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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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Sunday, July 31, 2005
Professional Reading Shelf Congrats to ResourceShelf and DocuTicker Deputy Editor, Shirl Kennedy! Info about her upcoming book is now available in the Amazon.com database. Way to Go Shirl, We're Proud of You!!! The book will be published in November. -- Information Literacy Source: Stephen C. Miller, The New York Times M.I.D.I.S. (Miller Internet Data Integrity Scale) (PDF; 71 KB) "MIDIS is a way to determine if a web site has valid information that can be used in news reports. The standards we apply to non-digital information are - or should be - no different from the standards we apply to computerized information. The chart below is a guide to help you determine if the information you get off the Internet can be trusted. MIDIS sets a Hierarchy of Trust."
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents Military Science--Bibliographies Source: Air University Library Two new bibliographies: + Distance Learning in the Service (by service branch) + Leadership and the Military (Internet Resources, Case Studies, Ethics, Executive Leadership, Followership, Leadership, Management, Military Leadership, Motivation, Organizational Leadership) -- Government Contracts--United States--Printing Source: Government Printing Office + Just Released, GPO's Top 50 Contractors (by dollar value) + GPO's Top 50 Top 50 Contractors (by state) + Summary All documents are PDF files. Saturday, July 30, 2005
Professional Reading Shelf Library of Congress--Acquisitions Source: LC Library of Congress Acquires Rare Musical Theater Manuscripts "The Library of Congress has recently received two important gifts of manuscripts to add to its Music Division American Musical Theater collections. The first is a collection of lyric sketches by Lorenz Hart, the lyricist who collaborated with Richard Rodgers between 1920 and 1943 and wrote dozens of enduring standards, such as 'My Funny Valentine,''The Lady Is a Tramp,' and 'Bewitched.' The second collection, of Oscar Hammerstein II manuscripts, comes to the Library as a gift from Hammerstein's biographer, author and record producer Hugh Fordin."
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents London Bombings Source: SF Chronicle Chronology of London bombings, investigations, arrests Compiled by Johnny Miller, a librarian (and ResourceShelf reader) at the SF Chronicle Library. -- Postsecondary Institutions--Enrollment Source: National Center for Education Statistics Enrollment in Postsecondary Institutions, Fall 2003; Graduation Rates 1997 & 2000 Cohorts; and Financial Statistics, Fiscal Year 2003 "This report presents findings from the spring 2004 Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) Web-based data collection. Data were requested from over 6,600 postsecondary institutions participating in Title IV federal student financial aid programs. The tables in this publication present enrollment data for fall 2003, financial statistics for fiscal year 2003, and student financial aid data for academic year 2002-2003. Also included are graduation rate data for the 1997 and 2000 student cohorts." Full Report (PDF; 609 KB) Friday, July 29, 2005
Professional Reading Shelf Web Directories Source: LII Take a Look: Preview of the Redesigned Librarians' Index to the Internet Now Online One of the great web directories is online with a preview of its new look. Impressive! Great slogan too!!! Kudos to Karen Schneider and her team. More soon. Note: If you've never visited and/or used the LII, make sure to visit. We can't stress enough how useful the LII is. It's also a great illustration of the important work info pros are doing in the web age. -- Library Databases Source: Forbes Good Press for Library Databases If we've said it once on ResourceShelf, we've said it more than a thousand times, library databases provide free remote access to a treasure trove of material. We're thrilled to see others writing about them. If you're interested in a recent article that Gary wrote on the topic, here's a link. The article concludes with a piece of advice that we've also been repeating for years. "My biggest complaint is that some libraries' Web sites don't detail the amazing range of services they offer online until you cough up a card number. Memo to those insular institutions: Put the info in the shop windows out front and I bet you'll see a lot more card-carrying customers walking through the electronic doors." -- Information--Standards Source: National Information Standards Organization The July Issue of NISO Newsline is Now Available Reports include: + ANSI Approves Bibliographic References Standard + Scientific and Technical Reports Standard Receives NISO Approval -- Global Information Locator Service (GILS) Source: Federal Computer Week GILS could soon get the boot "Popular commercial search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN Search might soon replace a 10-year-old government search standard intended as an electronic card catalog of public government information. The National Institute of Standards and Technology wants to withdraw the Global Information Locator Service (GILS), which it considers to be an obsolete search standard. A July 15 Federal Register notice states that recalling the standard seems justified because most agencies now use commercial search tools to help people locate government information." See: GILS website
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents Women--Lists & Rankings Source: Forbes Just Released, The 100 Most Powerful Women The Top Ten 1. Condoleezza Rice 2. Wu Yi 3. Yulia Tymoshenko 4. Gloria Arroyo 5. Margaret Whitman 6. Anne Mulcahy 7. Sallie Krawcheck 8. Brenda Barnes 9. Oprah Winfrey 10. Melinda Gates Note: Kudos to librarian/speaker/author/Director of Research at Forbes/friend/ResourceShelf reader/user, Anne Mintz, who worked on this just released list. She even gets a mention in the "Reported by" section of the article. -- Business Ownership--United States--Statistics Source: US Census New, Minority Groups Increasing Business Ownership at Higher Rate than National Average, Census Bureau Reports "Minority groups and women are increasing their business ownership at a much higher rate than the national average, according to new tabulations titled Preliminary Estimates of Business Ownership by Gender, Hispanic or Latino Origin, and Race: 2002, from the U.S. Census Bureau's 2002 Survey of Business Owners (SBO) released today." Summary By Sector By State See Also: California Home to Growing Number of Minority- and Women-Owned Firms, Census Bureau Announces -- Youth--United States--Statistics Source: NCES Just Released, Youth Indicators 2005: Trends in the Well-Being of American Youth "Youth Indicators contains statistics that address important aspects of the lives of youth, including family, schooling, work, community, and health. The report focuses on American youth and young adults 14 to 24 years old, and presents trends in various social contexts that may relate to youth education and learning." -- Children--Well-Being--United States Source: Annie E. Casey Foundation KIDS COUNT 2005 Data Book Online From press release (PDF; 36 KB): "National trends in child well-being are no longer improving in the rapid and sustained way they did in the late 1990s, according to a report released today. Among the negative trends: the number of children who live with parents facing persistent unemployment grew to 4 million, an increase of more than 1 million since 2000. These parents often face issues such as domestic violence, depression, substance abuse, and prior incarceration that make connecting to the workforce especially difficult." Download entire data book(PDF; 5.4 MB) Via DocuTicker. -- Music History Digitization Projects Source: University of Pittsburgh Digital Research Library Just Released, Stephen Foster's Sketchbook "The Digital Research Library released an image collection containing the page images of Stephen Foster's Sketchbook, which contains draft texts for sixty-four songs including several of his most popular ones such as 'Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair,' 'My Old Kentucky Home,' and 'Old Folks at Home' (or "Way Down Upon the Swanee River?). The sketchbook, which dates to June 26, 1851, can be searched by a full-text transcription or browsed by song title." Searchable.
Search Briefs + Goin' Mobile With Technorati + A Look at Search Interface Protocols and Specifications Thursday, July 28, 2005
Resource of the Week by Shirl Kennedy, Deputy Editor If you've been with us awhile, you know how much we enjoy digital collections. We also like "one-stop-shopping" sites, and if you're with us on this, we've got a terrific resource for you this week. Digital Libraries--Databases Source: Grainger Engineering Library, University of Illinois/Institute of Museum and Library Services IMLS Digital Collections Registry We gave this one a brief mention on ResourceShelf a week or so ago, but we felt it warranted a closer look. "The IMLS Digital Collections Registry includes digital collections created or developed as part of one or more National Leadership Grant projects. These collections include both traditional digital library collections of digitized content and "born-digital" resources and non-traditional collections such as learning modules designed for online use. The collections have been created both through innovative collaborations among large numbers of institutions and through the work of a single institution. In many cases the digital content is an important by-product of other foci of the NLG project such as training, research, or education." More than 130 digital collections are featurered here now, each fully described via the IMLS DCC Collection Description Metadata Scheme, based on the UKOLN RSLP Collection Description Metadata Scheme and the Dublin Core Collection Description Application Profile. Now that we've gotten the geeky stuff out of the way, let's take a look at the content. The home page is pretty self-explanatory; you can browse the collections by: + Subject (Arts, Educational Technology, Foreign Languages, Health, Language Arts, Mathematics, Philosophy, Physical Education, Religion, Science, Social Studies, Vocational Education) + Object (Dataset, Image, Interactive Resource, Moving Image, Physical Object, Sound, Text) + Place (countries, cities, states) + Collection Title (alphabetical) If you're so inclined, you can also browse by National Leadership Grant Project (alphabetical) or Hosting Institution (alphabetical by state). There's a simple keyword search form on the home page. An advanced search form allows you to restrict your keyword search to a particular type of object. (More than one type may be selected via checkboxes.) The search results include collections and hosting institutions. For each collection, there is a link to its home page, a brief annotation and a link to a full record containing the title, URL, description, GEM subjects, standard subject entries, geographic coverage, time period, objects included, format, intended audience, intereaction with collection (e.g., search, browse), size, frequency of additions, metadata schema used, supplemenetary materials, hosting institution and more.
Social Media Part 1: A Conversation with OurMedia Co-Founder, J.D. Lasica by Christina Pikas, Contributing Editor Ed. Note: We would like to welcome Christina Pikas, a librarian at the Johns Hopkins University Advanced Physics Lab, to the ResourceShelf/DocuTicker team. She'll be contributing items from time to time. Christina also has her own blog; it's linked here. I recently got the opportunity to interview J.D. Lasica by e-mail and ask him about one of his new projects, OurMedia. Lasica and Brewster Kahle of The Internet Archive are making great strides in bringing personal media publishing to the masses. This is one web project in which librarians can make great contributions by assisting in the metadata development and searching and it's a place where we can publish our media for free. It's worth having this on your radar as a source of multimedia available for your customers plus you now have a better way to experiment with making presentations and podcasts available to the widest audience. Christina Pikas/ResourceShelf (RS): Can you tell me a little about yourself and how you became interested in social media? J.D Lasica (JD): For 20 years I was an ink-stained wretch, working as an editor and reporter at various newspapers, chiefly at the Sacramento Bee. In the mid-'90s, I became entranced by the world of new media and made the leap from print to new media, working in senior management at three dotcoms. Social media is where we're headed in the mediasphere. It's not about an individual or organization delivering content to an audience -- it's about having a genuine dialogue around particular topics. In a world where the audience is now a part of the media equation, forward-looking media organizations should be looking for ways to engage readers and to bring them into the conversation. RS: What do you mean by "personal media revolution"? JD: For decades, media was all about big printing presses or broadcast stations, where an elite corps of professionals brought you the news and the information they deemed important. That's the way it was. No longer. The Internet and software tools that have become easy and inexpensive to use have led to a democratic mediasphere where you can reach millions of people through the power of your voice and ideas. The personal media revolution has leveled the playing field. Stories of public import can now be shaped through voice and talent rather than through one's pocketbook. We all own A.J. Liebling's printing presses now. But what will we publish? RS: Could you briefly introduce your new repository project, OurMedia? JD: In July 2004 a handful of volunteers began work on a project with a simple proposition: Anyone in the world can publish a work of personal media, and we'll store it, let you show it off, and give you bandwidth for it -- for free, forever. In March 2005 we launched Ourmedia.org, hewing to that vision of free storage. Some 20,000 people signed up to become members in the first two months. We're a nonprofit educational community with the goal of helping to enable the grassroots media movement, which is now in full bloom. Members have published thousands of truly astonishing works -- home videos, podcasts, student films, independent movies and more. But our goal is to be more than a mere repository. We plan to roll out a global registry so that Ourmedia serves as the nexus of a global grassroots media movement that any site can enlist in. In a year or two from now, millions of people should be able to summon up works of freely shareable personal media and have them display on their desktops at the click of a mouse -- without even knowing where the works actually live. You should be able to call up hundreds of videos or audio files about George W. Bush, or global warming, or the Iraq war, and have them dance on your desktop -- and not care about which servers they reside on. Ourmedia will succeed when we disappear into the fabric of the Internet. Our goal is to go dark. Part 2 of Christina's conversation with J.D Lasica is posted on ResourceShelfEXTRA.
Professional Reading Shelf Public Libraries--Privacy Source: Denver Post Library tells feds: Butt out "Concerned about patrons' privacy, the Denver Public Library this week inserted itself into the national political debate over the USA Patriot Act. On Monday, the library strung, between its east pillars, white plastic tape with large letters reading: "Privacy Line - Do Not Cross." Smaller text read, 'Stop Secret Searches - ACLU - ReformthePatriotAct.org.'" -- Libraries--Canada--Announcements Source: Council on Federal Libraries CFL Annual Fall Seminar 2005: Ahead of the Digital Wave: Transforming Services, Building Communities The seminar is scheduled to take place on Wednesday, September 14, 2005, in Ottawa. It will feature a panel moderated by Librarystuff.net Editor and ResourceShelf Contributing Editor, Steven Cohen." From the description: "What are the impacts of the digital environment on the information community? How has the electronic work environment influenced the ways we collaborate and build information infrastructures within existing legal and institutional frameworks? What do we need to know about the technical infrastructure in order to communicate effectively with one another? How are we going to keep up with changes in information technology so that we can serve our users better and meet their expectations? The Fall Seminar this year will look at these challenges from several perspectives." -- Public Libraries--UK Source: Libri New Report, From University to Village Hall 15 pages; PDF. "The report tracks developments in the world of public libraries over the past year since our first report Who's in Charge? was published. Regrettably we cannot report on any major improvements to the dire situation we reported on last time: book issues continue to decline; costs continue to escalate; value for money is eroding fast. Even the bright spot of a 4% increase in library visitors has failed to stem the decline in book issues. Use of The People's Network seems to be almost entirely for email and internet (web surfing and searching, downloading music and mobile phone ringtones, online games, plus internet banking, online shopping and flight booking). Web-based chat interaction was also a common use among young people until banned by most library services for safety/security reasons. In addition we have identified a significant trend for senior librarians and library policy makers -- the DCMS and the MLA, among others -- (wrongly) to no longer see providing books as a prime responsibility. This became clear during the recent evidence hearings of the Select Committee where witness after witness explained that there were new social roles for libraries to fulfil, only some of which have to do with books. We see this as an excuse for the failure of public libraries to deliver what the public wants. Further, we believe that the public library will fulfil all its social roles if it does books properly: a good modern stock for reading and reference, available at times convenient to the public, and in premises which are welcoming, clean and decent." -- Information Access--China Source: Council on Library and Information Resources New Report, EVERGREEN: Bringing Information Resources to Rural China 24 pages; PDF. "The China Evergreen Rural Library Service (CERLS) received the 2004 Bill & Melinda Gates Access to Learning Award for placing computers in rural public high schools in China as a way of responding to the need for information among students, teachers, and communities in remote areas where poverty and illiteracy are widespread. CLIR manages the Access to Learning Award."
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents Internet Usage--United States--Teens Source: Pew Internet and American Life Project Just Released, Teens and Technology: Youth are Leading the Transition to a Fully Wired and Mobile Nation "Today's American teens live in a world enveloped by communications technologies; the internet and cell phones have become a central force that fuels the rhythm of daily life. The number of teenagers using the internet has grown 24% in the past four years and 87% of those between the ages of 12 and 17 are online. Compared to four years ago, teens' use of the internet has intensified and broadened as they log on more often and do more things when they are online. Summary Direct to Full Text (PDF) -- Commercial Real Estate--Leasing Source: Colliers International Worldwide Leasing Guidelines (PDF; 184 KB) "A summary of key business terms for real estate in major markets worldwide." Includes length of leases, how rent is quoted, renewal/retention options, major markets. -- Medicare Medicaid Source: Kaiser Family Foundation Medicare and Medicaid at 40 "The Kaiser Family Foundation has some new resources that examine how Medicare and Medicaid came into existence and how they have evolved over the past 40 years. You will find new documentaries and extended interviews with key policymakers and government officials examining the origins of Medicare and Medicaid, new interactive historical timelines, a chart pack of key information and statistics." -- New Mexico--History Source: AP State launches Historical Web site
Search Briefs + Yahoo Toolbar for Firefox Leaves Beta, Version 1.0 Now Available + Cairo.com Beats ShopLocal.com in WSJ Test of Local Shopping Engines + AOL Unveils New Mobile Search Services Wednesday, July 27, 2005
Professional Reading Shelf E-Books---Online Conference Source: Planet Library Online Conference: Let's Go Library Expo: Books, eBooks, and Audiobooks This online conference will begin 10 a.m. EDST tomorrow (Thursday, July 28, 2005). Registration is free. Agenda. -- Research Libraries Source: ARL Bimonthly Report ARL Salary Survey Highlights, 2004-2005 -- National Libraries--Singapore Source: Channel NewsAsia Lee Kong Chian Reference Library receives 33,000 visitors on opening day "The Lee Kong Chian Reference Library in the spanking new National Library building received some 33,000 visitors when it opened on July 22." -- Public Libraries--Northern Ireland Source: Belfast Telegraph Library of future to open 72 hours a week "The library of the future will be open 72 hours a week - half of which will be in the evenings and weekends. One of the first branches to adopt this user-friendly approach is Glengormley Library..." -- Health Research--Training Materials Source: NLM NLM Releases Updated PubMed, NLM Gateway, and ClinicalTrials.gov Training Materials
Space Shuttle (STS-114) Earth--Imagery Real-Time Tracking of the Space Shuttle Use either of these tools to track (real-time) the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station. + SkyWatch: Orbital Tracking from NASA You'll also find a link to access info about Space Shuttle sighting opportunities. + NASA's J-Track Spacecraft Tracking Other Useful Resources + STS-114 Press Kit (8.7 Mb; PDF) + STS-114 Flight Timeline + Archive of STS-114 Multimedia Files See Also: NASA RSS Feeds See Also: Searchable Database of Imagery of Earth Taken By Astronauts Database contains more than 600,000 images back to 1961. A smaller collection is also available. Cool!
Search Briefs + Amazon's A9 Adds Online Calculator + RSS Search & Add Option Now Available For Google Personalized Home Page + Former Google Exec Files Suit Over Alleged Pregnancy Discrimination
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents U.S. Supreme Court--Justices Source: University of Michigan Documents Center United States Supreme Court Justices for the Past 100 Years (.xls) "Spreadsheet showing presidents since Teddy Roosevelt, their years in office, and the names of their appointments to the Supreme Court. Justices are also identified by their status (chief/associate) and the years they held office." Handy. -- Children--United States--Statistics Source: US Census Just Released, Living Arrangements of Children: 2001 16 pages; PDF. "Children live in a variety of family arrangements that usually reflect the marriage, divorce, and remarriage patterns of their parents. In addition, one third of children today are born out-of-wedlock and may grow up in single-parent families or spend significant portions of their lives with other relatives or stepparents." -- Video Games Source: FTC New Guide to Video Game Ratings -- HIV/AIDS--Funding Source: Kaiser Family Foundation New Report, Future Financing to Address the Global HIV/AIDS Epidemic "The Kaiser Family Foundation has issued a report that provides a detailed look at funding for the global HIV/AIDS epidemic by major donors. The report, Financing the Response to HIV/AIDS in Low and Middle Income Countries: Funding for HIV/AIDS from the G7 and the European Commission, examines funding from countries in the Group of 7 and European Commission, which provide the bulk of donor assistance for HIV/AIDS through bilateral programs and contributions to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. The data for the report were collected through a collaborative effort between the Kaiser Family Foundation and UNAIDS."
Briefly ProQuest Helps Safari Celebrate Addition Of 3000th Book To e-Reference Library (via ManagingInformation.com) Tuesday, July 26, 2005
Professional Reading Shelf Cataloging Source: ALA/AASL/Knowledge Quest on the Web The Recent Evolution of Cataloging "If you are in a quandary about cataloging standards and how they affect the way you process your library resources, you are not alone. Yet understanding and adhering to these rules is essential. A quick review of how cataloging practices have changed through the years can help you understand why." -- Museums--United States--Statistics IMLS Releases National Report on Status of Museums' Data Collection Activities "[The] Museum Data Collection Report and Analysis, a national study on the status of America's museums' data collection activities. The report updates a similar study commissioned by IMLS in 1998 and focuses on data collected and reported by museums between 1999 and 2004 (or planned through 2006)." Summary Direct to Full Text (PDF) -- Information Needs--Nursing Source: ManagingInformation.com Royal College of Nursing's Survey On Information Needs "Patients may not be getting the best care possible because nurses have limited access to the latest research and information in their workplaces, according to research from the Royal College of Nursing (RCN)." -- Psychology--Publications Source: American Psychological Association Librarian's Resource Center "We have designed this page to give you a gateway to information about APA publications. We hope you can easily get to any information you need about our products from one page." In addition to pricing, licensing and technical info, includes: + PsychINFO User Guide + PsychNET Librarian's Reference Desk + Library Ressearch in Psychology -- OCLC Source: OCLC OCLC Announces Promotions Congrats to ResourceShelf friend, Chip Nilges, on his promotion.
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents Internet Resources Source: IRN The August 2005 Issue of The Internet Resources Newsletter is Now Online Numerous links to quality resources from Roddy MacLeod. -- Small Business--Canada--Statistics Source: Industry Canada New, Key Small Business Statistics -- July 2005 -- Computer Security--United States--Surveys Source: Computer Security Institute/FBI (via DocuTicker) New, 2005 CSI/FBI Computer Crime and Security Survey 26 pages; PDF. -- Economics--United Kingdom--Statistics Source: National Statistics Office UK Worth 5.8 Trillion Pounds (PDF) "The total value of the UK at the end of 2004 was 5.8 trillion pounds. Latest estimates from an Office for National Statistics (ONS) report, Capital Stocks, Capita Consumption and Non-Financial Balance Sheets 2005, show that at the end of last year the total net worth of the UK including financial assets was 5,843 billion pounds -- an increase of £404 billion on the previous year." -- Population--United States--Statistics Source: Population Reference Bureau Recently Released: New Marriages, New Families: U.S. Racial and Hispanic Intermarriage "This Population Bulletin covers three aspects of intermarriage in the United States: racial intermarriage, interracial couples, and their children; Hispanic intermarriage, inter- Hispanic couples, and their children; and the implications of racial and Hispanic intermarriage, family formation, and racial identification for future demographic and social trends." Key Findings ||| Direct to Full Text (PDF) -- Weblogs--Glossary Source: The Blog Herald Understanding Blog Speak Definitions...from audioblog to XML.
Search Briefs + Download Aerial Imagery and Access Detailed Local Info + MSN Releases Beta Version of Virtual Earth + Web Tools: What's A Widget? Monday, July 25, 2005
Professional Reading Shelf Libraries--Video Games Source: Bloomington (IL) Public Library Video Presentation and Podcast: Thinking Inside the Box: Games, Teens and Libraries "A 90 minute podcast and 15 minute video by Bloomington Public Library and Alliance Library System covers how libraries can offer video gaming programs as a way make the library a relevant place for users, create social networks, and involve organizations in the community. The presentation was recorded on July 15, 2005." -- ERIC ERIC Users Information Exchange A new site from Kate Corby at Michigan State University. "Tips, techniques and current information about the ERIC index." -- Scholary Electronic Publishing-- Current Awareness Source: Charles W. Bailey, Jr. DigitalKoans: Flashback Weekly news update via Bailey's DigitalKoans weblog "that provides commentary on scholarly electronic publishing and digital culture issues." According to Bailey, this "complements the scholarly reference-oriented biweekly SEPW" (Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog). See also: Digital Works by Charles W. Bailey, Jr. -- Digital Rights Management Source: Reviews.com New, Managing the Unmanageable: Putting Cryptography to Work for Digital Rights "Written by Professor Aggelos Kiayias of the University of Connecticut, the Hot Topic focuses on cryptography's role in managing the dissemination of digital content in ways that protect the rights of the creators. This form of digital rights management (DRM) must consider both the needs of the producer and consumer, and the field of cryptography promises to provide effective solutions."
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents E-Learning Source: eLearn Magazine Book Excerpt: The Basics of E-Learning: An Excerpt from Handbook of Human Factors in Web Design From a new book by Lisa Neal and Diane Miller. -- Schools--United States--Health Policies--Database Source: National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE) Healthy Schools: State-Level School Health Policies "NASBE's policy collection effort was designed to build upon the School Health Policies and Programs Study 2000 (SHPPS 2000), conducted by the CDC Division of Adolescent and School Health (DASH). Whereas SHPPS collected state policy information by means of survey questionnaires, NASBE's complementary effort was designed to gather actual written state policies in key areas of school health policy. Initially, the choice of school health topics for Phase 1 & 2 of this policy collection reflects the priority areas of NASBE and DASH: general health education; HIV, STD and pregnancy prevention; asthma management; and tobacco use prevention. Phase 3 & 4 topics of violence and bullying prevention, mental health services, and physical activity and nutrition policies have since been added to the database." -- Legal Industry--United States--Lists & Rankings Source: Corporate Counsel, Law.com New, 100 Highest-Paid General Counsel (Registration Required, Free) -- Electricity--United States Source: EIA New, Residential Electricity Prices: A Consumer's Guide "Brochure topics include a description of the U.S. network including electricity generation, transmission and distribution, types of power plants based on energy sources used to generate electricity, factors which affect the price of electricity, historical graphs and maps which show electrical prices per state and consumer tips for reducing residential bills through conservation and efficiency." -- Lewis and Clark Explorers--United States Source: USGS The Voyage of Discovery Continues: A Satellite View of the Journey of Lewis and Clark Sunday, July 24, 2005
Professional Reading Shelf Libraries American Library Association Source: Cox News Service ALA President Michael Gorman Interviewed "Michael Gorman, who began his term as ALA president last month, said in an interview Tuesday that the concerns include Web giant Google's plans to digitize the nation's libraries, government intrusion into personal library records, and funding shortfalls...While he supports digitizing reference materials such as encyclopedias and dictionaries, Gorman said many books are being "atomized," meaning that online they would be reduced to a collection of paragraphs or sentences that can be taken out of context." -- Freedom of Information Act--United States Source: FOIA Post, US DOJ FOIA Training Opportunities, Fiscal Year 2006
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents Software--Portals Source: UNESCO New Look, Site Redesign: UNESCO's Free & Open Source Software Portal "A gateway to resources related to Free Software and Open Source Technology movement." -- Human Resources--United States--Legislation Source: Towers Perrin + Updated, Towers Perrin U.S. Legislative Tracking Charts -- Health and Welfare + Updated, Towers Perrin U.S. Legislative Tracking Charts -- Human Resources + Updated, Towers Perrin U.S. Legislative Tracking Charts -- Retirement Saturday, July 23, 2005
Professional Reading Shelf Interlibrary Loan--Canada Source: The Globe and Mail Funding fight threatens library delivery plan "A funding dispute between Canada Post and the Canadian Heritage Department could put an end to a 66-year-old program that helps libraries exchange books at cheap rates and deliver them to borrowers in rural and remote areas of the country.... Don Butcher, executive director of the Canadian Library Association, said he believes the threat to cancel the book rate may be a negotiating tactic on the part of Canada Post, which wants the federal government to find a way to help pay for it."
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents Education Indicators--Handbook Source: National Center for Education Statistics Forum Guide to Education Indicators "The Forum Guide to Education Indicators provides encyclopedia-type entries for 44 commonly used education indicators. Each indicator entry contains a definition, recommended uses, usage caveats and cautions, related policy questions, data element components, a formula, commonly reported subgroups, and display suggestions. The document will help readers better understand how to appropriately develop, apply, and interpret commonly used education indicators." Full Document (PDF; 1.03 MB) Friday, July 22, 2005
Professional Reading Shelf Information Industry--Encyclopaedia Britannica Source: Boston Globe Venerable encylopedia seeks just the facts "To respond to competitive challenges from Google, Yahoo, and the popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia, Britannica today will announce it is returning to an old practice after a lapse of a decade by naming an advisory board, whose 15 members top editor Dale Hoiberg calls ''some of the smartest people on earth." The Chicago-based publisher hopes that the prestige and knowledge of the members -- four Nobel laureates and two Pulitzer Prize winners among them -- will help reassert the authority of an encyclopedia first published in 1768 but buffeted in an age when the Internet has loosened the definition of what is factual." -- Libraries Source: Council on Library and Information Resources. All rights reserved The July/August Issue of CLIR Issues is Now Online Articles Include: + American Literature E-Scholarship: A Revolution in the Making by Kathlin Smith + The Promise and Problems of Digital Scholarship by Amy Harbur -- Public Libraries Source: The Courier, Waterloo, Iowa Por-no-no: A twisted trip through public libraries' battle with Internet pornography "Johnson found herself where many American libraries and librarians find themselves, balancing some patrons' freedom of speech and other patrons' right to be free from potentially offensive material. American libraries can house anything that is legal in the "outside world," including pornography; but each library chooses what material it will make available. Most libraries work to serve as community-oriented learning centers for everyone." See Also: The Courier Shares Its Opinions in an Editorial -- Presidential Libraries--United States Source: AP Arlington, Universities Vie For Presidential Library "The city of Arlington, Southern Methodist University, and Baylor University have received letters requesting proposals for a George W. Bush presidential library and museum" -- National Archives and Records Administration Digital Preservation Source: Technology Review Fading Memory of the State "Electronic records rot much faster than paper ones, and NARA must either figure out how to save them permanently, or allow the nation to lose its grip on history."
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents Environment--United States Source: CDC (via DocuTicker) New, CDC Releases Extensive Survey of Americans' Exposure to Environmental Chemicals "The Third National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals, released today by The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), shows a significant decline in exposure to secondhand smoke and continued decreases in children?s blood lead levels. The report also suggests the need for more research into health effects of exposure to low levels of cadmium." Summary ||| Direct to Full Text -- School Transportation--Statistics--United States School Transportation--Statistics--Canada Source: School Transportation News Data and Statistics Includes loading/unloading zone data, enrollment and transportation data, number of small and large vans by state, annual school bus production, train-school bus collisions, general data and statistics. Also offers: + School transportation data by U.S. state or Canadian province + Information on special needs transportation -- Cities--United States--Lists & Rankings Cost of Living--United States Source: Forbes Most Overpriced Places In The U.S. 2005 See Also: What is Costs to Live Well in the United States -- Higher Education--United States--Statistics R&D--United States--Statistics Source: National Science Foundation Just Released, Academic R&D Doubled During Past Decade, Reaching $40 Billion in FY 2003 "FY 2003 R&D expenditures topped $40 billion (10.2 percent over FY 2002), according to data from the Survey of Research and Development Expenditures at Universities and Colleges."
Briefly + Free trial offer send-off for STN AnaVist (via IWR) + EBSCO Publishing Acquires DynaMed + Access to IEEE Standards, Publications, and Bibliographies Enhanced in IEEE Xplore 2.1 Thursday, July 21, 2005
Resource of the Week By Shirl Kennedy, Deputy Editor Our resource for you this week is a European-based research portal for economic and financial data. Sites like this are very handy, especially when a reliable academic source has taken the time to select and organize the available information. Finance and Economics--Hub Source: European Business School (International University Schloß Reichartshausen) Eco5 "Eco5.com is a free professional research platform for the financial and economic world. The concept of eco5.com is based on 'adding value by selection'. This is put into practice by carefully selecting free research resources and making these directly accessible via a simple menu structure, enabling our users to save research time and energy." The home page is deceptively simple. Start exploring the eight sections here and you'll uncover some real gems. For example, you'll find an extensive collection of nicely organized links to historic financial data -- stock market, GDP, exchange rates, interest rates, employment income/personal consumption, trade, public finance, budget and more. Data is available in varying quantities for North America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia -- mainly, but not exclusively, from the U.S., the UK, Japan, Germany and France. You'll also find links to key sources of global historic data. There's also good one-stop shopping here for repositories of working papers, finance and economics glossaries, and dictionaries and translation sites. The international institutions section provides links to central banks, finance ministries, chambers of commerce, exchanges and commissions, governments, international organizations and statistical offices. Browse by type of institution or geographic location. Other useful links here: + University Rankings -- for the U.S. and worldwide. + Economists and Economics Departments -- U.S. and non-U.S. + Sources for annual reports and 10ks + Links to sites offering country studies And there's a wealth of information for graduate students and job seekers, as well as links to sites concerning relevant exams and certifications. Add Eco5.com to your bookmark list and you can probably weed out dozens of other sites you'll no longer need.
REMINDER Make Sure to Visit DocuTicker Today! Docuticker is a daily update from the ResourceShelf team with direct links to new reports from government agencies, ngo's, think tanks, and other groups.
Professional Reading Shelf Digital Libraries--Preservation Academic Libraries Source: San Diego Daily Transcript UCSD Libraries, SDSC team up to develop media library "The University of California, San Diego Libraries and the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) announced Monday they have teamed up to address media preservation challenges that are fast becoming a global problem by developing a media library that will catalogue past programs for future generations." -- Libraries--Patriot Act Source: Congressional Research Service (via Federation of American Scientists) Libraries and the USA Patriot Act (PDF; 37 KB) "Although past practices have apparently made the library community apprehensive, the extent to which the authority of Section 215 has been used, if at all, is unclear. Media accounts of federal investigations involving library patrons ordinarily do not distinguish between simple inquiries, grand jury subpoenas, criminal search warrants, FISA physical search orders, and FISA tangible item orders. Moreover, the Justice Department has indicated that as of March 30, 2005 the authority under Section 215 had been exercised on 35 occasions, but had not been used in any instance to secure library, bookstore, gun sale or medical records." -- Librarianship Source: Sirsi OneSource 32 Tips to Inspire Innovation for You and Your Library: Part 1 "In part one of this three-part column, Stephen (Abram) reflects on his past 25 years since library school and shares insights about what has inspired innovation in his own life. If your job involves consensus decision-making, usability testing, or project management, you're sure to find useful tips to enrich your career and improve your library." -- Libraries--Marketing Source: Chris Olson & Associates The July issue of Chris Olson's Marketing Treasures newsletter is online. -- Photography--Databases Source: CBC Website to be database for acclaimed photography "The George Eastman House and New York's International Center of Photography are collaborating on a project to create a massive online database of photography... Currently operating as a test site, Photomuse.org is scheduled for completion in fall 2006, at an initial cost of about $800,000 US. Organizers hope to feature nearly 200,000 photos at the start and eventually add thousands more." See Also: Direct to PhotoMuse.org
Search Briefs + PubSub Plays Ball with New Feature + Survey Results Show Most American's Have No Clue About RSS + MSN Updates Start.com Site with New Features + SMS Search Provider 4INFO.net Adds Email Search Service, WiFi Hotspot Search Coming Soon + Google Takes You to the Moon
RSS Round-Up by Steven Cohen, ResourceShelf Contributing Editor -- Here are some newly released RSS feeds that may be of interest to information professionals: + The Federal Depository Library Program (part of GPO Access) has an RSS Feed for their news and updates section. + Elsevier officially launched their Engineering Village 2 customized feeds this week. From the Ei Update: "RSS feeds are available with the July 18th release of Engineering Village 2. Users can set their own customized queries and have the benefit of reviewing literature in an integrated way. Used with Compendex, Inspec, or NTIS, users can receive weekly updates fed directly into their aggregators and manage all results in a more efficient manner. These feeds provide direct linking to Engineering Village 2 content and records of relevance can be viewed." + The National Academies has 4 RSS feeds including news, new publications, and the current and recent issues of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. + Wondir, an open Q&A service for the masses, RSSified all of their questions, breaking them down into subjects.
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents Media--Bibliography Source: Air University Library Mass Media Three sections: General Information, Military and the Media, Terrorism and the Media. Includes Internet resources, books, documents, periodicals and videos. -- Public Records--United States--Databases Sexual Offenders--United States--Databases Source: US Dept. of Justice New, The National Sex Offender Public Registry Via USA Today, "The national registry, located at www.nsopr.gov, had records from 22 states on Wednesday. Records from the rest of the states are expected to be online by year's end..." -- Poverty--United States--Statistics Source: US Census Just Released, Areas with Concentrated Poverty: 1999 "A special Census 2000 report on demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of census tracts by levels of poverty. Data are provided for the nation, regions and states." -- Documents in the News China--Military Source: Office of the Secretary of Defense (via DocuTicker.com) Annual Report to Congress: The Military Power of the People's Republic of China 2005 (PDF; 1.31 MB) "This report outlines what we know of China?s national and military strategies, progress and trends in its military modernization, and their implications for regional security and stability. But, secrecy envelops most aspects of Chinese security affairs. The outside world has little knowledge of Chinese motivations and decision-making and of key capabilities supporting PLA modernization. Hence, the findings and conclusions are based on incomplete data. These gaps are, of necessity, bridged by informed judgment."
Briefly + Enterprise Search: Canadian Broadcasting Company Uses Coveo for Intranet Searching (via ITBusiness.ca) + Site Search: Germany's Bund.de (Europe's Largest Government Portal) Selects FAST Search and Transfer + Dialog Adds Mexican Trademarks to Intellectual Property Portfolio Wednesday, July 20, 2005
Professional Reading Shelf Digital Libraries--Databases Source: Grainger Engineering Library, University of Illinois/Institute of Museum and Library Services IMLS Digital Collections Registry "A gateway to the digital collections funded through the IMLS National Leadership Grant Program and a resource for educators and cultural heritage professionals. You will find here a fascinating array of digital collections from all subject areas - art to science, literature to home economics - and from all types of institutions such as museums, libraries, and historical societies. Browse or search collections." -- PubMed Source: NLM New, References for Articles Archived in PubMed Central can be Displayed in PubMed "The full text of articles archived in PubMed Central (PMC) includes the references cited by the articles. You can now also see a list of those references in PubMed, using the option Cited Articles, on the Links menu." -- Knowledge Management--Surveys Source: EIU Companies turn to knowledge management to solve information overload "Knowledge management solutions are now the most important strategic technologies for large companies, according to a new report and survey of European executives by the Economist Intelligence Unit, sponsored by Tata Consultancy Services. A key finding of the report includes the following: Too much information impedes decision-making. Over half (55%) of executives say that IT's failure to prioritise information is the main barrier to effective decision-making. Consolidating information and providing consistent performance indicators are regarded as the most important step firms can take to improve the speed and quality of decision-making." Summary Direct to Full Text Report (PDF; 22 pages) -- Professional Reading Shelf OpenURL--Software Source: OCLC Research OCLC Research releases Open Source OpenURL 1.0 software
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents Children--Health--United States Source: Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics Just Released: America's Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being, 2005 America's Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being, 2005 is a biennial report to the Nation on the condition of children in America. Nine contextual measures describe the changing population, family, and environmental context in which children are living, and 25 indicators depict the well-being of children in the areas of economic security, health, behavior and social environment, and education. This year's report has special features on children with asthma, children with specified blood lead levels, and parental reports of children's emotional and behavioral difficulties. In addition, the report includes a special section on family structure and the well-being of children." (via DocuTicker) -- Employment--United States--Statistics Help-Wanted Advertising--United States--Statistics Source: The Conference Board (via DocuTicker.com) The Conference Board Unveils New Help-Wanted Online Data Series "The Conference Board Help-Wanted OnLine Data Series -- which made its debut today -- shows that there were just over 2 million first-time, online job postings appearing on major Internet job boards in June. This figure is essentially unchanged from May and up from 1.8 million new job ads posted online in April." See Also: Technical Notes (PDF) Statistical Tables (PDF) -- Stolen Automobiles--United States--Lists and Rankings Source: CCC Information Systems Just Released, Most Stolen Vehicle List 2004 List contains top 25 stolen vehicles. -- Electricity--United States--Statistics Source: EIA Just Released, New Info Product: U.S. Household Electricity Report "This report is the first report in EIA's newest Regional Energy Profiles series. It analyzes electricity consumption by U.S. households for each of several end uses, including air-conditioning, space heating, water heating, lighting, and the operation of more than two dozen appliances." -- George Orwell Source: The National Archives, UK Just Released Filed, George Orwell under the watchful eye of Big Brother This newly released Metropolitan police file (MEPO 38/69) reveals how George Orwell, the author of Nineteen Eighty-Four, was under Special Branch surveillance for more than 12 years of his life. MI5 first became suspicious of the author's activities in 1936 when carrying out research into the living and working conditions of the working class for The Road to Wigan Pier. The reports link Orwell to well-known Communists and left-wing organisations. Download documents here (free).
Scholarly Publishing--Citation Reports Source: ISI + Journals Ranked by Impact: Multidisciplinary Sciences + Materials Science & Engineering: High-Impact U.S. Universities, 2000-04 + Science in Brazil, 2000-04 Tuesday, July 19, 2005
Professional Reading Shelf Digital Libraries Source: D-Lib The July/August 2005 Issue of D-Lib Magazine is Available This is the 10th Anniversary issue of D-Lib Magazine! Congrats!!! Articles in the new issue include: + Funding for Digital Libraries Research: Past and Present + Digital Libraries: Challenges and Influential Work + Where Do We Go From Here? The Next Decade for Digital Libraries + Dewey Meets Turing: Librarians, Computer Scientists, and the Digital Libraries Initiative + Border Crossings: Reflections on a Decade of Metadata Consensus Building -- Electronic Records Archives Source: International Council on Archives Electronic Records: A Workbook for Archivists (ICA Study 16), the final version is now available "This ICA study takes a practical approach to managing and preserving electronic records throughout their lifecycle." 80 pages; PDF. -- Law Libraries--Florida Source: Jacksonville Business Journal Florida law library now a click away "The Florida Bar has partnered with Fastcase, a Virginia company, to provide its members with links to U.S. Supreme Court and Florida Supreme Court cases. No terms were available related to the cost of the project." -- Information Industry--OCLC Source: Columbus Business First OCLC acquires German library company "OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. expanded its presence in Europe with the acquisition of Sisis Informationssysteme GmbH, a German provider of library software. Sisis Informationssysteme sells library management systems and software in Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands...OCLC will fold the acquisition into its European subsidiary, OCLC Pica.
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents Living Conditions--United States--Lists & Rankings Source: CNN/Money Just released: Best Places to Live 2005 "MONEY magazine and CNN/Money spent months looking for Great American Towns -- where you would want to raise your children and celebrate life's milestones. Starting with more than 1,300 cities, we settled on 10 winners." -- Birds--Databases Source: USGS Raptor Information System (RIS) "RIS is a keyworded catalog of over 33,000 references about the biology and management of birds of prey. It includes books, articles, theses, government reports, and other gray literature regarding raptors worldwide. You can search by author, title, keyword, year of publication... or any combination of these fields. You can also search for articles on a particular raptor species by typing in the genus and the species or by referring to an extensive 4,000 keyword list." Direct to database -- Medicare--Statistics--Charts Source: Kaiser Family Foundation (via DocuTicker.com) Just Released, Medicare Chartbook Highlights Latest Data and Trends "This 2005 chartbook features more than 80 charts and tables with detailed information about the Medicare program and the 42 million seniors and younger people with disabilities who rely on the program for health insurance coverage." -- Dental Health--Glossary Source: American Dental Association Glossary of Dental Terms In alphabetical order, from Abrasion to X-Ray.
Search Briefs + Metasearch the Blogosphere With Clusty + Where's My Bus (or Train or Plane)?, Services That Offer Real-Time Info and Maps
Search Briefs + RSS Comes to BlinkxTV with SmartFeed Very cool! Lots of use in business current awareness. Free! -- + Shopping "Research" Engine Become.com Adds New Services (via SearchDay) Monday, July 18, 2005
Professional Reading Shelf Information Industry--Elsevier Source: Information Today Elsevier Enhances Scopus A new article by Paula Hane. "Today, July 18, Scopus is announcing a range of new updates and features that further its mission of providing an easy-to-use, comprehensive system for conducting scientific research. The product is not viewed as a stand-alone, but rather as one that fits within the research process and supports the workflow by seamlessly integrating third-party research tools. New features being introduced include close integration with RefWorks, the bibliographic management tool from CSA; interoperability with the chemical structure searching in MDL's CrossFire Commander; and several content integration enhancements." -- Information Industry--LocatePlus Source: Mass High Tech LocatePlus uncovers $8 million in financing "LocatePlus Holdings Corp. has closed on an aggregate $8 million in financing. The company is a Beverly-based provider of a business-to-business and business-to-government investigative online database of public information." -- Electronic Records--United States Digital Archives NARA Source: FCW NARA earns accolades from GAO "The National Archives and Records Administration's huge undertaking -- to save government records in any format and make them available on future hardware and software -- is moving full speed ahead, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office. 'The [Electronic Records Archives] program is meeting its cost, schedule, and performance objectives and has identified risks to the program's objectives. GAO is not making any recommendations at this time because NARA has plans in place to address identified weaknesses,' the GAO report released today states." See Also: Direct to Full Text of GAO Report (PDF) (via DocuTicker) -- Public Libraries--United States Sourcece: Buffalo News 'Shoebox' libraries are well-loved but have problems "You may love your local library. But if you don't live near one of the county's handful of bigger-and-brighter branches, chances are your library is older, smaller, and less accessible." It would have been useful if this article would have pointed out some of the remotely accessible services that many libraries (of all sizes) provide. The world of the library and librarian continue to expand beyond the four walls of a library building. -- Internet Censorship--China Source: The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) Committee on Free Access to Information and Freedom of Expression (IFLA/FAIFE) IFLA/FAIFE calls on the Chinese government to end censorship of Internet access and allow freedom of expression online
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents Marketing--Hispanics--United States--Statistics Demographics--Hispanics--United States Source: Advertising Age (Reg. Req, Free) Just Released, Latest Changes In Hispanic Market Detailed "The U.S. Hispanic population, and the money marketers pour into Hispanic media to keep up with America's largest minority group, continues to grow. In 2005, TNS Media Intelligence is forecasting 10.5% growth for the U.S. Hispanic media market, compared to a moderate 3.4% increase for the total U.S. advertising market." Summary ||| Hispanic Fact Pack (52 Pages; PDF) "Advertising Age's second annual Hispanic Fact Pack offers valuable, hard-to-find data about demographic trends, marketer spending by category and company, Hispanic media and an expanded ranking of the top 50 Hispanic ad agencies. New this year is information about use of the Internet by Hispanics, who are going online faster than the overall population, and about acculturation, as the Hispanic population reaches a tipping point where greater growth from now on will come from U.S.-born Hispanics than from immigration as in the past." -- Marine Transportation--Canada--Databases Source: Canadian Transportation Agency Recently Revised, Canadian Vessels Information System "These lists are a synopsis of Canadian registered vessels in operation in Canadian waters by type and area of service. Information contained in the lists is compiled from the Canadian Transportation Agency's marine database..." Searchable. -- London Olympics--Legislation Source: UK House of Commons Library The London Olympics Bill [Bill 45 of 2005-06] 38 pages; PDF.
Briefly + Lockheed Martin to Develop Next-Generation Army Knowledge Online + Duke University Press launches e-Duke Scholarly Collection, hosted by HighWire Press + Thomson Gale Signs Worldwide Distribution Agreement with Internet Business Law Services Sunday, July 17, 2005
Professional Reading Shelf Music Librarians Source: Pittsburgh Tribune-Review Librarians work backstage for the PSO "Before the musicians of the Pittsburgh Symphony take the stage, before they can even pick up their parts to practice them, crucial work has taken place backstage in the music library. Walk into a public library and chances are you can pull the book you want from a shelf, or have a librarian do so. Even private and research libraries work off the shelf, order what they don't have, or find information on the Internet." -- Libraries--Germany Source: Deutsche Welle Library Goes up in Flames, Destroying Literary Legacy "A fire on Thursday night at the Duchess Anna Amalia Library in Weimar has damaged a unique collection of German literary works. Flames several meters high could be seen rising from the roof of the over 300-year-old library, a UNESCO world heritage site, in the eastern German town of Weimar."
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents RFID Source: ResearchChannel.com/Univ. of Washington Video Presentation: RFID: The Next Big Little Thing A 57 minute presentation by Chris Diorio, professor, University of Washington. "his talk will cover the fundamentals of RFID technology, the reasons for its impending adoption, the many benefits and looming issues, how it may impact the way we live and work, and the exciting research and business opportunities that await us." The presentation (available on-demand) was recorded on April 28, 2005. -- Bank Failures--United States Source: FDIC Failed Banks "Learn how accounts and loans are affected when a bank fails, how to seek unclaimed funds, and how to obtain a lien release." Includes: + Failed Bank List (since October 1, 2000) + FDIC Dividends From Failed Banks (search) + Bank and Thrift Failure Reports (historic statistics) + Bank Failures & Assistance: "Brief summary of each bank failure from 1991 to the present." + Obtaining a Lien Release: "If your bank or Savings and Loan has failed and you need to obtain a 'Release of Lien' for real or other property secured by a loan. + Unclaimed Funds: "Search for unclaimed insured deposits for failed banks from January 1, 1989 to June 28, 1993 or for dividend checks issued which were undeliverable or never cashed."
Search Briefs + MSN Search Releases More International Versions of Toolbar + Yahoo Announces New Research Laboratory Saturday, July 16, 2005
Professional Reading Shelf Legal Research Source: Hauser Global Law School Program, New York University School of Law GlobaLex "GlobaLex is an electronic legal publication dedicated to international and foreign law research. Published by the Hauser Global Law School Program at NYU School of Law.... The information and articles published by GlobaLex represent both research and teaching resources used by legal academics, practitioners and other specialists around the world who are active either in foreign, international, and comparative law research or those focusing on their own domestic law. The guides and articles published are written by scholars well known in their respective fields and are recommended as a legal resource by universities, library schools, and legal training courses. The tools available in GlobaLex will continue to expand to cover international law topics, countries and legal systems thus providing a coherent and encompassing research tool for all constituencies." -- Data Mining--United States Source: DGRC Better Police Work Through Data Mining "Prof. Salvatore J. Stolfo and his colleagues at Columbia University are working under a Digital Government grant to create software to help sort through the mess. Called the Email Mining Toolkit (EMT), their system harvests data from email accounts and then computes behavior profiles for the users. Stolfo describes their work as a "much more sophisticated version" of conventional text retrieval software, with more statistical analysis. In the "keyword search" software with which most of us are familiar, you type in one word, or perhaps two or more words, using Boolean operators, like "and" or "or" to find relevant documents. Thus, 'Yankees' brings up many documents, but 'Yankees and Red Sox,' restricts the search to only documents that include the names of both teams. A die-hard Red Sox fan might search on, "Red Sox and Yankees (or Evil Empire)," which will bring up documents with "Red Sox and Yankees" or 'Red Sox and Evil Empire.'
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents Online Games Source: GftB GamesfortheBrain Addictive! "Play neverending quiz and memory games to train your thinking skills." Games designed and built by ResourceShelf friend, Philipp Lenssen. -- Technology Transfer--NASA--Database Source: NASA Center for AeroSpace Information Spinoff Database "The Spinoff database will help you find products/services that incorporate NASA technology in such areas as health and medicine, environment, public safety, consumer/home/recreation, transportation, computer technology and industrial productivity. You can find the date of the publication, page number, the center responsible for the technology, and the original NASA program in which the technology was developed if applicable." Friday, July 15, 2005
Professional Reading Shelf Digital Preservation--United Kingdom Source: Digital Preservation Coalition Just Announced: The 2005 Conservation Awards -- Digital Preservation Award Five projects have been shortlisted. -- Librarians Source: IMLS Dr. Robert S. Martin Completes Term as Director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services "Dr. Robert S. Martin completed his four-year term as Director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) yesterday. Dr. Martin was nominated by the President of the United States to be Director of IMLS in June 2001; the U.S. Senate subsequently confirmed his nomination by unanimous consent. During his tenure, IMLS has awarded 4,704 grants to America's museums and libraries totaling more than $899 million." -- Law Librarians Source: Legal Technology Don't Count Out Law Librarians ResourceShelf's Steven Cohen is quoted in the article. Kudos SC! -- Web Directories Source: Globe and Mail Zenome: A human touch to searching the Internet Some guy named Gary Price (-: is quoted. He mentions the LII and Infomine. -- Public Libraries--Canada Source: Broadcast News Library workers strike tentative deal "A tentative agreement was reached this morning covering 2,400 workers at the Toronto Public Library."
Information Industry--Factiva Information Industry--LexisNexis Source: SEW Blog Material from LexisNexis and Factiva Begins Appearing in Yahoo "When Yahoo Search Subscriptions launched a few weeks ago, Yahoo said that material from Factiva and LexisNexis, two well-know online information aggregators, would eventually become accessible via the new service."
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents Television--Awards Source: Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (via DocuTicker) 57th Annual Emmy Awards--Nominees A list of nominees is available in either PDF or MS Word. Also available, this file (MS Word) with facts and figures about the nominations along with this nominations summary (PDF). See Also: Primetime Emmy Awards Database -- Country Studies Source: Federal Research Division/Library of Congress Just Released, Country Profile of Romania 22 pages; PDF. See Also: More Country Profiles from the FRD -- Environment--United States Source: OMB Watch/Right to Know Network Just Released, OMB Watch Wins in Court for Access to Risk Management Data "After almost four years of silence, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released updated information on Risk Management Plans (RMPs) filed by facilities with large quantities of hazardous chemicals onsite, in order to inform communities about the risks. The agency released the information to OMB Watch after the organization sued EPA for failing to respond to its request filed under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). OMB Watch has posted the executive summaries of the RMPs on its Right to Know Network website." See Also: Search Updated RMP Data
Search Briefs + Yahoo Search Translator Released + Maps and Satellite Imagery Now Available on Google Japan Thursday, July 14, 2005
Resources of the Week By Shirl Kennedy, Deputy Editor Having been trapped in my house most of last weekend due to storm surge flooding from Hurricane Dennis (I am so OVER these storms), disaster management is truly not far from my mind these days. Figured it was time for a look at some of what FEMA has to offer. Some good stuff here. You'll probably want to bookmark both of these sites. Emergency Management--Database Source: Federal Emergency Management Agency Global Emergency Management System (GEMS) "The Global Emergency Management System is an online, searchable database containing annotated links to Websites in a variety of categories that are related in some way to emergency management. In most cases there is also a brief description of what the Website offers." You can do a simple keyword search here or browse by category; there are more than 40, from Business Solutions to Weather/Meteorology. Some categories are more well-stocked than others; e.g., there are 47 sites under State Emergency Management Agencies, and only two or three links under several other headings. This appears to be a work in progress. Users are invited to suggest a link; suggestions are evaluated by FEMA staff before being added to GEMS. Click the GEMS 25 Most Recent Additions to see the newest stuff. The database is international in scope. Some interesting sites turned up in a quick browse: + Nobody Left Behind: Disaster Preparedness for Persons With Mobility Impairments + Institute for Home and Business Safety + The World of Building Codes + CBS News Disaster Links (Wowie Kazowie! This is a "don't miss.") -- FEMA--Library Source: Federal Emergency Management Agency Virtual Library and Electronic Reading Room "FEMA's Online Library is divided into four sections. In each section, you will find reference materials, publications, maps, photographs, audio clips and video clips." + FEMA Information: Includes Directives, Doing Business with FEMA, Facts about FEMA, FEMA Employee Resources, FEMA for Kids, Forms, Information Technology, Internet Resources, Legal, Planning, Telecommunications, Tribal, Archives. Interested in doing business with FEMA? Looking for FEMA forms? Maybe you need a quick overview of the agency, what it does and does not do, a few disaster facts, etc. (I learned here that "Moving flood waters as shallow as six inches deep can be sufficient to knock a person off their feet.") You'll also find a guide to FEMA Acronyms, Abbreviations and Terms. + Preparation & Prevention: Includes Mitigation Division/Insurance & Mitigation Resources, Maps, Planning & Preparing, Reports, Archives. Find out about the National Flood Insurance Program, and find backgrounders on dam safety, earthquakes, fires, floods, hurricanes and tornados. There's also a small section on terrorism prevention. + Disasters & Emergencies: Includes Animals and Emergencies, CHER-CAP (Comprehensive HAZMAT Emergency Response - Capability Assessment Program), Disaster Information, Education, Major Disaster Summary Maps, Supplies, Warnings, Archives. Some juicy stuff tucked away here -- disaster chronologies and lists, statistics, fact sheets and backgrounders. + Response & Recovery "What to do when a disaster or emergency occurs in your local area." Offers an eclectic group of resources, including a business recovery checklist and a guide to helping children cope with disaster. The good news, there's lots of information here and it's nicely organized for browsing. The bad news, there's lots of information here and it's not searchable -- although the FEMA site as a whole offers a Google-based search tool. -- Bonus Resource of the Week A Guide To The Disaster Declaration Process And Federal Disaster Assistance "Local and State governments share the responsibility for protecting their citizens from disasters, and for helping them to recover when a disaster strikes. In some cases, a disaster is beyond the capabilities of the State and local government to respond. In 1988, the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 5121-5206, was enacted to support State and local governments and their citizens when disasters overwhelm them. This law, as amended, establishes a process for requesting and obtaining a Presidential disaster declaration, defines the type and scope of assistance available from the Federal government, and sets the conditions for obtaining that assistance. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), now part of the Emergency Preparedness and Response Directorate of the Department of Homeland Security, is tasked with coordinating the response. This paper explains the declaration process and provides an overview of the assistance available."
Professional Reading Shelf Libraries--Weblogs Source: The Dag Hammarskjöld Library, United Nations HQ UN Pulse: Connecting to UN Information "The blog focuses on just-released UN system-wide online information, major reports, publications and documents. Created and maintained by a team of reference librarians, UN Pulse is updated as new information is published and received. There is also a RSS feed." -- Public Libraries--UK Source: PriceWaterhouseCoopers Laser Foundation: Libraries Impact Project (PDF; 304 KB) "This report proposes methodologies and measures for quantifying the impacts of public libraries in relation to four particular Government priority areas -- children, education, health and older people. Based on desk research and the results of piloting the methodologies in seven English libraries, the report argues that libraries make a clear and measurable contribution to wider policy priorities at both the local and national level." -- Digital Libraries--Texas Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education Texas Universities Join to Create a Digital Library for Scholars and the Public "Four Texas university systems and Rice University will collaborate on a digital repository whose goal is to offer online resources, such as teaching aids, dissertations, and practical information, although not books. The repository will be called the Texas Digital Library, but it will not resemble the California Digital Library -- not initially, at least. While the California Digital Library -- which provides books, journals, and databases to California libraries -- provides an inspiration, says Fred Heath, vice provost of the University of Texas Libraries, 'this would be closer to the DSpace collaborative at MIT.'" See Also: Texas universities establish Texas Digital Library (via Houston Business Journal)
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents Copyright--Current Awareness Source: Jamail Center for Legal Research, Tarlton Law Library, University of Texas School of Law Current copyright literature "The 'Current copyright literature' website is a resource for keeping informed of current articles related to U.S. copyright law. This service is edited by Tobe Liebert, the Assistant Director for Collection Development & Special Projects at the Tarlton Law Library. Here's the process: I review law journals and law reviews (and a great many other legal periodicals) as they are received in the library. I examine the table of contents of all of these publications and identify any article concerning U.S. copyright law. I then input the basic bibliographic information about each article into this database, and scan the first page of the article. The availability of the first page of the article should better enable readers to know if they are interested in reading the whole article. I anticipate that this website will be updated a couple of times a week, depending on the volume of cites." Cool! -- Reference--Reviews The July 2005 Edition of Peter's Digital Reference Shelf is Now Online This month Dr. Jacso reviews: Lonely Planet Online The Web counterpart of the legendary series nicely complements its books with current information and additional materials about destinations by this relatively low key, but well-organized and content-rich site, which recently won a Webby Award. The only weak point is the lodging and flightfinder service for travels to and from Australia and Asia provided by Zuji, which is not on par with Lonely Planet. & SideStep "SideStep provides a very good metasearch tool for comprehensive one-stop shopping. It often makes travel much less expensive, and provides peace of mind that you explored a reasonable number of alternatives. But, just as you should check with your trusted librarian when you need the best answer for some critical reference information, you should not forget your traditional, flesh-and-blood travel agent for the best deals." See Also: Want to Compare SideStep with Other Metasearch Travel Tools? Take a look at: + Kayak + Mobissimo + Yahoo/FareChase -- Population--United States--Statistics Source: US Census Just Released, Historical Census Statistics on Population Totals by Race, 1790 to 1990, and by Hispanic Origin, 1970 to 1990, for Large Cities and Other Urban Places in the United States "This working paper illustrates how the composition by race and Hispanic origin has changed over the years in 306 cities. Data are provided for 224 places that have had a census population of 100,000 or more at some point during the 1790 to 1990 period, as well as another 82 places that historically were among the largest in their state." Summary ||| Direct to Full Text HTML ||| PDF -- Topics in the News--Timelines Source: San Francisco Chronicle Time line in leak of CIA operative's identity Compiled by Johnny Miller, a librarian at the SF Chronicle.
Search Briefs + A Couple of My Favorite Mobile Web Tools + A New Image Search Tool Named Pixsy + What Americans are Searching For Wednesday, July 13, 2005
Professional Reading Shelf Librarians--Awards--Australia and New Zealand Source: SLA (via Dialog) SLA-Australia/New Zealand Names Nerida Hart Info Pro of the Year -- Canadian Librarian Association--Conferences Source: CLA Presentations and Materials from the 2005 Canadian Library Association Conference Now Online -- Digital Archives Personal Information Management Source: Los Angeles Times Lean About Microsoft's "My Life Bits" Research Project "I think we've got the Memex dream down," Gordon Bell told me when I greeted him at Microsoft Corp.'s downtown San Francisco laboratory. To technology aficionados his allusion would be instantly recognizable. "Memex" was a machine envisioned by Vannevar Bush, Franklin D. Roosevelt's science advisor, in a prophetic 1945 Atlantic Monthly article titled, "As We May Think." The device was an intriguing preconception of today's personal computer in which, as Bush wrote, "an individual stores all his books, records, and communications" for easy retrieval through a form of indexing based on the associative properties of the human mind." Bell's version, embodied in a system known as MyLifeBits (soon to be formally renamed "Memex") aims at nothing less than creating a digital archive of a person's entire life. You can learn more about MyLifeBits here. -- Digital Libraries--Conferences Source: JCDL Joint Conference on Digital Libraries: 2006 The conference will take place in Chapel Hill next June. -- The Internet Archive Source: The New York Times Keeper of Expired Web Pages Is Sued Because Archive Was Used in Another Suit "The Internet Archive was created in 1996 as the institutional memory of the online world, storing snapshots of ever-changing Web sites and collecting other multimedia artifacts. Now the nonprofit archive is on the defensive in a legal case that represents a strange turn in the debate over copyrights in the digital age." See Also: Gary here. I've posted the full text of the complaint that was filed in the lawsuit on Search Engine Watch site. For those of you who don't know, I'm also the news editor at SEW.
Search Briefs + Yahoo Desktop Search Capable of Indexing More than 300 File Formats + Multimedia Content from BusinessWeek and The New York Now Searchable via Blinkx
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents Economics--Global--Lists & Rankings Source: The World Bank (via Reuters) World Bank's GDP Rankings for 2004 The official announcement from The World Bank will be posted here on Friday. -- Hospitals--United States--Lists & Rankings Source: U.S. News and World Report Just Released, Best Hospitals 2005 -- Internet Security Source: US-CERT: United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team Cyber Security Tip ST05-014: Real-World Warnings Keep You Safe Online "Like the real world, technology and the internet present dangers as well as benefits. Equipment fails, attackers may target you, and mistakes and poor judgment happen. Just as you take precautions to protect yourself in the real world, you need to take precautions to protect yourself online. For many users, computers and the internet are unfamiliar and intimidating, so it is appropriate to approach them the same way we urge children to approach the real world."
Briefly + Email Newsletters Gain Popularity in 2005 According to Oxbridge Directory of Newsletters + APA Announces Addition of Archival Journals; New Database; New Web Site (via EContent) "The American Psychological Association has announced that nearly 100 years of issues from 24 APA journals will be added to PsycARTICLES, a full-text database in psychology." Tuesday, July 12, 2005
Professional Reading Shelf National Archives--United States FBI--History Source: NARA J. Edgar Hoover's Official and Confidential Files to be Transferred To the National Archives from the FBI "Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein signed an agreement with Assistant Director of the FBI William Hooton to transfer 210 cubic feet of historic FBI records to the National Archives. The highlight of this transfer is the entire collection of Director J. Edgar Hoover's Official and Confidential Files, covering the period 1924-1972." -- Learning Objects Source: EDUCAUSE Review Learning Objects: A Rose by Any Other Name "Over the last few years, online repositories comprising digital resources of all shapes and sizes have sprung up in the form of large, discipline-specific and NSF-funded digital libraries, community-built repositories, discipline collections, and fee-based commercial databases. In theory, learning objects should have proven useful for packaging unwieldy educational content in ways that were easily accessible, engaging, and ideally, cost-effective." -- Information Professionals--Weblogs Source: Lighthouse Blog Stephen Abram Launches Weblog Congrats and kudos to our friend, mentor, librarian, wonderful conference presenter, and info industry thinker, Steven Abram, on the launch of his new blog. When SA speaks or writes, we listen or read. You can visit Stephen's Lighthouse here.
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents Space Shuttle Source: NASA Selected Space Shuttle (STS-114) Resources + Posted today on a FOIA portion of the NASA site: Briefing Charts from the Flight Readiness Review (FRR) meeting. + STS-114 Press Kit (8.7 Mb; PDF) + STS-114 Flight Timeline + NASA RSS Feeds including Space Shuttle/Return to Flight feed. -- Mobile Web--Resources Public Transportation--Database Source: Patrice Bernard/Frank Van Caenegem Metro: The ultimate public transport guide for your PDA or Smartphone "Métro is your free guide on PDA (Palm, PocketPC, Smartphone...) to public transport systems worldwide (more than 300 cities covered now)." Presently includes special version (.pdb) of the database relevant to the London subway attacks. -- Business Information Source: Information Today Hoover's Enhances Free Site "Hoover's is also making the content on its free site broader and deeper. Users of the site can now access a selection of Hoover's most-used subscriber tools, including Download to Excel, Build A Report, Build Company List (limited to the first 10 results), and Build Executive List. The company said that the new site more effectively showcases the value of Hoover's and also offers more opportunities for its advertisers and e-commerce partners. Hoover's covers 13 million companies, more than 14 million corporate executives, and 600 industries." -- Internal Revenue Service Source: IRS (via The Memory Hole, Russ Kick) Full Text, "75 Years of IRS Criminal Investigation History" "Uncensored version of a book-length report that the IRS pulled from libraries in 1996. In it, their investigative division celebrates its biggest cases since 1919, provides stats, and profiles its leaders."
Briefly Factiva Adds More than 70 New Sources in May and June "Newly added publications include Bloomberg Money, Business 2.0, Finance Week, Fortune European Edition, Chinese WSJ.com, Capital Finance and more. These publications compliment Factiva's unrivalled collection of more than 9,000 news and business publications." Complete list of sources here. Monday, July 11, 2005
Professional Reading Shelf E-Libraries--Philippines E-Libraries--Marketing Source: Manila Bulletin Prepaid cards seen to boost access to national e-library To create greater awareness of the national e-library project, the country's largest online resource located at www.elib.gov.ph, its proponents will soon be issuing prepaid cards to allow individual users to download contents. -- Law Libraries Source: Albany (NY) Times Union Law libraries stand open, empty "State law mandates that every county in New York have a law library open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays. It's a resource that costs the state $8.27 million annually for the 62 counties, but that few know exists. Even the state did not know what it owned, as the law provided the impetus for librarians to don hazmat suits to scour forgotten courthouse crannies to inventory legal texts." -- Special Libraries Association--Annual Conference Presentations Source: Special Libraries Association SLA 2005 Conference Presentations "The following are PowerPoint presentations of sessions held at the annual conference that are available at no cost!" 20 presentations currently available.
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents Australia--Images--Databases Source: Picture Australia New Picture Trails! + Music "Picture Australia's Music Trail is a fascinating visual record of Australia's musical heritage. Discover music and musicians ranging from traditional indigenous forms through to folk and western art music, and the latest popular artists." + Outback House "PictureAustralia's Outback House Picture Trail reveals the landscape, industry, personalities, conditions and lifestyles of Australians who pioneered in our rural landscape 150 years ago..." -- Health--United Kingdom--Statistics Source: National Statistics Office Just Released, Cancer atlas of the UK and Ireland Summary (PDF) Full Text -- Workplace--United States--Surveys Source: Salary.com & AOL Wasted Time At Work Costing Companies Billions "America Online / Salary.com survey indicates that employees are wasting about twice as much time as their employers expect. Salary.com calculated that employers spend $759 billion per year on salaries for which real work was expected, but not actually performed." You'll find lists of the Top 5 Time-Wasting States and the Top 5 Time-Conserving States.
Search Briefs + International Group of Publishers Asks Google to "Cease" Scanning Library Books + FeedPlex Adds Advanced Search Options + Google SMS Graduates from Google Labs But Remains in Beta; Web Demos Now Available
Briefly Librarians and Information Professionals Among Recipients of the 2005 Emerald Literati Network Awards for Excellence Sunday, July 10, 2005
---------------------------------------------- Up-to-the-Minute Coverage of Hurricane Dennis NewsNow aggregates content from more than 20,000 sources. Page auto-refreshes every five minutes. Florida Division of Emergency Management National Hurrican Center All Current U.S. Weather Warnings See Also: Watch Live TV Coverage from NBC Affiliate (WPMI), Mobile, AL See Also: Listen To Mobile, AL Police Dept. See Also: Watch Government Briefings from The Florida Channel ---------------------------------------------- Professional Reading Shelf National Archives and Records Administration--United States Source: NARA At the National Archives, Pursuing Two Great Goals to Improve Service to Our Customers A new article from Allen Weinstein, Archivist of the United States. -- Databases--Privacy Source: AP Hated by privacy advocates, database search engine lives on "When the federal government in April stopped funding a database that lets police quickly see public records and commercially collected information on Americans, privacy advocates celebrated what they saw as a victory against overzealousness in the fight against terrorism. But a few states are pressing forward with a similar system, continuing to look for ways to quickly search through a trove of data - from driver's license photos to phone numbers to information about people's cars. Their argument in seeking to keep the Matrix database alive in some form: it's too important for solving crimes to give up on." -- Librarians Source: San Francisco Chronicle Academic Librarian Uses His Research Skills to Uncover Poetry Contest "Corruption"
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents Market Research--Hub Source: Consortium of UK-based contributors Market Research Portal "Within the Market Research Portal you'll find a number of useful resources and articles that will be relevant to market research companies, researchers, market research buyers and anyone generally interested in the market research industry." Resources include: + Library of Articles: "...a number of research articles written by professionals in the industry" + Market Research Explained: "...we have explained the main components of research...qualitative research, quantitative research and that daunting word for some statistics" + Glossary of Terms: "...will help you to understand market research jargon" + Industry News & Events: "...market research news and event information from around the globe" Saturday, July 09, 2005
Professional Reading Shelf Law Students--Online Research Source: Robert Crown Law Library, Stanford Law School Book Lovers Beware: A Survey of Online Research Habits of Stanford Law Students (PDF; 44 KB) "The reference librarians have long observed that students strongly favor electronic resources, and the survey results bear out this observation. When helping students with their research, we often will generate a bibliography of citations, some of which are available electronically and others of which exist only in print. Many students will only look at the online resources."
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents Film Trailers--Archive Source: Digital History (Department of History and the College of Education at the University of Houston) Trailers of Historically Significant Films "Hollywood has shaped our most vivid images of the historical past. Our collection of film trailers allows users to see how the film studios promoted the films that are most deeply impressed in our collective imagination. This database contains trailers of films for educational use. Digital History is an educational and non-commercial site designed specifically for history teachers and their students. By continuing, you are acknowledging your understanding of this notice and your agreement to use these trailers accordingly and for educational purposes only." + Trailers Ordered by Title + Trailers Ordered by Year of Release Friday, July 08, 2005
---------------------------------------------- Up-to-the-Minute Coverage of the London Explosions via NewsNow NewsNow aggregates content from more than 20,000 sources. Page auto-refreshes every five minutes. ---------------------------------------------- Professional Reading Shelf Information Literacy Source: Combined Arms Research Lab, Combat Studies Institute (CSI) Evaluating Historical Materials "This CSI Report deals with ideas and techniques the professional soldier can use to assess historical materials critically. The soldier can apply this evaluation process to individual history books or the assorted documents, articles, and monographs used in historical research. There is nothing complex or even magical about this procedure. The techniques are basically the same commonsense rules or guides the average person uses every day. Essentially, the reader, much as a consumer, is concerned with the quality of the materials used in making the item, the craftsmanship of the person or persons who did the work, and the purpose for which the item was designed to serve." -- Public Libraries--Censorship Source: Tampa Tribune Librarians Find Fault In Gay Pride Stance "The attorney asked the question: Were the book displays at Germany put up to celebrate June as Gay Pride Month? Stines' answer was yes. He made the decision to take down the displays. 'I'm very aware of intellectual freedom, but in the real world you have to find a way to uphold those principles while still continuing everyday service based on the situation you're in,' said Stines, a librarian of more than 30 years who has been leading Hillsborough County's library system since 1991.... He points out that county libraries are still able to display gay-written and gay-themed books. They just can't display them for the purpose of promoting gay pride." -- Libraries--Canada Pricacy--Canada Source: Canadian Press Alberta privacy commission rules against library that monitored computer use A privacy commissioner's ruling against an Alberta library that electronically monitored an employee's computer use means employers have lost one objective way of measuring workers' performance, says the library's director." -- Metadata--Conferences Source: Dublin Core Metadata Initiative Preliminary Program Now Online: DC-2005: International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications "The preliminary program for DC-2005, to be held in Madrid from 12 through 15 September, is now online. The program includes keynotes by Thomas Baker, Ricardo Baeza, Johannes Keizer and Eric Miller, presentations of 36 papers and project reports, a series of tutorials on metadata basics and numerous working group meetings."
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents London--Satellite Imagery Source Digital Globe Satellite Imagery: London Media Gallery "DigitalGlobe is making available to the media satellite imagery of London, England. This image was collected by DigitalGlobe on July 28, 2002. The image provides a comprehensive overview of the city where bombings occurred during the Thursday morning rush hour." -- Intelligence--Web Resources Source: Dr. Kevin Hula, Department of Political Science, Loyola College in Maryland Loyola Homepage on Strategic Intelligence Large collection of links organized into categories: Intelligence Community, Military Intelligence, Government Intel Servers, International Links, Organizations, Documents, Laws and Reports, Testimony, Reorganization, Terrorism, Journals and Articles, Economic Espionage and Intelligence, Historical Interest, Ames Affair, Hanssen Affair, Debates and Controversy, Conferences. See also: The U.S. Intelligence Community: Information Resources (Lehman Social Sciences Library, Columbia University) -- Internet Access--United States--Statistics Source: FCC Just Released, FCC Releases Data on High-Speed Internet Access Connections News Release (PDF) ||| Full Text (PDF)
Search Briefs + Yahoo Now Offering SMS Search Tool; Expands Reach of Mobile Web Search + Firefox Search Goodies Keep on Coming + Yahoo HotJobs Enhanced By New Job Engine Thursday, July 07, 2005
Resource of the Week By Shirl Kennedy, Deputy Editor U.S. Department of Defense--Languages Source: Defense Language Institute LingNet: The Global Language Network " The LingNet web site is a service provided by the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center. LingNet hosts materials developed at DLI by the Curriculum Development Division. These include both the 'Countries in Perspective' series and the Global Language Online Support System (GLOSS). The LingNet web site also hosts materials developed by other government and Department of Defense agencies."
Professional Reading Shelf Libraries Source: IFLA Now Available: Success Stories Database "Within the framework of its activities for WSIS (World Summit on the Information Society) and in order to contribute to the ongoing and long term presence of libraries in the world, IFLA has set up a database [searchable] that aims to showcase the value of libraries to society as a whole." -- National Archives and Records Administration Source: NARA NARA Will Unveil Redesigned Site on July 20th -- Geospatial Data--Open Source Applications Source: O'Reilly Network An Introduction to Open Source Geospatial Tools "The development of open source geospatial software is an exciting part of the new geospatial landscape. Open source project offerings cover the spectrum of tools: command-line data conversion, spatially aware enterprise databases, internet mapping applications, desktop Geographic Information System (GIS) applications, geoprocessing libraries, and more.... A quick glance at websites like OpenSourceGIS.org garners a massive list of tools that are freely available to you for a wide array of tasks. How do you get started? This article introduces a handful of the applications that are available, grouped according to task. -- RSS Feeds--Medical Journals Source: MedPDA.net How-to: RSS feeds for medical journals "...a quick tutorial on how to get RSS links using PubMed." See also: RSS links to medical journals -- Public Libraries--Hawaii Source: Honolulu Advertiser State libraries remain in a bind "Two years after the state's public libraries reduced hours, with some open just five days a week in response to budget cuts, the system still has not recovered, according to state librarian Jo Ann Schindler." -- History--United States--Online Archives Source: Karen Terrell Pardue, T.A., MLIS Candidate, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs/University of Illinois--Urbana-Champaign HistoryLinks: A Selection of Web Links to Digitized Primary and Secondary Sources from a Variety of Archives around the U.S. "Welcome to the HistoryLinks Website! Contained within this site you will find documents, maps, photographs, and realia from pre-revolutionary America to the post-Reconstruction period. This website is intended to draw attention to the increasing number of historical primary and secondary sources that can be found in digital archives/libraries on the Web and is targeted toward history student researchers in undergraduate history classes, though all visitors may benefit from this listing."
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents Economics--New Zealand Source: UNESCO Economic Survey of New Zealand -- Health Information and Research Source: patientINFORM Official Launch: patientINFORM From a news release, "Three of the nation's leading voluntary health organizations have joined a group of scholarly and medical publishers to launch a pilot program to provide patients, caregivers, and the general public direct access to medical research on some of the most serious diseases and medical conditions. The free online information resource called patientINFORM (www.patientinform.org), will provide consumers with the ability to read the latest original research articles published in medical and scientific journals, find assistance in interpreting the information and access additional materials on the Web sites of participating voluntary health organizations." See Also: Commentary About patientINFORM from Open Access News -- Spyware--United States--Surveys Source: Pew Internet and American Life Project Just Released Report, Spyware: The threat of unwanted software programs is changing the way people use the internet "Spyware and the threat of unwanted programs being secretly loaded onto computers are becoming serious threats online. Nine out of ten internet users say they have adjusted their online behavior out of fear of falling victim to software intrusions." News Release ||| Direct to Full Text (PDF) -- Taxation--United States--Almanac Source: Intuit TaxAlmanac "TaxAlmanac is a free tax research resource brought to you by Intuit. It is a revolutionary leap forward in how accountants research tax laws, create and share knowledge.... Content on TaxAlmanac is written by tax professionals from across the country and takes advantage of the knowledge of academia as well as practioners - in short, the real tax experts. The site includes key information that tax professionals find useful when conducting research - including the Internal Revenue Code, Treasury Regulations, Tax Court Cases, and a variety of Articles. TaxAlmanac currently contains 7976 articles." -- Computer Viruses Source: Sophos Just Released: Computer Virus Activity, January-June 2005 Wednesday, July 06, 2005
Professional Reading Shelf Open Access Key Open Access Concepts An overview written by Charles W. Bailey. The article comes from Bailey's, "Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals." -- PATRIOT Act Source: Library Journal Behind the Sanders Amendment: An Internet Exception "Many in the library world missed a crucial element in the House of Representatives' passage of the 'Freedom to Read' amendment by Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) to scale back the USA PATRIOT Act. While the press release from the American Library Association (ALA) said the amendment bars the Justice Department 'from using any of the appropriated money to search library and bookstore records under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act,' there is a crucial exception: Internet records." -- Public Libraries Source: Dallas Morning News Meet the Director of the Dallas Library System, Laurie Evans "She might be heading up the institution she loves, but Ms. Evans knows she doesn't have an easy road ahead. Preliminary city budget numbers suggest that the library will need to cut more than $880,000 from its costs next fiscal year, with the heftiest slice coming from the new-book budget."
Scholarly Publishing--Citation Reports Source: ISI + Science in The Netherlands, 2000-04 + 10-Year Country Rankings for France + Mathematics: High-Impact U.S. Universities, 2000-04
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents Country Studies--Germany Source: Federal Research Division/Library of Congress Just Released, Country Profile of Germany PDF. See Also: More Country Profiles from FRD -- Energy--Statistics Source: EIA Updated, World Proved Reserves of Oil and Natural Gas, Most Recent Estimates "An updated table of World Proved Reserves of Oil and Natural Gas, Most Recent Estimates is now available. The table has been updated to include the proved reserve estimates for Year-End 2004 from the recently released BP Statistical Review of World Energy June 2005. The table is also available in Excel spreadsheet format." -- Business--Surveys Source: Towers Perrin Just Released, Equity Incentives Around the World 20 pages; PDF. "Major companies around the world now consider equity incentives to be an integral part of their remuneration programs. Stock options and other forms of equity awards have become nearly universal for companies based in the major developed countries and, in the growing markets of the world where equity incentives are not currently majority practice, their use is on the rise." -- Education--United States--Statistics Public Libraries--United States--Statistics Updated, State Education Data Profiles -- Public Library Info Now Added "This popular data tool has now added public library information to information in elementary/secondary education, postsecondary education and selected demographics for all states in the U.S. Besides being able to get state data you will also get data on U.S. averages and the ability to graph the results." -- Gasoline Prices--United States Source: FTC (via DocuTicker.com) FTC Releases Report on "Gasoline Price Changes: the Dynamic of Supply, Demand, and Competition" "The Federal Trade Commission today issued a report entitled 'Gasoline Price Changes: The Dynamic of Supply, Demand, and Competition.' The Report analyzes the many factors that influence fluctuations in the prices that U.S. consumers pay for gasoline at their local gas station. It examines a wide range of gasoline price factors -- including the cost of crude oil, increasing national and international demand, and federal, state, and local regulations -- all of which influence the prices consumers pay at the pump. One of the Report's conclusions is that over the past 20 years, changes in the price of crude oil have led to 85 percent of the changes in the retail price of gasoline in the U.S., while other important factors have included increasing demand, supply restrictions, and federal, state, and local regulations such as 'clean fuel' requirements and taxes." Direct to Full Text of Report (PDF).
Search Briefs + Smart Move: Yahoo Begins Promoting Their "Clean" Interface + Become.com Launches Product News Search + Searching with Your Cameraphone Tuesday, July 05, 2005
Professional Reading Shelf Information Literacy Skills Source: AP New Test Would Measure Students' Web Wisdom "...Cal State and a number of other colleges are working with ETS to create a test to evaluate Internet intelligence, measuring whether students can locate and verify reliable online information and whether they know how to properly use and credit the material." -- Preservation Digitization Source: AP Oldest Bible is going digital "The world's oldest monastery plans to use high-tech cameras to shed new light on ancient Christian texts preserved for centuries within its fortress walls in the Sinai Desert. -- Information Industry--Oxford University Press Digitisation Projects Source: IWR OUP launches digitised humanities archive "Oxford Journals has completed the digitisation of its humanities backfiles and launched an online archive. The Humanities Archive is the first of five new backfiles to be launched by the division of Oxford University Press." -- Copyright--Digitization Source: Houston Business Journal Copyright questions surround issue of putting libraries online -- OCLC Source: Information Today OCLC Pilots Traditional Libraries into Web Services Barbara Quint takes an in-depth look at three new services that OCLC is testing. -- Information Industry--CSA Federated Search Source: Information Today CSA Launches MultiSearch Paula Hane writes about a new federated search tool that has just been introduced by CSA.
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents Counseling--Internet Resources Source: C&RL News Internet Resources: Counseling: Resources for students, consumers, and professionals A new collection of resources compiled by Kristine Condic, a reference coordinator at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. -- Smoking--United States--Economics--Statistics Source: CDC Smoking Deaths Cost Nation $92 Billion in Lost Productivity Annually "Smoking cost the nation about $92 billion in the form of lost productivity in 1997-2001, up about $10 billion from the annual mortality related productivity losses for the years 1995-1999, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention." Complete stats here. -- Legal Industry--United States--Lists & Rankings Source: American Lawyer Just Released, AmLaw 100 Access to the many charts listed at the bottom of the article is free (reg. req.)
Briefly + infoUSA Plans to Offer ''infoGenie'' -- A New Business Search Tool + New Sources Added to Lexis.com Service Monday, July 04, 2005
--------------------------------- Happy 4th of July!!! --------------------------------- Professional Reading Shelf Presidential Libraries--United States--History Source: NARA Prologue New Article, The Presidential Libraries Act after 50 Years From the article, "Signed into law on August 12, 1955, the act provides for the orderly transfer of presidential papers and memorabilia to the federal government. The law also permits former Presidents to build "presidential libraries" at no expense to the government and to transfer these facilities to the government along with their personal property. The government, in turn, agrees to maintain both the property and the buildings at public expense."
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents Population--United States--Lists & Rankings Source: U.S. Census America's Fastest-Growing Cities, 2005 "Port St. Lucie, Fla., had the nation's fastest growth rate among large cities (100,000 or more population) between July 1, 2003, and July 1, 2004, according to new U.S. Census Bureau population estimates. Located along the Atlantic coast between Cape Canaveral and West Palm Beach, and spring training home of the New York Mets, Port St. Lucie saw its population increase 12 percent during the period, to 118,396. It was joined on the list of the 10 fastest-growing cities by two other in the Sunshine State: Cape Coral (ranking fifth) and Miramar city (eighth). California had four cities in the top 10: Elk Grove (second), Moreno Valley (sixth), Rancho Cucamonga (ninth) and Roseville (10th). Two cities in Arizona were in the top 10 -- Gilbert (fourth) and Chandler (seventh)-- and, relatively nearby, North Las Vegas, Nev., was third. Elk Grove, Miramar and Roseville each became eligible for this list for the first time, as all three cities passed the 100,000 population threshold between 2003 and 2004. See Also: Population Estimates for the 25 Fastest Growing U.S. Cities with a Population of 100,000 or More in 2004 (XLS) See Also: Population Estimates for the 25 Largest U.S. Cities based on July 1, 2004 Population Estimates: April 1, 2000 to July 1, 2004 (XLS) See Also: Population Estimates for the 25 U.S. Cities with a Population of 100,000 or More with the Largest Numerical Increase from July 1, 2003, to July 1, 2004 (XLS) Sunday, July 03, 2005
Professional Reading Shelf Librarians Academic Libraries Source: Iowa City Press-Citizen Russian librarians search for info "The University of Iowa Main Library was almost vacant and silent at 9 a.m. Thursday -- until the sound of sharp heels and clicking cameras echoed in the hallways. The sounds came from eight women from Russia -- all librarians -- who are on a three-week tour of American libraries. The tour is sponsored by the Council for International Visitors to Iowa Cities as part of the U.S. Department of State's Library Service for Youth program."
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents Teachers--United States Source: National Center for Education Statistics Two New Issue Briefs About Teachers + Private School Teacher Turnover and Teacher Perceptions of School Organizational Characteristics "Using 1999-2000 Schools and Staffing Survey data file and the Teacher Follow-up Survey, this issue brief looks at the private school sector to investigate teacher-perceived school organizational characteristics and relationships between these characteristics and teacher turnover in Catholic, other religious, and nonsectarian private schools." + Qualifications of Secondary School Biology Teachers "This Issue Brief describes the qualifications of public middle school and high school biology teachers in terms of the subject matter of their certifications and postsecondary majors and minors. Data are drawn from the 1999-2000 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS). At the middle and high school level, 52 percent of biology students had a teacher with both certification in biology and a postsecondary major or minor in biology; 16 percent of biology students had a teacher with neither a certification nor a postsecondary major or minor in biology." Saturday, July 02, 2005
Professional Reading Shelf Electronic Resources--Statistics Source: Proceedings EAHIL Workshop 2005 (via E-LIS) The evaluation of electronic resources as a strategic factor in the decision making process: tools, critical points, feasible solutions "The continuous increase of electronic resources in biomedical libraries involves a detailed analysis on their use, from the general impact on library services to the observation of statistical data and including also a monitoring of users' customs. Starting from this framework the paper will focus the importance of some tools such as ISO library standards, statistics on the use of electronic products (e-journals, data bases, catalogues, etc.), surveys on users, in order to evaluate achieved results and to support decisions and management policy in the library." Full paper available as Word document or PDF.
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents Humanitarian Aid--Bibliography Source: Air University Library Humanitarian Intervention and Assistance New bibliography includes Internet resources, books, documents, periodicals. Friday, July 01, 2005
------------------------------------------ Happy Canada Day!!! ------------------------------------------ Professional Reading Shelf The British Library Source: PublicTechnology.net A National Digital Library is planned at heart of British Library's new strategy "Lynne Brindley, Chief Executive of the British Library, has predicted a switch from print to digital publishing by the year 2020. Speaking at the launch of the Library's new three-year strategy, Lynne Brindley said: 'Most people are aware that a national switch to digital broadcasting is expected by the end of this decade. Less well known is the fact that a similar trend is underway in the world of publishing: a study by EPS , commissioned by the Library, projects that by the year 2020 40% of UK research monographs will be available in electronic format only, while a further 50% will be produced in both print and digital. A mere 10% of new titles will be available in print alone by 2020.'" See Also: The future of print and electronic publishing output worldwide -- National Archives and Records Administration Source: NARA NARA Set to Open New Facility in Georgia New Southeast Region facility will open in Morrow, Georgia, next month. -- Memory of the World Register Source: UNESCO Twenty-Nine New Documentary Collections Inscribed on the Memory of the World Register "Twenty-nine documentary collections in 24 countries have been inscribed on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register. These additions bring to 120 the total number of inscriptions on the Register to date. They include, for the first time, collections from Albania, Azerbaijan, Colombia, Cuba, Italy, Lebanon, Namibia, Portugal, Sweden, Ukraine, United Kingdom and United States of America."
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents Supreme Court--United States Documents in the News Source: USSC (via C-SPAN) Justice O'Connor Retirement Letter to Pres. Bush (PDF) See Also: Interview with Justice O'Connor (via C-SPAN) From 2002, transcript and streaming video available. -- Homeland Security Source: U.S. Department of Defense Just Released: Strategy for Homeland Defense and Civil Support (PDF; 1.2 MB) From press release: "The Strategy for Homeland Defense and Civil Support articulates strategic goals and objectives and provides direction to relevant Homeland Defense activities across the department. These activities include deterring and preventing attacks, protecting critical defense and designated civilian infrastructure, providing situational understanding, and preparing for and responding to incidents." -- Internet Resources Source: IRN The July 2005 Issue of The Internet Resources Newsletter is Now Online More useful goodies from Roddy M. and crew. -- Health Insurance--United States--Statistics Source: CDC/NCHS Just Released, Health Insurance Coverage: Estimates from the National Health Interview Survey, 2004 "Health insurance coverage for children showed continued improvement in 2004, and the percentage of working-age adults without insurance coverage, which had been climbing in recent years, did not increase last year, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)." Summary ||| Direct to Full Text (PDF) -- U.S. Congress--Women Source: Congressional Research Service (via Federation of American Scientists) Women in the United States Congress: 1917-2005 (PDF; 284 KB) "This report identifies the names, committee assignments, dates of service, and (for Representatives) districts of the 228 women Members of Congress. It will be updated as events warrant. -- Technology Spending--Businesses--United States Source: U.S. Census Bureau Information and Communication Technology: 2003 (PDF; 3.03 MB) From press release: "The U.S. Census Bureau today released first-ever estimates of U.S. business spending on information and communication technology (ICT) equipment. The report, Information and Communication Technology: 2003, includes spending figures on the following types of items: * Computers and any hardware devices connected to them (such as printers, keyboards, mouses and monitors); * Telephones and related equipment (such as noncellular, cordless telephones, fax machines, modems and answering machines); * Electronic devices used for medical and therapeutic purposes (e.g., defibrillator, dialysis equipment, hearing aids and pacemakers); and * Computer software." (via DocuTicker)
Search Briefs (via SEW) + AOL Begins Rolling Out New Video Search Engine + The Birth of A9 Maps; Block View Imagery Added for More Cities + What's Cooking in Search Engine Labs |
