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Resources and News for Information Professionals
ResourceShelf is Compiled & Edited By Gary Price, MLIS Gary Price Library & Internet Research Consulting gary@ resourceshelf.com Gary's Bio Shirl Kennedy, MLIS Contributing Editor Dan Giancaterino, MLIS Contributing Editor Steven Cohen, MLS Contributing Editor Looking For More Info? News? Search Help? News Tips?
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Monday, September 30, 2002
NTIS (National Technical Information Service) NTIS Updates Web Site, New Search and Retrieval Options Available What's New? *Free Access to NTIS Catalog Back To 1990 *Ability to Download new Documents Directly from Web *Up to 20 pages may be downloaded free; downloading more than 21 pages will cost $8.95 per report. *Link to the full text of documents on the web for free See Also: Direct to Advanced Search Interface Many Thanks to S.C. for the news tip.
Enterprise Search--Google Google Enhances Enterprise Search "Box" "New secure search capabilities." See Also: "Google Upgrades Appliance Tool" (via Info Today NewsBreaks) See Also: More On the Google Search Box (via SearchTools.Com) Additional Enterprise Search News Swish-E (Free, Open Source Search Engine) Receives Upgrade (via SearchTools.Com) Inxight SmartDiscovery 3.0 Now Available “Measuring Search Effectiveness: Turning Customer Queries into Gold" (New White Paper from Inquira)
Resources, Tools and Full-Text Documents (5 Items) Plagiarism--Webliography Comprehensive Webliography About Plagiarism Available Online This impressive compilation was prepared by Sharon Stoerger for the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Along with links to many web-accessible articles, sections for instructors and students are also included. You'll also find case studies, material on plagiarism detection tools, and examples of term paper sites. Thanks to B.S. for alerting me to this resource. -- Weather--Database New, Searchable Knowledgebase of Questions and Answers from NOAA Answers@NOAA.Gov is a new searchable knowledgebase with questions and answers about meteorology/weather (Find historical weather information for any city, Find global warming information, etc) and other topics from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. -- Health Insurance--United States--Statistics Source: U.S. Census Full-Text Report, Health Insurance Coverage: 2001 Summary ||| Full-Text Report -- Higher Education--United States--Statistics Source: National Center for Education Statistics Full-Text Report, What Students Pay for College: Changes in Net Price of College Attendance Between 1992-93 and 1999-2000 -- Population--United Kingdom--Statistics Source: National Statistics New Report, "Census 2001, The Big Number" The U.K. population is now 58,789,194. See Also: New Population Statistics for London
National Libraries (2 Items) National Library of Canada Full-Text Brief, National Library of Canada: Excellence in Innovation "Brief on the Government of Canada's Innovation Strategy". -- National Library of New Zealand Full-Text, Briefing for the Incoming Minister: National Library of New Zealand 37 pages .pdf
Professional Reading Shelf Serials Source: Library Journal "Online Serials Heat Up" Dr. Carol Tenopir's latest for LJ. She writes, "Serials librarianship is hot. It wasn't too long ago that library schools were eliminating serials management courses while libraries were merging serials departments into acquisitions and cataloging. Now, in the era of electronic journals and magazines, serials is the hottest topic in the library." Sunday, September 29, 2002
Web Search--Google Happy Birthday Google Google is marking its fourth birthday. You can see the birthday cake at the top of the Google home page. Actually, Google was around prior to October, 1998 as a research project at Stanford known as Backrub. The Google.Com address was first registered on 9/15/1997. For those search fanatics out there, here's a look at a few early Google web pages. * Larry Page Asks a Technical Question About a Java Web Robot on 1/7/1996 * The Backrub Home Page Captured in 1997 "BackRub is a "web crawler" which is designed to traverse the web. Currently we are developing techniques to improve web search engines." "BackRub is written in Java and Python and runs on several Sun Ultras and Intel Pentiums running Linux. The primary database is kept on an Sun Ultra II with 28GB of disk." * The BackRub FAQ in 1997 "If your question is not answered here, please email...or if you prefer call...and ask for Larry." "* The Google Home Page Captured on 12/10/1997 URL: http://Backrub.Google.Com, 24 million urls "fetched" * The Google Home Page Captured on 5/10/1998 URL: http://google.stanford.edu. *The Google Pre-Beta Home Page in 1998 URL: http://google.stanford.edu. * A Message from Larry via the Google Friends Mailing List on 7/8/1998 "We plan to have a much bigger index than our current 24 million pages soon." *Google's Original Corportation Record (9/8/1998) in the State of California Note: The Original Record Was Just Updated (About A Week Ago) with New Info * Sergey and Larry Speak to the Bay Area Linux Users Group 9/18/98 "Google, the search engine of the future..." * Google Inc., "An Early Stage Startup" is Looking For An Office Manager From 10/12/98 Craig Silverstein posts a message advertising this "killer opportunity". * The Google.Com Home Page on 11/11/1998 No content, only 2 links. * The Google "Beta" Home Page Captured on 12/2/1998 URL: http://www.google.com * The "Why Use Google" Page From 1999 URL: http://www.google.com * The Google Stickers Page From 1999 URL: http://www.google.com * Google Press Release #1, 6/7/1999 "Google Receives $25 Million in Equity Funding" * The Google FAQ From September, 1999 ---- Key Papers "The PageRank Citation Ranking: Bringing Order to the Web" By Lawrence Page, Sergey Brin, Rajeev Motwani, and Terry Winograd "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine" By Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page Patents "Method for Node Ranking in a Linked Database" U.S. Patent No. 6,285,999 Inventor: Lawrence Page - See Also: Other Early Search Engine Announcements (Once of the Page, Scroll to the 12/15 Postings)
Professional Reading Shelf Readers Advisory--Book Recommendation Tools--Webliogaphy Source: Library Journal "Personalized Recommended Reading" A webliography of web based readers advisory resources prepared by Neal Wyatt, Senior Librarian, Collection Development, at the Chesterfield County Public Library in Virginia.
Maps--Online Source: AP/Rocky Mountain News "One Route to Riches: Maps in Public Arena" From the article, "You can see, even download a 1902 map of Pittsburgh for free from the Library of Congress. But some Internet entrepreneurs are banking on the prospect that you'd pay for its delivery to your home or office as a poster. And that's just fine, say many curators, who figure those commercial Internet sites, while making money, also help expose historical images to thousands of people who otherwise might never be aware of them." See Also: Online Maps from The Library of Congress See Also: Library of Congress Geography and Maps: An Illustrated Guide
Business Libraries Source: St. Paul Pioneer Press Learn About: The James J. Hill Reference Library From the article, "Founded by railroad tycoon James J. Hill, it boasts one of the nation's most extensive collections of business reference materials, and features 12 information specialists trained to assist a wide range of visitors — from students to entrepreneurs. On average, library staff members respond to 120 information requests a day." See Also: Direct to the James J. Hill Reference Library Home Page
Resources, Tools and Full-Text Documents New Online Collections from The Library of Congress This announcement offers info on three new collections. 1) "Music for the Nation: American Sheet Music 1820-1860" "...offers more than 15,000 pieces of sheet music registered for copyright during the pre-Civil War years...sheet music items are searchable by title, composer or subject." Material from 1870-1885 is also available. - 2) "Trails to Utah and the Pacific: Diaries and Letters, 1846-1869" "...incorporates 49 diaries of pioneers trekking westward across America to Utah, Montana and the Pacific between 1847 and the meeting of the rails in 1869." - 3) "Reclaiming the Everglades: South Florida's Natural History, 1884-1934" "The materials in this online presentation are drawn from the collections of the University of Miami, International University and the Historical Museum of Southern Florida. These collections are normally available only by appointment. "Reclaiming the Everglades" now makes these valuable materials freely accessible to users worldwide." Saturday, September 28, 2002
Public Libraries--United States Source: American Libraries Full-Text, "Great American Public Libraries: The 2002 HAPLR Rankings" Available as a 5 page .pdf file. Friday, September 27, 2002
Info Industry News Briefs (2 Items) Proquest Adds Full-Text Content From 11 Palgrave Macmillan Titles -- Several Enhancements to Factiva.Com Updated 9/30--"Factiva.com Gets Updated" (via Info Today NewsBreaks)
Resources, Tools and Full-Text Documents (4 Items) 3 Recently Released Reports from the Congressional Research Service * U.S. Use of Preemptive Military Force (RS 21311) * Critical Infrastructures: What Makes an Infrastructure Critical? (RL 31556) * Terrorist Nuclear Attacks on Seaports: Threat and Response (RS 21293) -- Recreation--United States--Statistics Source: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service New, Full-Text Report, 2001 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting and Wildlife-Associated Recreation -- Public Schools--United States Source: National Center for Education Statistics Database Update, Search for Public School Districts "Recently added information includes high school completion information, fiscal data, and census data. The data comes from the Common Core of Data (CCD) for the 2000-01 school year, Census data from 2000, fiscal data from 1998-1999, and High School completers data from 1999-2000." -- United States History--Lewis and Clark--Geographic Information Digitization Projects Source: University of Missouri New Site, Lewis and Clark Across Missouri From the site, "This website serves geographical information and maps that are products of the Lewis and Clark Historic Landscape Project...With the primary goals to geo-reference, digitize, and map all of the retrievable information from the Lewis and Clark journals and the 18th and 19th-century land survey notes along the Big River Corridors of the state of Missouri...Specific campsite maps, photo-realistic images of important river landmarks, animated virtual Missouri River travel, and an interactive map server offering various layers of geographical data on the Expedition's outward and homeward journeys joined with the natural and cultural history of the Missouri River corridor are all currently offered..."
Professional Reading Shelf (4 Items) Information Usage--Higher Education Source: EDUCAUSE Review Full-Text, "Print and Electronic Information: Shedding New Light on Campus Use" -- Digital Libraries--Usage Source: Information Research Full-Text, "Studying Digital Library Users Over Time: A Follow-up Survey of Early Canadiana Online" Thanks Jill O'Neil for the url. -- Archives Encoded Archival Description Source: RLG Full-Text, RLG Best Practice Guidelines for Encoded Archival Description -- Web Links The Chronicle of Higher Education "University Orders Student Group to Remove Online Link to a Rebel Group's Web Site" From the article, "The University of California at San Diego has ordered a leftist student group to remove from its Web site a link to the site of a Colombian rebel organization. The university contends that the link defies the USA Patriot Act. The student group has not complied with the university's demand."
Health Research (2 Items) Source: NCBI 1) New Journal Locator Database New Database: Journals From the site, "NCBI has created a new Entrez database, Journals. Journals replaces the Journal Browser and provides additional search and display features. The Journals database is available from the Search pull-down menu and from the PubMed sidebar." It's also available at this url. "Journals provides additional search and display features, and includes all the journals in the Entrez databases such as PubMed, Nucleotide, and Protein." -- National Library of Medicine 2) Survey Results: Results of a National Library of Medicine Web Site User Survey
News Briefs TheEndofFree reports that Yahoo's RSS feed of financial information is no longer available. Thursday, September 26, 2002
Web Resource of the Week Lists & Rankings No Kidding, Price's List of Lists Has a New Home Some exciting news to share. The compilation of business/industry lists and other useful rankings is back and being updated. Because of a massive amount of help and assistance from Trip Wyckoff, a librarian and owner of Special Issues, the List of Lists is back and still available at no charge. Special Issues, Trip's company and online database is a fee-based resource. Please change your links from the old url to the new one. Note: We're in the very early stages of the rebuilding process but Trip and I wanted to share the new site with you asap. Thanks for your interest and the many e-mails about the LOL over the past few years.
Web Search--Google Google News "Missing" Some Content (UPDATE 4:20 PM EDST) As of 4:20 PM EDST the Message About Missing Data From Google News has been REMOVED Overnight, I was unable to access Google News. Now, the site is online with the following message, "Google News search is currently missing some data. Please try again later for complete results." ...and since we're on the subject of Google News here's another feature: The Google News Top Stories page and the lead page of each section (U.S., Business, Sports, etc.) will automatically refresh with new/updated content every 15 minutes if they are left on your screen.
Professional Reading Shelf Scholarly Publishing Electronic Journals The October Issue of Learned Publishing is Now Online All material is full-text, no charge. Here are the titles of a few of the articles: "Reading Behaviour and Electronic Journals" by Carol Tenopir and Donald King "The Pergamon phenomenon 1951-1991: Robert Maxwell and scientific publishing" "Linking to Full Text: The Secondary Publisher's Perspective" "Promoting literacy in a digital age: approaches to training for information literacy" "Medical journal publishing: one culture or several?"
Dictionaries--Oxford English Dictionary About 3500 New Entries Added to Oxford English Dictionary From the article, "The first new edition in nearly a decade of the short version of the classic word bible will appear on Thursday, with 3,500 new entries, from "ass-backwards" to "warp drive." "Generally, a word has to be used five times in five different places over five years, although something like 'text messaging' got in quicker because it became so widely used so quickly," said spokeswoman Claire Turner. See Also, Fast Facts About the OED
Resources, Tools and Full-Text Documents (3 Items) Business--Lists & Rankings--Europe Source: Bureau van Dijk (AMADEUS) Full-Text, Top 20 Companies in Europe In addition to the list, a basic report for each company is available at no charge from Bureau van Dijk. -- Freedom of Information Act--United States Source: GAO Full-Text Report, Update on Implementation of the 1996 Electronic Freedom of Information Act Amendment -- Military--Australia Source: Department of the Parliamentary Library, Parliament of Australia Full-Text Research Note, Scenarios for Australian Military Contributions to the Probable war in Iraq
Citation Rankings Source: Institute for Scientific Information Citation Report/Impact Factor Briefs Science in Denmark, 1997-2001 Science in Mexico, 1997-2001 Science in Sweden, 1997-2001 Journals Ranked by Impact: Chemistry (general) Journals Ranked by Impact: International Relations Highly Cited Authors in Plant & Animal Science, 1992-2002 U.S. Universities with Highest Concentrations in Food Science & Nutrition, 1997-2001 Psychiatry: High-Impact U.S. Universities, 1997-2001 Sociology & Anthropology: High-Impact U.S. Universities, 1997-2001 See Also: Many Other Reports From ISI's SCI-BYTES Wednesday, September 25, 2002
Web Search USGovSearch is No More After a brief online discussion mention several weeks ago and then noticing many dead links on library web sites, I asked divine/Northern Light about the status of USGovSearch. USGovSearch searched material from NTIS and started with a bit of controversy. (See Paula Hane’s 1999 article). Today, a conversation with divine’s Susan Burke provides us with official word that USGovSearch is no more. In fact, it hasn’t been online for about six months. Ms. Burke writes, “Since divine's acquisition of Northern Light we have changed the business model a bit and are currently focusing on the areas where we provide the most value to our customers such as merging technology and content to provide complete information delivery solutions. Northern Light was acquired by divine in January of 2002. Time to change a few web pages. -- More News From divine --- Yahoo's Research Documents (Fee-Based Content) No Longer Available On Sunday, Greg Notess's Search Engine Showdown had an item about "Research Documents" (fee-based, full-text articles) no longer being available on Yahoo. Greg's keen eye was clearly focused because he is correct. Susan Burke confirms that the fee-based material from divine/Northern Light has been removed from Yahoo. She was unable provide any additional information. In late January of this year this divine/NL/Yahoo "premium service" was unveiled to a fair amount of media attention and info industry discussion. Northern Light's pay-per-article service (Special Collection) continues. (Updated 9/27 "Yahoo shelves for-fee research service" via News.Com)
Research Skills Source: Columbia Journalism Review On the Research Skills of Journalism Students No surprises here but still 100% worthy of your attention. Journalism students at Harvard learn that it's not all on the web. A good article for your bibliographic instruction file. It's sad but but true what this article documents, Web Search = Research for many students. Kudos to the author for teaching his students an important lesson.
Web Search--Google One More Thing Re: Google News A quick note about an issue with Google News and other news search engines. Multiple versions of the same wire service story. It's not a question of it being good or bad but something you might want to be aware of and share with users. Content from the major wire services, Associated Press and Reuters, often appear in Google News multiple times. In other words, although the story might have a different headline and time stamp, the underlying content is identical or very close to identical because different news organizations might edit the story for length. Here are a few examples: 1) An AP story, approx. 60 entries 2) A Reuters story, approx. 5 times 3) Another Issue with Reuters, Material Labeled as an "Update". As new facts and reaction come in portions of the story are updated and released. Excellent for research but in other instances make sure you're looking at the most current update. Example: Here's A Story that's Been Updated 5 Times.
The Internet Archive The Internet Archive Bookmobile Hits the Road on Monday The Bookmobile departs next week. From the announcement, "In a celebration of the Public Domain, starting September 30, 2002, the Internet Archive's Bookmobile will be coming to a town near you, bringing with it the ability to access, download, and print one of the almost 20,000 public domain books currently available online." Also from the site, So what is the Bookmobile? "It is a mobile digital library capable of downloading public domain books from the Internet via satellite and printing them anytime, anywhere, for anyone. It will be traveling across the country from San Francisco to Washington D.C., stopping at schools, libraries and retirement homes; places where people understand the value of a book. After the bookmobile leaves, each library will understand what it would take to make print and bind public domain books for their patrons." Much more info on the site. See Also: Direct to the Internet Archive and The Wayback Machine
News Briefs (2 Items) * Oldest Known Copy of Sikh Scripture outside India found in the British Library -- * "The Royal Library of Sweden Preserve Archived 17th Century Newspapers" (via Managing Information)
Resources, Tools and Full-Text Documents (4 Items) Business--Lists & Rankings New, 2002 ed. 17th ed. 100 Best Companies for Working Women -- Poverty--United States--Statistics Source: U.S. Census Full-Text Report, Poverty in the United States: 2001 Full-Text Report, Money Income in the United States: 2001 See Also: News Release with Summary Info From These Reports -- Health--Schools--United States Source: EPA New Web Portal, Healthy School Environments From the site, "EPA's new Healthy School Environments web portal will help facility managers, school administrators, architects, design engineers, school nurses, parents, and teachers find the resources they need to address environmental health issues in schools." -- Internet Usage--United Kingdom Source: National Statistics Office Full-Text Report, Internet access - Households and Individuals Tuesday, September 24, 2002
The Internet Archive Source: The Internet Archive "Net Archive Silences Scientology Critic" From the article, "The Internet Archive, a site that preserves snapshots of old Web pages and bills itself as "a library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form," no longer contains links to archival pages of Xenu.net. Instead, surfers are pointed to a page telling them the site was taken down "per the request of the site owner." Also from the article, "A representative of the Internet Archive said the organization, which is run mostly by volunteers, took the pages down after lawyers for the Church of Scientology "asserted ownership of materials visible through" the site. He said the group replaced the links with a generic error message about blocked sites." Much more in the article. See Also: Official Internet Archive Statement See Also: Official Internet Archive Statement (in Plain English) See Also: Discussion in The Wayback Machine Forum
Web Search--AlltheWeb Source: Search Engine Showdown New KWIC from AlltheWeb Greg Notess reports that AtW is beginning to offer KWIC (keyword-in-context) view. Greg writes, "This is the kind of display Google usually provides where the extract contains the actual search terms along with some of the surrounding text." He also notes that it's now possible to limit by site using site: Previously the syntax was a clunky url.host and/or url.domain.
Web Search--Daypop Daypop is Back Online After running out of hard drive space Dan Chan has brought Daypop, a search tool for weblog and news content, is back online.
Librarians Source: Federal Computer Week "E-Learning aimed at Librarians" From the article, "The Maryland Library Partnership, a coalition of public libraries, is developing an e-learning course that it hopes will help libraries across the country provide better service." Also, from the article, "A test of the new course is planned for January and should be available to libraries in Maryland in spring 2003. It will then be offered for sale to libraries in the rest of the country later next year."
News Search--Google Source: The New York Times "All the News Google Algorithms Say Is Fit to Print" Key Quotes from the article: *"We are trying to leverage the experience of all the editors out there," said Larry Page *"For now, Google's service has no advertising or other revenue source. But Mr. Page said the service, which is still considered a beta — or trial — offering, will easily accommodate the text advertising that Google sells on other areas of its site. The company is also exploring syndicating the news service to other sites and possibly offering a version of it for a fee to its users." *"Yahoo is said to be seriously considering switching its Web search to Inktomi, a Google rival that does not run its own Web site." *"Their front page is not too far off from what is on the Post site at the moment," said Douglas B. Feaver, the executive editor of washingtonpost.com. "It's a useful service, but it's not going to drive me to the unemployment office tomorrow."
Information Industry--Factiva Formal Launch: Factiva Public Figures & Associates From the announcement, "Factiva Public Figures & Associates identifies individuals who may require enhanced scrutiny due to their political connections, a major focus of recent anti-money laundering legislation, including the USA Patriot Act, and established benchmarks such as the Customer Due Diligence for Banks from the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. It also includes lists of specially designated nationals such as those produced by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control and the European Union." Note: This database is not available to current customers or potential Factiva customers. According to this page, the sale of Factiva Public Figures & Associates is limited in all countries to companies or institutions that fall within one of three categories defined below: * Companies who would use the services to comply with legal duties and regulations. The only legal duty currently recognized is that of “know your customer” specifically in relation to protection against money laundering. Other duties may be added. * Governmental organizations that would use the services in performing their statutory duties. * Organizations that would use the services in performing law enforcement duties. See Also: Learn More About Factiva Public Figures & Associates
Online Industry--LexisNexis News From LN: LexisNexis Country Analysis Product for Academic Market From the announcement, "...news, analysis, in-depth reports and statistics on 190 countries including emerging markets in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. LexisNexis Country Analysis was designed with sophisticated subject and industry indexing for effortless searching through more than 300,000 documents for specific country information in an easy to use format."
Online Industry--Dialog/Cambridge Scientific Abstracts Source: Information Today NewsBreaks "CSA Beefs Up Service, Will Remove Its Files from Dialog" From Paula Hane's article, "Searchers who logged on to Dialog Classic last week were greeted by a surprise announcement: The abstract databases from Cambridge Scientific Abstracts (CSA) will no longer be available through the Dialog and Dialog DataStar services. According to Dialog: “Dialog and CSA have jointly decided to change the nature of our relationship in order that we may each pursue different strategic interests. With the change in the relationship, CSA databases will no longer be available through Dialog and Dialog DataStar services after September 30, 2002.” "ONLINE magazine editor Marydee Ojala, who first noticed the Dialog announcement, wondered about this. She said, “Why wouldn’t they cite Wilson’s Library Literature (File 438) as an alternative to LISA?” Was this just a simple oversight or could it be that H.W. Wilson will be the next database producer to exit Dialog? Searcher editor Barbara Quint commented that perhaps Dan Wagner’s prediction (from “The Shooting of Dan Wagner” on p. 1 of the September issue of Information Today and http://www.infotoday.com/it/sep02/Poynder.htm) that Dialog will become just a platform for Thomson content is coming true."
Resources, Tools and Full-Text Documents (3 Items) Health--United Kingdom New Content Added to National Electronic Library for Health From an announcement, "Guidelines Finder for health clinicians has been added to the National electronic Library for Health (NeLH), it was announced on 18 September 2002. The resource has been developed in collaboration with the Sheffield Evidence for Effectiveness and Knowledge (SEEK), and holds details of 447 UK national guidelines with links to downloadable versions." Also, all U.K. based users now have free access Cochrane Library and Clinical Evidence. -- Documents in the News Source: Prime Minister's Office, U.K. Full-Text, Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction - The Assessment of the British Government See Also: Executive Summary -- Documents in the News Terrorism--United States Full-Text, The FBI's Handling of the Phoenix Electronic Communication and Investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui Prior to September 11, 2001 23 pages. Presented at a House and Senate Intelligence Committee hearing today by Eleanor Hill, Director, Joint Inquiry Staff.
Professional Reading Shelf XML Source: Journal of Digital Information Full-Text Article, "XML: One Input--Many Outputs" Monday, September 23, 2002
Google News Gets A New Look, More Content Today, Google has announced several major changes and updates to the Google News Beta. Some of you began seeing the changes last week. What's New? * Over 4000 English Language Sources. This is a MAJOR Increase to the List of Crawled Sources. Previously at about 100-150. * Database Refreshed Every 15 Minutes. Previously About Once or Twice an Hour. * Tab to Google News Listed With the Other Google Tools (Web, Images, Groups, Directory) * Layout Of Google News Home Page What Continues? * Clustering of Headlines on Similar Topic From Various Sources * Ability to Sort Results by Relevance or Date What's Not Available? * Advanced Interface * Non-English Language Content *Ability to Limit from a Specific Source Other Things To Know *You Can Limit To Terms in the Title or Headline by Using the Syntax intitle: *Inurl: Also Available To Limit to Terms in the URL (Use to Limit to a Specific News Site, Thanks T.C.) *From the site, "Google News includes articles that appeared within the Past 30 Days". I'm awaiting details about this statement from a Google representative. It doesn't make sense to me. Also, Why? Previously, Google kept material in the News database for 5 days. This makes sense since a great deal of "freely available" news material is only available for a 5-10 days after publication. 30 days is a long time in the online news world and Google has no control as to how long a specific site might make it available. Exceptions do exist. Other News Engines Worthy Of Your Attention See Also: AlltheWeb News (Includes Non-English Language Content, Advanced Interface) See Also: Northern Light News (Sources Not Available Elsewhere on the Open Web For Free. Free E-Mail Alerts) See Also: Rocket News See Also: NewsNow See Also: NewsSeer (An Adaptive Engine, From the People Behind Research Index, More on this One in the Next 10 Days) See Also: NewsBlaster (A Demo from Columbia University) New Image Browse Feature!
U.S. Government Information Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Source: Federal Computer Week "Energy Agency says Web Info Poses Threat" From the article, "Citing the threat of terrorism, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is proposing new rules to limit the public's access to information about power plants, pipelines and other components of the energy infrastructure. Only those with "a need to know" will have access to the information, and they might be required to sign an agreement that prohibits them from revealing what they have learned."
Union Catalogs Source: Research Libraries Group Pilot Study: "RLG's Union Catalog on the Web" From the announcement, "Responding to new expectations in this environment, libraries, archives, and museums have begun asserting their role in the information discovery process, rethinking and repositioning their traditional tool—the catalog. In 2002, RLG began working to reinvent and transfer its largest bibliographic database, the RLG Union Catalog, to the open Web environment in a completely new way."
Professional Reading Shelf Selected Articles from the September Issue of Information Technology and Libraries Are Now Available Online Articles Available Include: "Hanging Indents and the Reference Librarian: Offering Productivity Software in the Public Library Using Microsoft Access and HTML to Produce Browseable Web Lists" Book Review: The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World by Lawrence Lessig Software Reviews
Resources, Tools and Full-Text Documents (2 Items) U.S. Congress--Lists & Rankings Source: Roll Call "The 50 Richest Lawmakers" -- Comic Books--Online Exhibits Source: National Library of Canada New, Beyond the Funnies: The History of Comics in English Canada and Quebec
Libraries--Museum Exhibits An Odyssey in Print: Adventures in the Smithsonian Library The web site for An Odyssey in Print: Adventures in the Smithsonian Library an exhibit currently at the National Museum of American History here in D.C. The complete catalog is for sale. It's published by the Smithsonian Institution Press. See Also: Smithsonian Institution Libraries Home Page See Also: Smithsonian Institution Libraries Digital Collections Sunday, September 22, 2002
Web Search Search Engine Showdown Gets a New Look Congrats and kudos to our friend and colleague Greg Notess on the new look to his informative and important site. Along with the new site design, Greg has added reviews of Gigablast and Openfind. You'll also find an updated Search Engine Features Chart (a must have resource) and Search Engine By Features page.
Censorship Banned Books Week Is Underway Resources from the American Library Association 1) Librarians' Quick and Easy Guide to Banned Books Week 2) Reporters' Quick and Easy Guide to Banned Books Week 3) The Most Frequently Challenged Books of 2001 4) 1990–2000 Challenges by Initiator, Institution, Type, and Year (*.PPT and *.PDF) 5) The Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–1999 Additional Resources: The Free Expression Network Additional Resources: Banned Book Online (via the Online Books Page) Saturday, September 21, 2002
The Library of Congress Sounds Great: LC Seeking Public Nominations for Inaugural (2002) National Recording Registry From the announcement, "Librarian of Congress James H. Billington will name culturally, historically or aesthetically significant sound recordings to the National Recording Registry. The Act sets forth a program to ensure the preservation of our heritage in sound and includes the establishment of the National Recording Preservation Board and National Recording Preservation Foundation, in addition to founding the Registry in the Library of Congress." Go to this page for more info, criteria, and a link to a nomination form. See Also: Learn More About the Recorded Sound Reference Center at LC See Also: Direct to SONIC (Recorded Sound Catalog) from LC
Libraries--Privacy Source: Library Journal "Make Sure You Are Privacy Literate" Karen Coyle writes, "The renewed awareness of privacy issues sparked by the Patriot Act creates an opportunity to take stock of policies and procedures. How effectively is your library protecting privacy? Are your policies and procedures up-to-date with current technology?"
and while we're on the topic of privacy... Web Search--FAST Search and Transfer Privacy Issues Source: News.Com "Search Firm Takes Heat for Sharing Data" From the article, "In a complaint filed this week with the Norwegian government, Public Information Research (PIR) charged the search provider's [Fast Search and Transfer] showcase site, AlltheWeb, with failing to notify visitors that it uses tiny electronic tags to monitor search queries in partnership with online portal Lycos and DoubleClick, an advertising technology company. The privacy watchdog said that the practice breaches Norwegian laws requiring companies to disclose if personal data about consumers is shared with third parties." "Peter Gorman, a spokesman for Fast Search and Transfer's (FAST) AlltheWeb, said that the company is newly aware of the problem and plans on issuing a corrective measure soon. He said FAST will either post a privacy policy that makes clear to people that information is being collected, or it will work with partners Lycos and DoubleClick to remove the tags, otherwise known as clear gifs." Let's see how long it takes FAST to respond. Stay tuned. Friday, September 20, 2002
Information Visualization Web Tools Source: PC World What's a Web Thumbnail? A very brief article about Allison Woodruff from the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center and her research using Web Thumbnails. From the article, "What we do with our Web Thumbnails is return a set of small screenshots of the pages themselves, and if you click on one of the pictures, it takes you to the page, just as a Web link would. Keywords within the picture are blown up to large size in the thumbnail view, so you can get a feel for how relevant the document's text is to your search." See Also: A Demo/Screen Shots of Web Thumbnail Software See Also: Download/Demo the Popout Prism Browser (Free/90 Days)
Web Search--Google What's Up With Google News? We've seen mentions on a few lists that changes (new design/organization) are underway at Google News. It's true but this "testing" is not available for all users. So, some of you will see it but others will see what you've seen for the past six months. A Google spokesperson confirms the test but no dates for a general release are currently available. Stay tuned.
Web Search--Google Source: PC World "Google Eyes the Next Innovation" From the article, "Web services give us a lot of promise in terms of enabling communication by means of speeding up communications and creating new services," Brin said.
Resources, Tools and Full-Text Documents (3 Items) Terrorism--United States Full-Text, The Intelligence Community's Knowledge of the September 11 Highjackers Prior to September 11, 2001 See Also: Full-Text, Joint Inquiry Staff Statement 1 -- Documents in the News Source: The White House Full Text, The National Security Strategy of the United States of America See Also: A Full-Text PDF Version is Also Available -- Crime--United States--Statistics Source: BJS Full-Text, Crime and the Nation's Households, 2000 with Trends, 1994-2000 Summary/Excel Spreadsheets ||| Direct to PDF Thursday, September 19, 2002
Web Resource of the Week Statistics--Global Source: Library of Statistics Finland Need A Statistic? Check WebStat If you're in need of statistics compiled by governments from around the world, WebStat might be a very useful to in helping you access what you need. From WebStat, "The material is classified by subject field and by country. The search result contains both a description of the source and a direct link to it." -- The database is straightforward and simple to use. At the bottom the home page you'll find several clickable links. Select "subject fields" to see the vocabulary used to describe various types of statistics. Selecting "search" will take you to the interface. You can conduct a free-text search and/or limit by publisher, title, description, keywords, country, region, and subject. Another link at the bottom of the home page will take you to a comprehensive list of links to statistical publishers. Not only useful but also interesting! Thanks to B.B. for alerting me to this site a long time ago. -- See Also: If Webstat wasn't enough, the Library of Statistics Finland also provides "The World In Figures" Here you'll find packaged and ready to view/download in Excel spreadsheet format. From the site, "The World in Figures table package contains 28 Excel tables of country-specific structural data on all the countries of the world. The number of countries is 241 and themes 248. The data can be found easily by means of a separate index." Each spreadsheet (table) is labeled as to when the data was last updated. Wow!
The Library of Congress Source: The Washington Times "Nation's Library' Welcomes Public" One of the best things about living here in D.C. is having LC only a few minutes away. Of course many LC services are now available online but a visit to the three buildings here in Washington is a must for librarians and non-librarians alike. From the article, "This is the nation's library," says Diana Nestor Kresh, director of the Library's Public Service Collections. "We are very interested in attracting the average person."
Info Industry--Thomson/Gale/Dialog Product Introduction: ReferenceLink ReferenceLink a new gateway designed for public and educational libraries was formally introduced today. From the announcement, "The new product enables library patrons and students to search thousands of news sources and databases simultaneously through a single, friendly interface without having to jump between individual Web sites or access multiple online information services. The product is the first to be introduced in a line of planned online products and services serving academic and public libraries worldwide." Also, "ReferenceLink is a multidisciplinary database containing medical, reference, health, science, technical and regulatory sources, including The New England Journal of Medicine, Consumer Reports, Medline, GeoRef and thousands of other widely used sources. News coverage is rich, containing nearly 50 databases with more than 1,500 newspaper and journal titles pulled from the acclaimed Dialog® NewsRoom online service, including The Boston Globe, USA Today and Global Reporter. Libraries may subscribe to only the newspaper database, which provides access to the news content, or in combination with ReferenceLink to get the broader full content set."
News Briefs The Library of Congress to Evaluate Data Grid Technology (via AScribe) (Updated 10/2/02 "Library of Congress Taps the Grid" (via Wired News) ) -- The British Library Names Head of Publisher Relations (via Managing Information)
Resources, Tools and Full-Text Documents (2 Items) Driving Laws and Regulations--United States Source: Institute for Highway Safety, Highway Loss Data Institute Driving Regulation Fact Sheets Several fact sheets from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, Highway Loss Data Institute These include: Current Speed Limit Laws by State Child Restraint Laws by State Children Not Covered by Safety Belt or Child Restraint Laws Safety Belt Use Laws by State Automated Enforcement Laws by State (includes chart) State Court Decisions on the Constitutionality of Sobriety Checkpoints (includes chart) See Also: Additional Charts and Highway Safety Facts -- Medicine Source: History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine New Resource, Greek Medicine Includes profiles, timeline, further reading list. Wednesday, September 18, 2002
Online Databases--National Archives (U.S.) Say Hello to The Archival Research Catalog (ARC) from the National Archives (U.S.) The ARC catalog replaces the NAIL (NARA Archival Information Locator) prototype. The database currently has records for about 13% of the Archive's holdings. It also contains about 124,000 digital images. See Also: Direct to the ARC Database See Also: ARC Database (Advanced Interface)
Web Search--FAST/AlltheWeb Source: Fast Company "The Search for the Fastest Engine" Learn more about AlltheWeb, FAST, and "third generation search" from company CEO John Lervik. From the article, "To perform a third-generation search, says Lervik, means getting closer to the user's real intention -- applying rules of grammar, syntax, and semantics to computer linguistics. "It's a morphological challenge," Lervik says, "to understand that words can be written in many different forms." About one in 10 queries, for example, is misspelled, so FAST's latest algorithms consider whether the spelling of "Saturn" is correct. Query analysis recognizes "Where is" as a request for a location, while dynamic clustering groups results together based on whether the user wants information on Saturn the planet or Saturn the car."
Web Search--Google Source: American Libraries "Librarianship after Google" In a new American Libraries column, Joe Janes discusses life for the librarian in the age of Google. For the most part I agree with Dr. Janes about Google's need to work with the library community. I tell the Google staff this each time I talk with them. Dr. Jane's also asks if Google, "is a big-enough deal to fundamentally affect our practice?" Important thoughts for discussion. Allow me to share a few comments on the topic. 1) Google is a wonderful tool. However, as you've heard me say before, it's not the only search tool. Unfortunately, for many end users Google and "Googling" equals research and for professionals it's the only web engine they use. What about all of the material not accessible in Google both "on the web", "on the Invisible Web", or not on the web at all but in books and proprietary databases? 2) While Google is a "must use tool" other general web engines are important to use and know about. People seem to forget this important fact as Google continues to gain popularity. As noted on this weblog almost every week, companies like AlltheWeb, Teoma, and Vivisimo are doing new and exciting things. The same is true in the specialty search world with resources like ResearchIndex. 3) A knowledge of other tools is not only important in the day to day world of searching but this is knowledge is an asset we can use to market ourselves and the profession both inside and outside of our organizations. 4) Even if every search tool used the same database each uses its own ranking algorithm. So, the same keywords would show different results. This is why a knowledge and the use of more than one search tool is useful especially when your doing overview type searching. Most people don't scroll through long lists. As someone said to me a few months ago, if it's not on the first or second page of results for most searcher's it's invisible. 5) What about the Invisible Web? Mountains of data on the web that's not directly accessible to the spiders from Google and other engines. Often this is high quality/authority info goes unused unless you are aware of the problem and now how to solve it. 6) Knowledge of specialty search tools is also important. You have a smaller universe of documents to search through. This could help lower recall and improve precision. Dialog is home to many files and LN to many libraries, not just one super file. Database selection is a huge problem when you combine the many proprietary databases, web search, and specialty search tools. Again, where to begin a search is another key skill to have these days. At the same time perhaps products like MuseGlobal will assist in solving this issue at least for the end user. However, don't forget that in many cases the best and most useful answer sits in a non-electronic resource. 7) Other "limits" with Google's operation might be of interest to the power searcher. First, Google does not search terms past a ten term maximum. We've mentioned the next two several times. Second, although not a everyday occurrence, it stops indexing a web page after indexing 101k of content is crawled. If what you're looking is something on a page past this limit, it's not in the Google database. Third, as Greg Notess notes, Google "tends" to stop indexing pdf files after the 120k mark. Fourth, Google offers no term truncation capabilities. 8) Finally, it's important to realize that while the search tools are ESSENTIAL resources for the library community and information professional WE are not the primary audience for these products. Many of us appreciate the advanced capabilities that the engines offer but most users just type and hope for the best. Once again, another set of marketable skills to have. Knowing about these options and being able to share them can really save people time. On a professional level, maybe a general web engine that's designed and/or customized with the info professional in mind might be a good idea. We'll save that discussion for another time.
Education Databases--ERIC ERIC News Rumors have been flying around several online lists in the past week about the possible removal of material from the ERIC database. From the way I read these posts it seems that the U.S. Department of Education is considering a reorganization of their site. However, this reorganization should not see content removed from the ERIC database or other ERIC sites. I'm still working on getting an official statement from the Department of Education. However, Dr. David Lankes, Director of the ASkERIC project at Syracuse University (home to a web accessible version of ERIC) tells the VAS&ND that he's never been asked to remove items from the ERIC database, AskERIC, or the ERIC/IT web site. -- Much of this online discussion comes from an Education Week article that is now available online. The article discusses the Dept. of Education web site reorganization which is according to the article is, "to remove outdated data—and ensure that material on the site meshes with the Bush administration's political philosophy." While this is definitely cause for debate and discussion it's not unprecendeted. When the Clinton Administration moved out of Washington, all of the Whitehouse.Gov material was removed from the site and can now be accessed via an archive. The article also raises the importance of archival projects to make material accessible if/when it's removed from its original site. It would be interesting to see what from the Ed site is accessible from the Internet Archive. -- From the article, "Each assistant secretary received a list of files slated for the chopping block. According to the May 31 directive, everything on the site dated before February 2001, just after President Bush took office, will be removed unless it is needed for legal reasons or it supports the "No Child Left Behind Act" of 2001— the president's key education measure—or other administration initiatives. Some information can remain if it's important for historical perspective or a policy reason. Staff can argue to keep older files, but an assistant secretary must approve the decision, the memo says." The article also notes that material removed from the Education site might be placed on a CD-ROM and made available to the public. -- A mention of ERIC Digests is included in the article. From the article, "The popular digests put out by the Educational Resources Information Center make up one big chunk of data that may soon disappear from ed.gov. ERIC, the 30-year-old data-collection center of the education world, produces about 160 digests a year from its 16 informational clearinghouses. The four-page briefing papers on "hot topics" address everything from class size to bilingual education...If pulled from ed.gov, the digests will still be available on ERIC's own Web site, Mr. Rudner said. But many teachers and parents aren't familiar with the site and find the digests instead on ed.gov." -- This might be 100% correct but if the material is no longer on the Education web site a redirect to AskERIC or some/any/all of the ERIC Clearinghouses that host digest material could be achieved in a matter of minutes. After doing a quick search ERIC Digests can be search and accessed via: AskERIC (includes a limit to search only digests, robust interface) The ERIC Clearinghouse on Assessment and Evaluation A Collection of Direct Links to Other Digest Browsable ERIC Digest Compilations (by Subject) -- I want want to mention again that the Education Week article's topic (longevity, accessibility, and removal of material on the "open web") is crucial and important. However, as far as the ERIC database and ERIC Digest material being in danger of disappearing, it appears not to be an issue, at least for the present time. Thanks to Genie Tyburski for the news tip.
Scholarly Publishing Source: C&RL News "SPARC and ACRL: Working Together To Reform Scholarly Communication" Rick Johnson, SPARC's Enterprise director, writes on SPARC's development plans.
Resources, Tools and Full-Text Documents (4 Items) Stories in the News Terrorism--United States Full-Text, Joint Inquiry Staff Statement 1 31 pages. Presented at a House and Senate Intelligence Committee hearing today by Eleanor Hill, Director, Joint Inquiry Staff. -- Stories in the News Cyber Security Source: President's Critical Infrastructure Protection Board Full-Text, The National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace (Draft) The release of this draft has been in the news throughout the day. -- Digitization Projects--Astronomy The Parallax Project From an article on The Chronicle of Higher Education, "Through a new digital archive, the University of Pittsburgh is making six decades of astronomy research available to scientists and ambitious armchair astronomers. The archive, called the Parallax Project, collects 10 volumes of data published by the university's Allegheny Observatory -- information dating back to 1910 that remains relevant to researchers today...Mr. Galloway [Director of Digital Library Research at Univ. of Pittsburgh] oversaw the database's creation, which required a team of students to spend nearly a year culling information from the journals. He says the results justify the tedium. "The key to this project was that being able to search by parallax information is awfully unique. It's something you can't do with the physical journals," he says." -- Advertising Source: Federal Trade Commission New, Full-Text, FTC Staff Report Full-Text, Weight Loss Advertising: An Analysis of Current Trends
Internet Domains Source: Library Journal "Kids-Only Subdomain to Ban "Seven Dirty Words" The ".kids.us" Internet subdomain limited to materials for pre-teens would ban sex, violence and the "seven dirty words" prohibited by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC), according to preliminary guidelines released Monday by the domain manager, NeuStar." See Also: Read the Full-Text of the Guidelines Mentioned in this Article
News Briefs Australia: Historic Books 'Sold to Plug Budget Gaps' From the article, "The NSW Parliament is being accused of using money raised from the sale of almost 3500 historic books to plug gaps in its budget rather than spend it on preserving rare books and documents." Thanks to S.C. for the news tip. Tuesday, September 17, 2002
Resources, Tools and Full-Text Documents (5 Items) Transportation--United States--Database--Statistics Source: Bureau of Transportation Statistics New Database, TranStats From the announcement, "The U.S. Department of Transportation's Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) today offered a major step forward in electronic government with the unveiling of TranStats, a new website providing one-stop data shopping through access to more than 100 transportation-related data bases." See Also: Direct to the TranStats Site -- Census--United States Source: U.S. Census Bureau New Report, Historical Census Statistics on Population Totals By Race, 1790 to 1990, and By Hispanic Origin, 1970 to 1990, For The United States, Regions, Divisions, and States All stats are available in Excel or pdf. -- Internet Usage--United States Source: National Center for Education Statistics New, Full-Text Report, Internet Access in U.S. Public Schools and Classrooms: 1994-2001 -- New Zealand--Web Directory Source: National Library of New Zealand New URL: The Te Puna Web Directory of New Zealand and Pacific Island Web Sites In addition to the new url, site descriptions are now more complete. -- Iraq Source: Department of Parliamentary Libraries, Parliament of Australia Full-Text, E-Brief, "The Iraqi Precipice"
Professional Reading Shelf (2 Items) Digital Libraries Source: Council on Library and Information Resources/Digital Library Foundation New, Full-Text Publication, The Digital Library: A Biography From the announcement, "Digital libraries, once project based and largely autonomous efforts, are maturing. As individual programs have grown, each has developed its own personality, reflecting the circumstances of its creation and environment, and its leadership. A new report from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) and the Digital Library Federation (DLF) draws on the results of a survey and case studies of DLF members to reveal how these influences have molded a range of organizational forms that we call the digital library. The report, entitled The Digital Library: A Biography, is written by Daniel Greenstein and Suzanne Thorin. Greenstein, formerly the director of the DLF, is now university librarian for systemwide library planning and scholarly information and director of the California Digital Library. Thorin is the dean of university libraries at Indiana University. -- Section one of the report examines three stages of digital library growth: the young digital library, the maturing digital library, and the adult digital library...Section two of the report presents case studies of digital library development at six institutions. These case studies reveal other attributes that have helped shape the character of digital library programs. They include a program's orientation toward the production of digital content, organization and leadership, and relationship with surrounding academic departments and information services. Direct to Full-Text, The Digital Library: A Biography -- Archives and Repositories Source: Library Journal "Institutional Repositories" Roy Tennant's latest "Digital Libraries" column. From the article, "Faculty and researchers at universities worldwide gather and interpret data, advocate new ideas, and extend human knowledge. This work is sometimes shared with other scholars and researchers as working papers, technical reports, and other forms of prepublication work. Although this scholarship may eventually show up in a peer-reviewed journal or book, some may not. This preprint culture is strongest in the scientific and technical disciplines, but social scientists share similar works. This 'grey literature' is often difficult to find and even more difficult for librarians to collect systematically, manage, and preserve (see 'What Is Grey Literature?' in the link list). But the web and other digital technologies are changing all that." Numerous resources and sites are included in the article.
Government Printing Office--United States Source: Los Angeles Times Government Documents Librarian Shares Her Opinion in Letter to Los Angeles Times Karrie Peterson is the Government Documents Librarian at the University of California, San Diego. On Sunday, Karrie shared her views about the OMB, "encouraging federal agencies to bypass the Government Printing Office and let private companies bid for their jobs."
The Library of Congress The 2001 Annual Report of The Library of Congress is Now Available The report is not available online but should be available in pdf by next month. Until then here are a few highlights and statistics from a news release. *During the year, the size of the Library’s collections grew to more than 124 million items, including 28.2 million books and other print materials, 55 million manuscripts, 13.5 million visual materials, 13 million microfilms, nearly 5 million maps and 5 million items in the music collection. *The Bicentennial Gifts to the Nation program, which allowed the Library to acquire many significant items and collections, resulted in 392 gifts totaling $119.5 million. *A gift of $60 million from John W. Kluge, Metromedia president and founding chair of the Madison Council, supported the establishment of the John W. Kluge Center for postdoctoral research. *The year marked the 30th anniversary of the Cataloging in Publication (CIP) program and the 70th year of the National Library Services for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS). Since its inception, the CIP program has produced more than 1 million records. Established by an act of Congress in 1931, NLS now supplies more than 23 million braille and recorded disks to hundreds of thousands of readers through a network of 140 cooperating libraries around the country. *During the year, NLS made substantial progress in its goal of developing a Digital Talking Book to replace obsolete analog playback equipment. At year’s end, more than 1,600 users were registered for the new Internet service known as Web-Braille, which allows access to more than 3,800 digital braille books. *At year’s end, 7.5 million American historical items were available on the Library’s award-winning Web site. * The site (www.americaslibrary.gov) received more than 100 million “hits” during its first year of operation.
Online Industry--ProQuest Effective Immediately, "ABI/INFORM® Subscribers to Receive Expanded Access to Backfiles of Business Journals" From the announcement, "Effective immediately, all subscribers to ABI/INFORM databases will receive access to the ABI/INFORM ArchiveTM database--a file containing historical backfile content for 25 business periodicals, with more titles to be loaded later this year. Customers of ABI/INFORM with full page images will receive page images of the backfile content...Titles currently available through the ABI/INFORM Archive include Sales and Marketing Management, Foreign Affairs, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Marketing, and Journal of Advertising."
Information Retrieval--Vivisimo Stanford University's HighWire Press Licenses Vivísimo Clustering Products From the announcement, "...HighWire Press has licensed Vivísimo's clustering products to enhance access to the medical and scientific journals that are electronically published by HighWire. Vivísimo's products will help HighWire Press organize its content into intelligent and easy-to-navigate clusters for end-users world-wide. HighWire licensed Vivísimo's Clustering Engine and Enterprise Publisher to organize search results and to publish larger document subsets on its master site, and will offer the products to HighWire's own publishing customers for use on their journal websites. "HighWire Press now has 13 million online articles, so researchers need tools to reduce, refine, and tunnel into search results," said John Sack, director of HighWire. "This fall, Vivísimo will help liberate readers from the need to make overly specific queries. Instead, they can recognize interesting topic clusters and drill down from there, in the 'I know it when I see it' style. After sustained evaluation, we found Vivísimo's clusters to be compact, compelling, and more accurate than other approaches we've experimented with. Also, we expect to deploy clustering in other ways beyond keyword searching." See Also: Demo Vivisimo Clustering Technology
Scholarly Publishing--Europe Source: FIGARO "FIGARO - European Academic Digital Publishing Initiative Underway" From the announcement, "Utrecht, the Netherlands -- A collective of European universities and publishers today announced the establishment of FIGARO, an academic publishing project that will create a European network of institutions providing e-publishing support to the European academic community. FIGARO will investigate new business models for scholarly publishing and will stimulate open access to the publications produced and distributed with its infrastructure, making scholarly publishing faster, cheaper and simpler." See Also: Direct to the FIGARO Home Page
Internet Filters--United States Source: AP "Schools Install Internet Filters" From the article, "The federal Children's Internet Protection Act also requires filtering in libraries, but that provision is on hold after a federal court in Philadelphia struck it down as violating First Amendment guarantees. An appeal is pending. But the requirement for schools — and their libraries — was never challenged, partly because schools typically have greater leeway in restricting student conduct."
Libraries--California Source: The Sacramento Bee Library Disaster Preparedness Training Sessions in Sacramento From the article, "As part of the California Preservation Program, funded by an $87,000 federal grant, Page is visiting libraries in Sacramento and elsewhere to conduct a survey and train librarians in disaster preparedness. The workshops were held last week, drawing roughly 100 librarians from 100 institutions." Monday, September 16, 2002
Libraries--United States--Privacy Source: San Francisco Chronicle "FBI Snooping has Librarians Stamping Mad" An interview with Zoia Horn, an 84-year-old retired librarian. From the article, "Thirty years ago, after an encounter with an FBI informant in a Pennsylvania college library, Horn spent nearly three weeks in jail for refusing to testify for the prosecution in the sensational trial of anti-war activists accused of a terrorist plot. Horn was "the first librarian who spent time in jail for a value of our profession," said Judith Krug, longtime director of the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom."
Resources, Tools and Full-Text Documents (5 Items) College Students--United States Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project New, Full-Text, The Internet Goes to College: How Students are Living in the Future with Today's Technology -- Internet--China Source: Rand New Book, Full-Text Available Online, You've Got Dissent! Chinese Dissident Use of the Internet and Beijing's Counter-Strategies Includes several charts and directory of web sites from dissident groups. -- E-Government Source: Industry Advisory Council Full-Text Report, Cross-Jurisdictional eGovernment Implementations -- E-Government Source: Center for Technology in Government Full-Text Report, Making a Case for Local E-Government -- E-Government--United States Source: Brown University Full-Text Report, 3rd Annual, State and Federal E-Government in the United States, 2002 Summary ||| Full-Text (HTML) ||| Full-Text (PDF) -- Travel--Directory Source: The Washington Post "Organizations and Web Sites for Specialty Travel"
Deep Linking Source: Detroit Free Press "Deep Links Spark Fight on Content at Web Site" Mike Wendland on a deep linking controversy with the EllisIsland.Org site. See Also: "Are Bots Legal" (via The Wall Street Journal, Registration Required)
Internet Filtering and Censorship Source: The Wall Street Journal Who is Ben Edelman? (Registration Required) From the article, "All of 22 years old and looking even younger, Mr. Edelman nevertheless has emerged as one of the nation's most influential voices in the debates raging over the power of governments and corporations to restrict who can download what off the Internet...In the library case, Mr. Edelman was an expert witness for the American Civil Liberties Union. His testimony helped persuade a special panel of three federal judges in Philadelphia that antipornography filters routinely block thousands of inoffensive sites, including some hosted by flower stores and breast-cancer awareness groups. The panel struck down the law as an unconstitutional infringement on the blocked sites' free speech."
Web Search--Google Answers Source: The Wall Street Journal "A Question for Google" (Registation Required) More on how and why Google Answers might survive when other services haven't been so lucky. No mention of any AskA services, remotely accessible databases, and VRD services many libraries offer patrons. One quote from a librarian in the article, "People get frustrated when they think of the Internet as a vast library, when it's not a library at all," says Ned Fielden, associate librarian at San Francisco State University and author of a book on Internet research. "People feel inadequate when they can't find what they want." Sunday, September 15, 2002
New Book Alert Spinning the Semantic Web: Bringing the World Wide Web to Its Full Potential The book is scheduled for publication by MIT Press in November. The book is edited by Dieter Fensel, James A. Hendler, Henry Lieberman and Wolfgang Wahlster. Tim Berners-Lee has written the forward. From the catalog blurb, "As the World Wide Web continues to expand, it becomes increasingly difficult for users to obtain information efficiently. Because most search engines read format languages such as HTML or SGML, search results reflect formatting tags more than actual page content, which is expressed in natural language. Spinning the Semantic Web describes an exciting new type of hierarchy and standardization that will replace the current "web of links" with a "web of meaning." Using a flexible set of languages and tools, the Semantic Web will make all available information--display elements, metadata, services, images, and especially content--accessible...The truly interdisciplinary Semantic Web combines aspects of artificial intelligence, markup languages, natural language processing, information retrieval, knowledge representation, intelligent agents, and databases."
News Briefs Rolling Stone Can Stay in High School Library But Parental Permission Required to Access (via The Livingston Enterprise) - "Immigrants Rewrite the Book at Libraries" (via The Washington Post) - Library Funding Issues in Ohio (via Cleveland Plain Dealer) Saturday, September 14, 2002
Specialized Search--Daypop Daypop Is Still Not Working Some not so good news from Dan Chan, the man behind Daypop. Last week we reported that while Dan was visiting Italy, Daypop went down. After returning home yesterday Dan discovered that Daypop was out of disk space. According to a message on the site, it's going to "to take some time" to get the weblog/news specialized search engine back online.
Ready Reference The September Issue of The World Almanac's Monthly Newsletter is Online Lists of key September dates, birthdays, chronology of August, 2002 events. See Also: Archive of Previous Issues
Resources, Tools and Full-Text Documents Wealth--United States--Lists & Rankings Source: Forbes Online Today, Forbes 400 (Wealthiest Americans) The online site contains several lists, background articles, and interactive tools. A searchable database is also available. See Also: Direct to the Forbes 400 List (Rank Order) Friday, September 13, 2002
Web Search--AlltheWeb AlltheWeb Adds New Advanced Search Features I noticed a few changes on the AtW Advanced Interface and the folks at company hq have confirmed these new advanced interface features. 1) A New Document Depth Limit in Result Restrictions Section You can now limit to the directory level where search term(s) are found. The limit finds material above, below, or exactly level one (the home page) to the 10th level directory of a site. 2) A New Embedded Content Section You can select if a page some or none of the following types of content: Images, Audio, Video, RealVideo & RealAudio, Macromedia Flash, Java applets, JavaScript, and VBScript. See Also: Direct to AlltheWeb Adavanced Interface See Also: Direct to AlltheWeb
Online Industry--Elsevier Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education "Bundles" of Problems for Elsevier's Science Direct From the article, "Librarians' skepticism grows on colleges' agreements with Elsevier."
Online Industry--ProQuest ABI/INFORM Adds Full-Text Content from Several Wiley Business Journals From the announcement, "John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and ProQuest Company's (NYSE: PQE) Information and Learning unit have announced a limited exclusive agreement to allow ProQuest to distribute the journal content from the BoldIdeasTM Collection of business jour |
