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Resources and News for Information Professionals
ResourceShelf is Compiled & Edited By Gary Price, MLIS Librarian Director of Online Information Resources, Ask.com Editor and Compiler, The ResourceShelf Editor and Compiler, DocuTicker
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Saturday, December 31, 2005
Professional Reading Shelf Public Libraries--Exhibits Source: St. Petersburg Times Will Morrison exhibit light readers' fire? "The Clearwater Library, once a hangout for a young Jim Morrison, is considering a permanent Morrison exhibit." (Ignore the brain-dead lead about Morrison as "a young man getting shushed a lot at the Clearwater Library."). -- Data Quality Source: Government Technology MPI Report Shows Database Errors Plague Immigration Enforcement "Thousands of times each year, police officers checking the name of an individual stopped or detained against records in the nation's main criminal database have received an initial 'hit' for an immigration violation that, upon further investigation, the Department of Homeland Security could not confirm. These 'false positives' have likely caused wrongful detentions and diverted scarce police resources from local public safety priorities, finds a report to be released on Thursday by the Migration Policy Institute." See the full report via DocuTicker.
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Health Statistics--United States Source: National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Health, United States, 2005 "Health, United States is an annual report on trends in health statistics. The report consists of two main sections: A chartbook containing text and figures that illustrates major trends in the health of Americans; and a trend tables section that contains 156 detailed data tables. The two main components are supplemented by an executive summary, a highlights section, an extensive appendix and reference section, and an index." (via DocuTicker) -- Nonprofits--Entrepreneurship Source: Fast Company, Monitor Group Social Capitalist Awards 2006 "Like their counterparts in the profit-driven world, our 25 winning organizations -- winnowed from 278 nominations with the help of 43 experts -- are masters at envisioning products and services that don't yet exist, marshaling resources, and crafting solutions that deeply affect their customers. The results these nonprofit organizations deliver hinge on business acumen and often reflect strategies that their for-profit brethren would do well to imitate." -- U.S. Supreme Court Source: National Archives National Archives Opens Additional Samuel Alito Records "The National Archives at College Park will release 45 documents relating to Samuel Alito. These records total 744 pages from Record Group 60, Records of the Department of Justice, Files of John Bolton, Michael Carvin, Roger Clegg, Stephen Galebach, Brian Landsberg, Mark Levin, and Richard Willard." Direct to materials.
Population--United States--Statistics Source: U.S. Census Just Released, U.S. Population as of January 1, 2006 "The U.S. Census Bureau today projected the Jan. 1, 2006, population will be 297,821,175 up 2,713,518 or 0.9 percent from New Year's Day 2005. In January, the United States is expected to register one birth every eight seconds and one death every 12 seconds. Meanwhile, net international migration is expected to add one person every 31 seconds. The result is an increase in the total population of one person every 14 seconds." Friday, December 30, 2005
Professional Reading Shelf Questia Media Source: Houston Chronicle Online library isn't ready to give up yet "Since the company's inception, Questia's biggest critics have been academic librarians. Some felt threatened that they would be rendered obsolete, some didn't like the idea of Questia marketing itself as an academic library rather than a database, and others didn't like the idea of charging for information that is free at the local library." -- OCLC Library Education Source: OCLC OCLC and ALISE announce 2006 research grant award recipients "OCLC Research and the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE) awarded research grants to Lokman Meho with Kiduk Yang (Indiana), Joyce Kanini Mbwesa with Julius Mburi (Nairobi), Jeffrey Pomerantz (North Carolina), and Louise Spiteri (Dalhousie)."
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text United States--Statistics Source: U.S. Census Recently Released: Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2006 Summary and Fast Facts Direct to Full Text (by Chapter) -- Spam--Lists & Rankings Source: America Online Hey, 'Donald Trump Wants You'!! (... & Other Lies Told by Spammers in 2005) "Does Donald Trump really want you? Will the Penis Patch improve your sex life? Is your mortgage application ready? Can you lose 6-20 inches in one hour with a body wrap? Did Lisa send you to the wrong site? The answer to each of these questions is almost certainly no. But they are examples of increasingly sophisticated methods spammers are using to prey on email users this year, according to AOL's third annual Top 10 Spam List." -- Music--Concerts--Lists & Rankings Source: Pollstar Top 20 North American Tours of 2005 -- Environment--United States--Statistics Source: EPA New Report, Measuring Progress 1999-2003: The Priority Chemicals Trends Report "EPA has released its National Priority Chemicals Trends Report. This year's report analyzes 23 of the 31 priority chemicals found in some industrial waste, using 2003 data newly reported and compiled in the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI). TRI is a publicly available database with information on the use, release, and management of more than 650 toxic chemicals within industrial and federal facilities. Priority chemicals are chemicals that are persistent, highly toxic, and can accumulate in living organisms." -- iPod--Tutorial Source: Apple iPod 101: Master Your Music and More Did you get a new iPod over this holiday season? Learn how to get the most out of it. "Whether you're a Mac or Windows user, iPod 101 contains tons of information that'll help you enjoy your iPod to its fullest and guide you on your way to becoming iTunes savvy (we're using iTunes 6 in our course materials). Get ready to walk through the virtual aisles of the iTunes Music Store; learn how to sync your music, contacts, calendars, and more; admire your pretty pictures (and force others to do the same); watch TV shows and video; and find out what to do when things don't go as planned." Thursday, December 29, 2005
Resource of the Week By Shirl Kennedy, Deputy Editor Are you familiar with 511, "America's Traveler Information Telephone Number?" It's not active everywhere in the United States yet, but it's getting there. 511, basically, is a highway and traffic information system that takes advantage of detailed information on road conditions gleaned from Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). A motorist dials 511, and he or she receives localized basic travel information such as traffic conditions, construction/road closures, weather, public transit service updates, etc. Personally, I've never dialed 511 but I've accessed it a number of times online, for the State of Florida, and for the local Tampa Bay area. Actually, there is a lot of stuff like this online; anyone with Internet access need never settle for those skimpy radio and TV traffic reports. Since we are such huge fans of one-stop shopping sites here at ResourceShelf, we commend your attention to a site which aggregates a large collection of links to highway and traffic information...and sometimes more. Traffic Information--United States Source: U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration National Traffic and Road Closure Information Nothing complicated here, folks. A clickable map you can use to get to information for the state of your choice, or use the text listing beneath it. Keep scrolling for links to sites with national information on traffic conditions, weather and road conditions, and regional information. At the very bottom is a link that will take you to a page with direct links to all 50 state transportation departments. Click the "What's New" button below and to the left of the map to explore the sites most recently added. There are some national links above that, including pointers to information about the 511 system. For additional information about intelligent transportation systems, see: + Center for Intelligent Transportation Systems at Penn State University + Intelligent Transportation Systems at Transport Canada + Intelligent Transportation Systems at the University of Washington + Intelligent Transportation Systems Institute at the University of Minnesota + Intelligent Transportation Systems at Oak Ridge National Laboratory + Intelligent Transportation Systems Science Tracer Bullet at the Library of Congress + ITS America And here is an ITS glossary.
Professional Reading Shelf Access to Information Source: GCN OMB policy on posting information sparks debate -- Electronic Journals Source: IWR Elsevier covers archiving with Portico deal "Scientific, technical and medical publishing giant Elsevier is creating a permanent archive for its e-journals in a deal with Portico, a specialist in electronic archiving. Elsevier will deposit over 2000 titles from ScienceDirect into the Portico archive." -- Libraries--United Kingdom--Statistics Source: LISU New, A Survey of Library Services to Schools and Children in the UK 2004-05 -- Serial Prices Source: Swets Serials Price Increase Report #3 published -- Documentaries--Ranking Source: Video Librarian Video Librarian 2005 Best Documentaries "The following list, selected and compiled by Video Librarian staff, honors the best new documentaries reviewed in the magazine and online during 2005. Unless otherwise noted, titles are available from most distributors."
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Employment--United States--Reference Source: BLS Just Released: Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2006-07 Edition Just Released: Career Guide to Industries, 2006-07 Edition -- Educators--United States--Statistics Source: NCES New Report, Background Characteristics, Work Activities, and Compensation of Instructional Faculty and Staff: Fall 2003 "This publication is the second from the 2004 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty (NSOPF:04), a study of faculty and instructional staff in public and private not-for-profit 2-year-and-above postsecondary institutions in the United States." -- Climate--United States Source: NOAA NOAA National Weather Service Unveils New Precipitation Web Page "High-quality precipitation analyses used for flood forecasts, drought monitoring and climate trends are being made available on the NOAA National Weather Service Web site on a trial basis through June 2006." -- E-Government--United States Source: CBO New Report: Expanding E-Government: Improved Service Delivery for the American People Using Information Technology "All 25 of the reviewed agencies had 'effective' enterprise architectures, or systems designed to eliminate redundancies in business functions, processes and technologies, the report stated." 12 pages; PDF. More in this Govexec.com story. -- Baby Names--United Kingdom--Lists & Rankings Source: National Statistics Office Babies' Names 2005 -- Dissertations--Lists & Rankings Source: ProQuest Business Research Is Tops in 2004 in ProQuest Analysis of Best-Selling Dissertations and Theses -- Internet Usage Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project New Research: How Women and Men Use the Internet
Search Briefs + New Search Engine For Economists (via ResearchBuzz) + New Entry: Medio Joins Mobile Search Space in U.S. + Consumer Reports Looks at Travel Search Meta Engines in New Study Wednesday, December 28, 2005
Professional Reading Shelf Motion Pictures--United States Library of Congress Source: LC Librarian of Congress Adds 25 Films to National Film Registry Films Selected to the 2005 National Film Registry Baby Face (1933) The Buffalo Creek Flood: An Act of Man (1975) The Cameraman (1928) Commandment Keeper Church, Beaufort South Carolina, May 1940 (1940) Cool Hand Luke (1967) Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) The French Connection (1971) Giant (1956) H2O (1929) Hands Up (1926) Hoop Dreams (1994) House of Usher (1960) Imitation of Life (1934) Jeffries-Johnson World's Championship Boxing Contest (1910) Making of an American (1920) Miracle on 34th Street (1947) Mom and Dad (1944) The Music Man (1962) Power of the Press (1928) A Raisin in the Sun (1961) The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, April 18, 1906 (1906) The Sting (1973) A Time for Burning (1966) Toy Story (1995) -- Libraries Source: from ARL, CNI, and SPARC ARL, CNI, and SPARC Publishes Bimonthly Report on Research Library Issues & Actions This issues focuses on "Role of the Library in a Digital Landscape." -- Law Libraries Health Sciences Libraries Source: ARL + ARL Publishes Health Sciences Library Statistics for 2003-04 + ARL Publishes Law Library Statistics for 2003-04 -- International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions Source: IFLA IFLA 2005: Report of Achievements
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Information Industry Source: U.S. Census Just Released, 2004 Service Annual Survey: Information Sector Services "Revenues from cellular and other wireless telecommunications firms reached approximately $126 billion in 2004, up 14 percent, from 2003, according to a report released today by the U.S. Census Bureau. Cable and other program distribution revenues increased 13 percent, to $73 billion. Basic cable programming, which accounts for more than half of cable distribution revenues, increased by 14 percent, to $44 billion. Up 28 percent, cable Internet access services posted the largest year-to-year percentage increase of cable distribution revenues, increasing to $9 billion." Direct to Full Text. See Also: The Services Annual for the Investment/Securities Industry Has Also Been Released -- Airline Industry--United States--Statistics Source: BTS New Issue Brief: Airline Travel Since 9/11 -- 2005 Source: LexisNexis Most Talked-About News in 2005: Americans Rank Hurricane Katrina and Spike in Oil Prices Highest, Reports LexisNexis Survey "More than 1,500 Americans ranked the stories they most talked about in 2005. It is no surprise that Hurricane Katrina ranked number one, with 97 percent of consumers reporting that it was the most talked about event at their home or office. The spike in gasoline/oil prices took second place (88%) compared to the war in Iraq, which ranked third and revealed that the domestic economy remains top of mind for most Americans." See also: The Clicks Are In and the Winner Is ? (Wall Street Journal)
Search Briefs + CiteSeer Offers New Feature; Mirrors of Database Also Added + Technorati Adds New Features, Rubel Offers "Hacking" Tips + Google Faces Patent Infringement Lawsuit Over Google Talk + New Microsoft Patent Apps Discusses the Building of Personalized Portals Tuesday, December 27, 2005
Professional Reading Shelf Open Access Source: Inside Higher Ed 'The Access Principle' "Paying for information? In print? That's a model that's just so early 20th century, according to The Access Principle: The Case for Open Access to Research and Scholarship, published last week by MIT Press. The book reviews the various models to bring the dissemination of knowledge online and to make it free, and along the way, the book criticizes plenty of publishing practices, copyright interpretations and scholarly traditions. John Willinsky, professor of language and literacy education at the University of British Columbia, has devoted much of his scholarship to the ideas behind the book. Among other things, he directs the Public Knowledge Project, which is financed by the Canadian government to promote the free exchange of information. Willinsky responded to questions about the themes of his book." -- Wikipedia Source: St. Petersburg Times When Wikipedians run amok on orderly online encyclopedia "What's the difference between an expert and an enthusiast? On Wikipedia, both have equal weight in creating and maintaining the site." -- Libraries--Books--Ranking Source: Library Journal Library Best Sellers 2005 "It wasn't all The Da Vinci Code in libraries this year. LJ's fiction list shows how responsive librarians are to patron demand. Pop titles pop right away, ride the list up, and most often ride back down to get replaced by the next big thing. But library book clubs and insightful readers' advisory keep many books alive well past their first printings. While John Grisham's The Broker was hot, it barely outpaced not only Dan Brown's Da Vinci but Khaled Hosseini's reading club sensation The Kite Runner. James Patterson ruled this year's borrowed fiction, however, with four titles making the top 20."
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Law Schools--Rankings Source: University of Alabama Public Law Research Paper (via SSRN) The Relationship between Law Review Citations and Law School Rankings "Much recent scholarship has focused on the US News rankings and other ranking systems; other scholarship has focused on citations of law journals. This paper combines those two areas. It explores the connections between US News rankings (particularly the peer assessment scores) and citations of schools' main law reviews by journals and by courts. There are high correlations between the US News peer assessment scores and citations of main law reviews by journals for the US News top 50 schools. For comparison purposes, the paper also looks to Brian Leiter's rankings and finds a similar correlation. However, the strength of the correlations decrease for US News third and fourth tier schools. There is a weaker correlation between US News peer assessment scores and court citations across all US News tiers. The paper considers some of the implications of the correlations for law school rankings and suggests that, perhaps, future rankings should include citations as a factor in assessing the quality of law schools." -- Telephony--Hub Source: O'Reilly Network O'Reilly Emerging Telephony "I'm excited to announce the launch of our new O'Reilly site devoted to what we're calling 'Emerging Telephony.' We'll be covering the latest happenings in telecommunications, from VoIP and Internet Telephony to new mobile applications and devices to the policy and regulatory issues that impact these important technologies. Please check back regularly or subscribe to our feed: you'll find news, analysis, reviews, and the in-depth technical articles you've come to expect from O'Reilly." -- CEOs--Ranking Source: Burson-Marsteller, Economist Intelligence Unit The World's Most Admired Leaders of 2005 "Despite the continuing controversy surrounding today's corporate executives, leadership still shapes a company's destiny. A new global study conducted by Burson-Marsteller with the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) names Bill Gates, Microsoft's chairman and chief software architect, the world's most admired business leader. The 2005 CEO Capital study asked more than 600 global business influentials in 65 countries to write in which CEO or chairman they admire most in the business world today. The CEO/chairman rankings appear below." Monday, December 26, 2005
Professional Reading Shelf Information Overload Source: USA Today Ready access to info means smarts or stress? "'Social networks, search engines and things [not?] yet invented are critical as we bring millions of movies, books, and musical recordings online,' said Brewster Kahle, a search pioneer who created the Internet Archive, a non-profit preservation group. Even more important will be good research skills -- infoliteracy, if you will. That means knowing where and how to look, and evaluating what you get back. And that's crucial as people get inundated with electronic information 24/7 -- not just at their computers. Cellphones are being transformed into search and browsing tools, and iPods are becoming small television displays." -- Public Domain Works Source: Associated Press (via Baltimore Sun) He revives books others have forgotten "Steve Hines spends hours camped out at the Nashville Public Library, looking for obscure works by famous authors. He's motivated by more than just a love of literature. Hines is hoping to find and publish stories by writers such as Louisa May Alcott and Laura Ingalls Wilder -- not the famous novels like Little Women or Little House on the Prairie but lesser-known works that might still appeal to the authors' die-hard fans. The copyright for most books and stories published in the United States before 1978 expires after 75 years, putting it in the public domain. That means anyone can republish the stories for profit." -- English Language Library--Russia Source: The Daily Times (Maryville, TN) Project supplies English library to Russian town "This is a good Christmas story. It revolves around humanity, charity, kindness, and compassion. It's about how a city of Alcoa employee named Steve Hillis inspired and led 144 people to organize and deliver a 10,000-volume English library to a struggling Russian town that was once a center of chemical weapons production."
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Population--United States--Statistics Source: U.S. Census Nevada Edges Out Arizona as the Fastest-Growing State -- Health Issues--Backgrounders Source: Health Behavior News Service Facts of Life: Issue Briefings for Health Reporters "We publish a monthly issue briefing for health reporters that provides background on particular topics within health and behavior, interviews with prominent researchers and sidebars that can be published, with credit to the Health Behavior News Service. Recent topics have included: second-generation SSRIs, conveying disease statistics, obesity and the elderly, postpartum depression, depression in children and carpal tunnel syndrome." -- Biology Source: Whitman College Virtual Pig Dissection "Requirements for the VPD: A monitor set to 16-bit (Thousands) of colors or more, Netscape or IE with the newest version of the Shockwave Plug-in, and your monitor needs to be set to a resolution of at least 640x480, but preferably higher. The stage size for the presentations is 640x480, and you need to be able to see the entire stage." Includes study guides and quizzes. -- Military Science--Bibliographies Souce: Air University Library Two new bibliographies include Internet resources, books, documents, periodicals + Chechnya Insurgency + Effects Based Operations Sunday, December 25, 2005
Professional Reading Shelf Encyclopedias Source: Future Brief Changing The World - Overnight "The encyclopedia industry was blindsided. They never imagined that they could be marginalized, much less by the antithesis of their long-valued process of expert editors and verified content experts. In a way, this is similar to what happened to be [sic] best buggy whip manufacturers when the automobile replaced the previous common mode of transportation." -- Out-of-Print Books--Ranking Source: Bookfinder.com Top 10 out-of-print books of 2005 "According to BookFinder.com's research, the top 10 most sought after US out-of-print books of 2005 are...." Madonna's Sex (1992) is number one. Who knew?
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Holiday Season--United States--Statistics Source: U.S. Census Fast Facts: The Holiday Season A round-up of facts and stats including: 6.5 million Number of Christmas trees cut in Oregon in 2002, making the Beaver State the nation's leader. (There were 2.6 million trees cut in Clackamas County, Ore., alone.) Also topping the 1-million mark among states were Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Washington, and Wisconsin. + 1,162 Population of Christmas, Fla., an unincorporated town. (Source: American FactFinder) Other places whose names are associated with the holiday season include North Pole, Alaska (population 1,659 in 2004); Santa Claus, Ind. (2,201); Santa Claus, Ga. (238); Noel, Mo. (1,476); and -- if you know about reindeer -- the village of Rudolph, Wis. (418). On top of that there is Snowflake, Ariz. (4,836); Dasher, Ga. (822); and a dozen places named Holly, including Holly Springs, Miss., and Mount Holly, N.C. (Source: American FactFinder) + $21.5 billion The value of total retail e-commerce sales for the fourth quarter of 2004. This amount, represented 2.3 percent of total retail sales over the period and exceeded e-commerce sales for all other quarters of the year. E-commerce sales were up 24 percent from the fourth quarter of 2003. -- Philanthropy--Ranking Source: Center for Civil Society Studies, Johns Hopkins University Institute for Policy Studies As the World Gives: Johns Hopkins Survey Details Philanthropic Behavior, Giving "Just who in the world is the most generous? Would it be Americans, who lead the world in cash donations to charities, measured as a percentage of gross domestic product? Or is it the good people of the Netherlands, who give more of their time and money combined and thus lead the world in overall philanthropic behavior?" Chart: Private Philanthropy Across the World (PDF; 10 KB) -- "Each of the three lists below provides a different perspective on philanthropic giving patterns in the countries studied by the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project. The first column includes all private philanthropy (giving + volunteering), the second covers only the value of volunteering, and the third covers only giving (cash and other property gifts)." -- Media--Plagiarism Source: Regret the Error 2005 Plagiarism Round-Up "Oh what a year for plagiarists. Herewith, a quick collection of the year's instances of plagiarism in the media. We've tried to catch them all, but can't promise that this is a definitive list." See also: Crunks '05: The Year in Media Errors and Corrections Saturday, December 24, 2005
Professional Reading Shelf Public Libraries--Budget Issues Source: MassLive.com Girl to Santa: Reopen library "An 11-year-old girl has written a letter to Santa stating that all she wants for Christmas is 'our little town library open again.' Anne Collins, of Hampden, who said she is home-schooled, said the Hampden Free Public Library, which was closed in July after a proposed override of Proposition 2˝ failed, was like 'a second home' to her." -- Medline--Literary Allusions Source: British Medical Journal From Shakespeare to Star Trek and beyond: a Medline search for literary and other allusions in biomedical titles "More than 1400 Shakespearean allusions exist, a third of them to 'What's in a name' and another third to Hamlet -- mostly to 'To be or not to be.' The trend of increasing use of allusive titles, identified from Shakespeare and Andersen, is paralleled by allusions to Carroll and proverbs; the trend of biblical allusions is also upward but is more erratic. Trends for newer allusions are also upwards, including the previously surveyed "paradigm shift." Allusive titles are likely to be to editorial or comment rather than to original research."
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Christmas--Science Source: NewScientist.com Instant Expert: Christmas Science "Ever wondered how they celebrate Christmas at the South Pole, pondered the psychology behind Christmas card lists and Christmas dinner, or wondered why an average of 80,000 Brits end up hospitalised every holiday season? Here NewScientist.com guides you through the science of all things festive." -- Recipes--Database Source: Naval Supply Systems Command, Naval Logistics Library Naval Logistics Library: Recipe Repository "Welcome to NAVSUP's Naval Logistics Library Recipe Repository. All recipes require a free PDF Viewer/Reader from Adobe.... Please enter your search criteria below (all fields are optional). Example of search keywords are Ham, Steak, Shrimp, Index, Conversion." Friday, December 23, 2005
Professional Reading Shelf Libraries--Buildings Source: Library Journal A Storm Rains on Our Parade -- Library Buildings 2005 "A year that features 185 completed public library projects should be cause for celebration, and likely those constituencies that now have access to these 91 new buildings and 94 added-to/renovated facilities no doubt have been pleased with the outcome. Yet, underlying all this solid library construction news is a sadness over the devastation suffered by other libraries and their communities following Hurricane Katrina and her sister storms." -- Young Adults--Recommended Reading Source: Young Adult Library Services Association Recommended Reading for Tweens & Teens: Chronicles of Narnia Read-A-Likes (PDF; 81 KB) "While these books were selected for tweens and teens, the titles on this list span a broad range of reading and maturity levels. We encourage adults to take an active role in helping individual teens choose those books that are the best fit for them and their families."
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Now Available--2006-07 Editions of the Occupational Outlook Handbook and the Career Guide to Industries Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics -- Business Expenses--United States Source: U.S. Census Bureau 2002 Business Expenses Survey (BES) "Data are collected on operating expenses including payroll and fringe benefits, contract labor costs, taxes and license fees, packaging and containers, transportation and warehousing services, depreciation and amortization charges, software and other computer expenses, communications services, computer and other supplies, office supplies, repair and maintenance expenses, lease and rental payments, printing, utilities, advertising, accounting, insurance, management and consulting services and legal services." -- Faculty--Characteristics and Attitudes Source: National Center for Education Statistics Background Characteristics, Work Activities, and Compensation of Instructional Faculty and Staff: Fall 2003 "This publication is the second from the 2004 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty (NSOPF:04), a study of faculty and instructional staff in public and private not-for-profit 2-year-and-above postsecondary institutions in the United States. This report describes the background characteristics, work activities, and compensation of instructional faculty and staff in fall 2003, by employment status, institution type, and program area. The results show that the majority (57 percent) of instructional faculty and staff were employed full time in fall 2003. Women made up a larger proportion of part-time than full-time instructional faculty and staff (47 percent vs. 38 percent). Full-time instructional faculty and staff, overall, reported working an average of 53 hours each week at all jobs both within and outside the institution, and part-time faculty averaged 40 hours per week at all jobs. The average basic salary from the institution for full-time instructional faculty and staff in all types of institutions was $66,800, and the average basic salary for part-time instructional staff was $11,000 in 2003." Full Report (PDF; 344 KB) -- Journalism--Awards Source: International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, Center for Public Integrity ABC 20/20, Sweden's TV4 Receive International Watchdog Awards "An ABC News 20/20 report documenting systematic sexual exploitation of girls and boys by UN peacekeepers and civilians in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been awarded the Outstanding Investigative Reporting prize for 2005 by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the international arm of the Center for Public Integrity. Winners and Finalists
REMINDER Make Sure to Visit DocuTicker Today! Docuticker is a daily update from your ResourceShelf team with direct links to new reports from government agencies, ngo's, think tanks, and other groups. Looking for primary docs? This is the place. Thursday, December 22, 2005
Professional Reading Shelf Data Quality Source: Science News Online The Risky Business of Spreadsheet Errors "Spreadsheets create an illusion of orderliness, accuracy, and integrity. The tidy rows and columns of data, instant calculations, eerily invisible updating, and other features of these ubiquitous instruments contribute to this soothing impression. At the same time, faulty spreadsheets and poor spreadsheet practices have been implicated in a wide variety of business and financial problems." -- Libraries--Marketing The December issue of Chris Olsen's Marketing Treasures newsletter is available. Among other things, you can find out "what to include in Requests for Proposals seeking logo design services."
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Advertising--Foreign Markets Source: Advertising Age Ten 2005 Ads America Won't See "With viewable online videos, we bring you the annual review of the most noteworthy 2005 ads from other countries that will never be shown in the U.S." Free registraion required. -- Packaging Material--Recycling Source: Plastic Loose Fill Council (PLFC) Peanut Hotline "The Peanut Hotline, 800-828-2214, is the national reuse program for plastic packing peanuts . Consumers can drop off their leftover plastic packing peanuts at Peanut Hotline collection sites. There are over 1,500 collection sites in the US. Search for a Collection Site to find the one nearest you." -- Satellites--Database Source: Union of Concerned Scientists UCS Satellite Database "The UCS Satellite Database is a listing of operational satellites currently in orbit around the Earth. It is available as a downloadable Excel file, which is updated roughly quarterly. Our intent in producing the database is to create a research tool for specialists and non-specialists alike by collecting open-source information on operational satellites and presenting it in a format that can be easily manipulated for research and analysis. The database includes basic information about more than 800 satellites and their orbits, but does not contain the detailed information necessary to locate individual satellites." Direct to database (xls) -- Celebrities--Ranking Source: Internet Movie Database STARmeter Top 25 for 2005 "IMDb.com, Earth's biggest movie database, has released their top 25 stars for 2005. These STARmeter rankings were not based upon critical assessments or box-office performance, but the actual search behavior of over 30 million users of IMDb.com." Wednesday, December 21, 2005
Professional Reading Shelf Digital Libraries Call for Papers: Special Issue on Digital Libraries and eScience To be published in the International Journal on Digital Libraries. -- eBooks--Digitization--Legal Issues Copyright Source: Digital Library Federation and Council on Library and Information Acquiring Copyright Permission To Digitize and Provide Open Access to Books "This report focuses on three efforts at Carnegie Mellon University to acquire copyright permission to digitize and provide open access to books-that is, to make books freely available on the Internet for public use. [1] To provide a context for the studies that form the basis of this report, the report begins with an overview of copyright laws, licensing practices, and technological developments that have brought about dramatic changes in the cost and dissemination of scholarly information. This section also describes the impact that these changes have had on research, learning, and libraries. The three studies, including data analyses that explore the response and success rates with different types of publishers and publications and transaction costs, are then presented in detail. Anecdotes illuminate the effort required and problems encountered in trying to acquire copyright permission for open access, from the difficulty of determining copyright status and ownership and locating copyright owners to the questions, concerns, record-keeping methods, and changing contractual practices that constrain publishers' embrace of open access. The report describes how lessons learned in each study were applied in the next study and the benefits of flexible and innovative approaches to acquiring copyright permission." -- National Archives--United Kingdom Source: IWR Archives site upgraded for FoI -- Access Services Source: ARL New SPEC Kit (Summary Only): SPEC Kit 290: Access Services "In 1991, SPEC Kit 179, Access Services: Organization and Management, documented the emergence of a new trend in ARL member libraries: over the course of a decade, a variety of services related to providing access to library resources were being brought under one administrative umbrella, a department that was typically called 'Circulation,' though a growing number of libraries began to use the term 'Access Services.' This new SPEC survey, conducted in spring 2005, tracks developments and trends in access services since 1995. The survey results show a steady evolution in department name from 'Circulation' to 'Access Services' and an increasing relevance of this department's functions to library users." Table of Contents and Exec Summary (PDF). -- Metadata--United States Government Source: GCN GSA: Metadata not essential for search "Metadata and other advanced preparation techniques may not be required to make government information available for public search, according to feedback the General Services Administration received from a request for information it posted earlier this year."
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Telephone Numbers--United States--Databases Source: Melissa Data Area Code + Prefixes in a Radius Lookup Find all of the prefixes and areas in a radius of a specific Zip Code (10 miles max). Melissa Data offers a number of free lookup databases that we offer an overview of here. -- Germany--Elections Source: House of Commons Library New Research Report, Germany: elections, the new government and Anglo-German relations PDF; 57 pages. -- Agriculture--Economics Source: ERS/USDA Just Updated: International Macroeconomic Data Set -- Crime--United States--Statistics Source: BJS Just Released, Uniform Crime Reports: Preliminary Semiannual Report, January-June 2005 -- Central Intelligence Agency Source: CIA Just Released, CIA Organizational Chart PDF. -- Spam--United States--Statistics Source: FTC New Report, Effectiveness and Enforcement of the CAN-SPAM Act: A Federal Trade Commission Report to Congress (December 2005) Summary ||| Direct to Full Text (PDF)
Search Briefs + Ask Jeeves Adds New Features AJ continues to develop into a key ready reference tool for librarians. + Answers.com Testing New "Find As You Type" Feature + Governments Ask Google to Turn a Blind Eye All sorts of places to find satellite imagery. + Yahoo Launches Open Shortcuts, Allows Creation Of Custom Search Commands You'll also read about several toolbars that allow you to create one-click searches with just about any search engine EVEN if doesn't offer its own toolbar. Cool! Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Professional Reading Shelf Web Search--Google Source: Google First Issue of Google's Newsletter for Librarians Released More than two months ago Google said that they would begin publishing a quartely newsletter for librarians. Today, the first issue became available. Unfortunately, not much there in terms of content except for an intro article by Jodi Healy and an interesting article about how Google works (and most other web engines for that matter) by one of our favorite Googlers, Matt Cutts. That said, the article, although interesting and well written (Cutts is a great writer), will be, for the most part, known by many of the information professionals and and library school students who read it. Info pros who have read books by Chris Sherman, Ran Hock, and Tara Calishain (books held by many libraries) and other IR titles, talk about much of what's written here. Btw, both the books by Chris and Ran are full text searchable via Amazon's "Search Inside the Book" program but not accessible via Google Book Search. Tara's, latest book, Web Search Garage, is not available (search wise, that is) from either service. Her 2003 book Google Hacks is searchable via Google Book Search. However, Matt's article will serve as an excellent review by an expert. The sidebar with an exercise for students about the concepts involved in an inverted index is also a great idea. I was surprised not to see more, being this is the first issue, like the latest from Google's perspective on the Google Library Project since its first anniversary was last week (here's a review I compiled) and this would have been a logical time for an update, more search tips, and intros to Google's lesser known servics like the just launched (synergy) music search. Personally, I would have also enjoyed learning more about an exchange from a recently held Google Print/Library debate that took place at the NY Public Library. In a discussion with a leader from a publishing trade group, Google's General Counsel said it would be "horrors" if people only went to libraries to gain physical access to new books found via Google Book Search. I blogged about it here. Bottom Line: ResourceShelf welcomes the Google Librarian Newsletter to the growing number of publications serving the info community. Welcome! -- Digital Libraries Source: Corporation for National Research Initiatives The December Issue of D-Lib is Now Online Articles include: + Five Views of the Archive, Ingest and Handling Test + Harvard's Perspective on the Archive Ingest and Handling Test + Parallel Worlds: Online Games and Digital Information Services + The Archive Ingest and Handling Test: The Johns Hopkins University Report -- Emergency Responders--Databases Source: NLM WebWISER makes WISER available on the Internet "The National Library of Medicine announces that WISER, the Wireless Information System for Emergency Responders, is now available on the Web. This new version, WebWISER, joins the existing PDA and desktop (PC) applications. WISER was developed by the Library's Division of Specialized Information Services." -- Public Libraries--New York City Map Libraries and Collection Source: NYPL The Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division Opens After Extensive Renovation Wow! Interested in the info technology available? Check this fact sheet.
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Influenza--Pandemics Source: World Health Organization WHO Handbook for Journalists: Influenza Pandemic: Updated December 2005 PDF; 24 pages. -- Bankruptcy--United States Source: Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts on behalf of the U.S. Courts New, 2005 Bankruptcy Act Resources -- Women--United States--Statistics Source: US Census Just Released, Fertility of American Women: June 2004 Profiles current fertility patterns of American women by age, race, ethnicity, education, marital status, income and nativity. Also contains labor force participation data by fertility status. PDF.
Search Briefs + Specialty Databases (Verticals) the Focus of a Wall Street Journal Article ResourceShelf Editor, Gary Price, is quoted in the article. + Japan's Government Forms Study Group to Determine if Country Should Launch its Own Search Engine + A New Blog from WWW Founder Tim Berners-Lee and a Bit of WWW History Monday, December 19, 2005
Professional Reading Shelf Libraries--Health Information Libraries--Africa Source: U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science (NCLIS) Recently Released, The Role of Libraries in HIV/AIDS Information Dissemination in Sub-Saharan Africa "The U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science (NCLIS) today announced the publication of The Role of Libraries in HIV/AIDS Information Dissemination in Sub-Saharan Africa...Believing that a key weapon in the battle against the HIV/AIDS pandemic is education and information targeted directly to the general public, especially young people, the Commission set the goal of this study to explore how information is--or can be--disseminated in parts of the world where the impact of HIV/AIDS has been the greatest, and the resources of the countries impacted have been the smallest. Nowhere is information so crucial and nowhere is information for the general population so lacking as in Africa." News Release (PDF) Direct to Full Text (PDF) -- RLG Source: RLG The December 15th Issue of RLG's DigiNews is Now Online Articles include: + When Just Doing It Isn't Enough: The University of Oregon Takes Stock + Building a Digital Archive: A Dutch Experience + A Look at the Electronic Literature Organization Web Site -- Electronic Databases--Reviews Source: Charleston Advisor Review of PatronsBooksinPrint -- National Archives and Records Administration Source: NARA National Archives Partners with the National Coalition for History to Identify Missing or Stolen Records
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text 2005 Source: InfoPlease.com Year-in-Review Materials from Infoplease.com + News of 2005 + People in the News, 2005 + Deaths 2005 -- United Nations Source: UN New Web Site: The UN Global Compact -- Substance Abuse--United Surveys--Youth--Surveys Source: Monitoring the Future, NIH Just Released, 2005 Monitoring the Future Survey Shows Continued Decline in Drug Use by Students From the NIH news release, "Overall, the 2005 Monitoring the Future (MTF) survey showed good news. While there was no substantive change in any illicit drug use between 2004 and 2005, analysis of the survey revealed an almost 19 percent decline in past month use of any illicit drug by 8th, 10th, and 12th graders between 2001 and 2005. This trend is driven largely by decreasing rates of marijuana use among these students. For example, since 2001, past month use of marijuana has fallen by 28 percent among 8th graders and by 23 percent among 10th graders." Direct to Tables and Additional Materials -- Calendars--Science--Conferences and Meetings Calendars--Medicine--Conferences and Meetings Source: Newswise + Calendar of Scientific Meetings + Calendar of Medical Meetings Both calendars are updated monthly.
Briefly + OverDrive: New Service Enables Audiobook and Music Downloads Inside the Library -- + ProQuest Completes Chicago Tribune and LA Times Digital Archives
Search Briefs + Blinkx.tv Ends a Busy Year with a New Feature and Some New Content Download content video blogs directly to your Video iPod. Sunday, December 18, 2005
Professional Reading Shelf National Library of Medicine Source: NLM + What's New for 2006 MeSH + "Bird Flu" Terminology and Changes to Influenza A Viruses and Related Headings + New Resource: NCBI Search Toolbar + New Authority Index Feature in the NLM Catalog -- Literacy--United States--Statistics Source: NCES Just Released, A First Look at the Literacy of America's Adults Includes summary, full text report (PDF), data tables, and more. -- Research Libraries ARL Source: Association of Research Libraries Publication Announcement: ARL Publishes ARL Statistics 2003-04 "ARL libraries are a relatively small subset of the largest research libraries in North America, but they account for a large portion of academic library resources in terms of assets, budgets, and the number of users they serve. The total library expenditures of all 123 member libraries in 2003-04 was more than $3.4 billion; of that total, almost $2.6 billion was spent by the 113 university libraries and more than $800 million was spent by the 10 nonuniversity libraries."
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Congressional Research Service Source: CRS A Selection of New/Updated CRS Reports All reports are PDF. + Same-Sex Marriages: Legal Issues + Muslims in Europe: Integration Policies in Selected Countries + Securing General Aviation + The Law of Church and State: Opinions of Judge Samuel Alito + Congress as a Consumer of Intelligence Information + Protecting New Orleans: From Hurricane Barriers to Floodwalls -- Manufacturers--United States--Statistics Source: U.S. Census 2004 Annual Survey of Manufactures, Product Shipments
Search Briefs + Google, Yahoo and Dogpile's Top Searches of 2005 List A very interesting list that shows info pros could play a role in training the web searcher on how it all works. + New Issue of Information Science Publication Focuses on "Paid Search" + A Brief Look at Mobile Mail Access from Yahoo and MSN Saturday, December 17, 2005
Professional Reading Shelf Librarians--Massachusetts Source: BetaNews Librarians Voice Support for OpenDoc "Five library associations voiced their support for the use of OpenDocument (ODF) in Massachusetts this week, sending a letter to William Galvin, the Commonwealth's Secretary of State. In it, the groups say the open source format is the best choice, as everyone has access to its specifications." -- PATRIOT Act Source: AP Senate Defeat For Patriot Act -- Special Collections Source: ARL New, Uses of Special Collections in Teaching and Learning, Summary of an ARL Membership Meeting Briefing Session, by Monica McCormick, UNC-Chapel Hill
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Educational Media Source: Kaiser Family Foundation New Report on Educational Media for Babies, Toddlers, and Preschoolers "In recent years, there has been a big increase in new electronic media products for very young children, including those as young as one month old. A driving force behind this new market is the advertising and package labeling that makes claims about the educational benefits of specific products. A new report examines the educational claims about commercially available educational media products (videos and DVDs, computer software, and video games) for very young children and the research to substantiate the educational claims." -- Education--United States--Statistics Source: NCES Just Released, Revenues and Expenditures by Public School Districts: School Year 2002-03 -- Country Studies Source: Federal Research Division/Library of Congress Just Updated, Country Profile of Turkmenistan PDF. -- Occupational Safety--United States--Statistics Source: BLS Just Released, Lost-worktime Injuries and Illnesses: Characteristics and Resulting Time Away From Work, 2004 Tables and text summary.
Search Briefs + CiteSeer Makes Mirrors of Database Available @ MIT @ U. of Zürich @ National U. of Singapore This web research "classic" offers incredible access to scholarly materials in computer science, IT, telcom, and related areas. The service began at Penn St. University. Developed by Dr. Lee Giles and team at Penn St. University. See Also: SmealSearch Same IR technology. Database focuses on scholarly materials in business. Amazing! Friday, December 16, 2005
Professional Reading Shelf SPARC Scholarly Communication Source: Against the Grain I Hear the Train A Comin' -- SPARC, An Interview With Executive Director Heather Joseph Published in Against the Grain, November, 2005. PDF; 2 pages. "What has SPARC accomplished, what is its view of the current scholarly communication landscape, and where are we headed?" -- Unstructured Data Source: ACM Queue Information Extraction: Distilling Structured Data from Unstructured Text "Much of the world's information is locked within unstructured, natural language text. Information extraction techniques can help set it free." -- Information Standards Source: National Information Standards Organization (NISO) Now Available: December 2005 Issue of NISO Newsline Posts include: + "NISO to Sponsor Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative" + "NISO-Sponsored INFO URI Scheme Gets Thumbs Up from IETF Group" + "Scanning the Pros and Cons of RFID Tagging" + "2006 Heritage Health Index Report on the State of America's Collections"
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Topix.net Source: SEW Blog Topix.net Has One Impressive Year from Both Business and User Perspective; Ends Year with New Look and Design A ResourceShelf favorite news search tool continues to expand and improve. -- Seat Belts--United States--Statistics Source: NHTSA New Data Show Rising Safety Belt Use Rates in Most States "More Americans than ever are wearing their safety belts with usage rates climbing in 34 states this year, according to U.S. Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta. In 2005, safety belt use ranged from 60.8 percent in Mississippi to 95.3 percent in Hawaii. Others breaking the 90 percent belt use barrier included Washington, Nevada, Arizona, Oregon, Michigan, California, Puerto Rico and Maryland." Direct to Full Text report. (PDF; 7 pages) -- Advertising--Online--Lists & Rankings Source: Clickz Top 50 Advertisers by Media Value in October, 2005 "The top Internet advertisers by media value. The data are provided by TNS Media Intelligence." -- Information Technology--Management--Lists & Rankings Source: Computerworld Just Released, Premier 100, 2005 "...7th annual awards shine a spotlight on some of the brightest minds in the IT community." -- Energy Conservation Source: FTC New Web Site, Saving Starts @ Home: The Insider Story on Conserving Energy "The Federal Trade Commission is offering energy conversation tips to help consumers save money in every room of the house. The Web site, Saving Starts @ Home: The Insider Story on Conserving Energy..." -- Higher Education--Engineering--Salary Surveys Source NSF Recent Engineering and Computer Science Graduates Continue to Earn the Highest Salaries "Recent bachelor's and master's engineering graduates and graduates with computer sciences bachelor's are more likely to be employed full time and to earn higher salaries than are graduates in other fields. Industry continues to be the largest employer of recent graduates in science, engineering, or health. Data are from the 2003 National Survey of Recent College Graduates for graduates who received bachelor's or master's degrees in science, engineering, or health fields between July 2000 and June 2002."
Search Briefs + Google Gmail Now Accessible via Mobile Phones + Technorati Begins Cooking Up Ideas in their New "Kitchen" + Search Execs Talk at MIT Forum + Yahoo Tweaks Pure Search Interface; Adds New Page Highlighting Popular Services Thursday, December 15, 2005
Resource of the Week by Steven M. Cohen, Assistant Editor Editors Note: Shirl Kennedy, Deputy Editor, will return next week with her ROTW column. Btw, we mentioned this week's ROTW and its developers last week when it was first released. Congrats to Derek and Adrian on the ROTW mention. While awaiting anxiously for the new release of Thomas, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the Washington Post has entered the congressional data fray with their votes database, which "lets you browse every vote in the U.S. Congress since 1991."
Professional Reading Shelf National Archives and Records Administration Source: AP Archives Smooths Web Access to Records If you ever used the Access to Archival Databases (AAD) from the National Archives of the U.S. it was a pain in the rear. You had to search one database at a time. Well, that's changed. Yes, it's another example of meta or federated searching coming to life. From the AP article: "The revamped Access to Archival Databases site -- http://http://aad.archives.gov/aad/ -- allows the public to search for free through 85 million documents in 475 files amassed by more than 30 federal agencies." From the site itself, "...Feature global free-text searching across all series and files, in addition to our standard fielded search, and easier and faster ways to find the series and files you want!" Thanks to Randy H. for the news tip. I think the challenge now will be in reaching these databases. I've been having trouble for the past hour. -- RLG Source: Educause Audio: Interview with RLG President and CEO, James Michalko A 20-minute interview with Michalko. History, preservation, services, and more. Includes talk about ResourceShelf favorite, RedLightGreen. See Also: Get Ready for ArchiveGrid from RLG (Coming in 2006) -- Digital Books On-Demand Printing Source: Book Tech New Study Predicts Double-Digit Growth in Digital Book Printing -- Spatial Data Source: ARL New, Spatial Data Collections and Services "This SPEC Kit examines how library patrons' use of spatial data has changed since 1999 and what effect this has had on library staffing, collections, budget, and services. The publication provides a snapshot of how ARL member libraries are handling the challenges associated with spatial data 15 years after geographic information systems (GIS) and digital mapping first appeared on campus." Full-text fee-baed. Executive Summary Available (PDF; FREE) -- Libraries and Librarians Source: LJ New by Roy Tennant: What I Wish I Had Known What will be a classic by our friend, Roy Tennant!
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Health Industry--United States--Databases Health Billing Codes and Dickens: Two New Databases from AskSam Available for Free AskSam is a free-form database company that offers numerous databases (online and offline, they call them ebooks) for free. In some cases you'll need the AskSam Reader (also free). New from AskSam this week: + Medical Billing Codes (Available online only) CPT and HCPCS Medical Codes. "This database contains a complete listing of CPT codes (Current Procedural Terminology) and HCPCS codes (Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System). This database is fully searchable by code, description, type or category." + A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens Free Searchable Version. Browse and/or search online or offline. ---- -- Trade--Canada--Interactive Maps Source: exportsource.ca Tutorial For Interactive TradeMap Canada From the site, "The decision to begin exporting, or to expand into new export markets, is not one that can be taken without some serious research into issues such as: 1. Is there a market for my product? 2. What market should I go after? 3. Is this market growing? 4. Who is the competition? 5. Are there any tariff or non-tariff barriers? The list goes on. Trademap Canada will have some of these answers for you. This tutorial will help you get these answers, enabling you to analyze the export or import potential for your product." Registration to use the database is required (Free). -- Historical Maps--Bibliography Source: Air University Library Historical Map Bibliographies "The bibliographies in this series are produced by Air University Library staff to support the need for historical maps pertaining to wars, battles, and famous leaders' actions. Maps cited in these bibliographies may be a combination of internet sites, books, periodicals, or documents, and may contain links to full-text material. Click on a specific topic to view a bibliography." Includes: Desert Storm, Korean War, WW I, WW II. See also: Air University Library Maproom -- Automobile Insurance Pricing--Factors Source: Quality Planning Corporation Why People Who Live Close to Restaurants Are More Likely To Have an Accident and Pay More for Auto Insurance "If you live within a mile of a church, you're far less likely to have a car accident than drivers who live more than a mile from a church. But if you live within one mile of a restaurant, you face a significantly greater risk of an accident than most other drivers. Those are among the key findings of a study released...by a leading predictive analytics company -- Quality Planning Corporation -- a firm that helps insurance companies price insurance more accurately and fairly." -- Renewable Energy--United States--State Profiles Source: EIA New, Renewable State Profiles California is the first state in a series of upcoming state renewable energy profiles. The state profiles will cover: electric power statistics from 1999-2003; renewable resource maps; state incentives for renewable energy; state market share rankings, as well as capacity and generation."
Search Briefs + Ask Jeeves UK Releases Smart Search Tool for Football Fans + Google Adds Music Search Feature and Learn What Others Offer + The A9 Top 99 Search Terms of 2005; All Terms Contain Nine Letters + Mobile Search: 4Info.net Has Plans to Release Client Software + Wayfinding on the Web
Wikipedia Roundup Wikipedia Source: BusinessWeek Yes, Another Interview With Wikipedia Founder, Jimmy Wales Comments by Gary. Last week Wales told NPR listeners to take Wikipedia and other web info with a grain of salt (actually, good advice). Today, in BusinessWeek he is quoted saying the following: Q. Do you think students and researchers should cite Wikipedia? A. (Jimmy Wales): No, I don't think people should cite it, and I don't think people should cite Britannica, either -- the error rate there isn't very good. People shouldn't be citing encyclopedias in the first place. Wikipedia and other encyclopedias should be solid enough to give good, solid background information to inform your studies for a deeper level. And really, it's more reliable to read Wikipedia for background than to read random Web pages on the Internet. Without getting into a long discussion about what encyclopedias are (both general and even more so, subject specific works) and when and how they should be used, I find the response interesting. I think some would argue that both types of encyclopedias are very citeable by a student or anyone else. 1) Worth noting that these comments, including about not citing EB, came before a new study (just released) that shows EB and Wikipedia compare well in terms of quality of entries in the sciences. More about knowing about and using specialty tools (electronic and print) is also becoming even more important than it has been in the past. Both of these are major areas where info pros need to be involved. --- More Reading and Listening A recent article about the quality of Wikipedia entries was published in The Guardian. Entries on specific topics were reviewed by subject experts. In most cases, the entries were rated from fair to poor. Finally, if you're interested in an audio interview with Jimmy Wales, he was heard on NPR last week. Wales said that material in Wikipedia and other data found on the web should be taken with a "grain of salt." That's another way of saying that critical info skills are important, choice of resource is important, etc. Again, we know this, but does the public and do they care to know or just take the first result they find and move on (aka satisficing)? The more I listen or read what Mr. Wales has to say, I admit I'm becoming more impressed. However, is he trying to tell people what we as info pros have been trying to impress upon them for years? Again, this is about why info literacy, we could even call it searching literacy and critical info skills must be taught and developed at an early age and continued throughout one's formal and informal education. At the same time it's crucial--I would think info providers would find it essential--that the public is taught about a variety of tools. My bottom line on Wikipedia? All the best to Mr. Wales. I might disagree with some of his comments but I respect where he's coming from. That's a bit of a change on my part. He also comes off being a likable guy. Btw, all of this doesn't mean I still don't have MAJOR concerns with Wikipedia. The true test of Wikipedia will be not today, tomorrow, or even next year, but in five or ten years. Will the volunteer efforts sustain? Remember the Open Directory Project? Now look at what it has become. Note to Mr. Wales: One change that I think would help Wikipedia is requiring those who license the database (free) to refresh the content on their server at a specific interval. However, from browsing the Wikipedia site, I noticed that some people take the data and don't even give Wikipedia credit, another issue for you to make sure your data is used correctly and updated on a regular basis. This would help answer the question, which version of Wikipedia am I looking at? I would think that as WikiP grows, more and more people will want to license and use the massive amount of content you offer for free. Can your system and, I guess, the public handle that? Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Professional Reading Shelf Web Search--Google Google Library Project Source: SEW Blog Anniversary #1 is Today: Google's Library Project Now One Year Old It has been quite a year. Talk about one project getting gobs of attention. Gary has compiled a list that looks back at key stories from the first year of a program including a look (via a post from Danny) at the important differences between Google Print (now Google Book Search). -- PubMed Source: NLM PubMed Online Training Page Now Available -- Science--Online Information Information Industry--Elsevier Source: Scirus Scirus Adds New Content to Database Word from Scirus (Elsevier) that a new content repository has been added and now searchable via Scirus. + "A partnership with DiVA - Academic Archive On-line - to index its repositories, and to power the search on the portal site. DiVA is a joint program of Scandinavian universities to publish, preserve and collect all of their academic content in the DiVA repository solution." Direct to DiVA. See Also: New, Elsevier Collaborates with MIT Researchers to Increase Access to Scientific Web across the Developing World See Also: Science search in developing nations (via News.com) -- Microsoft--Maps and Imagery--Live Local Source: AllPointsBlog Live Local to Get Data from EarthData "A press release from EarthData of Frederick, MD, announces it will provide data to Microsoft's Live Local (powered by Virtual Earth). It's a five-year deal for new imagery, lidar, and radar data acquisition and map production and gives Microsoft access to the company's archives." See Also: What is Live Local From Microsoft? (Very Cool!) -- International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions Source: International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions Just Released, IFLA Annual Report 2004 -- Dictionaries--Words of the Year Source: New Oxford American Dictionary New Oxford American Dictionary: 'Podcast' Is the Word of the Year New Oxford American Dictionary has selected "podcast" as the Word of the Year for 2005. Podcast, defined as "a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program, made available on the Internet for downloading to a personal audio player," will be added to the next online update of the New Oxford American Dictionary, due in early 2006." Runners-up for the 2005 Word of the Year include: + ICE (an entry stored in one's cellular phone that provides emergency contact information) + IED + lifehack + reggaeton + rootkit + squick (cause immediate and thorough revulsion: "was anyone else squicked by our waiter's piercings?")
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents Digitization Projects--Islam Source: The African and Middle Eastern Division of the Library of Congress, The Library of Congress Global Gateway Web, Mamma Haidara Commemorative Library of Timbuktu, Mali New, http://international.loc.gov/intldl/malihtml/malihome.html. -- Influenza--Economic Issues Source: CBO New Report, A Potential Influenza Pandemic: Possible Macroeconomic Effects and Policy Issues -- Children--United States--Statistics Source: U.S. Census New Working Paper, Changes in the Lives of U.S. Children: 1990-2000 From the media release, "This working paper uses decennial census data to present an analysis of changes in the demographic and socioeconomic state of children during the 1990s. The study, which utilizes both national- and state-level data, examines characteristics such as children's living arrangements and languages spoken, educational attainment level and labor force status of the children's parents, and the physical characteristics of the children's housing." -- Corporations--Reputation--Lists & Ranking Source: Harris Interactive, Reputation Institute Annual RQ 2005 - 7th Anniversary The RQ is an assessment tool that captures perceptions of corporate reputations across industries, among multiple audiences, and is adaptable to countries outside the United States.... RQ research evaluates stakeholder perceptions across 20 attributes that are grouped into the six dimensions of reputation: Products & Services; Financial Performance; Workplace Environment; Social Responsibility; Vision & Leadership; Emotional Appeal. For seven years, the Annual RQ results have been featured prominently in The Wall Street Journal®. This annual survey measures the reputations of the most visible companies in the United States. Sixty companies were again measured as part of this year's Annual RQ--including companies in the airline, oil/energy, automotive, technology, and retail sectors. Each company was evaluated by approximately 600 adults (18+ years) in the United States...."
Scholarly Publishing--Citation Reports Source: ISI + Science in Austria, 2000-04 + Journals Ranked by Impact: Sociology + Education: High-Impact U.S. Universities, 2000-04 + U.S. Universities with Highest Concentrations in Materials Science & Engineering, 2000-04 + What's Are the "Hot" Papers in Chemistry and Biology?
Search Briefs + Alexa Offers Fee-Based Vertical Search Services Don't overlook this post. In addition to commentary by Danny Sullivan, you'll find a list of tools like Rollyo and Gigablast that let you to build domain specific engines. Also, info about some free web crawlers like Nutch and Heritix from the Internet Archive, tech types should know about. You'll also read a few thoughts by about "structured tagging." + AOL Releases List of 2005's Top Search Terms
Briefly + Biomed Central: Five more journals accepted by ISI + BIS emerges as Dialog goes Scientific + PAIS Archive Completed (Via OCLC) "The PAIS Archive database on the OCLC FirstSearch service has been updated with a third and final installment. The PAIS Archive is a retrospective database chronicling global public policy and social issues from 1915-1976, and complements the contemporary social sciences coverage of the PAIS International database on FirstSearch." Tuesday, December 13, 2005
Professional Reading Shelf Dictionaries--Online--Lists & Rankings Source: Merriam-Webster Just Released, Top 10 Words Looked-Up on Merriam-Webster.com in 2005 1. integrity 2. refugee 3. contempt 4. filibuster 5. insipid -- Web Resources--Compilations Source: C&RL News The Polish presence in North America An updated collection of electronic resources compiled and annotated by Thomas Duszak, a librarian and the head of the cataloging section at State Library of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg. -- Digitization Projects Source: Reuters HarperCollins to begin digitizing books Shocker? No. Yet another publisher announces a book digitization program. So what else is new. If you just read the press in the last year you would think the concept of digitizing books was new. So many projects, so little time. "This is going to be a costly initiative," she said, adding that a budget had not yet been set but the cost was expected to run into millions of dollars. The publisher has invited proposals from vendors to carry out the contract to digitize some 20,000 or more books in the global back-catalogue as well as the 3,500 to 5,000 new books it publishes each year." Btw, in case you were wondering, Wednesday is the first anniversary of the Google Library Project.
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents Volunteering--United States--Statistics Source: BLS Just Released Statistics, Volunteering In The United States, 2005 "About 65.4 million people volunteered through or for an organization at least once between September 2004 and September 2005, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. The proportion of the population who volunteered was 28.8 percent, the same as in each of the prior 2 years." Thanks to S.B. for the news tip. -- Cities--Respiratory Infections--Ranking Source: Sperling's Best Places New Analysis Ranks America's Worst Cities for Respiratory Infections "A new analysis, which ranked the 50 worst cities for respiratory infections in the United States, was released..., naming Greenville, South Carolina, as the top city for respiratory tract infections. Rounding off the top 10 are: Nashville, TN; Birmingham, AL; Oklahoma City, OK; Greensboro, NC; Little Rock, AR; Dallas, TX; Dayton, OH; Jacksonville, FL; and Charlotte, NC. Bert Sperling of Sperling's BestPlaces conducted the study. A city was identified as a worst city for respiratory tract infections based on three criteria: (1) prevalence of the following: sinusitis, pharyngitis (sore throat), bronchitis, acute upper respiratory infections, pneumonia, otitis media (middle ear infection), other respiratory tract infections and the common cold; (2) total per capita prescriptions written for oral antibiotics for respiratory tract infections; and (3) prevalence of state level antibiotic resistance." -- E-Government--United States Source: Dept. of Justice New Report, U.S. Department of Justice E-Government Status Report -- Energy--United States--Statistics Source: EIA Just Released, Annual Energy Outlook 2006 (Early Release) "The AEO2006 presents long-term projections of energy supply, demand, and prices through 2030, which are based on results from EIA's National Energy Modeling System (NEMS). The AEO2006 Early Release only includes the reference case. The full publication, including complete documentation and over 30 additional cases examining energy markets will be released in February 2006."
Search Briefs + Lycos Kicks off the "Top Search Terms of the Year" Season + Writely Adds New Convert to PDF Feature and Another Free PDF Conversion Tool Called DocMorph
Briefly + Australia: ALIA [Australian Library and Information Association] Welcomes New Executive Director + Coming Soon: Electronic Edition of H.W. Wilson's Play Index Monday, December 12, 2005
Professional Reading Shelf Lookup Databases Source: Melissa Data (via SEW Blog) A Hearty Buffet of Look-Up Databases Grows Larger and More Useful Back in 2003, long before I started working here as news editor, I occasionally wrote a SearchDay stories for Chris while still also compiling ResourceShelf. One of those SearchDay stories was titled: A Hearty Buffet of Look-Up Databases, and looked at the many and free online databases that Melissa Data made available. Melissa Data is a mailing company and offers these online tools as a public service. Everything from "Zip Codes within a certain radius" to Income Tax stats to "area codes within a certain radius." Most of the databases listed in my 2003 article are still available. Ok, so after looking at that overview (an invite to do so) you'll be happy to know that Melissa Data continues to offer free lookup databases. In fact, when I wrote the article in 2003, 18 databases were listed. It's almost 2006 and that "hearty buffet" of databases, has grown even larger, now home to more than 30 databases and tools.
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents Avian Influenza--Map Source: BBC News How Bird Flu Has Spread "Watch how the lethal H5N1 virus has spread from south-east Asia into Europe since 2003." Interactive map. -- Environment Ecosystems Source: WHO New Report, Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Health Synthesis "...an attempt to describe the complex links between the preservation of healthy and biodiverse natural ecosystems and human health." Summary Direct to Full Text -- Vehicles--Safety Ratings Source: Insurance Institute for Highway Safety First Selection of Top Safety Picks: Institute Announces 10 Car Designs That Win "The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety today announces 10 cars (2006 models) that win its first ever Top Safety Pick award. The awards recognize car designs that afford the best protection for people in front, side, and rear crashes, based on performance in Institute tests. The winning vehicles were chosen from among current models of small, midsize, and large cars plus minivans. There's a winner in three of these four groups. The winners include 2 large car designs, 7 midsize cars, and 1 small car. No minivans meet the Institute's criteria to earn a Top Safety Pick. Pickups and SUVs weren't included in this round of awards because side impact tests of most of these vehicles haven't been conducted yet." -- Private Schools--Student Achievement Source: National Center for Education Statistics Student Achievement in Private Schools: Results from NAEP 2000-2005 "This report is the first to focus on private school students' performance on NAEP assessments. It provides results in reading, mathematics, science, and writing in 2000, 2002, 2003, and 2005. Specifically, it focuses on the three private school types that combined enroll the greatest proportion of private school students (Catholic, Lutheran, and Conservative Christian) as well as private schools overall. It also compares the performance of students in these schools to that of public school students to provide additional perspective." Full Report (PDF; 528 KB)
Search Briefs + Create Your Own Collection of RSS Feeds Searchable with ScoopGo and Blogdigger Groups Sunday, December 11, 2005
Professional Reading Shelf Open Access--Surveys Open Access--Databases Source: ARL/SPARC SPARC Unveils Survey of Open Access Programs It's time to share. "A resource for librarians and administrators creating events to promote open access among faculty members, this Web site will include details of conferences, seminars, brown-bag lunches, faculty meeting presentations, mailings, and every other form of outreach that you or your colleagues have found successful - or not." Browse the database about other institutions' open access events. -- Imagery--Semantic Semantic Web--Research Source: University of Maryland Generating and Querying Semantic Web Environments for Photo Libraries Abstract: "Online photo libraries require a method to efficiently search a collection of photographs, and retrieve photos with similar attributes. Our motivation was to incorporate an existing collection of over 250 photographs of over 200 faculty members and events spanning 7 decades into a library called CS PhotoHistory that is available in hypertext and on the Semantic Web. In this paper, we identify challenges related to making this repository available on the Semantic Web, including issues of automation, modeling, and expressivity. Using CS PhotoHistory as a case study, we describe the process of creating an ontology and a querying interface for interacting with a digital photo library on the Semantic Web."
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents School Districts--United States--Maps Source: Melissa Data School District Maps Nice! Uses Google Maps. -- Chechnya--Bibliography Source: Air University Library Chechnya Insurgency Internet resources, books, documents, periodicals. Saturday, December 10, 2005
Professional Reading Shelf Information Retrieval Source: SIGIR A New Issue of SIGIR Forum is Now Available + Recommended Reading for IR Research Students + Information Retrieval in Context - IRiX + Multimedia Information Retrieval + Heterogeneous and Distributed Information Retrieval -- Information Professionals--United Kingdom Source: MLA, LLUK Major boost to career opportunities for knowledge workers MLA and LLUK announced a strategic partnership agreement to develop a more skilled and responsive libraries and archives workforce. At the heart of the strategic partnership is the development of a variety of routes into working in libraries and archives, offering greater access to training and more flexibility in planning career pathways. Other key strands of development include the collection of more robust workforce data, enhancing leadership skills and increasing diversity in the sector's workforce." -- Findability--Privacy Source: O'Reilly Network UFOs (Ubiquitous Findable Objects) "The UFO application space invites a richer feature set than we may think. Major tasks include identifying, tracking, observing, communicating, and interacting. Consequently, the enabling toolset includes networked video cameras, acoustic sensors, satellite constellations, smartphones, radio-guided missiles, and other emerging technologies that afford a different kind of close encounter, and myriad new ways to reach out and touch someone." By Peter Morville, author of Ambient Findability. -- Project Gutenberg Source: WSJ, SEW Blog Book Digitization: Project Gutenberg Founder Interviewed A link to the interview, a link to some comments by Michael Hart to SEW Blog and a quick comment by Gary.
Search Briefs + Is a Mac Version of Google Earth Coming Soon? + Tag It: Acqusition, Yahoo Acquires del.icio.us
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents Web Search Source: SEW Blog Online Metasearch and Comparison Search Jux2.com Returns Gary has the rundown on this excellent tool to compare results from Google, Yahoo, and Ask Jeeves.
Search Briefs + Web Search History: Before Google Answers and Yahoo Answers There Was "Answer Point" From Ask Jeeves Friday, December 09, 2005
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents English Language--Banished Words--List & Rankings Source: Lake Superior State University Just Released, Lake Superior State University 2005 List of Banished Words Each year LSS publishes a list of words the public has submitted that should be banished. Three highlights from the 2005 list include: BLOG (say it ain't so) - and its variations, including blogger, blogged, blogging, blogosphere. Many who nominated it were unsure of the meaning. Sounds like something your mother would slap you for saying. "Sounds like a Viking's drink that's better than grog, or a technique to kill a frog." Teri Vaughn, Anaheim, Calif. "Maybe it's something that would be stuck in my toilet." Adrian Whittaker, Dundalk, Ontario. I think the words 'journal' and 'diary' need to come back." T. J. Allen, Shreveport, La. Other Terms + Battleground State + Sale Event + Webinar See Also: Banished Words from Past Years Thanks to E.P. for the news tip. -- Baseball Executives--Database Source: Baseball America Baseball America Executive Database "Welcome to the Baseball America Executive Database, the first complete and searchable listing of baseball front office executives ever compiled.... The database is designed to allow anyone -- fans, writers and executives -- to locate information like: Who made up the front office of the 1975-76 Big Red Machine, and who was its general manager? (It was Bob Howsam.) From there, you can click on Howsam's name to see his yearly employment history, and assess how he worked his way up the baseball ladder. You can discover people he worked below, and then follow their hyperlinks (as well as those of other teams) to see how all executives and club front offices have evolved.... To keep the project somewhat contained for now, only positions that relate to baseball operations are included, from the owner down to minor league field coordinator. (Area scouts, crosscheckers, instructors, and business staff will be added when time permits.) Full front offices are identified for clubs from 1960 on, while general managers are listed since 1950, which is roughly when the position had evolved to something similar to today." Direct to Database -- U.S. Congress Source: GPO Just Released, The House Rules and Manual for the 109th Congress -- Scientists & Engineers--United States Source: NSF New Report, All In a Week's Work: Workweeks of Doctoral Scientists and Engineers "Data from the 2003 Survey of Doctorate Recipients show that science and engineering doctorate recipients who reported the longest work weeks either held degrees in biological or agricultural sciences (50.5 hours) or worked in the education sector (50.6 hours). There was no clear correlation between work-week length and years since doctorate, but work-week length did differ by tenure status and by sex when there were nonadult children in the household."
Professional Reading Shelf Web Search--MSN Aerial Imagery--Microsoft Super Cool!Windows Live Local Beta is Now Online; Some Global Imagery Also Added Some very cool stuff here. For many cities get bird's eye views of buildings and much more. Overhead imagery also available. Nothing to download. MORE than worth a look. If time is limited we've linked to a few examples of the bird's eye imagery. At the conclusion of the article you'll also be introduced to Skyline and http://HomePages.com. -- Scholarly Publishing--United Kingdom Source: The Select Committee on Science and Technology, Parliament Scientific Publications: Free for All? "The Select Committee on Science and Technology will hold a debate on 15th December 2005 focusing on the conclusions of their report into access to scientific publications and the costs relating to that access. This report generated extensive submission of evidence from the academic sector and information professions during 2003-2005."
Briefly + Nature goes back to the sixties (Word Doc) "Another decade of Nature issues has been added to the online archive at The Nature Archive. All content published between January 1960 and December 1969 includes 53,069 articles from 522 issues." Thursday, December 08, 2005
Resource of the Week by Shirl Kennedy, Deputy Editor Greetings from Las Vegas, NV, the city that never sleeps. I am here attending the annual Military Librarians Workshop and, yes, indulging in low stakes gambling and cheap casino buffets. So things are kind of hectic...so this edition of Resource of the Week will be a rather brief one. Earnings Calls Source: 123Jump.com 123Jump: Earnings Calls Less is more -- at least in terms of the number of clicks you must perform to round up the information you need. We like one-stop shopping sites here at ResourceShelf, and this one recently crossed our radar screen. It's basically an ongoing weblog-style summary of corporate "earnings calls." Earnings reports are issued quarterly and annually by public companies; they include earnings, expenses, and net profit for the issue period. Companies often utilize conference calls with industry analysts and the news media to disseminate this information to as many interested parties as quickly as possible. More and more of these are taking place via webcasts. This information is available many places online, including Yahoo! Finance, MSN Money and Thomson's Earnings.com. Most corporations also make these things available on their investor relations websites. But we like 123Jump's clean design, where summaries of earnings calls - by the site's own writers -- are added as they are issued, with a link to more extensive information where available. The site offers other useful information, such as recent IPO performance, economics and earnings calendars, an archive of Mutual Fund Q&As, from various funds and fund families and, of course, a stock price look-up.
Professional Reading Shelf Reference Source: Answers.com New York City Area Libraries and Answers.com Form Homework Help Website Gary has several positive comments posted here. -- Libraries--United Kingdom Source: LISU Just Released, LISU Annual Library Statistics "This series is now well established as the most comprehensive set of statistics about libraries and information services in the UK. It gives the most recent figures available for libraries in all sectors, presenting the national picture appropriately broken down to give a useful overview of the current position, and in many cases how that position was arrived at." -- Copyright--Sound Recordings Source: CLIR Copyright Issues Relevant to Digital Preservation and Dissemination of Pre-1972 Commercial Sound Recordings by Libraries and Archives by June M. Besek. December 2005. -- Academic Libraries--Theft Source: Associated Press (via ESPN.com) Library can't find copies of early Black Sox reporting "Rare copies of a sports newspaper that was credited with uncovering the infamous 1919 Chicago White Sox gambling scandal are missing from a University of Illinois library. Librarians discovered that two bound volumes of Collyer's Eye from the 1920s were missing this fall, around the time the White Sox won their first World Series in 88 years, said associate university librarian Karen Schmidt." Update: Missing 'Black Sox' Volumes Returned to Campus Library (Washington Post): "The copies of Collyer's Eye -- which was credited with exposing the scandal -- were found on a table in the Urbana-Champaign campus library about 9 p.m. Tuesday, said Karen Schmidt , the associate university librarian for collections.... The person who placed the books on the table was not found and UI assistant police chief Krystal Fitzpatrick said the books would not be processed for fingerprints because of their delicate condition." -- Wikipedia Source: SFGate.com The online credibility gap: False claim on JFK murder shows vulnerability of Wikipedia "The communally produced compendium has become an accepted source of information for millions of Web surfers. With 2.5 billion page views a month, it is the second most-visited reference site on the Web (after Dictionary.com), according to Hitwise. But critics say Wikipedia leaves the door open for anyone who wants to rewrite history, whether it's your neighbor with a grudge, a nut job floating a conspiracy theory, or someone repeating an urban legend. As with other Web sources such as blogs, its accuracy can be hard to judge." -- Fugitive Documents and Files Source: ManagingInformation.com More than One Working Week a Year Wasted Searching For Shared Documents A survey of 250 professionals, conducted on behalf of Objective Corporation, has revealed that a significant amount of time is being wasted every year searching for documents that have not been saved on shared servers or in an appropriate folder."
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents Imagery--Databases Source: Library of Congress New Image Collection, The Highsmith Archive "About 1,700 negatives and transparencies. New 1980-2000. Architecture and architectural renovation projects in and around Washington, D.C., as well as political figures, and people in the U.S." See Also: 1 Million Digitized Images Now Available Online from The Library of Congress -- Industrial Design--Canada--Databases Source: CIPO New Database, Canadian Industrial Designs Database "Canadian industrial designs are now available on the web. This initiative responds to clients' feedback for better online service and easier access to industrial designs. The initial phase includes approximately 10,000 designs registered as of June 15, 2002. New registrations will be added on a weekly basis. CIPO is currently in the process of completing the electronic back capture of the designs registered prior to this date and they will be added in Spring 2006." -- Internet--United States Politics--United States Source: USC Annenberg School/Center for the Digital Future Highlights Only: 2005 Digital Future Report 19 pages; PDF. "Fifth Study of the Internet by the Digital Future Project Finds Major New Trends in Online Use for Political Campaigns. Annenberg project also finds that overall Internet use continues to increase; e-mail reigns as most popular online activity; broadband reaches highest level for online access. See Also: Archive of Past Reports -- Hispanic Population--United States Source: US Census Just Released, The Hispanic Population in the United States: 2004 and 2003 An update on the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of the nation's Hispanics, with national summary data from the Current Population Survey. Characteristics include, for example, sex, age, citizenship, nativity, educational attainment, occupation, and income and poverty status.' -- Gold--Australia--Statistics Source: Parliament Library, Parliament of Australia 'Gold! Gold to Australia! Gold!' Australian gold statistics -- Congressional Research Service Source: CRS Two New/Update Reports + Updated: China's Space Program + Muslims in Europe: Integration Policies in Selected Countries (via FAS)
Search Briefs + Ask Jeeves Adds Audio to Word Definitions Just enter define (search term) and click the speaker button. See Also: Voice of America Pronunciation Guide + Industry considers RSS (via ResearchInformation) Web developers are excited by the way that RSS technology can alert users to new journal articles and other content without them needing to visit dozens of web sites each day but are the users so excited? Industry analyst David Mort investigates + Answers.com Buys "Answer Extraction" Engine Brainboost for $4 Million in Cash and Some Shares of Restricted Stock
Web Search--Yahoo Yahoo Launches Answers.Yahoo.com and Other Q&A Servies, Most Free!!! In a two-part article, Gary first intros Yahoo's new service. In the second article he spends some time talking about what many people don't know about--libraries offering virtual reference services! He also mentions AskA services and Wondir.com, an organization that has tried its best to reach out to work with the library community, We wonder if the day will come when search companies like Wondir will take a more active role and work with the librarians. One example, see yesterday's post about Answers.com and New York City area libraries partnering to offer a new service for students.
Briefly + Victoria University of Wellington signs online full-text release of 19th Century House of Commons Parliamentary Papers from ProQuest. -- + A New Top-Level Domain .eu -- UK: Librarians vote 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' most recommended book this Christmas Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Professional Reading Shelf Reference Source: Answers.com New York City Area Libraries and Answers.com Form Homework Help Website Gary has several positive comments posted here and yes, take note of the virtual reference options on the page. -- Reference--Reviews The December 2005 Edition of Peter's Digital Reference Shelf is Now Online This month Dr. J reviews: + Amazon.com In the December issue of my column every year I try to review ready-reference sources that also help the librarians in their quest for holiday gift shopping. Few are as widely appropriate as the world's undoubtedly best virtual bookstore--and arguably the best virtual department store--which keeps getting better and better, especially after Amazon has re-focused its attention on its flagship department. Note: We're thrilled to see that Peter spends time discussing Amazon's impressive, useful, and fun Search Inside the Book program. We've also recently posted a few examples of what SITB offers. + Simply Audiobooks "As discussed in my companion review, Amazon provides the best experience of holiday shopping (and reference information) for books (and many other products). If you prefer something novel, but still related to books, CD audio books might be a good idea, but they still can be unreasonably expensive. The solution is renting. Among the few outlets that offer rental options, Simply Audiobooks seems to be the best with a good collection, very useful reference database and acceptable search engine." -- OCLC Source: OCLC Just Released, Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources PDF. "Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources (2005) summarizes findings of an international study on information-seeking habits and preferences. With extensive input from hundreds of librarians and OCLC staff, the OCLC Market Research team developed a project and commissioned Harris Interactive Inc. to survey a representative sample of information consumers. In June of 2005, we collected over 3,300 responses from information consumers in Australia, Canada, India, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States." Among the findings of the report: * Respondents use search engines to begin an information search (84 percent). One percent begin an information search on a library Web site. * Information consumers use the library but they use the library less and read less since they began using the Internet. * Borrowing print books is the library service used most; "Books" is the library brand. * Quality and quantity of information are top determinants of a satisfactory electronic information search, not speed of results. * Respondents do not trust purchased information more than free information. * Ninety percent of respondents are satisfied with their most recent search for information using a search engine. * Information consumers like to self-serve. They use personal knowledge and common sense to judge if electronic information is trustworthy, and they cross-reference other sites to validate their findings. * The survey results show that library and information preferences and use are consistent among respondents in the six countries surveyed. The findings indicate that information consumers view libraries as places to borrow print books, but they are unaware of the rich electronic content they can access through libraries. Even though information consumers make limited use of these resources, they continue to trust libraries as reliable sources of information." This report is a follow-up to The 2003 OCLC Environmental Scan: Pattern Recognition. -- Competitive Intelligence Source: LLRX Competitive Intelligence - A Selective Resource Guide
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents Poetry--UK--Databases Source: Poetry Archive New, The Poetry Archive "The Poetry Archive exists to help make poetry accessible, relevant and enjoyable to a wide audience. It came into being as a result of a meeting, in a recording studio, between Andrew Motion, soon after he became U.K. Poet Laureate in 1999, and the recording producer, Richard Carrington. They agreed about how enjoyable and illuminating it is to hear poets reading their work and about how regrettable it was that, even in the recent past, many important poets had not been properly recorded." -- Television Commerials--Databases Source: SEW Blog Blinkx Releases Keyword Searchable Archive of Classic European TV Commercials Online -- Phishing Source: MailFrontier (via DocuTicker) MailFrontier Field Guide to Phishing (PDF; 1.36 MB) "With the MailFrontier Field Guide to Phishing, you'll find clear, concise explanations and visual representations of sneaky, dangerous phish that may find their way to your computer. To help you identify these nasty threats--and trust your other incoming mail--at the end of this field guide are some suggestions on how you can protect yourself, as well as other phishing resources for more information." -- Ready Reference Desk Fast Facts Source: The World Almanac New, The December 2005 Issue of The World Almanac E-Newsletter is Online Contains a chronology of September events, October holidays, "This Day in History," and much more. See Also: Back issues and subscription info (free)
Search Briefs + Links to RSS Feeds and Podcasts from the U.S.Government + Audio: Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales Interviewed on NPR + Two Alternative Local Search Services (via SearchDay) Meet Meebot and TrueLocal!!!
Briefly + Thomson Scientific and Dialog Announce Upcoming Availability of Enhanced Derwent World Patents Index
Classics! PagesJaunes--Photos de Villes Virtually walk and tour the streets of every street in Paris, Madrid, Barcelona and other cities in France and Spain using street level imagery. Looks great. Something for the U.S.? Have you tried A9's Block Views? Street level imagery for about 20 major cities. Tuesday, December 06, 2005
Professional Reading Shelf OCLC Source: OCLC Just Released, OCLC 2005 Annual Report PDF. " In the report, Jay Jordan, OCLC President and Chief Executive Officer, wrote that fiscal 2005 was 'an eventful year' one of continuing innovation and steady growth. Libraries completed their migration to our new technological platform, and we began offering new services and programs on that platform. WorldCat grew faster than in any previous year since it began operation in 1971. Moreover, cooperation in our global network continued to increase with new forms and new partners. Thirteen libraries and organizations are featured in the report, which has been mailed to regional service providers, global service providers and OCLC member libraries. In the back of the report is a timeline that traces significant events in OCLC's history from 1971 to 2005." -- OPACS Source: OCLC Research Presentation by Thom Hickey: The Future of the Library Catalog: Open, Interactive, Participatory PowerPoint:4.3MB/36slides) Presented at FedLink Fall Members Meeting, 9 November 2005, Library of Congress, Washington, DC (USA) -- Standards--Databases Source: NIST Grant Advances Web Portal for U.S./China Standards The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has awarded a $250,000 matching grant to support the development of an American National Standards Institute (ANSI)-sponsored U.S./China Standards Portal. The Web site will provide online educational materials on the Chinese and U.S. standards systems, as well as translated titles and scopes of up to 1,000 selected standards used in each of the two nations." -- Copyright--United States--Fair Use Source: Free Expression Policy Project at NYU's School of Law Just Released, "Will Fair Use Survive" 76 pages; pdf. (via Berkman) "This report, by Marjorie Heins and Tricia Beckles, addresses whether increasingly heavy assertions of control by copyright and trademark owners smother fair use and free expression. The report incorporates data from the Berkman-hosted Chilling Effects project, which is led by fellows Wendy Seltzer and Diane Cabell." -- Access to Information--United States Freedom of Information Act Source: TRAC/Public Citizen TRAC Sues U.S. Office of Personnel Management "Federal Government Withholds Information About Nearly One Million Workers -- Close to Half the Total Civilian Workforce." -- Presidential Libraries Source: U.S. News & World Report The Secrets to Landing W's Library
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents Hurricane Season 2006--Predictions Source: Department of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University (Klotzbach, Gray) Just released, Extended Range Forecast of Atlantic Seasonal Hurricane Activity and U.S. Landfall Strike Probability for 2006 "We foresee another very active Atlantic basin tropical cyclone season in 2006. However, we do not expect to see as many landfalling major hurricanes in the United States as we have experienced in 2004 and 2005." (via DocuTicker) -- U.S. Congress--Votes Source: Washington Post Just Released, The U.S. Congress Votes Database Put together by Derek Wills and Adrian Holovaty from The Post (Kudos). "A congressional votes database that covers the 102nd-109th congresses (1991-present)." Currently browsable, a search engine should be available soon. -- September 11ith Source: The 9/11 Public Discourse Project Final Report On 9/11 Commission Recommendations + Full Text (PDF) + One page summary of grades (PDF) + Prepared Statement by Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton (PDF) -- African-Americans--United States--Fast Facts Source: U.S. Census Fast Facts: African-American History Month: December 2005 -- Mining--United States Source: The Memory Hole Federal Criminal Proceedings Against Mining Companies, 1979-2005 Newly released document gives details on 242 federal criminal prosecutions. -- Energy--United States--Statistics Source: EIA Power Plant Databases (EIA - 906 and EIA-920) "The nonutility source and disposition of electricity data for 2004 was collected on the Form EIA-906, 'Power Plant Report,' and Form EIA-920, 'Combined Heat and Power Plant Report.' The data is published in MS Excel format, and includes gross generation, station use, direct use, retail sales, and sales for resale." Monday, December 05, 2005
Professional Reading Shelf Libraries--Web Sites Source: HBCU Redesign: HBCU [Historically Black College and Universities] Library Alliance Launches Redesigned Website (PDF) "HBCU libraries serve as unique and indispensable gatekeepers for history, culture, and the African-American experience. The HBCU Library Alliance is a consortium that supports the collaboration of information professionals dedicated to providing leadership and resources designed to strengthen Historically Black Colleges and Universities and their constituents." The new site also includes the HBCU Library Alliance Blog. -- PubMed Source: NLM New Resource: MEDLINE/PubMed Baseline Repository "Freely accessible Web site, the MEDLINE/PubMed Baseline Repository(MBR), developed by staff in NLM's Lister Hill Center is now available. The MBR, at http://mbr.nlm.nih.gov/, contains various resources derived from or pertaining to the MEDLINE/PubMed baseline files which are produced after the records have undergone annual maintenance. One MBR resource, the MBR Query Tool, is restricted to use by NLM's registered MEDLINE/PubMed licensees." -- Open Access SPARC Open Access Newsletter Now Online (December, 2005) Edited by Peter Suber. For daily coverage, visit Peter's "must read" blog: http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html -- Bluetooth Source: O'Reilly MacDevCenter.com What Is Bluetooth "Bluetooth is a low-power-consumption and short-range wireless technology for personal area networks (PANs). It connects your personal electronic devices, such as laptops, mobile phones, digital cameras, audio equipment, and printers, without the clutter of cables. The Swedish telecom giant Ericsson originally developed Bluetooth. The name is inspired by King Harold Bluetooth, known for his unification of previously warring tribes from Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Likewise, the Bluetooth technology was intended to unify and connect different personal electronic devices." -- Digital Media--Copyright--Congressional Testimony Source: Library Copyright Alliance Testimony from Prue Adler, ARL [PDF], on behalf of the Library Copyright Alliance (LCA) regarding H.R. 1201, "The Digital Media Consumers Rights Act of 2005" (DMCRA), 11/16/05. PDF. -- Libraries--United Kingdom Source: IWR Terrorism bill poses threat "The government's Terrorism Bill puts libraries, librarians, and free speech at risk, according to an alliance of the industry's professional bodies."
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents Conversions Source: ConvertPlus.com Airports--United States Source: MapQuest Direct Links to Maps of Major U.S. Airport Locations Driving directions, too! -- National Hockey League--Rules Source: NHL Updated, 2005-06 NHL Official Rules -- Education--United States--Statistics Source: NCES New, Education Statistics Quarterly -- Parliament--United Kingdom Source: Kable's Government Computing Hear from your MP online "The creator of 'fax your MP' has launched an online discussion forum to build relationships between elected representatives and constituents. A government-backed partnership is attempting to encourage everyone in the UK to join online discussion forums with their MPs. The HearFromYourMP.com project, launched on 21 November 2005, aims to put constituents in touch with their MP through an email subscription service.
Search Briefs + Podscope Now Offering Keyword RSS Feeds + Exploring the Googleverse on SiliconValley.com's Roundtable + AOL Video Search Adds Slew of New Content from MTV and Many Other Cable Networks + People Search Engine, Zoom Info, Adds New Services and Features
Search Briefs + Collaborative Web Tagging Will Be Topic of Workshop at WWW 2006 + Public Domain Books: More than 25,000 Full Text Books in a Single Database + Too Many E-Mails? SNARF Them Up!
This Just In!!! Mobile Versions of DocuTicker and ResourceShelf Are Now Online using WinkSite Just point your mobile browser to http://winksite.com/docuticker/dt. It's that easy. Remember, it's a beta. (-: If you've never visited WinkSite.com, you should. This is a great service (free too!) and has many applications for info pros. One of the many pluses? It's VERY easy to use. The training curve is fast and dare I say, fun! More about WinkSite (it could be my new favorite tool) in future weeks. I plan on devoting some time during the holidays to creating more mobile tools for info pros with WinkSite.
Worth Checking Out Source: SEW Blog Boston: Check Out Hypermaps of Boston Your choice of MSN Virtual Earth, Google, or Yahoo Maps. Useful, fun, and very cool!
Briefly + CrossRef Web Services And Search Partner Program Enhance Web Searching For Scholarly Content + New Data Mining And Visualization Tool From Thomson Scientific Answers The Problem Of Information Overload Sunday, December 04, 2005
Professional Reading Shelf Literacy--United States Source: John W. Miller, President of Central Connecticut State University America's Most Literate Cities, 2005 "Drawing from a variety of available data resources, the America's Most Literate Cities study ranks the 69 largest cities (population 250,000 and above) in the United States. Previous editions of this study focused on five key indicators of literacy: newspaper circulation, number of bookstores, library resources, periodical publishing resources, and educational attainment. The 2005 study introduces a new factor--the Internet--to gauge the expansion of literacy to online media." + Overall Rankings + Data Sources + Methodology
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents Films--Databases Television--Databases Source: SEW Blog New from from The Internet Movie Database: The Movie Keyword Analyzer, Fun!!! "IMDb presents a fun new tool for finding and discovering film and television titles within our large catalog. MoKA lets you find titles that have a particular keyword and then presents a tally of all keywords from the titles that matched your initial keyword set." Saturday, December 03, 2005
Professional Reading Shelf Archival Materials--Databases Get Ready for a New Free Database from RLG We're big fans of RLG's amazing RedLightGreen bibliographic database. If you've never visited and used this service, you should. Here's an overview that Gary wrote for SearchDay. Now, a post from RLG's Merrilee Proffitt "Watch this space: ArchiveGrid is coming to town" reports that early in 2006 RLG will offer another free database. This one named Archivegrid.org. Cool! From the site: ArchiveGrid will be the ultimate destination for searching through family histories, political papers, and historical records held in archives around the world. Hundreds of libraries, museums, and archives have contributed nearly a million collection descriptions to ArchiveGrid. Scholars searching ArchiveGrid can learn about the many items in each of these collections, contact archives to arrange a visit to examine materials, and order copies." You can get an idea of how pages will look by clicking here then taking a look (and click) at some of the topics covered. You can also take a look at some prototype UI's here. See Also: If You're Unaware of the Wonderful and FREE Bibliographic Database that RLG offers called RedLightGreen, take a look. Here's an overview of the numerous features that you'll find. In a word, awesome.
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents Small Business--Research Source: U.S. Small Business Administration, Office of Advocacy Research Resources (PDF; 428 KB) "The Office of Advocacy evaluates and researches issues of relevance to small firms, entrepreneurs, policymakers, and academics. This guide is designed as a portal to direct faculty, students, and researchers to small business data and research." Friday, December 02, 2005
Professional Reading Shelf The British Library Source: BL Just Released, Redefining the Library: The British Library Annual Report 2004-2005 See Also: British Library looks to digital research (via Kablenet) -- Online Information Retrieval Source: British Computer Society BCS Informer #16 Articles include: + Research Update: Collaborative Community-Based Web Search + Review: “Yahoo Desktop Search” + “Evaluating Content-oriented XML Retrieval Effectiveness” -- Open Access--Journals Source: The Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers Preprint: Digital Assets Sources: CNI, ARL, CLIR, and DLF New, Presentations from Managing Digital Assets, a symposium jointly sponsored by CNI, ARL, CLIR, and DLF -- Personal Information Management Source: HCI Lab, Univ. of Maryland Personal Role Management: Overview and a Design Study of Email for University Students By: Plaisant, C., Shneiderman, B., Baker, H.R, Duarte, N.B, Haririnia, A., Klinesmith, D.E, Lee, H., Velikovich, L.A, Wanga, A.O and Westhoff, M.J (November 2005).
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents Documents in the News Just Released: Vietnam War Source: National Security Agency, Central Security Service Gulf of Tonkin - 11/30/2005 "On 30 November 2005, the National Security Agency (NSA) released the first installment of previously classified information regarding the Vietnam era, specifically the Gulf of Tonkin incident. This release includes a variety of articles, chronologies of events, oral history interviews, signals intelligence (SIGINT) reports and translations, and other related memoranda. The Gulf of Tonkin incident, like others in our nation's history, has become the center of considerable controversy and debate. It is not NSA's intention to prove or disprove any one set of conclusions, many of which can be drawn from a thorough review of this material. Instead, through this and subsequent public releases, we intend to make as much information as possible available for the many scholars, historians, academia, and members of the general public who find interest in analyzing the information and forming their own conclusions." -- Emerging Markets--Statistics Source: Global Edge/CIBER/Michigan St. Univ Just Released, 2005 Market Potential Indicators "Emerging economies comprise more than half of the world's population and account for a large share of world output. Their high growth rates translate to enormous market potential. MSU-CIBER recently published the new 2005 Market Potential Indicators for Emerging Markets which is a yearly study comparing the marketability of 24 emerging markets, as identified by The Economist. The study ranks the twenty-four countries in terms of market attractiveness to assist companies in their identification of global marketing opportunities. Eight dimensions (including Market Size, Economic Freedom, and Country Risk) are chosen to measure the market potential of a country." -- Wisconsin--History Source: Wisconsin Historical Society New, Dictionary of Wisconsin History Dozens of historical events are summarized, from the founding of the Gideons to the Dow Riot of 1967. Every obsolete ancient name applied to Wisconsin Native American tribes is defined. Historical jargon such as "road monkey" and "Cousin Jack", foreign-language expressions like "oriniak" or "toise", and specialized terms such as "Durham boat" and "yellow dogs" are all explained. More than 100 broad topics such as "roads in Wisconsin" or "Indian treaties" are briefly summarized an linked to more detailed information in our online collections, exhibits, and photo galleries." -- Internet--United States--Surveys Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project About 25 million people have used the internet to sell something "Some 17% of online American adults have used the internet to sell things. That amounts to approximately 25 million Americans. In addition, internet traffic data show that visits to classified ad web sites has grown 80% in the past year." Direct to Full Text Report (PDF). See Also: What types of furniture are bought on Ebay? eBay & FurnitureToday: What Consumers Are Buying Online Source: FurnitureToday "FurnitureToday partnered with eBay to help you discover what consumers are buying online" -- Bankruptcy--United States--Statistics Source: Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts on behalf of the U.S. Courts. (Docuticker.com) Bankruptcy Filings Hit New Records in Run Up to New Bankruptcy Law Implementation "Bankruptcy cases filed in federal courts grew 10 percent in fiscal year 2005, according to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts--rising to the highest number of bankruptcies ever filed."
Briefly + FBI Extends Contract With Convera + American Humanities Index from EBSCO Expands to Become Humanities International Index + Factiva President and CEO Clare Hart Honored with 2005 New York Ten Award
Search Briefs + Blinkx Announces Co-Branding Deal with The Times of London + Vivisimo CEO Doubts On Personal Search + AOL Mobile Search Exits Beta Thursday, December 01, 2005
Breaking News ResourceShelf's Sister Site, DocuTicker, Was Named Kool Site of the Day on the VERY Popular Komando.com Mailing List! Wow and Thanks Kim!!! Kim Komando is the host of a syndicated radio show about computers. Also, A Big Thanks to Shirl Kennedy for all of the INCREDIBLE WORK she does on DocuTicker.
Resource of the Week By Shirl Kennedy, Deputy Editor -------------------------------- There is a somewhat worn red SUV that parks in the lot in front of our library. Today it was parked next to me. For the first time, I noticed that it had a small black and white bumper sticker on the back: "Yes, I'm old, but your music really does suck." Like you, no doubt, I sit in my little world here and watch a lot of technology flash by. And yeah, sometimes I feel old, but I also kind of feel an obligation to try and keep up with at least some of it. Figuring out what is worthwhile -- that is likely to "stick" -- and what is ephemeral can be a bit of a challenge, however. So...what to make of "Web 2.0" -- something that is rocking the blogosphere these days. I guess I've ignored it for as long as I can, and now it is time to give it some attention. So listen up, pilgrims. I've tried to sort through and find some stuff that makes it understandable. Read and learn. If you're only going to read one article about Web 2.0, make it Tim O'Reilly's What Is Web 2.0: Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software. To wit: This article is an attempt to clarify just what we mean by Web 2.0. In our initial brainstorming, we formulated our sense of Web 2.0 by example: Web 1.0--> Web 2.0 DoubleClick--> Google AdSense Ofoto --> Flickr Akamai--> BitTorrent mp3.com --> Napster Britannica Online--> Wikipedia personal websites--> blogging evite --> upcoming.org and EVDB domain name speculation --> search engine optimization page views --> cost per click screen scraping--> web services publishing --> participation content management systems --> wikis directories (taxonomy) --> tagging ("folksonomy") stickiness --> syndication You probably know -- or at least have a vague idea -- about what most of these things are. But what makes something "Web 2.0" as opposed to "Web 1.0"? In his article, O'Reilly identifies certain key principles that define Web 2.0: + The Web As Platform ("Leverage customer-self service and algorithmic data management to reach out to the entire web, to the edges and not just the center, to the long tail and not just the head.") + Harnessing Collective Intelligence ("Network effects from user contributions are the key to market dominance in the Web 2.0 era.") + Data is the Next Intel Inside ("The race is on to own certain classes of core data....") + End of the Software Release Cycle ("Operations must become a core competency.... Users must be treated as co-developers...." + Lightweight Programming Models ("Support lightweight programming models that allow for loosely coupled systems.... Think syndication, not coordination.... Design for "hackability" and remixability." + Software Above the Level of a Single Device ("To date, iTunes is the best exemplar of this principle. This application seamlessly reaches from the handheld device to a massive web back-end, with the PC acting as a local cache and control station. There have been many previous attempts to bring web content to portable devices, but the iPod/iTunes combination is one of the first such applications designed from the ground up to span multiple devices. TiVo is another good example." + Rich User Experiences (as enabled by AJAX -- e.g., Flickr, Gmail, etc.) OK...so what does all of this mean for libraries and librarians? I commend your attention to an article by Paul Miller, in the October 2005 issue of Ariadne: Web 2.0: Building the New Library. Rather than writing Web 2.0 off as just the latest version of "Dot Com hysteria," Miller attempts to show how it is relevant by identifying a set of principles that are applicable to us: + Freeing of data -- e.g., "allowing it to be exposed, discovered and manipulated in a variety of ways distinct from the purpose of the application originally used to gain access." + The building of virtual applications -- e.g., which "tend to be small, they tend to be relatively rapid to deploy, and they bring power that was previously the preserve of corporations within the reach of suitably motivated individuals." + Participative -- e.g., "quick to spot the value of user-generated content." + Work for the user -- e.g., allow us "to locate and assemble content that meets our needs as users, rather than forcing us to conform to the paths laid out for us by content owners or their intermediaries." + Modular -- e.g., "developers and users able to pick and choose from a set of interoperating components in order to build something that meets their needs." + Sharing -- e.g., "whereby we collaborate on the platform(s) and make money by adding value over and above that which we and others have built together." + Communication and facilitating community -- e.g., "Trackbacks and the like are a shaky step towards Tim Berners-Lee's original vision of the Web as a two-way environment which made it as easy to contribute as it did to view." + Remix -- e.g., "unambiguously reference and call upon the service, document or snippet that we require, incorporating it into something new that is both ours and the original contributors'." + Smart -- e.g., "Applications will be able to use knowledge of us, where we have been and what we are doing to deliver services that meet our needs...although "there is more work to be done allaying fears of intrusion and loss of privacy." + The Long Tail -- e.g, "to service the interests of large numbers of relatively small groups of individuals, and to enable them to benefit from key pieces of the platform while fulfilling their own needs." -- DEMOS and a Quick Comment from Gary: This is all very interesting and important info. However, only time will tell if these and many other services are of value to both the end user and the info pro or just hype, mumbo jumbo (as been used elsewhere in this article, and/or vaporware. OK, that's my brief comment. Want to try some cool services that would most likely be grouped in the Web 2.0 category (in a broad sense)? + Meebo (IM clients all on one page) + Pandora (Music based on your preferences, VERY COOL!!!) + Slide (Another photo sharing service, free) + Writely (Shirl offered a great overview a few weeks ago) + PubSub (A great tool for immediate delivery of RSS) + Rollyo (We've also blogged and written about this one) + Riya (A Closed Beta at the Moment) + Podscope (Keyword Search Podcasts) + CalendarHub + ThinkFree Office Online + Trackle (Web-based web page updates, we prefer the WebSite-Watcher client software but Trackle is a good alternative) + LookAhead from SurfWax + Flock (A new browser based on Firefox) Think about the possibilities of this technology with a library OPAC. + MobiTV Live TV on your mobile phone or device + Streamload (Remote Storage, 10GB free) + 4info.net (A great mobile search service, numerous access points) -- One more thing. It would sure be great if we, as info pros, could also "turn people on" to some of the traditional (for lack of a better word) services we've made available for years like NetLibrary and ebrary. Heck, with ebrary, you don't even need a subscription Read over 20,000 for free, pay just to print or copy. For people only aware of Google Print, these services might be very Web 2.0. (-: The same goes for web directories like the LII, InfoMine, RDN, and IPL. Maybe we can call them "Library 2.0" to assist on getting the word out about these gems to the masses. Finally, RedLightGreen is also an OPAC that is very 2.0 in my opinion and a service all web users should know about.
Professional Reading Shelf Technolgy Trends in Libraries Source: LITA Now Available, Listen Online: Annual 2005 Top Tech Trends program Now Available via RealAudio) This program took place at the ALA 2005 Annual Conference in Chicago. Quite a panel!!! "This program features our ongoing roundtable discussion about trends and advances in library technology by a panel of LITA technology experts. The panelists will describe changes and advances in technology that say see having an impact on the library world, and suggest what libraries might do to to take advantage of these trends." The panel included: + Tom Wilson + Andrew Pace + Roy Tennant + Karen Schneider + Eric Lease Morgan + Marshall Breeding + Milton Wolf + Joan Frye Williams + Clifford Lynch + Sarah Houghton More here. -- Intranets Enterprise Search Source: SearchTools.com Recent Presentations by Enterprise Search Expert, Avi Rappaport Great content and reading!!! Well done, Avi and thanks for sharing. -- Patents--Search--United States Source: USPTO New, USPTO Publishes Patent Search Templates "The Department of Commerce's United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is building a library of search templates for use by applicants, patent practitioners, and patent examiners to assist them in finding evidence, known as prior art, to help determine if an invention is patentable. Similar to a library card catalog, the search templates will direct searchers to information on relevant fields of search, databases, and scientific journals considered germane to particular technologies and inventions. The search templates will aid in more thorough prior art searches, which should result in better quality patents." -- Web Search--Clusty Source: SEW Blog Clusty Launches Japanese Version of Its Metasearch and Dynamic Clustering Service Also, a few comments on clustering in general. -- Internet Resources Source: IRN The December 2005 Issue of The Internet Resources Newsletter is Now Online Numerous links to quality resources and news from Roddy MacLeod. -- Wikipedia Source: USA Today A false Wikipedia 'biography' An interesting read. Of course, popular/in the news topics are going to be checked, rechecked, and checked some more for content. But what about less popular material that still might be of research value to someone. How often is this material reviewed for mistakes, spam, etc? -- Libraries and Museums--Awards Source: IMLS Congrats and Kudos: Three Museums and Three Libraries to Receive Nation's Highest Honor for Extraordinary Community Service The winners of the 2005 National Awards for Museum and Library Service are: + COSI Toledo, Toledo, Ohio + Johnson County Library, Overland Park, Kansas + Levine Museum of the New South, Charlotte, North Carolina + Mathews Memorial Library, Mathews, Virginia + Pratt Museum, Homer, Alaska + Saint Paul Public Library, Saint Paul, Minnesota -- Google Library Project Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed (via a personal blog) Siva in Chronicle of Higher Ed: A Risky Gamble with Google By Siva Vaidhyanathan ,a cultural historian and media scholar, at NYU. Thanks to Bernie S. for the news tip. -- Government Secrecy Source: National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (via Federation of American Scientists NGA to Go Forward with Proposal to Remove Aeronautical Data from Public Access "The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) will go forward with its previously announced proposal to remove its Flight Information Publications (FLIP) and Digital Aeronautical Flight Information File (DAFIFTM) from public access. NGA is taking this action due to the increased numbers of international source providers claiming intellectual property rights of their data. Many of these sources forewarned NGA they intended to copyright their aeronautical data. NGA's public release of data produced by others violated claimed copyright, forcing NGA to discontinue the release of this data to the general public. Government agencies and authorized government contractors are not affected by this action. 'The removal of this aeronautical data from general public access will assure the continued availability of information vital to national security,' commented NGA Director, Lt. Gen. James R. Clapper, Jr., USAF (Ret)."
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents Libraries--Australia Source: National Library of Australia From Australia's Great Libraries: National Treasures A web version of an exhibit that opens on December 3rd. -- Maps--South Africa Online mapping for South Africa "After 18 months of development, the system delivers user-friendly directory and direction search options, an intuitive route-generating application for departure-to-destination routing, embedded directory information on South African business and points of interest, streets and companies searchable by name, easy view and print options, full-screen zoom mode and seven-day weather forecast for most towns in South Africa." -- Corporate Income Taxes Source: CBO New Report, Corporate Income Tax Rates: International Comparisons -- Freight--United States--Lists & Rankings Source: BTS Top 10 U.S. International Freight Gateways, Ranked By Value of Shipments: 2004
Search Briefs + Keyword Searching of Podcasts Using a Variety of Tools + Yahoo Now Default Search Engine on Asian Versions of Firefox 1.5 + Answers.com Now Embedded into Firefox 1.5 Search Toolbar
Briefly + FAST extends enterprise search leadership position with industry?s most comprehensive platform support; FAST joins Sun Partner Advantage Program |
