Yahoo filing within 6 minutes of the time it hit the database. 3) The database is updated in real-time with both EDGAR and SEDAR filings 4) You can search material by Search by Name, Industry, Business, SIC Code, Area Code, Topic, CIK, Accession Number, File Number, Date, ZIP, and more. 5) The SEC Info homepage provides you access to numerous links that make browsing easy. You'll find links to browse all of today's filings, recent institutional filings, proxy statements and more. 6) Documents accessed via SEC Info contain internal links that allow you to move around the document quickly and efficiently. For example, note the links embedded in the recently filed Yahoo annual report (10-K). 7) Browse companies by SIC Code 8) If you register for a free account, the "My Interest" section allows you to see a list of your most recently accessed documents. 9) A brief FAQ is available -- Caveat: Like most free EDGAR tools, SEC Info does not allow you to keyword search the "full-text" of filings. If you're looking for a free service that offers full-text searching, take a look at EDGARIQ. --- --- You Might Have Missed A new feature on ResourceShelf that I plan on including links to multimedia collections, image archives, digital archive projects, and other content that you might have overlooked. Let's begin with two collections of streaming media content. Many universities and organizations are offering the chance to watch or listen to lectures and other special events. Here are two favorites. 1) MIT World An archive of special presentations and lectures available for you to watch from a broad range of speakers. Here are just a few examples: * Jeff Bezos, "Earth's Most Customer Centric Company: Differentiating with Technology" * Maurice Sendak, "Descent into Limbo" * Sloan 50th Anniversary: Phil Condit Make sure to visit the complete list of archived presentations. -- 2) Landon Lecture Series Archive Watch or listen to every lecture back to 1966. The Landon Lecture takes place at Kansas State University. Here are a few examples of what you'll find. * From 2002, David McCullough, "The Founders: The greatest generation" * From 2001, Steven Ambrose, "Ike and World War II" * From 1997, Sam Donaldson, "The State of Television Today" * From 1990, Ambassador Abba Eban, "Prospects for Peace in the Middle East" * From 1982, Charles Kuralt, "America: The Long View" * From 1975, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, "The World in the Year Ahead" * From 1968, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, "Conflict in Vietnam and at Home" * From 1967, Governor Ronald Reagan, "Higher Education: Its Role in Contemporary America"
Web Search--AllTheWeb Hooray! AllTheWeb Adds a Spell Check Feature Long overdue, ATW has added a spell check tool. You'll find possible spelling corrections/suggestions at the top of the results list labeled as "did you mean:". I've noticed one issue. The spell check feature does not seem to work for phrase searching. For example, ""chicagoo cubbs" does not offer a corrected spelling but chicagoo cubbs does. Additionally, ATW has added several features in the past month. They include utilizing ATW as a conversion tool and calculator. In April they added a dictionary feature.
Enterprise Search--Ask Jeeves Ask Jeeves Unloads Enterprise Search Division It's enterprise technology (aka Jeeves Solutions) is sold for $4.25 million cash to Kanisa, a customer service software company. See Also: Learn More About Kanisa and the Jeeves Deal
Citation Analysis--Lists & Rankings Source: Institute for Scientific Information Science in Australia, 1998-2002 -- Science in Germany, 1998-2002 -- Microbiology: High-Impact U.S. Universities, 1998-2002 -- U.S. Universities with Highest Concentrations in Management, 1998-2002
Industry Briefs PatentCafe...Company Releases New Concept+Boolean Patent Search Database - ProQuest..Rights to Distribute 30 University of California Press Journals
Professional Reading Shelf Association of Research Libraries: Proceedings of the 142nd Annual Meeting The meeting took place about two weeks ago in Lexington, Kentucky. Here are titles of a few of the papers. * "Architecture as an Asset for Community Building" * "Place and Space: Collections and Access in Light of Changing Patterns of Research and Learning"
Resources, Reports, Tools, and Full-Text Documents Population--United States Source: U.S. Census New, Full-Text Report, The Asian and Pacific Islander Population in the United States: March 2002 Summary ||| Direct to Full-Text Wednesday, May 28, 2003
Web Searching Source: Search Engine Showdown Notess Releases New Web Freshness Survey When Greg Notess publishes a Showdown survey we read. So should you. This report looks at AllTheWeb, AltaVista, Gigablast, Google, Inktomi (via MSN and Hotbot), Teoma, and WiseNut. Here are a few findings: * Most have some results indexed in the last few days * But the bulk of most of the databases is about 1 month old * And some pages may not have been re-indexed for much longer
News Alert Services--The New York Times The NYT Will Soon End Free Access to NewsTracker Alert Tool So long to another useful web freebie. I just learned that as of June 13th, the paper will stop offering free access to their NewsTracker service. News Tracker offers the chance to get keyword alerts via e-mail on topics or terms of interest very soon after it's published. Beginning 6/13, the service will be available at $19.95 a year. You'll have the ability to track up to 10 topics simultaneously, a 90-day archive of articles matching your topic selection (new), and breaking news alerts. See Also: Marketwatch.Com and Yahoo News Continue to Offer Free News Alert Services
Information Visualization Source: Technology Review "Artful Displays Track Data" From the article, Many research projects are dedicated to making this information easy to monitor with a minimum of clicking. Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have written software that also aims to make the experience aesthetically pleasing. The InfoCanvas system displays an electronic scene—a desert, window view, aquarium, beach, or mountain camp—that uses movable elements to represent categories of information. The elements shift as information changes. See Also: Learn More About InfoCanvas See Also: Download an InfoCanvas Display Cool!
Listening Shelf e-Government Source: WAMU Listen Online (RealAudio): Radio Program Focuses on e-Government I know many ResourceShelf reader's have an interest in this topic. This hour long discussion aired on WAMU Radio in D.C. Natural language processing and FirstGov are discussed. Here's the guest list: Costis Toregas, President, Public Technology, Inc. David McClure, Vice President, e-Government, The Council for Excellence in Government Terri Ware, Director, Office of Information Technology & Communication, Prince George's County, Maryland Casey Coleman, Chief Technology Officer, Office of Citizen Services Communications, General Services Administration [The FirstGov.Gov folks] Lisa Mascolo, Managing Partner, Accenture
Professional Reading Shelf (3 Items) Coalition for Networked Information Project Briefings from the Coalition for Networked Information Spring Meeting The meeting took place about a month ago here in D.C. Here are a few presentations, many offer PowerPoint slides, that caught my eye: * New Initiatives for Resource Description and Preservation Metadata * Linking Courseware to Library Resources Using OpenURL: Experience, Possibilities, and Future Direction * SRW: The Search and Retrieve Web Service * Building a Virtual University of the Past: Archives and Electronic Media in the 21st Century * The Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative * Status Report of Ongoing National Library of Medicine End-to-End Pilot Study * The Role of Incentives in Digital Archiving * From PDF to PDF-Archival * ARTstor: Progress Report and Plans -- OCLC A Report From the OCLC Members Council Meeting -- Libraries The June Issue of Walt Crawford's Cites and Insights is Now Available
Resources, Reports, Tools, and Full-Text Documents (4 Items) League of Nations--Photo Archive New, League of Nations Photo Archive Browse hundred of images by category. -- Broadband Internet--United States--Statistics Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project Full-Text, Broadband Adoption at Home: A Pew Internet Project Data Memo -- Endangered Species--Digital Archive New, ARKive From the site, ...a digital safe haven for films, photographs and sound effects of British and globally endangered species. ...free click-and-view access to multi-media portraits of almost 1,000 species, created from the digital records and backed by fact-files and other information. Thanks to S.C. for the news tip. -- Human Rights Just Released, Full-Text: Amnesty International Report 2003 Tuesday, May 27, 2003
Search Engines Source: Wired "Big Changes for Search Engines" A report about a few search-related presentations at last week's WWW Conference in Budapest. If you would like to take a look at the full-text of many conference papers, I've compiled links to many of them on ResourceShelfPLUS.
Metadata--Canada The Library and Archives of Canada Announces Canadian Metadata Forum It's scheduled for September 19-20 in Ottawa. More details to come but some background about the focus of the forum is already available.
Information Industry--Octavo Source: East Bay Business Times Learn About: Octavo From the article, When Czeslaw Jan Grycz sent a team of employees to the British Library to photograph 400-year-old Quartos of Shakespeare, he tried to anticipate the problems they might face. "I've learned about the vagaries of doing business in far-flung locations," says Grycz, chief executive officer of Oakland-based Octavo, a unique publishing company that captures rare classic books and manuscripts, page by page, using the most modern of high-resolution digital media...Grycz worked for 20 years in libraries and in publishing before joining Octavo in 2000 at the invitation of founder John Warnock, a rare book enthusiast and engineer who also co-founded Adobe Systems Inc. See Also: Direct to the Octavo Home Page
Health Information--Drugs--United States Source: FDA Searchable Database, Postmarketing Study Commitments From the intro site, The Web site contains the basic information that FDA committed to make available to the public. The information currently available to search includes only postmarketing study commitments that have been reviewed for accuracy and made with the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) at any time and those made since January 1, 1991, with the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER). This site does not include commitments containing proprietary information. The Web site will be updated quarterly (in July, October, January, and April), at which time additional commitments will be added and the status of existing commitments updated. See Also: Additional Background and Materials See Also: "FDA Attempts To Track Drug Study Status"
Professional Reading Shelf Intelligence Software Source: Fuld and Company 2003 Intelligence Software Report (Executive Summary) One of the big names in competitive intelligence consulting, Fuld & Co., is out with their Intelligence Software Report. The full-text document is fee-based but a 25 page exec summary is available for free. You'll need to fill out a registration form to gain access. It takes about 2 minutes to complete.
Resources, Reports, Tools, and Full-Text Documents (3 Items) War in Iraq Source: House of Commons Library, United Kingdom Full-Text Report, The Conflict in Iraq A 90 page research report. -- Terrorism Source: GAO Full-Text Report, Combating Terrorism: Interagency Framework and Agency Programs to Address Overseas Threat This 274 page report is full of charts and tables. -- Emergency Preparedness--United States Source: U.S. Department of Justice Full-Text, DOJ Emergency Preparedness Manual Monday, May 26, 2003
Public Libraries--United States Source: AP For Libraries, Charity Begins Online From the article, Facing possible layoffs, shortened hours and cuts that would slash their $1.2 million book budget by a third, the staff at the Oakland Public Library in California tried a new twist on philanthropy. They posted a list of books they would buy if they could on Amazon.com, the online bookseller. The response was overwhelming. See Also: Take a Look at the OPL "Buy a Book" Page
Libraries--Asia Source: RFE Central Asia: Libraries In A Difficult Bind Following Soviet Collapse From the article, Some of the world's earliest and most splendid libraries arose between the 2nd century B.C. and the 16th century along the fabled Silk Road, which linked China with Europe via Central Asia. But many of the libraries that the now independent states of Central Asia inherited after the collapse of the Soviet Union have -- over the past 12 years -- fallen victim to neglect, theft, and inadequate funding. In a recent interview with RFE/RL in Tashkent, Uzbek political scientist Rustam Djumayev says there has been a decline in the professional qualifications of library staff over the past decade, especially in the provinces. He said this may be one of the reasons why rare books are being stolen and offered for sale. Sunday, May 25, 2003
Professional Reading Shelf Digital Preservation Source: Syllabus Full-Text, "Digital Preservation: An Individual Responsibility for Communal Scholarship"
Resources, Reports, Tools, and Full-Text Documents United States Source: Library of Congress New Online Collection, Courage, Patriotism, Community From the announcement, In honor of Memorial Day and in celebration of the American spirit, the Library of Congress is launching a new Web site highlighting its collections of veterans’ stories, patriotic music and community life. The new site, called Courage, Patriotism, Community. Saturday, May 24, 2003
Books--United States--Statistics "U.S. Book Production Tops 150,000 in 2002" From the report, R.R. Bowker today released a wide range of statistics on the U.S. book industry compiled from its Books In Print database. The most notable finding is that U.S. title output increased 5.86 % to 150,000 new titles and editions in 2002, while new titles from the largest trade publishers declined 5.02%. University presses increased their title output by 10.21% in 2002, reversing a decline of 4.04% in 2001.
Web Browsers Source: Technology Review Learn About: BrainBrowser From the article, Georgia State University researchers have come up with a Web browser that allows people to surf just by thinking. Previous research has shown that it is possible to move a cursor by controlling neural activity. The researchers' BrainBrowser Internet software is designed to work with the limited mouse movements neural control allows. The browser window is divided into an upper section that resembles a traditional browser and a lower control section. Common controls like "Home", "Refresh", "Print" and "Back" are grouped in the left-hand corner and provide feedback. When a user focuses his attention on a button, it becomes highlighted, and when the user successfully focuses on clicking the button, it emits a low tone. See Also: Friday, May 23, 2003
Motion Pictures Source: The New York Times New, NYT Updates Movie Site, All Reviews Back to 1983 Are Now Available Online (Free!) Fans of the cinema will love this! You can now do a simple search (year, actor, keyword) or browse (by title, genre, year) all film reviews back to 1983 and the read the full-text online at no charge. Want more? Selected reviews back to 1929 (full-text) are also online and available for free. See Also: The Movie Section Now Offers A Complete Chart of Weekend Box Office for the U.S./Canada, U.K., and New York Metro. All-Time Box Office Grosses for the U.S./Canada, U.K., and NY Metro Are Also Available.
Web Search--Northern Light The Return of Northern Light? Only Time Will Tell The Northern Light name and search technology was purchased at a divine bankruptcy auction earlier this week by NL's former CEO David Seuss. What this really means for a relaunch of NL in the enterprise search and the web search space is not clear, especially as to precisely when it will happen. According to the news release, "Immediately, after the acquisition, Seuss contacted the corporate customers for Northern Light’s SinglePoint Market Research Portal that had not fled during the Divine era and assured them that their customer support would soon return to the exceptionally high levels characteristic of Northern Light during its days as an independent company." The news release goes on to note that Seuss wants to put NL's "never before released Northern Light Enterprise Search Engine" on the market. As far as the return of the once publicly available Northern Light web engine, makes no promises about its return. Seuss says, "We have started discussions with interested parties about ideas for new approaches to the Web search problem, ideas that represent a collaboration between others who have done innovative work and Northern Light. These ideas may result in uniquely useful Web search services." Bottom line? Another case of "only time will tell". Good luck to David. Thanks to S.C. for the news tip. (Updated 6/2) See Also: Paula Hane Sheds More Light on the New Northern Light (via Info Today NewsBreaks)
Libraries Source: The Smoky Mountain News Area Debates the Building of Joint Public and Academic Library From the article, A proposal to move Jackson County's main library out of downtown Sylva has upset many residents, but supporters say it is the best way to get the kind of library that is needed. Some Jackson County leaders are backing a plan to build a joint library with Southwestern Community College on its Webster campus. By joining forces, residents could get a $6 million, 25,000-square-foot facility with every imaginable amenity...Joyce Moore, who owns City Lights Bookstore in downtown Sylva, is the spokesperson for KOLD (Keep Our Library Downtown). She has a degree in library science and says there are several reasons for opposing the joint proposal. “Opposition to the move centers around concerns about a conflict of missions and operations between a public and academic library, accessibility to senior citizens and young children and the negative economic impact on the revitalization efforts of downtown Sylva,” she wrote in a statement that came from the group.
Resources, Reports, Tools, and Full-Text Documents (5 Items) Media Ownership--United States Source: Center for Public Integrity New Database, The "Well Connected" Database From the site, This searchable database contains basic information on every radio and television station in America as well as every cable television system and telephone company. You may search by company, by call sign or by area. Searchers will find basic information on some of the most important telecommunication companies, including a brief corporate profile and basic financial information. See Also: Rankings, Top 10 Media Holding Companies -- Veterans--United States Source: U.S. Census New, Full-Text Report: U.S. Veterans Summary ||| Direct to Full-Text A 12 page brief about the veteran population using Census 2000 data. -- Business--United States--Lists & Rankings Source: Forbes 2003 Lists, Best Places For Business And Careers Web site includes "Best Places for Small Business and Careers". This list isn't available in print edition. Other lists are searchable. -- People--Canada--Lists & Rankings Source: ROB "top forty/under forty" This is the 8th annual list. -- Presidents of the United States Source: GPO Volume I of the 2001 Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, George W. Bush Now Available on GPO Access Volumes covering the administrations of Presidents Hoover, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush are included in the Public Papers series. Currently, GPO Access contains the Public Papers for Presidents George H.W. Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush. Additional volumes covering the administrations of Presidents Hoover, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan will be made available from GPO Access in the future. Thursday, May 22, 2003
Web Resources of the Week Two entries for you this week! -- Canada--Web Directories Source: Micromedia/ProQuest 1) HOTLinks from Several Well-Known Canadian Directories (Free) Four Directories of urls and e-mail addresses. The full-text of each directory is a fee-based product. However, access to each HOTLink directory is free. Directory of Libraries in Canada HOTLinks Browse by subject area. -- Associations Canada HOTLinks Browse trade/professional associations. -- Financial Services Canada HOTLinks Browse by company/organization type. -- Canadian Environmental Database HOTLinks --- --- ERIC (Educational Resources Information Clearinghouse) 2) Now Online: New Search Technology/Interface to ERIC Database The engine offers four search options: (Direct to Search Options) A) Basic Search "Conduct a simple keyword search of the ERIC Database. Searches may be further limited by publication type, target audience, record type (RIE/CIJE), EDRS electronic availability, and year added." B) Advanced Search "Conduct a more complex search using Boolean operators "AND" and "OR." Searches may be further limited by author, title, electronic availability, target audience, journal name, publication type, etc." C) Topics Organized Hierarchically "Browse more than 2000 ERIC TOPICS in 50 general subjects areas arranged hierarchically. ERIC TOPICS are based on the content of the Thesaurus of ERIC Descriptors." D) Topics Organized Alphabetically "Browse more than 2000 ERIC TOPICS arranged alphabetically. ERIC TOPICS are based on the content of the Thesaurus of ERIC Descriptors." -- Other Notes: * Utilizes Search/Content Management Technology from Artesia * The Basic/Advanced search interfaces contain spell-check tool. * The % is the truncation symbol. * Basic Interface offers numerous limiting options via pull-down menus. * Results can be sorted by using one of 12 criteria (Basic and Advanced) * Boolean Connectors AND/OR Must Be Upper Case * Records are clearly labeled. "ED" records contain a direct link to the ERIC Document Reproduction Service where these items can be purchased. -- A very useful chart comparing four ERIC search interfaces/engines is also available. In other news, the entire ERIC site has received a makeover. See Also: Directory of ERIC Resource Collections
Professional Reading Shelf Web Credibility Source: Consumers Union Full-Text Transcript, "Building Trust on the Web Consumer WebWatch's First National Summit on Web Credibility" Participants include, Eugenie Prime, Librarian, Hewlett-Packard Doug Leeds, Overture Matt Cutts, Google Sandy Schlosser, ConsumerReports.org Leslie Marable, Consumer WebWatch -- Public Libraries--United Kingdom Source: Demos Full-Text Report, Overdue: How to create a modern public library service Direct to Full-Text ||| Commentary from ManagingInformation.Com
Resources, Reports, Tools, and Full-Text Documents Veterans--United States Source: Library of Congress Material Available Monday, Veterans History Project Goes Online on Library of Congress Web Site From the announcement, This Memorial Day, May 26, 21 fully digitized collections of materials submitted by veterans and civilians will be available for the first time on the Library of Congress Web. Direct to Web Site
News Search--Yahoo Yahoo News Adds Business Content Yahoo News continues to add feeds from various news oriented sites. Unlike other news engines, Yahoo licenses and obtains a feed of the material from each publisher. Other news engines like AltaVista and Google send their crawlers (several times an hour) to each news site looking for new material. Here's a list of the new material accessible via Yahoo News: * Technology News from SiliconValley.com * Business News from Motley Fool * Business News from The Daily Deal See Also: Yahoo News Advanced Interface Four Things You Can Do With Yahoo News Search * Limit By Dateline * Use an * as a Truncation Symbol * Limit with Author's Name * Limit Your Search To Words in the Story Title (Also Available via pull-down) Wednesday, May 21, 2003
Resources, Reports, Tools, and Full-Text Documents (3 Items) Digital Copyright Source: USPTO New, Full-Text Report, Technological Protection Systems for Digitized Copyrighted Works Summary ||| Direct to Full-Text -- Journalism The New York Times Full-Text Access to Jayson Blair Archive From the page, A team of Times editors, reporters and researchers have reviewed 73 articles by Jayson Blair since late October and are continuing to examine his work. This archive also includes articles by Jayson Blair dating back to June 9, 1998. Readers with information about these or other articles by Mr. Blair that may be false wholly or in part are asked to e-mail The Times: retrace@nytimes.com. The page contains full-text access to 73 articles by Blair beginning in 1998. A page where, "falsification, plagiarism and similar problems were discovered in a review of articles written by Jayson Blair" is also provided. Thanks to P.J. for the news tip. See Also: "Poisoning the archival wells" (via Fort Worth Star Telegram) From the article, As journalists dissect the epic scandal at The New York Times, their findings have troubled a key group of specialists: news researchers and newspaper librarians. They tend archives, the treasure trove of information from which they pull all manner of data to help journalists examine trends and developments. They groom databases to yield impeccable details for current and future generations. They have no tolerance for inaccuracy because, like the news staff they support, their credibility is forever at stake. Count them among those who were angered to learn that former Times reporter Jayson Blair had committed extensive plagiarism and falsification of facts. -- Health--United States Source: National Library of Medicine New Web Site, Asian American Health "An Information portal to issues affecting the health and well-being of Asian Americans in the United States."
Patriot Act Source: New York Times "Justice Dept. Lists Use of New Power to Fight Terror" From the article, And agents have contacted about 50 libraries nationwide in the course of terrorism investigations, often at the invitation of librarians who saw something suspicious, said Viet Dinh, an assistant attorney general who briefed members of the House Judiciary Committee on the findings at a hearing today. Librarians, concerned about the government's ability to pry into the public's reading habits, have said they believe libraries have been contacted much more frequently. See Also: Full-Text of DOJ Report Discussed in the Article (Press Release ||| Full-Text of Report, 60 pages)
Briefly Dialog...More Content Added to InSite Service ||| New Content for DialogPRO GPO...Printing Office Completes Budget Request Before Congress
Web Search--Google Source: Library Journal Google Guy: Reference Librarians Can Keep Jobs A very brief report about Craig Silverstein, Google's CTO, presentation at the Info Today 2003 Conference. From the article, The Holy Grail, for Google--to act like a reference librarian in responding to these queries--is "hundreds of years away. Silverstein realizes this, we know it, but does the public? If the public doesn't understand that Google isn't THE solution, let's not blame Google, web search engines in general, or super bookstores. Another question to ask is will "all" information be available for Google to crawl and add to their index? What do info vendors think? Will a one-stop interface provide the usability that users and professionals want? See Also: Google Will Not Separate Weblog Content (via SiliconValley.Com)
Reading List (3 Items) Source: Computerworld The Cost of an E-Mail Hoax Douglas Schweitzer attempts to monetize in the cost of an e-mail hoax in a corporate setting. -- Plagiarism Source: Syllabus "Probing for Plagiarism in the Virtual Classroom" Note: This article is not available in the print version of Syllabus. -- Information Overload Source: Sydney Morning Herald "Spinning Around" A look at info overload. Tuesday, May 20, 2003
Information Industry--ProQuest ProQuest Completes Digitizing 110 Years of The Washington Post Exactly two years after it was first announced, the digitization of the Washington Post from 1871-1987 is complete. It joins the other newspapers in the ProQuest Historical Newspapers program. Every word on every page is now searchable. Material is viewed/printed in pdf. Additionally, each article has been indexed using ProQuest's controlled vocabulary. The archive contains over 2.6 million pages of articles. The Post joins the completed digital archives of The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Christian Science Monitor. Content from The Los Angeles Times (1881-1984) and Chicago Tribune (1849-1984) is coming soon. Cold North Wind is in the process of digitizing the Washington Star beginning in 1852. See Also: Canadian Projects, ProQuest/Micromedia's Digital Archive of The Globe & Mail and Toronto Star See Also: Cold North Wind's "Paper of Record" Digitization Project See Also: Gale Provides A Digital Archive of The Times (London) Beginning in 1785.
Privacy--United States Source: AP DoD Renames Total Info Awareness Project to Terrorism Info Awareness Program From the article, The Pentagon assured Congress that its planned anti-terror surveillance system will only analyze legally acquired information and changed the name of the project to help allay privacy concerns that prompted congressional restrictions. The Total Information Awareness program now under development by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, will henceforth be named the Terrorism Information Awareness program. -- The Full-Text of the Report Submitted to Congress Today (and noted in the article) is Available Online. (FAQ ||| News Release ||| Summary ||| Full-Text). -- See Also: Full-Text, Center for Democracy and Technology Report, Privacy's Gap: The Largely Non-Existent Legal Framework for Government Mining of Commercial Data -- See Also: More Info in this Wired News Story
eBooks--Library Usage New, Special Interest Group About Library Use of eBooks From the announcement, "The Open eBook Forum (www.openebook.org), the trade and standards association for the eBook industry, today announced the creation of a Library Special Interest Group (SIG). The group was formed to enable publishers, eBook resellers, DRM, software and hardware companies to communicate directly with librarians to better appreciate the opportunities and challenges of service for libraries and their patrons. The group meets on a weekly basis via conference calls and maintains communication through an email list. Participation in the group is currently open to the public and further information can be found on the Open eBook Forum (OeBF) website at: http://www.openebook.org/oebf_groups/library.htm
Public Libraries--United States Source: Puget Sound Business Journal "Gates program to wire libraries continues to evolve" From the article, The five-year, $250 million effort by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to bring computers and Internet access to libraries in poor communities is drawing to a close, with the last equipment to be installed by October.
Professional Reading Shelf Web Search--Research Source: IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering Full-Text Article, Topic-Sensitive PageRank: A Context-Sensitive Ranking Algorithm for Web Search
Resources, Reports, Tools, and Full-Text Documents (4 Items) Older Americans--Statistics Source: U.S. Census Full-Text Report, The Older Population in the United States: March 2002 Summary ||| Direct to Full-Text -- Population--United States--Statistics Source: U.S. Census New Report, New Residents of Metropolitan Areas Referred to as "in-migrants". A detailed table of stats is also available in Excel format. -- Philanthropy--United States--Statistics Source: Foundation Center 2001 Tables Now Available, Detailed Breakdowns of 2001 Foundation Giving Patterns These free statistical tables are based on individual records of grants of $10,000 or more awarded by approximately 1,000 of the largest U.S. private and community foundations. Information is provided on funding by subject area, recipient organization, type of support, population group served, domestic geographic focus, top funders and recipients, and domestic vs. international focus. You'll also find Top 50 U.S. Foundations by Giving (Info for 50 States). Tables for 1998, 1999, and 2000 are also available. -- Business--Massachusetts--Lists & Rankings Source: Boston Globe The Boston Globe 100, 2003 Public companies in Massachusetts. Numerous rankings and breakdowns are available.
A Couple of Items from the GooglePlex -- Web Search--Google 1) Google Catalogs Reaches 6,000 Catalog Mark This interesting, useful, and dare I say, fun, demo from Google allows you to keyword search (and/or browse) of over 6,000 catalogs from U.S. businesses. What makes this so interesting? It's one of the best demonstrations of optical character recognition (ocr) searching. In other words, Google is taking the catalogs, scanning them in page by page, and saving each page as an image file. Ocr allows you to search words "inside" each of these images. You can enlarge each page, view multiple pages, and more. Google Catalogs is NOT the same as Froogle. See Also: Amazon Restaurants A similar beta resource using ocr to search restaurant menus. -- 2) News Search--Google Google Starts Adding Non-English Language News to Country Web Sites From the announcement, Users who search the web using Google.com.mx, Google.com.ar, Google.cl and Google.co.cr, Google.it and Google.ch as well as other Google sites that offer Spanish and Italian interfaces, will often see links at the top of their search results marked "News." These news story headlines connect users to articles from a number of Spanish and Italian language news. News links appear only if the search term entered includes a word(s) currently in the news. For instance, a search for "Vicente Fox" on Google.com.mx will return not only pages related to "Vicente Fox," but a list of news headlines related to the Mexican President. The primary Google News interface still only returns English language content. See Also: AllTheWeb News and AltaVista News Germany, and Net2One Contain News in Languages Other Than English
Quote of the Week In an article about dorm rooms and the "housing crunch" at several universities in New Jersey the following quote: "The library is really in their room, on their computer." ----Nancy Mackin, Dean of Students, Ramapo College Electronic resources are crucial and a major focus of what we talk about on ResourceShelf. Nevertheless, I would hope that the Dean of Students at a highly rated liberal arts college understands that all of the material in the Ramapo College Library is not accessible electronically. Unfotunately, these types of comments in the mainstream press reinforce the idea that it's ALL online. Monday, May 19, 2003
National Libraries Digital Archives National Library of the Netherlands and Kluwer Academic Publishers Agree on Long-Term Digital Archiving From the announcement, Peter Hendriks, CEO of Kluwer Academic Publishers, and Wim van Drimmelen, Director General of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB), the National Library of the Netherlands, today signed an agreement on long-term digital archiving of the electronic publications of Kluwer Online. Under the terms of this agreement, Koninklijke Bibliotheek will receive digital copies of all Kluwer journals and books made available on its web platform, Kluwer Online. The web platform now contains 235.000 articles from 670 journals and more than 600 e-Books covering the areas of science, technology and medicine. In 2003 alone more than 70.000 articles and 400 e-Books will be added." See Also: Last August (8/02), the National Library of the Netherlands Announced an Agreement with Elsevier To Create a Digital Archive for Elsevier Science Content
Reminder Starts Today: Symposium on Electronic Scientific, Technical, and Medical Journal Publishing and Its Implications This Natational Academy of Science Symposium is scheduled to take place in D.C. on Monday and Tuesday. If you can't attend in person, you can watch the symposium online and submit questions via e-mail. You'll find more info here and the final program on this web page Listen Here. NOTE: An Archived Copy of the Webcast Will Be Available Soon. Stay Tuned
Image Archives Source: Washington Post "Buried Treasure" The article asks the question, "Why has Bill Gates stashed millions of the greatest images of the 20th century under a mountain in Pennsylvania?" From the article, Welcome to Iron Mountain, the largest commercially owned underground storage facility in the world. This is where Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, has deposited his huge and growing collection of historical photographs -- approximately 11 million negatives, prints, slides -- a cache that represents a culturally significant chunk of the visual history of the 20th century. Down here, underneath the far reaches of western Pennsylvania, in a cold and gleaming vault big enough to stage a Busby Berkeley dance number, a Gates-owned company called Corbis has constructed a home that includes the storied Bettmann Archive, with its sprawling collection of photos and illustrations (film director Martin Scorsese drew on it heavily for "Gangs of New York"); the archive of United Press International, including its vast array of photographs from the Vietnam War; and more than a dozen smaller photo collections.
Professional Reading Shelf (3 Items) PubMed Updated Training Manual Available: PubMed Training materials for the NLM Gateway and ClinicalTrials.Gov are also available. -- Library Technology Selected Full-Text Articles from the March, 2003 Issue of Information Technology in Libraries is Now Online Articles Include: "The Impact of Information Technology on Job Requirements and Qualifications for Catalogers" "Subject Web Page Management without HTML Coding: Two Approaches" "HERMES: The Hopkins Electronic Resource Management System" "Remote Observation Strategies for Usability Testing" -- Free Full-Text Access This Week Only: Campus Wide Information Services Vol. 11-20 available in full-text.
Resources, Reports, Tools, and Full-Text Documents (2 Items) Nursing Homes--United States Source: Gannett News Service Rating America's Nursing Homes This "special report" includes a searchable database of "patient care" quality ratings of 16,000 nursing homes in the U.S. -- Digitization Projects Online Today: Einstein Papers to Be Published on Web From the article, A collaborative effort of the Einstein Papers Project at Caltech and the Albert Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Web site will allow users access to 3,000 digitized images of the Nobel prize winner's writings, Einstein Papers editor Diana Buchwald said. Among them are papers on the special theory of relativity, his never-published travel diaries, various humanitarian statements, and his frequent pleas for peace. Einstein Archives Online will be launched on Monday during a daylong symposium on Einstein's life and work at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The Site is Set to Go Live at 3 PM EDST Today.
Library Funding--United States Source: IMLS Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) Launches Online Project Planning Tutorial From the announcement, The federal Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) has launched an online tutorial to help libraries and museums develop project plans for its National Leadership Grant applications. This tool is designed to make it easier to develop good, competitive applications for federal IMLS grants. Others will also find the tutorial useful for planning projects and IMLS welcomes all users. The full-text of the announcement is available here. Sunday, May 18, 2003
Web Search--Google Source: The New York Times "As Google Goes, So Goes the Nation" What would a week be like without an article about Google in The New York Times? Well, we won't find out this week. Geoffrey Nunberg, a Stanford linguist, writes, Its [Google's] algorithms rank results both by looking at how prominently the search terms figure in the pages that include them and by taking advantage of what Google calls "the uniquely democratic nature of the Web" to estimate the popularity of a site. It gives a higher rank to pages that are linked to by a number of other pages, particularly if the referring pages themselves are frequently linked to. (The other major search engines have adopted similar techniques. Kudos to Dr. Nunberg for mentioning that other engines do the same thing. However, it's important to mention that Google (and other engines) look at many other factors besides PageRank. These factors include terms in the title, keyword density, heading size (H1, H2), bolding, is the site in the Open Directory? It's also worth mentioning that these algorithms are constantly tweaked and closely held secrets. I agree with most of Dr. Nunberg's conclusion, The outcomes of Google's popularity contests can be useful to know, but it's a mistake to believe they reflect the consensus of the "Internet community," whatever that might be, or to think of the Web as a single vast colloquy — the picture that's implicit in all the talk of the Internet as a "digital commons" or "collective mind."... The search engines cruise the alleyways to listen in on all of these conversations, locate the people who are talking about the subject we're interested in, and tell us which of them has earned the most nods from the other confabulators in the room. But just because someone is regarded as a savant in the barbershop doesn't mean he'll pass for wise with the people in the other stalls. NOTE: Dr. Nunberg's mentions at the beginning of the article that the word "ford" returns over sixteen million hits with Google. Although using Google as a popularity counter by using page count totals might not be a useful or valid measurement we're seeing many people doing just this and in many cases not even doing it well. Josh Dube from Poynter Online mentions some of the problems in a recent column. By the way, for those of you who are counting, "ford" returns over 21 million hits with AllTheWeb. In fact, searching for the song title "stairway to heaven" with Google returns about 116,000 while at ATW it returns over 362,000. In fact, most people don't search with quotation marks when phrase searching (a good idea) but ATW will, in many situations, convert your search into a phrase search automatically. Here's an example, note the statement at the top of the list about the query being rewritten. Bottom Line: As we've said many times, page counts are just estimates.
Internet Source: Sydney Morning Herald "Internet feud as health service pushes to delete past" An interesting story about removing of content from a web archive. Saturday, May 17, 2003
Web Search--RocketNews RocketNews Updates Its Look, Releases Desktop Tool I'll spend some time with this one over the weekend and report back. RocketNews has been a favorite news search tool for quite some time. I often find things via Rocket I don't find elsewhere. Here's where you can learn about and download a trial version (free) of the RocketInfo Desktop tool. More later.
Librarians RSS Cohen Providing RSS Feeds for Library Related Sites That Don't Have Them Steven Cohen, editor of Library Stuff and author of "the introduction" to RSS for librarians is offering this new service. You can get complete details here.
Communication and Dissemination--Instant Messaging Source: Fortune "The IM Invasion" More about the rise of instant messaging in the workplace. See Also: Wall Street Journal to Begin Offering Limited Content via AIM See Also: Read about and Demo, SmarterChild, a Chatbot with Ready Reference Material (Free) or Simply Send an Instant Message to smarterchild
Resources, Reports, Tools, and Full-Text Documents Bankruptcy--United States--Statistics Source: Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts Just Released, Bankruptcy Filings, 2002-2003 See Also Several Charts are also available in Excel format: Table F (12 Month Period) (xls) | Table F-2 (12 Months Period) (xls) | Table F-2 (3 Months Period) Friday, May 16, 2003
Web Search--AllTheWeb New Syntax from AllTheWeb, Convert:, ATW as A Simple Conversion Calculator Another neat feature from ATW direct from the search box. Conversion categories include length, time, speed, temperature, weight, area, and cooking. Make sure to visit the reference page to see what you can convert. A Few Examples: convert: 30 sec convert: 3 liters convert: 25 pounds ----- And Some More New Items from ATW ------ 1) Clustered Results: Run an ATW Search and You'll Now See Results Organized Into "Clusters" at the Bottom of the Results List. A couple of years ago ATW offered a similar service called "Fast Topics". Stay tuned for more details. -- 2) ATW now allows you to search any of their "specialty catalogs" from any search box by using the following syntax: pics:, or, images: or image: news: (news database) web: video:, videos: ftp: mp3:, audio: -- 3) A New URL Investigator "Button" for IE, Netscape, and Opera URL Investigator via ATW allows you enter any url into the search box and learn what ATW "knows" about the page along with direct links to an Internet Archive and WHOIS lookup. - See Also: Use ATW as a Simple Calculator
Resources, Reports, Tools, and Full-Text Documents (3 Items) Labor--United States--Statistics Source: Minnesota Work Force Center Chart, Comparing sources of data on employment... Glossary of Labor Market Information Terms -- Transportation--United States--Statistics Source: BTS Full-Text, Issue Brief: Highway Congestion New, 2002 National Survey of Pedestrian and Bicyclist Attitudes and Behaviors -- Recently Updated Congressional Research Service Reports (via FPC) Full-Text, Syria: U.S. Relations and Bilateral Issues Full-Text, Trade and the Americas Full-Text, Campaign Financing Full-Text, India-U.S. Relations Full-Text, Iraq: U.S. Regime Change Efforts and Post-War Governance Full-Text, United Nations Peacekeeping: Issues for Congress
Professional Reading Shelf The May Issue of D-Lib is Now Online Articles Include: "Usage Analysis for the Identification of Research Trends in Digital Libraries" "Keepers of the Crumbling Culture: What Digital Preservation Can Learn from Library History" "Patterns of Journal Use by Scientists through Three Evolutionary Phases" "Developing a Content Management System-based Web Site" "Exploring Charging Models for Digital Cultural Heritage in Europe" "Visions: The Academic Library in 2012" Book Review: XML for Libraries by Roy Tennant Thursday, May 15, 2003
Web Resources of the Week Two items this week. 1) Information Technology--Public Access New, WebJunction From the site, WebJunction is an online community of libraries and other agencies sharing knowledge and experience to provide the broadest public access to information technology. The project is led by OCLC with funding via a three-year grant from the Gates Foundation. The grant is to "build a portal for public libraries and other organizations that provide open access to information". Other organizations involved in the project include the Colorado State Library, Benton Foundation, Isoph, and TechSoup. See Also: You can learn a bit more via this LJ article. See Also: A February, 2002 Op/Ed Column by Bill Gates, "Investing in libraries connects us to the future" See Also: The 5/02 Grant Announcement From the Gates Foundation -- 2) Ready Reference--Thesaurus Information Visualization Visual Thesaurus-Online Edition Plumb Design, an information visualization software company, provides free access to the thesaurus. It utilizes Plumb's Thinkmap (R) visualization software. The content comes from the WordNet project from the Cognitive Science Laboratory at Princeton University. The database contains over 50,000 words and 40,000 phrases collected into more than 70,000 sense meanings. Learning how to use the thesaurus to it's fullest is as easy as taking the tour. Of course, learning as you go, using Ran Hock's "clicking everywhere" method is also an option. You'll need to be using Netscape 7.0 or Internet Explorer 4.0 or higher. I was also able to access using Mozilla. Java will also be need to available. Interesting, useful, and fun! Btw, a fee-based version (with extra features) can be downloaded. Thanks to Mary Ellen Bates, info pro legend and author of the just published, Building and Running a Successful Research Business, for alerting me to this tool. Congrats Mary Ellen!
Professional Reading Shelf WHOIS Source: Online "WHO WAS, WHOIS, AND WHO WILL BE: Domain Name Ownership Research Tools" Mark Goldstein takes a comprehensive look at fee and free services to search WHOIS databases. One tool that Mark doesn't mention in his article is a free software app called Sam Spade. It provides several services and will automatically redirect your WHOIS lookup to the correct registry database. A web version of Sam Spade is also available.
Information Industry--Wiley Wiley Interscience Launches Pay-Per-View Service Wiley Interscience offers full text access to over 300 leading scientific, technical, medical, and professional journals, plus major reference works. Articles can now be purchased using a credit card. See Also: Direct to Wiley Interscience See Also: Journal Finder ||| Book Finder See Also: Search Wiley Interscience Database
Virtual Reference--Wondir Wondir Plans Another Beta Test Hour Matt Koll, co-founder and Chairman of the Wondir Foundation alerts us to a another test of the system scheduled for next Tuesday evening U.S. time. Matt writes, Please join us for a concentrated beta test hour on www.wondir.org, on Tuesday, May 20, 9-10pm, EDT. Please come to www.wondir.org during that hour and help us test the system. Feel free to ask questions. And even more important, please jump in and answer a question or two if you see anything on the ticker that you think you can be helpful with. If you register, and answer a question, you will be eligible to win prizes in the weekly drawing. Wondir is a free site run by a nonprofit organization. Our goal is to have a big open place where people can ask and answer questions easily. You don't even have to register to use it.. See Also: Wondir Receives NSF Grant (9/10/2002) See Also: What's Wondir All About? See Also: Learn More About Wondir via this SearchDay Article See Also:
Resources, Reports, Tools, and Full-Text Documents (4 Items) Public Health Source: Department of the Parliamentary Library, Parliament of Australia Full-Text Report, The Economic Costs of Infectious Diseases Also available, pdf. -- Disabilities--United States--Statistics Source: U.S. Census New, Full-Text Report, Disability Status 2000 -- Legal Industry--Patents--United States--Lists & Rankings Source: IP Law & Business New, Top Patent Practices -- Baby Names--United States--Lists & Rankings Source: Social Security Administration Most Popular Baby Names in the U.S., 2002 See Also, Older Lists and Various Data Sorts are Also Available Wednesday, May 14, 2003
Search Engines Source: VNU Net "Search engines make us dumb" Quite a strong headline. Here's the lead of this tech magazine column, They [search engines] may add huge value in facilitating rapid and effective retrieval of known information, but to put our faith in search engines ultimately disempowers us. A few quick comments. Putting faith in any one resource is probably not a good idea. However, because of the popularity of web engines (one in particular) do this for many people becuase they always deliver something. That said, just which search engine or type of online information is the author talking about? I think he is referring to what we often call "open web" engines like Google, AllTheWeb, Teoma. In my mind the problem is not with the actual web searching technology. Yes, free-text searching will always have have some issues as compared to a formatted database but web searching is getting better all of the time. The problem might be due to the data itself and a lack of knowledge about alternatives. It's hard to make generalizations about open web data. Some of it is useful, timely, authoritative, and just what's needed to effectively answer a query. But, a great deal of content is out of date, inaccurate, incorrect. Since open web engines are so popular (does anything else exist?) they might cause a searcher to spend time looking for an answer that they could get it elsewhere (yes, sometimes from a book) in a matter of minutes. How much time are people wasting because they're searching in the wrong place? What does it boil down to? 1) Lack of knowledge about alternatives, both electronic, print, and human (ask a librarian? give me a break). If people don't know that a resource is available how can they even consider using it? 2) Laziness. So what else is new? When it comes to finding an answer a web engine will deliver something. It might be the right "something" but it might also be a waste of time. Of course, NO resource is perfect. Incorrect data can appear in anywhere. No wonder why info quality skills are so crucial these days. This is why knowledge about variety of resources and strategies is crucial. Here's a favorite quote: From the NY Times (9/2/01): ''People think with the Internet, you push a button and get an answer,'' says Marcia Osofsky, a librarian at the New York Public Library telephone reference desk. Do some people think that library resources (electronic and print) and the librarian are obsolete because of web engines? Unfortunately, I'm beginning to think so. 3) Search intimidation. Afraid and not willing to try a resource because they think it's difficult to access and to use. Searching in many databases is improving. For example, ProQuest offers four interface options. 4) Forgetting that information can cost money. Of course, this also goes back to point number two, since in many cases, a library can assist in providing access to some fee-based material for little or no cost out of the searcher's pocket. 5) The incorrect belief that just about all material has been digitized. So, while Thomas Mann's expression, the "principle of least effort" might be more evident today than ever before, this is not the only problem. We are building better search tools but just building them doesn't make people use them. 6) Information resources (hi and low tech) are not like a field of dreams. Building "it" does not guarantee that they will come. Like I've said many times, it's about marketing and education. If we don't promote the services, tools (why to use them), and most importantly the skills we offer (how to search, formulating a query, which resources to use, judging quality), it's not the researcher's fault/problem/concern for not using them. Yes, it would be wonderful if people sought this stuff out, but most don't. Vendors of database and print products also must also assist in the effort. Thanks to Jill O. at NFAIS for the new tip.
Information Industry--xrefer xrefer to Close Showcase Site, Fee-Based Services Remain One of the most useful web "freebies", the xrefer Showcase will go offline on June 17th. xrefer will continue to maket and develop the xreferplus subscription product for libraries. xrefer Managing Director, Adam Hodgkins, provides a list of reasons why the company is shutting down the showcase. They include: * The existing xrefer showcase service is becoming an increasingly inaccurate demonstration of xrefer's content and technology. * Another major reason for discontinuing the free showcase site is that the licence to include reference works published by Oxford University Press (OUP) expires in June, and has not been renewed. * Finally, the showcase site was originally supported by advertising revenue and we all know what a difficult (almost non-existent) business that has become. xreferplus offers searchable full-text access to over 130 reference books from a variety of well-known publishers. Although the product is not available for a single person to subscribe to, xrefer is offering a 30 day trial (free) to both individuals and institutions. It will be interesting to see if the company will make individual subscriptions available. ebrary announced this type of service a couple of days ago.
Professional Reading Shelf Open Archives Initiative Source: The Technology Source All About the Open Archives Initiative Web Site Stephen Downes provides an overview of the OAI web site. From the article, Readers will not be dazzled by glitzy graphics as they enter the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) Web site, but its potential impact on learning is greater than that of most glossy online brochures. As stated on the site, the Initiative "develops and promotes interoperability standards that aim to facilitate the efficient dissemination of content." In other words, it details a mechanism that can be used by colleges or individual professors to share their work freely over the Internet.
Public Records Office--United Kingdom PRO-Online Service Relaunched as DocumentsOnline From the site, DocumentsOnline (formerly PRO-Online) allows you online access to the Public Record Office's collection of digitised public records, including both academic and genealogical sources. Searching the index is free, and it costs Ł3 to download a digital image of a document. We have completed the first phase of enhancements and we will continue to improve the website over the next few months. A new advanced search interface is also available. DocumentsOnline uses Verity search technology.
Library URLS Source: Seattle Times "Web site too close to library's for comfort" Another story about how guessing/assuming a url is not always a good idea. The article discusses how KCLS(dot)Com is not the King County Library System. A similar story from about 2 weeks ago discussed how the Monroe County Library System in Indiana is having a similar problem. O.K. now a minor point. The article makes it seem that the library web site and catalog is just about telling you if a book is available. Yes it does this but it also provides a gateway to so much more. Thanks to S.C. for the news tip.
Web Search Source: NSF "Researchers Develop Techniques for Computing Google-Style Web Rankings Up to Five Times Faster" This news release discusses a paper that will be delivered at the WWW2003 Conference next week in Budapest. Btw, if you're interested in taking a look at a selection of other conference papers, check this post on ResourceShelfPLUS. Many of the papers are available in full-text format.
Information Industry The Codies: SIIA Announces Winners of Industry Awards The awards (called Codies) are given by the Software & Information Industry Association, a major trade association. Here are the winners in a few categories. Entopia Knowledge Locator, Entopia Best Search Engine Factiva Best Online Business News or Information Service Best Online Professional Financial Information Service. Lexis Nexis and Westlaw Best Online Legal or Tax Information Service OxfordReference.com, Oxford University Press Best Online Reference or Directory Service The Wall Street Journal Online Health Industry Edition, Dow Jones & Company Best Online Science/Technology/Medical Service Nationalgeographic.com, National Geographic Best Online Consumer Service -- You can review the complete list of winners here.
Resources, Reports, Tools, and Full-Text Documents (3 Items) Middle East Source: ebrary Full-Text Content: Middle East Ebrary The company is offering free access to over 100 full-text books and maps about the Middle East. Publishers include Knopf, Routledge, Harvard Univ. Press, and Greenwood. -- Accessibility--United States Source: Information Technology Technical Assistance Center and Training Center (ITTATC) New, Overview of State Accessibility Laws, Policies, Standards and Other Resources Available On-line -- Online Databases Source: EPIC Full-Text: FBI Memo on the Use Private Databases Full-Text: FBI Presentation on the Use Private Databases Here's the description from the EPIC site, A FBI memorandum obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, discusses use of private sector databases for intelligence investigations. The memo concludes that FBI agents may use the databases without violating the Attorney General's Guidelines. A separate presentation claims that the FBI has increased its use of such databases by 9,600% since 1992. Tuesday, May 13, 2003
Information Industry--ebrary ebrary Launches Service For People Who Don't Have Access to Service via a Library From the announcement, "Independent researchers who do not have access to ebrary’s database collections through their library may now pay for an individual account. The company today announced the availability of ebrary Discover, a new fee-based website that provides independent researchers with anytime, anywhere access to over 20,000 authoritative titles including books in full-text, sheet music, reports and other authoritative documents from more than 150 leading publishers such as Cambridge University Press, Random House, Inc., and The McGraw-Hill Companies. Discover ebrary at http://discover.ebrary.com."
News Competitive Intelligence NewNow Does Continues To Expand, Pass 9000 Source Mark A mention of NewsNow's expansion is becoming a regular occurrence on ResourceShelf. No problem. NewsNow is one of the most useful and valuable news resources available for free on the web. Today, the company passed the 9,000 (English language) source mark. That's right, over 9000 open web news sources constantly being crawled and new items being added to the NewsNow database. According to the company about 80,000 new articles are added each day. It was just over a month ago when we reported NewsNow passing passing the 8,000 source mark. Material can be browsed via one of the numerous subjects available via pull-down menus on the right side of the page. All pages auto refresh every 5 minutes. Unfortunately, only a basic (single terms, in title) search engine is available via the free service. Nevertheless, this is one impressive news resource and is most worthy of your attention. Finally, you can also turn NewsNow into a "virtual news ticker" via the Live Feed link. Here you'll see all articles as they are acquired by the crawler.
Web Search--Daypop A Conversation With Dan Chan, Daypop's Founder and Sole Proprietor Here is the first part of an interview with Dan Chan, the person who created and currently runs Daypop, a specialized web engine devoted to weblog and news material. Look for Part 2 in the next week or so. In fact, ResourceShelf is in the process of conducting interviews with people from several web engines. Before we get to the interview, Dan's development and devotion to Daypop is worthy of the highest praise. Even if other engines begin devoting more resources to weblog searching, Daypop should not be forgotten. Because Daypop is the work of one person, Dan can experiment, try "new things" (search options, lists, rankings), and tweak the engine in a matter of hours if not minutes. ----- Part 1 of Interview with Dan Chan ----- Q. Can you share some of Daypop's history with ResourceShelf readers? For example, when did you start it and why? A. During the 2000 Presidential Elections I was keeping up with the news from Hong Kong (where I was staying at the time) and writing in my blog. I wanted to know what other people thought of the elections and I realized there wasn't any way of searching for current events. All the search engines at the time were on a two-month cycle for each crawl of the web. They were missing out on a huge amount of dynamic content, all the sites that I call the Living Web. I wanted to read news articles about the elections, to expand my reading beyond Salon, but most importantly I wanted to get all the different viewpoints on the elections. What better way to get opinions that to search blogs? That was like a Eureka moment for me when I realized there was this huge void -- no one was offering a simple Google-like service to search highly dynamic sites. Someone had to fill that void. In April or May of 2001 I started working on it, almost full-time, and I launched at the end of August 2001. Q. What are Daypop's current numbers in terms of sources, hits, etc. A. There are about 1000 news sources from around the world and about 13000* weblogs. All the feeds from NewsIsFree as well as the weblog RSS that Blogstreet tracks are also indexed. I believe NewsIsFree has about 5000 feeds and Blogstreet tracks about 9000 feeds. Daypop gets about 50,000 page views a day. * Today (5/12/03), Daypop increased its coverage by adding 19,000 blogs. So, the current total of sources is over 35,000 (News, Weblogs, RSS Feeds). Q. You're one person running a very well-known web tool. Is Daypop your only job? How much time do you put into running it? A. I stopped working on Daypop during the weekdays around the beginning of 2002. It's mostly a weekend thing for me now. I'm actually a videogame programmer and I'm currently working on a project for a home console system. The last game I worked on was Crash Team Racing for the Playstation. Q. Is funding an issue? I noticed that you ask for donations? A. I've put up a lot of money (in addition to all the time) to keep Daypop running. The cost of the line is just a part of it. The cost of the equipment is also a major factor. The little advertising Daypop has had plus all the donations don't even add up to the cost of the equipment. But I consider the server my donation to Daypop and I'd be happy if just going forward I could break even. The server right now is overburdened, it takes care of all the crawling, indexing, inverting, analysis (Top 40, Top News, Word Bursts, News Bursts, Wishlist, Top Weblogs), and searching. Daypop's index is updated continuously. I'm looking into offloading some of that work to another server, but of course that's another added cost. Q. What has Daypop taught you about how people search for news and information? A. People still perform general searches (many one word queries) even when looking for news. "Iraq" has topped the charts for a while now but a search like that will turn up semi-random articles about Iraq without a specific context. It's a very general search. A small minority of searchers actually use Daypop to narrow their hunt for news with searches like "Basra" or "Jessica Lynch". Q. When you started Daypop it was one of the few specialized news engines available. Then, Google News came along and many people became aware of news and specialty search. Did your visitor numbers decrease? A. Surprisingly, no. I knew it was a matter of time before Google came out with a news search and when they did I took solace in the fact that at least Daypop indexes weblogs also (which I've found just as useful as news search). I guess most Daypop users think the same way, they've stuck with Daypop even through the extended downtime in November 2002 (which I apologize for). Q. Did Google news force you to change anything? Focus more on blogs and less on news sources? A. That's something I've been mulling over recently. Should I drop the news search from Daypop altogether and concentrate on weblogs? But there are still plenty of people who use Daypop for news searches, and some people are even finally utilizing the RSS feed feature to create customized news feeds. And Daypop indexes all Western European languages whereas Google just indexes English sites. So I think there's still value in keeping news search in Daypop. Q. Has Google or any other engine ever contacted you merge Daypop into their service or for you to become part of their team? A. Several companies have given me calls but nothing has ever come of it. Q. Dan, you're someone deeply involved in web search, what's wrong with it? A. I've got some ideas that I'm working on for Daypop on the weekends so I don't really want to let the cat out of the bag, but it boils down to the fact that I still have to dig for relevant information. If I have to dig, at least give me the tools to do it. ---- Final Note: In addition to making news and weblog content searchable, make sure to take a look at the interesting rankings that Daypop also provides. Top 40 | Top News | Top Posts | Word Bursts | News Bursts | Top Wishlist | Top Weblogs | Blogstats The Blogstats service is also new today. Blogstats, "generates a page of statistics for any weblog in Daypop's index." -- Coming Soon Part 2 of the Dan Chan Interview -- See Also: "Can Daypop Stay Out of Google's Headlights?" A new article by Mark Glaser in Online Journalism Review
Web Search Source: The Virtual Chase "Different Engines Search Differently" Genie Tyburski writes, Penn State researcher Bernard J. Jansen finds that searchers should stick to using one or two engines in order to retrieve the best results. He contends that until search engines understand what searchers mean, rather than what they type, searchers would do well to avoid different search utilities with diverse syntax and algorithms. Those who feel relief at Jensen's conclusion should understand that his advice does not amount to good research strategy. I agree 100% with G.T's comments. No one said that "doing research" and "finding an answer" was as simple as typing in 2.1 words and clicking search. It's also worth mentioning that in many cases popular searches, independent of search syntax and in some cases exact terms, have result sets pre-built or hard coded by the engines and always return the same result sets. Finally: 1) The study does not take into account any advanced syntax such as limiting to words in the title, url, etc. 2) It only looks at the top 10 results. In some cases a useful answer can be found after the number 10 result. 3) An implied AND is in use at all major engines. You only need to type it when using a boolean search box. 4) If you use OR with Google it needs to be in upper case. 5) AOL Search uses a major portion of the Google database. 6) At least the study mentions learning two engines. Today, it's been my experience than many people only rely on one. 7) Another important research need is helping users determine "which" engine or tool to choose or not to choose. The question, "where do I begin" is a common plea. Of course, this is a crucial skill that all information professionals should have, nothing new here. Traditional skills are still important. The challenge (and it's a big one) is keeping this type of knowledge current. See Also: Full-Text of News Release Announcing 'Jansen' Study See Also: Full-Text of Many of Dr. Jansen's Publications
Speech Recognition Source: MIT Technology Review "Natural Language: Beyond the Conversation" From the article, Software that analyzes verbal expression is helping computers deal intelligently with e-mail, audio and video recordings, and other “unstructured” information. Companies mentioned: Banter Stream Sage Fast Talk iPhrase Nuance SpeechWorks See Also: Special Section of Tech Review, "Language Machines"
Briefly ExLibris...Company Names New CEO/President and Chairman of the Board -- Allentown, PA...Library Ready to Launch New ILS (via Allentown Morning Call) -- ProQuest....New Content Added to Digital National Security Archive Database -- LexisNexis...Upgrade to Lexis.Com
Resources, Reports, Tools, and Full-Text Documents (2 Items) History--United States Source: U.S. Census Fast Facts, Louisiana Purchase Bicentennial Facts about the U.S. before and after the Louisiana Purchase. -- Virginia--Databases New, Health Department Makes Restaurant Inspection Database Available Online Monday, May 12, 2003
Quote of the Day "Even Google's engineers admit Fast and Teoma deliver results comparable to theirs." ------From Forbes magazine. You can read more quotes and comments from the article here. Quick Comment: Teoma also provides the very useful REFINE and RESOURCE options. AllTheWeb provides several advanced limiting options that Google doesn't offer. AltaVista offers truncation, proximity, and other features. My point, other engines provide useful answers, just ask the Google engineers. Vivisimo which is powered by most of these databases clusters your results, plus offers the very useful "preview" feature.
Scholarly Communication Open Access Journals--Directory New, Directory of Open Access Journals is Now Online Three months after being first announced, the new directory goes live. This searchable directory, being developed at Lund University in Sweden, currently contains information about 350 open access journals. From the announcement, The goal of the Directory of Open Access Journals is to increase the visibility and accessibility of open access scholarly journals, thereby promoting their increased usage and impact. The directory aims to comprehensively cover all open access scholarly journals that use an appropriate quality control system. Journals in all languages and subject areas will be included in the DOAJ.The database records will be freely available for reuse in other services and can be harvested by using the OAI-PMH (http://www.openarchives.org/), thus further increasing the visibility of the journals. The further development of DOAJ will continue with version 2, which will offer the enhanced feature of allowing the journals to be searched at the article level, and is expected to be available in late fall 2003. See Also: ResourceShelf's 2/14/03 Post Introducing the Project
News Search--Google Google Launches Regional News Interfaces It's important to remember that these new "regional" versions access the same content that's included via the primary news page BUT these new sites give a higher relevancy weighting to sources from each country on the automated "top stories" displays. When I reviewed the new pages early Monday morning I noticed that the algorithms need more tweaking since sources from outside of these countries were appearing. These "regional" versions also illustrate Google's marketing superiority. They'll create a massive amount of press attention in the next few days reinforcing Google's brand throughout the world. All they have done is simply repackaged content that has been available for many months. 1) Google News Canada 2) Google News U.K. 3) Google News Australia 4) Google News New Zealand 5) Google News India You can also read the official news announcements about the Canadian and U.K. versions. See Also: See Also: Remember, Google News Only Provides Access to English Language Content. AllTheWeb News, Net2One and AltaVista News Germany, and the Regional Versions of Yahoo Provide Content in Other Languages.
Digitization Technology Source: The New York Times "The Evelyn Wood of Digitized Book Scanners" John Markoff writes, Putting the world's most advanced scholarly and scientific knowledge on the Internet has been a long-held ambition for Michael Keller, head librarian at Stanford University. But achieving this goal means digitizing the texts of millions of books, journals and magazines — a slow process that involves turning each page, flattening it and scanning the words into a computer database...For Mr. Keller, the robot, made by 4DigitalBooks, one of two companies now introducing the first automated digitization systems, is a boon...The first book-scanning robots were introduced this spring by 4DigitalBooks of St. Aubin, Switzerland, and Kirtas Technologies of Victor, N.Y. The machines have already begun to generate interest from libraries and private and nonprofit groups now working to digitize books. See Also: Learn More From the 4DigitalBooks Home Page
Resources, Reports, Tools, and Full-Text Documents (2 Items) SARS--Webliography New, Government Views of SARS This comprehensive collection of web accessible resources was compiled by Grace-Ellen McCrann, Chief, Government Documents Division at the Cohen Library, The City College of New York. -- North Korea Source: Department of the Parliamentary Library, Parliament of Australia Full-Text Report, Resolving the North Korea Nuclear Crisis Sunday, May 11, 2003
Public Libraries Source: The New York Times "When Doors Are Barred, and Books Sit Idle" After reading this article, you'll see why super bookstores are becoming public libraries for many people. Sad. The NYT recently published an article about this topic.
Professional Reading Shelf Scholarly Publishing--United Kingdom Source: British Medical Journal Full-Text article, "Libraries face higher costs for academic journals" From the article, Growing numbers of university librarians are reporting difficulties in continuing agreements to pay for increasingly expensive academic journals that their budgets can no longer afford. Academic librarians and publishers attending the annual meeting of the UK Serials Group (a professional interest group on scholarly communication) last week said that the organisation and funding of research publications would have to change. Since the article was published, several "Rapid Responses" have been published. You can read them here. UPDATED 5/14/02...Editorial: "Scientific literature's open sesame?" (via British Medical Journal)
Digital Archives--Music "Mellon Foundation Grant Helps Create Digital Video Archive of World Music" From the announcement, "A new world of music from around the globe will soon be available to students and scholars. A research team from Indiana University and the University of Michigan has received an $875,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to create an online digital archive of video recordings and a searchable database for research and teaching." See Also: Learn Much More About the Digital Archive
Resources, Reports, Tools, and Full-Text Documents Digital Library Projects--Canada Source: The Library and Archives of Canada New, Hockey History Time In Canada! (via the Library and Archives of Canada) From the announcement, Just in time for the playoffs, the Library and Archives of Canada this week launched a pair of scintillating new Web sites: Backcheck: A Hockey Retrospective and Backcheck: Hockey for Kids. Both sites explore the history and development of hockey using photos, stories and manuscript materials, most of which are available to the public for the first time. Developed by the Digital Library of Canada in partnership with the Society for International Hockey Research, Backcheck features great hockey stories based on English and French language newspapers, rare photos, and valuable information for researchers, teachers and hockey buffs. Saturday, May 10, 2003
National Libraries--Russia Source: Moscow Times Russia's National Library Celebrating 175th Anniversary From the article, The library -- the second largest in the world after the U.S. Library of Congress -- is emerging from one of the hardest periods in its history this year to celebrate its 175th anniversary. Viktor Fyodorov, the library's chain-smoking director, is realistic but optimistic about the future. Funding is up 200 million rubles from the last year, a new building is to be built and Pashkov House, which has disgracefully lain derelict for 15 years waiting for repairs, will finally be returned to its former glory...With 40 million books in 30,000 square meters of space, the library has been bursting at the seams for years. It receives 400,000 new items per year and needs 1,000 square meters per year just to fit all the new books on the shelves. By law, the library is supposed to receive two copies of every book and document published in Russia, although it gets only about 70 percent. See Also: Direct to the National Library of Russia Web Site
Intranets Source: Intranet Professional An Interview with Jakob Nielsen on Designing Web sites for the Intranet From the interview: Q. When designing an intranet, what would you consider the three wisest considerations to address for the user experience? A. 1) consistency, design standards, and templates 2) Search 3) Continuous updates of content, in particular with respect to news on the top levels of the intranet
Information Industry--LexisNexis Source: Dayton Daily News LN Sells Off Doument Services Unit From the article, LexisNexis, an online provider of information, said Wednesday it has agreed to sell its document solutions unit to Corporation Service Co. Terms of the deal between LexisNexis and Wilmington, Del.-based CSC were not disclosed. The document solutions unit, based in Springfield, Ill., sells technology and services used by lenders, businesses and law firms to search, file and organize uniform commercial code, motor vehicle and corporate documents. Friday, May 09, 2003
Web Search--Google Source: Forbes.Com "All Eyes on Google" Another in what seems like a never ending stream of Google "is it" articles. Like I always say, Google is a wonderful and important tool but it is not the answer. One thing is for sure, Google has made all web engines better but the other web engines don't seem to have the wonderful p.r. machine that Google has. This article provides a history of the company from a business perspective. Quotes "Even Google's engineers admit Fast and Teoma deliver results comparable to theirs." Quick Comment: Teoma also provides the very useful REFINE and RESOURCES options. -- "In Westport, Conn. consultant Elena Amboyan's kids use Google daily; even when they research something at the library, they say they're Googling it." -- "[Larry] Page adds that Google has become "like a person to [Google users], helping them and giving them intelligence any hour of the day." -- "Google will need to quell the hubris that is much in abundance at the jubilant company these days." -- "Cheesy as it may sound," says cofounder Brin about the company's early days, "we never thought in terms of revenue streams." Now he must, for the next year or two could determine whether Google delivers on the high hopes it inspires in so many quarters or instead falters, glorying in its early success while others plot its doom." -- "Google's long-term dream is to index all of the world's public information and make it searchable--everything from driver records to radio shows and films--and reap profits from it." (Give me a break). -- "I fear we'll grow shortsighted and lose the wider potential applications of our company," says Brin. "The biggest thing we'd lose is the opportunity cost of what we could do if we didn't go public." -- "Every Friday [Eric Schmidt] holds a companywide meeting, preaching to a cocky flock. Along with Brin and Page he talks business, technology--and attitude. He reminds these whiz kids to count on nothing." -- Final Comments I think it might be a good time to once again include a few comments from Walt Mossberg. Mossberg writes for the Wall Street Journal. In a review of Gurunet, he discusses a few of Google's limitations. Actually, these limitations are true for most general web engines. He writes: + "But as brilliant as Google is, this process has several limitations. First of all, in most cases Google doesn't actually provide you an answer, just a list of links to Web pages where information might be found. So getting the exact information you want requires more steps: You have to browse through the links Google offers, pick out one that looks good, then go to it and look for the relevant material." + "Second, you're doing all this in a general, undifferentiated piece of software called a Web browser that isn't designed to help you drill down into information." + "Third, neither the browser nor Google gives you a good sense of the credibility of the sources that turn up, just their popularity." You can read the complete article here. -- See Also: The article makes mention of Page and Brin's PageRank algorithm. In fact, link analysis was developed prior to Google at IBM for their Clever project. Clever was never made available to the public. However, many of Clever's underlying concepts are now being utilized at Teoma. To learn more, take a look at this Scientific American article. Brin and Page cite some of the IBM work in their 1998 paper. -- And in Other News... See Also: "Google to fix blog noise problem" (via The Register) ResourceShelf is Mentioned. Btw, I'm thrilled to see that the author is planning on doing a story about library based resources. I did my best to "sell" the idea to him during the interview. It seems to have worked. Hooray!!! One resource I mentioned several times during my interview and was no included in the article was Daypop, a search engine devoted to weblog content that has been around and doing a great job for the past several years. Will Google's entry into this area make people forget about this valuable tool? Why do people think that if it's not Google, it's not important? Daypop is run by one person, Dan Chan, in San Francisco. -- See Also: A Brief History of Google (Compiled for ResourceShelf, 9/02)
Open Access Scholarly Publishing Public Library of Science Announces Their First Open-Access Journal From the announcement, The Public Library of Science (PLoS), a nonprofit organization of scientists committed to making scientific and medical literature a public resource, is pleased to announce that we have established a nonprofit scientific publishing venture and that we will be publishing our first open-access journal, PLoS Biology, in October 2003. I have published the complete PLoS announcement on ResourceShelfPLUS. See Also: Direct to Public Library of Science Home Page
Instant Messaging Source: News.Com The Wall Street Journal Now Offering Limited Content via AOL Instant Messenger Instant messaging will continue to develop as a delivery tool for content and as a place where searches can be launched and questions can be asked. Have you seen SmarterChild? From the article, Whenever AIM users want to access the service, they can send an instant message to WSJonline. The Journal then sends instructions, via IM, for navigating a menu that will provide updated stock quotes and summaries of news articles. In their IM windows, the AIM users can view online sections of the publication such as top U.S. news stories or search for headlines by ticker or by company name. Full versions of the articles are available only to those who subscribe to the Web site. Notes: If you don't have an AOL account you can still register for an AIM account, free. If you're unable or don't want to download the AIM software, no problem. Check out the Java based, AIM Express. See Also: Dow Jones News Release About WSJ Service
Professional Reading Shelf Information and Libraries The May Issue of First Monday is Now Online Articles include: Creating the Digital Future What is a library anymore, anyway? Issues in sustainability: Creating value for online users Business model issues in the development of digital cultural content
Resources, Reports, Tools, and Full-Text Documents Business--Europe--Lists and Rankings Source: Tornado Insider Europe's top 100 emerging private tech companies Thursday, May 08, 2003
Web Resources of the Week Two resources for you this week! --- 1) Ready Reference Demographics--United States Various Zip Code, Area Code, Street Look-Up Databases (U.S. and Canada) Numerous sites provide access to this type of info but this compilation of FREE lookups from Melissa Data is first rate. Here are a few examples of what you can access. You'll need to spend some time with this one to see all of the data that's available. ++ ZIP-City-Phone "Lookup ZIP Codes, city names, the location of phone numbers or the cities covered by an area code." ++ Street Name "Enter any street name in the U.S. and get a listing of which states and cities have the street name. Even displays local street address detail." ++ Income Tax Statistics "Income tax information by ZIP Code. Includes average AGI, number of returns, average refund, filing status, age and more." ++ Canadian Addresses "Lookup any Canadian address and get the Postal Code, time zone and area code." ++ Area Codes in a Radius "Displays a listing of the Area Code + Prefixes that fall within a radius." ++ ZIP Codes by County "Obtain a list of the ZIP Codes in any county in the United States." ++ ZIP Codes in a Radius "Displays a listing of the ZIP Codes that fall within a radius." -- 2) Image Searching Search an Image Database using Optical Character Recognition During the past year I have enjoyed using Visoo. It was a test site from Cobion that allowed users to keyword search and find text inside images. Well, it appears that Cobion has removed the site from the Internet. However, you can still use the technology because it's available from a German website, Freenet.de. Details ++ Here's a translated (English-German) version of the search interface page. ++ Check the "Term must be contained in the picture as text" box. ++ Enter your terms, click the search/"suchen" button. That's it. Remember, with other image engines your finding words in the text surrounding the image, in the image url, in the alt-image tag and elsewhere. This tool will find text in the actual image file. Cool! Google Catalog's also uses ocr. Finally, you'll also notice two other limits that you often don't see with image engines: A) "In the picture the face of a person must have to be seen". B) The option to search only bitmap files. -- Note: Once you obtain a set of search results and want to view the individual images you'll need to translate the results page back into German. The link is at the top of the page and is labeled, "View page in its original Language".
Broadcast Archives National Public Radio University of Maryland to house NPR News Collection From the announcement, The University of Maryland Libraries in College Park, MD have become the institutional curator and depository for the NPR News Programming Collection. This valuable collection of more than 29,500 audiotape reels chronicles, in depth, all of the major world news events that occurred from1971 to 1988. The collection, to be located in the National Public Broadcasting Archives (NPBA) in Hornbake Library, will be accessible on May 1. NPR will transfer each year to the Libraries some 4,000 additional tapes spanning events beyond 1988. See Also: Don't Forget, NPR Also Provides a Searchable Archive of Content from Several Major Programs On the Web. Material Dates Back to 1996. Once A Program or Segment is Located, You Can Listen to It Online using RealAudio. See Also: Here Are A Few Other Well-Known Broadcast Archives 1) Television News Archive at Vanderbilt University The Television News Archive collection at Vanderbilt University is the world's most extensive and complete archive of television news. The collection holds more than 30,000 individual network evening news broadcasts from the major U.S. national broadcast networks: ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN, and more than 9,000 hours of special news-related programming including ABC's Nightline since 1989. Search the Television News Archive Database. You can read abstracts online. Very useful and interesting. -- 2) Footage.net Search material (abstracts available) from CNN, NBC News, AP Television News, and many other film/video archives. Most of the material in this database is available for licensing but CANNOT be viewed online. -- 3) ABC News VideoSource Search and purchase material online. -- 3) The C-SPAN Archive The database cannot be searched online.
ERIC ALA/ACRL Forward Comments to Department of Education About ERIC Funding Situation This four page document was sent to the Secretary of Education and other Department of Ed. officials. Thanks to FOS News for the tip.
Iraq Source: CNN "Thousands of Iraqi artifacts found" From the article, U.S. Customs agents, working with military and museum experts at the National Museum in Baghdad, have recovered nearly 40,000 manuscripts and about 700 artifacts, government officials announced in Washington Wednesday, leaving perhaps only a few dozen key pieces missing.
Information Privacy--United States Source: IDG News Service "Feds Defend Data-Mining Plans" From the article, Leaders of two much-criticized projects that privacy advocates fear will collect massive amounts of data on U.S. residents defended those projects before the U.S. Congress Tuesday, saying the projects will be much more limited in scope than opponents fear. James Loy, director of the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA), and Anthony Tether, director of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), countered concerns that the TSA's proposed Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System (CAPPS II) nor DARPA's Total Information Awareness research project would house new volumes of data that could be later used to check up on U.S. citizens..."You pay us to contemplate," Tether said of DARPA considering the use information such as library records. "I personally would be extraordinarily surprised if video rentals would be something that they use."...But the FBI's [Steve] McCraw said his agency is planning to search publicly available databases, such as LexisNexis, to track criminals with a data-mining project called SCOPE that it is developing. The FBI protects against false information in those databases by checking out the leads it finds in the data, he said, and it has no plans to purchase personal information on U.S. citizens who are not part of an investigation. See Also: "Balancing Data Needs And Privacy" (via The Washington Post) From the article, Nonetheless, if such a system can be made to work while respecting the privacy of law-abiding Americans, Teresa Lunt likely will play a key role. Lunt is the computer security expert here at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) hired by the Pentagon's research arm to create a "privacy appliance" prototype for the electronic surveillance network.
News Briefs Yahoo! considers localized searches (via Seattle P-I) -- Flexible E-Paper on Its Way (via Wired)
Web Search--Overture Source: News.Com Overture sued over Fast acquisition From the article, Overture Services has been sued over its acquisition of Norway's Fast Search & Transfer, the company disclosed in a securities filing Wednesday. Overture said MRT Micro ASA filed suit April 10 in federal court in Massachusetts seeking all of the proceeds from the $70 million deal, as well as preliminary and permanent injunctions blocking the sale of Fast's search assets. MRT alleges that it owns some of the technology that Overture is acquiring in the purchase. See Also: Read the Full-Text of the SEC Filing Discusses this and other law suits.
Libraries "Pentagon Library Back Home After Difficult Journey" From the article, Library director Mena Whitmore and her staff were glad to be back on Pentagon grounds, the end of a difficult journey to get back home. For more than a year, the fourth floor of the Taylor Building in nearby Crystal City was home for the library, its collection relocated there after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack...The staff returned to find thousands of books and documents damaged from the water, dust, mold and mildew. "We lost most of our official records for acquisitions, catalog statistics, personnel files and personal belongings," she [Angela Henson, military documents specialist] said. "The mold had taken over everything." BMS Catastrophe, a company that handles recovery and restoration of documents, was called in to repair the library collection. "The contractors had to clean the dust volume by volume, page by page," [Barbara] Risser said of the recovery effort.
Resources, Reports, Tools, and Full-Text Documents (3 Items) Economics--Global--Statistics Source: IMF New, The World Economic Outlook (WEO) Database Numerous statistics available in Excel format. Charts include, Selected World Aggregates, Gross Domestic Product, Current Prices, Per Capita Gross Domestic Product, Inflation, General Government Fiscal Balances, and more. See Also: Full-Text of Report -- Legal Citation--United States Source: Legal Information Institute New Edition Now Online, Introduction to Basic Legal Citation (LII 2002-2003 ed.) -- SARS World SARS Cases and Infection Time Line Graph Using data visualization technology from Corda. Wednesday, May 07, 2003
Libraries Source: The Central Florida Future (Univ. of Central Florida) "Internet replacing libraries as top source for research" Here's another article from a student run newspaper on the topic of libraries being replaced by the Internet. But what Internet? The open web (Google, AllTheWeb) or materials available via a library? From the article, When Jen Kiraly goes to the library to do research, she said she usually ends up leaving with a huge stack of books. "A lot of the times [the books] look like they're going to be helpful, but then when I get them home and actually read them, they're not," said Kiraly, a creative writing major. Out of frustration, she said she turns to the Internet these days to complete her research. Kiraly, a senior, said libraries should put more books and journals online so students can access them from home. "I think that eventually there won't need to be a library," said Kiraly, 21. "Our society is moving towards being completely computer run. So, it only makes sense if libraries went completely online too." Ms. Kiraly's final quote is a real stinger. Although the article discusses electronic fee-based databases available via the library, I think her quote highlights the lack of understanding between traditional fee-based database tools (available electronically) and general open web searching. I continue to hear, particularly from academic, public, and school librarians, that instructors demand that their not use the Internet. I think also illustrates the lack of understanding between "on and via the web resources". Kudos, to the information professionals who make some important comments in the article. How about one more quote from the article? Here goes, I have only been to the library maybe five to seven times my whole college career," said Jessica Clark, a junior in advertising and public relations. Although she thinks the library is useful, Clark, 20, said in comparison to the Internet, researching the traditional way takes too much time. No comment needed. What a mess!
Digitization Projects--National Agriculture Library Image Preservation "Joint Project Will Help Libraries Care for Still-Image Collection" From the announcement, The National Agricultural Library (NAL) has announced a cooperative project to improve the care and accessibility of still-image collections by developing guidelines to assist institutions in preservation reformatting projects. The joint project with the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the Boston College Library will develop a readily accessible guide to best practices that will help libraries integrate preservation and digitization functions. NAL and the Boston College Library are both ARL member libraries. Thanks to Noteworthy for the news tip.
Taxonomies--Education Source: National Center for Educations Statistics Now Available on the Web: Classification of Instructional Programs From the site, The purpose of the Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP) is to provide a taxonomic scheme that will support the accurate tracking, assessment, and reporting of fields of study and program completions activity. The 2000 edition presents an updated taxonomy of instructional program classifications and descriptions. CIP 2000 is now available on the web in a searchable, downloadable data base. The data base permits a full-text search of the CIP and contains all of the tables in the CIP publication including the crosswalk table between the 1990 CIP and the CIP:2000. These tables can be down loaded into an Excel or Access.
U.S. Government FirstGov.Gov Unveils Redesigned Site A new look and some new features this federal gov portal. The search functionality, including the powerful advanced interface, remains the same. Remember, you can limit your search to material from state government web sites. Other new features include: + We Answer Your Questions." E-mail your questions and comments about the government and you'll get a response within two business days at the latest. + "Information by Topic." The most popular topics, such as travel and recreation, are highlighted to help you quickly find what you're looking for. + "News and Features" keeps you up-to-date on current events and information that you need right now, such as checking on your tax refund status. + "Gateway Tabs" provide an easy and fast way for citizens, businesses and nonprofits, Federal employees, and other governments to get to the specific services they need. See Also: Vivisimo Has a New Site Where You Can Dynamically Cluster FirstGov Results into Various Topics
Professional Reading Shelf Electronic Information The May, 2003 Update to the Subject Index to Literature on Electronic Sources of Information is Online Marion Dworaczek's other excellent resource, Electronic Sources of Information: A Bibliography has also been updated. -- Web Navigation Full-Text, A Special Issue of IT&Society Devoted to Web Navigation Articles Include: Governmental Statistical Data on the Web: A Case Study of FedStats "Serving Citizens' Needs: Minimizing Online Hurdles to Accessing Government Information" "Patterns of Information Seeking on the Web: A Qualitative Study of Domain Expertise and Web Expertise" "Post-Valued Recall Web Pages: User Disorientation Hits the Big Time" Thanks to iaslash/ for the news tip.
Industry News Briefs Thomson...Company Launches New Home Page for ThomsonFN.com Note: All of the investment tools on ThomsonFN are available at no charge. -- OneSource...Upgrade to Business Browser Product Line With Companies House Images
Resources, Reports, Tools, and Full-Text Documents Trade Unions--History--United Kingdom New Resource, History of Trade Union's in the U.K ...a partnership initiative between London Metropolitan University and the Trades Union Congress in support of their strategies in lifelong learning, made possible through a grant from the New Opportunities Fund as part of their NOF-Digitise programme...The site consists of five learning resources, which will be released in phases throughout 2003. At present you can take a journey through 150 years of labour history with our Timeline, or learn about the Match Workers strike in 1888. Tuesday, May 06, 2003
Online Databases Library Services Get Mention in PC Magazine Article This is something we don't see everyday! In his PC Magazine article, "How to Find Anything Online", writer Sean Carroll includes a section about libraries and library databases. This is great to see. From the article, Library reference departments are still great sources of information, even in today's online environment. Many of the indexes, directories, and encyclopedias you used in print have been reformatted and are available online. Perhaps even more important, the magazines and peer-reviewed journals you no doubt used for academic research are also often available online. For those of you who aren't aware of some of the electronic tools available to you from public libraries, an article that I wrote for Search Day might be of interest. Thanks to J.H. for the news tip. See Also: Full-Text of "How To Find Anything Online" (via PC Magazine)
Citation Analysis--Lists & Rankings Source: Institute for Scientific Information * Library & Information Science: High-Impact U.S. Universities, 1997-2001 -- * Science in Canada, 1998-2002 -- * Science in the Netherlands 1998-2002 -- * Public Health & Health Care Science: High-Impact U.S. Universities, 1998-2002 -- * Engineering Mathematics: High-Impact U.S. Universities, 1998-2002 -- * Social Work & Social Policy: High-Impact U.S. Universities, 1998-2002 -- * Science in the United States, 1998-2002 -- * Religion & Theology: Most Prolific U.S. Universities, 1998-2002 -- * Mechanical Engineering: High-Impact U.S. Universities, 1998-2002 -- * Science in Japan, 1998-2002 -- * Science in France, 1998-2002
Web Search--Google Source: Reuters On Google Going Public: CEO Comments Nothing really new. However, when Eric Schmidt talks people listen. Yesterday, he said, Google "has no plans right now to go public." From the article, "Schmidt said the company will stay focused on its core search technology, which it outsources to corporations, Web sites and Internet service providers such as Yahoo Google allows people to search Web pages, as well as search specific types of content such as news sources, shopping sites through its "Froogle" service, Usenet groups. Soon the company will also offer a service for searching Web logs, known as "blogs," Schmidt said...[He] also forecast that by 2008 everyone will have a continuous wireless Internet connection. A search tool specializing in weblog search called Daypop has existed for a couple of years. It is the work on one, Dan Chan. Also, Google currently includes many weblogs in its database. For example, ResourceShelf is recrawled and reindexed every 24-48 hours.
Public Libraries Source: Pioneer Press Minneapolis Public Library Hire's New Director, Not a Librarian From the article, If there's one shortcoming to Hadley in the job, it's that she's a lawyer, not a librarian. "That's unusual, and in principle, I'm opposed to it," said Maurice J. Freedman, president of the American Library Association and director of the Westchester (N.Y.) Library System. "A lot of people think judges should be lawyers, and we tend to like our surgeons having board certification," Freedman said. "This has nothing to do with credentials of Ms. Hadley, but a library is staffed by people with master's degrees in library science who understand what is done, how it's done and why it's done." Spotted at LISNEWS.Com.
Government Information--Ohio Source: Info Today NewsBreak "Ohio Bill Threatens Flow of State Government Data" ResourceShelf included news about this story about two weeks ago. From Barabara Quint's article, Some librarian listservs and discussion groups buzzed recently about a new bill in the Ohio state legislature that could threaten the flow of digital information from state agencies, including publicly owned libraries. The bill is drawn from model legislation written by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC; http://www.alec.org), a conservative, public and private sector membership group that includes 2,400 state legislators. Further investigation indicated that the legislation has had little success outside of Ohio.
Intranet and Personal Search Source: Business 2.0 "When Google Isn't Enough" A discussion of Scopeware and The Brain Btw, I've been demoing a version of Scopeware that allows me to keyword search most materials on my hard drive. So far, very impressive.
Professional Reading Shelf (3 Items) OpenURL Source: Charleston Adviser An Interview with Herbert Van de Sompel Creator and first developer of OpenURL. -- Internet Resources The May Issue of Roddy McLeod's Internet Resources Newsletter is Online -- Internet Resources The May Issue of Peter's Digital Reference Shelf is Online This month Peter reviews: 1) The Collins English Dictionary, 2000 edition This excellent dictionary is almost totally overlooked by Web directories. It has a very good selection of about 200,000 words with clear definitions and etymology notes, all served up by simple, yet smart, software courtesy of Michael Kellogg and HarperCollins, the publisher of the print version of the Collins English Dictionary. -- 2) Encyclopedia of Music in Canada This valuable digitized version of a well-known print resource with full-text search capability occasionally lacks current information and is missing independent entries about a few musicians, music industry personalities, orchestras, institutes and at least one important genre -- all of which deserve their own entries.
Resources, Reports, Tools, and Full-Text Documents U.S. History Source: GPO' Full-Text, Transcripts of "Closed" McCarthy Hearings Released (1954-1955) See Also: Background via New York Times Article Monday, May 05, 2003
Library Science Education Source: Newswise "Course Introduces Future Librarians to Data-Rich World of Sports" Fun and education in Seattle! From the article, What may be the nation's first university graduate course on Information In Sports is quietly introducing 30 future librarians this spring to, among other things, the infield fly rule. The librarians-in-training even attended a Seattle Mariners baseball game together. Mike Eisenberg, dean of the UW's Information School (formerly School of Library and Information Science) and one of the two instructors in LIS598, said sports offers a perfect setting for probing information challenges, from research to competitive intelligence.
Intranets Source: PC World Intranets are 'information dumping grounds' From the article, Company intranets are a waste of time and money as they are only used as "information dumping grounds", new research has warned. A study by human resources consulting firm Mercer has criticised many internal websites for being disjointed and for failing to fit into an overall corporate communication strategy...Many sites are created by self-serving departments with little regard for the needs of other employees," he said.
Resources, Reports, Tools, and Full-Text Documents (2 Items) Museums--United Kigdom Tate Modern Interactive Exhibit Launches "Explore Tate Modern provides users with an interactive floorplan of the permanent display galleries at Tate Modern. Upon entering the site online visitors discover that the homepage echoes the vast space of Tate Modern's famous Turbine Hall and that the left wall animates the 3-D plan and displays generic gallery information. Visitors can wander through the virtual galleries, finding detailed information on each of the fifty-five rooms and listen to audio descriptions." -- Congressional Research Service Full-Text, updated reports available. All reports are pdf files. 1) North Korea's Nuclear Weapons Program -- 2) Nuclear Nonproliferation Issues -- 3) Iran: Current Developments and U.S. Policy -- 4) AIDS in Africa Sunday, May 04, 2003
Smart Mobs Scholarly Communication 1) Watch Howard Rheingold Discuss Smart Mobs, An MIT Lecture From October, 2002. Available in both Real and Microsoft formats. - 2) " Watch Scholarly Communication in a Digital World: A Thought Provoking Symposium To Celebrate the World-Wide Launch of DSpace" From November, 2002. Available in both Real and Microsoft formats. Presentations by: * Ann Wolpert, Director, MIT Libraries * Hal Abelson, Class of 1922 Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, MIT School of Engineering * James Boyle, Professor, Duke University School of Law * Clifford Lynch, Director, Coalition for Networked Information
Resources, Reports, Tools, and Full-Text Documents ( 2 Items) National Libraries--Japan Political Science--Japan Source: The National Diet Library New Online Exhibit: Birth of the Constitution of Japan Includes documents, timeline, bibliography, and glossary. See Also: "Historic constitutional documents released online by Diet Library" (via Daily Yomiuri) -- Freedom of the Press--Global Source: Reporters Without Borders Full-Text, Freedom of the Press Throughout the World (2003 Annual Report) Saturday, May 03, 2003
Internet Filtering Source: Ottawa Citizen "Library board OKs Net filters for children" From the article, "After weeks of furious public debate, the library board has reversed an earlier decision not to put Internet content filters on its computer terminals. After a gruelling three-hour meeting last night, the board voted in favour of a moderate filter policy that makes filtered Internet access the default safeguard for children 16 years of age and younger, unless their parents expressly permit use of unfiltered terminals."
Information Technology Source: sci.NewsFactor.com "An Illinois County Makes an Attempt to Go Paperless" Paperless has been a goal for many organizations. Has it ever worked? From the article, The fastest-growing county in Illinois has summoned the will to go paperless. In order to minimize storage space, cut costs and improve efficiency, employees of Will County -- also the 37th fastest-growing county in the United States -- have installed a new software application called "ViewWise" to manage and store their now-electronic records."
Resources, Reports, Tools, and Full-Text Documents (2 Items) Genetics Source: NLM New Site, Genetics Home Reference "Your Guide to Understanding Genetic Conditions". -- Sign Language International Bibliography of Sign Language Spotted at BUBL, "Contains over 30,000 academic titles and 3000 abstracts focusing on modern sign language research, deaf culture, sign language interpreting, and education of the deaf. Bibliography is browsable by author, keyword, or classification, and searchable by author, title, keyword, or year of publication." Friday, May 02, 2003
Web Search--AltaVista Overture Completes Acquisition of AltaVista The deal is done. AV is now in the Overture stable. The company completed the deal for AllTheWeb about a week ago. According to the news release look for a "common platform" by the end of 2003. Until then, each engine will remain as separate entities. Four members of the "old" AV management team will join Overture. Jim Barnett, formerly AltaVista's chief executive officer, will lead Overture's Web search efforts and will report to Overture's Meisel...Fred Bullock, formerly AltaVista's senior vice president and chief marketing officer, will direct site management and marketing for Overture's Web search efforts and will report to Barnett...John Ellis, formerly AltaVista's senior vice president of engineering and operations, will oversee those same areas for Overture's Web search efforts and will report to Barnett.
Recommendation Systems in 2003 Source: The New York Times "Making Intelligence a Bit Less Artificial" Lisa Guernsey takes a look at recommendation systems being used by Amazon and others. Interesting reading. You'll also learned what happened to the Firefly technology after it was purchased by Microsoft.
Professional Reading Shelf Visualization of Information Source: Information Today Full-Text, Visualizing Online Information (An Interview with Tim Bray) -- Libraries Source: CLIR The May/June Issue of the CLIR Issues Newsletter is Online Articles Include: "Trends Affecting the Space Required by Library Collections" "What Users Are Telling Us: A Symposium"
Resources, Reports, Tools, and Full-Text Documents (3 Items) Citation Indexing Source: ISI 1) List: The 20 most-cited countries in clinical medicine, 1992-2002 2) Rankings for India among the 149 top-performing countries in all fields 3) Rankings for South Africa among the 152 top-performing countries in all fields -- Energy Source: EIA Full-Text Report, International Energy Outlook 2003 Highlights ||| Full-Text -- Air Quality Source: American Lung Association Full-Text, American Lung Association State of the Air: 2003 Thursday, May 01, 2003
Web Resource of the Week Specialized Databases--Meetings and Events MInd: The Meetings Index MInd: The Meetings Index is a "just online" free searchable database from InterDok. The database is provided by InterDok the company that publishes the fee-based Directory of Published Proceedings (DoPP). From the site, "Listings are for conferences, congresses, meetings and symposia that eventually will result in published proceedings and therefore, be referenced in DoPP." The database is keyword searchable and can also be browsed by subject categories. Top-level categories include: Science/Technology, Medical/Life Sciences, Pollution Control/Ecology, and Social Sciences/Humanities. After making a selection numerous limiting parameters are available. For example, after selecting Science/Technology you're can narrow (via a pull-down menu) using a couple of hundred parameters. You're also able to narrow your search by year, country, state, and sponsor. Event records contain contact info and when available a link to the conference home page. More Facts About MInd: The Meetings Index * The database is in the early stages of development. As of today it contains about 2200 records. * MInd is updated daily with at least 50 new records added each day. The plan is to have at least 10,000 records in the database by the end of the year. * About 50% of the records in the database come from material submitted by conference organizers via a form on the site. The other 50% comes from InterDok research. All information is verified before it hits the database. * MInd was once a fee-based, print resource. It ceased publication about nine years ago. InterDok has been in business since 1964. * Future Plans? In addition to expanding the database the company plans to introduce MIndAlert, a free e-mail event alert service. See Also: Learn More About InterDok
Audio Searching Source: Technology Review "The Grammar of Sound" A look at the Fast-Talk's searching technology that allows you to keyword search audio files. See Also: Two Other Articles About Keyword Audio Searching From ResourceShelf #1 ||| #2
Trade Associatons A Report About From National Federation of Abstracting and Information Services Conference Source: Library Journal In her May column, Dr. Carole Tenopir reports on activities at the NFAIS Annual Conference. You can learn more about this trade organization by heading to their home page. From the article, The National Federation of Abstracting and Information Services (NFAIS) was founded to bring secondary publishers together to share common concerns. As I witnessed at the 45th annual NFAIS conference in February, secondary publishers these days are being joined by primary publishers, aggregators, and even a few consumers. Together, these constituents will determine the tenuous future of indexing and abstracting services. But first they have to determine just who their systems are designed for. See Also: In October, 2002 ResourceShelf Featured News About a NFAIS Produced Brochure Aimed at Library Users
Professional Reading Shelf (2 Items) Electronic Library Full-Text, The April, 2003 of Ariadne is Now Online Articles Include: What features in a Portal? ePrints UK: Developing a national e-prints archive Syndicated content: it's more than just some file formats Stakeholder Requirements for Institutional Portals -- Librarianship Full-Text Now Available, The Journal of the Medical Library Association (April, 2003) Articles Include: * "The use of online information resources by nurses" * "1927 reference in the new millennium: where is the Automat?" * "Measuring use patterns of online journals and databases"
Standards--OpenURL NISO Discover Patent Apps Filed for an OpenURL Tool From a news release, "On April 10, 2003 NISO learned that an international patent application was filed with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) via the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) by Openly Informatics, Inc. We have subsequently learned that Openly Informatics also filed a patent application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office November 10, 1999. Openly Informatics is a NISO Voting Member and Eric Hellman, President of Openly Informatics, is a member of NISO's OpenURL standards committee. On its face, the description of the "invention" in the patent filing mirrors the OpenURL Framework, the basis for NISO's OpenURL standard. Learning of this patent application was of great concern. One of our aims in the NISO community is to create a body of standards that is open, and fully and freely available to the community of implementors, with no impediments to implementation."
Internet Research Skills Source: The Virtual Chase The Skill of the Hunt: Effective Research Strategies for Finding Information on the Web From Genie Tyburski's article, "Successful Web-based research encompasses economy of time and effort. It also takes into account the quality of the answer. The key is to focus on the strategy and skill of the hunt rather than the find."
Resources, Reports, Tools, and Full-Text Documents Digital Libraries New, Afghanistan Digital Library You can learn more about this new project at NYU in this LJ article. |
