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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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Friday, October 31, 2003
Web Research Internet References Are Frequently Lost, Says Study By University of Colorado Health Sciences Center From the story, Anyone who has ever typed an Internet address into a Web browser and received a message that the page was not available knows how frustrating it can be to look for information on the Internet. In a study appearing in this week's issue of Science titled "Going, Going, Gone: Lost Internet References," researchers found that very important scientific information is sometimes hard to find on the Internet... Internet references accounted for 2.6 percent of all references in a sample of more than 1000 articles published between 2000 and 2003 in three journals: The New England Journal of Medicine, The Journal of the American Medical Association and Science. In articles up to only 27 months old, 13 percent of Internet references were inactive, making substantial amounts of information unavailable. UPDATE: The complete article is available (no charge) by visiting the lead author's web site and clicking on the full text link next to the title, "Going, going, gone: lost Internet references". It's the first article listed under "selected publications."
Infoglut Source: School of Information Management and Systems, University of California at Berkeley How Much Information 2003 "Print, film, magnetic, and optical storage media produced about 5 exabytes of new information in 2002. Ninety-two percent of the new information was stored on magnetic media, mostly in hard disks." To put this into perspective, the study authors note that "five exabytes of information is equivalent in size to the information contained in half a million new libraries the size of the Library of Congress print collections." Thanks to Shirl Kennedy for the link. Executive Summary Summary of Findings Full Report (PDF: 100 pages)
Web Search--Google Source: The New York Times "Microsoft and Google: Partners or rivals?" With all of the talk lately that: 1) Google will have an IPO early in 2004 2) Microsoft is going to develop its own search product this article will sure to kick the speculation of "what will happen" meter into overdrive. According to this NYT article talk about a possible purchase or partnership of Google by Mr. Gates continues. From the article: * Microsoft approached Google within the last two months to discuss options, including the possibility of a takeover. * Though seemingly spurned, Microsoft may still be interested in pursuing Google at a later date, according to an executive briefed on the discussions. * The auction route is said to appeal to Google's founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who are known for their fascination in pursing technical solutions to many different kinds of problems. But it appears that Google is more likely to take the traditional path of using Wall Street to sell its initial offering. It is still toying with the idea, executives said, of using an online auction for a possible secondary offering as a way to allow its millions of users to have a better opportunity to buy its shares. * Microsoft as a search competitor could change the market's assessment of Google's value. One of the MANY things that Google has going for it is how the company is perceived and though of by its loyal user base. No one doubts that some of Google's success, to this point, has been carefully developing and building its public image. A formal relationship with Microsoft (of all companies) would be likely viewed as the ultimate sell-out and strongly weaken how the company is viewed and used by its most loyal users. However, the role that this would play on the masses who just want to use a search engine is most likely small. However, if word-of-mouth/viral marketing can make "to Google" a verb in just a few years, can it work the other way? A gut feeling on my part, the end of talk between MS and Google (GoogleSoft?) is not over. See Also: Friendster Says No To Google Buyout (via SJ Mercury News)
Government Documents--United Kingdom Source: British Library Today, New Depository Rules Become Law in UK From the annoucement, A Private Members Bill, introduced by Chris Mole MP in December 2002 has passed all its Parliamentary hurdles and became law today when it received Royal Assent. The Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003 extends previous legal deposit legislation passed nearly 100 years ago in 1911. The Act enshrines the principle that electronic or e-publications and other non-print materials will be deposited in the future under secondary legislation. It ensures that these publications can be saved as part of the published archive - and become an important resource for future generations of researchers and scholars. See Also: "British Library archives websites" via BBC News
Briefly Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals Now Available on EBSCOhost Platform -- Dialog Adds Exclusive Health, Disease Statistics to Medical Information Collection
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents (2 Items) Electrcity--United States--Statistics Source: EIA Just Released: State Electricity Profiles 2001 "This Internet only report presents a summary of the key State statistics for 2001 contrasted with 1996 and 1992. The tables present summary statistics; ten largest plants by generating capacity; top five utilites ranked by retail sales; electric power industry generating capacity by primary energy source..." -- Earth Sciences--Imagery Database Source: NASA Visible Earth "The purpose of NASA's Visible Earth is to provide a consistently updated, central point of access to the superset of NASA's Earth science-related images, animations, and data visualizations. These images are considered to be public." Keyword search with standard Boolean operators; advanced search additionally allows you to specify a sensor, a location, a subject heading and/or date range. As of 10/31/03, "There are currently 5888 records in the database (44.7 GB)."
Librarians Source: Quality Planning Corporation More Drivers Are on the Roads; Who Are You Most Likely To Run Into? A Student? A Politician? A Librarian? Students, as you might expect, are most likely to get into an accident among 40 professions surveyed by Quality Planning Corporation (QPC), an insurance industry consulting firm that helps rate driver risk. Farmers are least likely to get into an accident. Says QPC: "Students are 3.5 times more likely to be involved in an accident than farmers." Students also top the list of 40 professions most likely to get speeding tickets. Homemakers are at the bottom of the list. Next to last, at number 39? Librarians. Maybe we all need to take a copy of this survey to our insurance agents and ask for a rate reduction. Thanks to SDK for the link. See: Also Worst drivers: Teens, doctors, lawyers (CNN/Money) Thursday, October 30, 2003
Specialized Search--Books Amazon's "Search Inside the Book" Discussed on NPR As ResourceShelf mentioned last Thursday and you've probably read about elsewhere, Amazon's Search Inside the Book" service is getting plenty of press attention. Yesterday, the service was discussed on National Public Radio's "Day to Day" program. From the NPR site, Amazon.com is now allowing potential book buyers to sample large parts of any given volume through a new service called "Search Inside the Book." Is it a service, or a scam? NPR's Karen Grigsby Bates talks with an Amazon representative and a critic of the new service. The segment runs about 4.5 minutes.
Professional Reading Shelf Libraries and Librarians The October, 2003 Issue (#37) of Ariadne is Now Available Articles include: + Trends in Self-Posting of Research Material Online by Academic Staff + Delivering OAI Records as RSS: An IMesh Toolkit module for facilitating resource sharing + Ebooks in UK Libraries: Where are we now? + Towards a Typology for Portals + DAEDALUS: Initial experiences with EPrints and DSpace at the University of Glasgow -- PubMed Source: National Library of Medicine A New Version of the PubMed Tutorial Is Now Online This new version incorporates changes to PubMed through June 2003. Some of the changes include: + Page selection + “Send to” pull-down menu options + Journals database + MeSH database + Abstract/full-text icons + Display of more comments/corrections + New search capabilities for corporate author, place of publication, and grant number
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents (5 Items) Afghanistan--U.S. Contractors Iraq--U.S. Contractors Source: Center for Public Integrity New report, Windfalls of War: U.S. Contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan This new report discusses the companies chosen to help rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan. Included in the report is a list of contractors for both Iraq and Afghanistan and a ranking of contractors by contract size (lists and rankings in left column). -- Knowledge Economy--Worldwide--Statistics New, Web Edition, OECD Science, Technology and Industry Scoreboard 2003 The Science, Technology and Industry (STI) Scoreboard 2003 brings together the latest internationally comparable data on trends in the knowledge-based economy. It is the sixth edition of a series spanning a decade and brings together over 200 indicators, many of them new to this edition. The Web book edition, Web Scoreboard 2003, which includes a data appendix and links to the underlying data for all graphs and figures is available here. Thanks to S.B. for the news tip. -- Migration--United States--Statistics Source: U.S. Census Full-Text, Just Released, Migration by Race and Hispanic Origin: 1995 to 2000 Summary ||| Direct to Full-Text -- Knowledge Workers--Canada Source: Statstitics Canada Two New, Full-Text Reports 1) Dimensions of occupational changes in Canada's knowledge economy, 1971-1996 2) Knowledge workers in Canada's economy, 1971-2001 -- Energy--United States--Statistics Source: EIA New Edition, Just Released, Annual Energy Review 2002 U.S. energy history from 1949-2002 recorded in data tables and figures.
Briefly ProQuest, Project MUSE Agree to Offer Full-Text Linking -- FAST Search & Transfer Continues To Line-Up New Clients, Add Charles Schwab to Roster
Web Search--MSN Source: Reuters "Microsoft Realigns MSN Into Two Divisions" From the article, MSN executives also said that they had hired Paul Ryan, former Chief Technology Officer of online search advertising company Overture Services Inc., to head up MSN's nascent search efforts. See Also: Paul Ryan Bio (via Overture) Wednesday, October 29, 2003
E-Learning Source: OCLC/E-Learning Task Force Full-Text White Paper, "Libraries and the Enhancement of E-learning" From the site, The E-learning Task Force is composed of 13 representatives from OCLC member libraries in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia. The white paper introduces the current state of electronic and online enhancement to college-level coursework, and it outlines the importance of library collaboration with campus staff as these technologies evolve. Summary/Intro ||| Direct to Full-Text
Librarians--United States--Recruitment Source: IMLS Nearly $10 Million Awarded to Recruit and Educate New Generation of Librarians From the announcement, Today [Tuesday] the Institute of Museum and Library Services awards $9,898,338 in 27 inaugural grants for this initiative under a new program, Recruiting and Educating Librarians for the 21st Century...Anticipating the loss of as many as 58% of the current cohort of professional librarians by 2019, this program is designed to help recruit a new generation of librarians. You can access a complete list of grant projects (27) and descriptions here.
Web Search--Google Source: Financial Times Full-Text article: "Why Google's technology may have reached its peak" (subscription only) A bit more cautious writing about Google's future by FT writer, John Gapper. Those of you who read ResourceShelf on a regular basis are more than aware of the fact that I've never bought into the "nothing will ever be better mindset." Google was in the right place at the right time and was able to market itself in many unique ways. In my opinion, the most interesting history of Google's early years will not be about their technology but will be how they marketed the product. Here are a few quotes and comments from the FT article. + "Already the bulletin board of Slashdot, provider of "news for nerds", is full of gripes that Sergey Brin and Larry Page are taking the stock market shilling." I sometimes think that to be a reader of Slashdot you need to have a complaint about everything. What the Slashdot community is realizing is that Google is a company that has more goals than satisfying the personal search needs and wants of every single user. One tool Google has used to get it to where it is today by managing how it uses the media. Google has never been seen as a big company because in many cases big companies advertise and then advertise some more. They spend, spend, spend trying to "sell" people on their product. Google hasn't needed to do this because they get plenty of positive advertising (and that's putting it mildly) for free via hundreds of newspaper/magazine articles, radio segments, and television features. Then, toss into the mix all of the "Google is great" pub they receive on various web sites and you've created a massive marketing powerhouse using non-traditional tools. It not only promotes but enhances Google's "just some people building a search engine" image. Google is a case study in how to market a company. + The loudest complaint against Google is that it has lost some of its original arm's-length attitude to commerce. The article does not mention that all of the major search players have done a good job of labeling results and that all search results are manipulated in one way or another by search engine optimizers. + The more pertinent question is whether its business model will retain the lead. To start with, it can no longer rely on others failing to grasp the importance of search. Algorithmic search engines are tough to design and maintain but others such as Teoma, owned by Ask Jeeves, and Yahoo's Inktomi are catching up. I agree 100%. Again, those of you who have been a regular on this site know that I'm a big fan and supporter of what Jeeves and Teoma are up to. No need to repeat myself. Let's not forget that Yahoo is now the owner of powerful technology from AllTheWeb and AltaVista. + Yahoo is augmenting internet search with its own information. Its Yahoo Shopping service not only allows users to search for the cheapest outlet for different models of digital cameras but also combines the results with its own guide to buying cameras, and with user reviews. Again, Mr. Gapper is correct. After preparing for a recent seminar on web consumerism and looking at the various shopping search tools, Yahoo Shopping is my current fave. Yahoo's just announced "SmartSort" personalized results tools show plenty of promise. Of course Google's founders have shown before that only a fool underestimates them, and its technology remains hard to match; there is still plenty of scope for further growth. Still, if I were on the board, I might well think that it was time to sell a few shares. + Gapper is right again. However, I think he would have made an already interesting article better by also mentioning the fact that the need for smaller, niche-based engines is still very strong and important. In other words, one search tool cannot be the end all, be all for all types of searches and types of searchers. I sometimes think that some information professionals have forgotten this point. Google has done MANY good things for the search community but it has created a belief in the general public that it's perfect technology and home to all of the answers (if it's not in Google it doesn't exist). --- AND SPEAKING OF BAD SEARCH HABITS.... Barbara Quint reports about how OCLC is allowing Google to add records (on a trial basis) from WorldCat. Quint corrrectly points out that many issues come into play here including the likelihood of an end user doing a basic Google search and a link for the book (via OCLC) appearing in the first few results (where most people look). The article also mentions that IEEE material is being added into Google. We've reported on this several times. From several test searches I've noticed estimates of less than 150,000 citations being available as of today. The full IEEE xPlore Database is closing in on 1 million records. Some questions to consider 1) I've found even with the technical nature of IEEE material, you must run an exact item search to access the abstract. Running a basic keyword search does not often produce IEEE material. 2) Searching on an author's name or initials will often not produce IEEE abstracts. 3) Here's a known item search for the article, "Scene detection in hollywood movies and TV shows" The first result is the full text of the paper from the author's web site. Who needs IEEE? Also, a database like CiteSeer not only offers a link to the full text (if available) but it also acts as a citation index. 4) An author search for Zeeshan Rasheed or Z Rasheed does not retrieve the IEEE abstract, for the paper mentioned above, anywhere in the first 100 results. 5) In the case of the soon to come OCLC/Google database, will links to the library record appear near bookstores trying to sell the book? How will this be determined. 6) Why are libraries spending so much time and effort in cataloging material for it to be thrown into a free-text database where the power of a cataloged record can be exploited?
Web Search Source: GCN "White House: Web site doesn’t steer clear of Iraq" What many thought was the perfect web conspiracy theory was really an example of how a lack of knowledge about how search engines work can cause the conspiracy theorists to have a field day. It also illustrates how quickly incorrect info can spread over the web. The robots.txt files that has been in place on WhiteHouse.Gov has been there for many months. However, it's worth pointing out that other sites block spiders from crawling because they DO NOT want the material accessible via a general engine. See Also: Learn About How Robots.Txt Works
Professional Reading Shelf (4 Items) Digital Preservation New Issue, DPC/PADI What's new in digital preservation From the UKOLN site, Specific topics covered in this issue are institutional repositories, preservation metadata, file format registries, persistent identifiers, Web archiving, and the use of XML as a preservation strategy. -- Scholarly Communication Source: ARL Conference Presentations from the "Scholarly Tribes and Tribulations: How Tradition and Technology Are Driving Disciplinary Change". The conference took place on October 17th in DC. Presentations from: + Blaise Cronin, Indiana University + Milton Corn, M.D., National Library of Medicine + Michael Lesk, Rutgers University + John Unsworth, University of Illinois + Barbara O'Keefe, Northwestern University -- Portals Workshop Presentations: The Scholar's Portal: An International Perspective The workshop took place at IFLA in August. Thanks to FOS News for the tip. -- Cybercrime Source: The JISC Legal Information Service (J-LIS), Summary/Conference Overview ||| Direct to Conference Presentations
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents (5 Items) Internet Usage--United States Source: National Center for Education Statistics Two New Full-Text Reports Released Today 1) Internet Access in U.S. Public Schools and Classrooms: 1994-2002 "...presents data on Internet access in U.S. public schools from 1994 to 2002 by school characteristics. It provides trend analysis on the progress of public schools and classrooms in connecting to the Internet and on the ratio of students to instructional computers with Internet access." 2) Computer and Internet Use by Children and Adolescents in 2001 "...uses data from the September Computer and Internet Use supplement to the 2001 Current Population Survey to examine the use of computers and the Internet by American children and adolescents between the ages of 5 and 17." -- Medicaid--United States Source: Kaiser Family Foundation New Searchable Online Database: Medicaid Benefits Covered by 50 States, DC, and U.S. Territories The new online database on Medicaid benefits in the 50 states, DC, and the U.S. territories is comprehensive, with information about benefits covered by each state, for what populations the benefits are available, and the limitations, co-payments and payment rules that apply to the benefits. The database is searchable by Medicaid benefit as well as by state. -- Fire Ecology--Bibliogaphic Database Source: Tall Timbers Research Station E.V. Komarek Fire Ecology Database "Use this database as a unique resource for locating a broad range of fire-related information. Literature on control of wildfires as well as applications of prescribed burning is included. The database is international in scope with emphasis on North America and in particular, the southeastern United States. Citations include references to books, chapters within books, journal articles, conferences and conference papers, state and federal documents. Abstracts are often included as part of the citations. The database is updated on a continuous basis, with information both current and historical. At present there are over 10,800 citations are in the database." Thanks to Shirl Kennedy for the site and annotation. See also: + Federal Wildland Fire Policy + International Association of Wildland Fire + Natural Heritage Baseline Survey and Fire Ecology/Effects Literature Review (USAF Academy) + USGS: Fire Ecology Research + Western Fire Ecology Center -- Digitization Projects Source: British Library Rare British Library copies of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales go online for the first time From the announcement, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales has been a bestseller since it was first printed by William Caxton in the 1470s and 1480s. Recently updated for modern times in the popular BBC Canterbury Tales, new digital versions of these original fifteenth century texts are now available for the first time in their entirety on the British Library's website. See Also: Direct to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales -- Philanthropy--United States--Statistics Source: Foundation Center Report Highlights, Foundation Reporting: Update on Public Reporting Trends of Private and Community Foundations, 2003 Edition
DMCA Feds grant DMCA exceptions Source: News.Com The Library of Congress created on Tuesday four narrow exemptions to a controversial digital-piracy statute but faces criticism from free-speech activists, who had hoped for more exceptions. See Also: Full-Text of LC Ruling
Citation Analysis--Lists & Rankings Scholarly Publishing Source: Institute for Scientific Information + U.S. Universities with High Concentrations in Education, 1998-2002 + Science in Switzerland, 1998-2002 + Rankings for Japan among the 151 top-performing countries in all fields
Scholarly Publishing Source: San Francisco Chronicle "Bay Area leads revolt against scientific journals..Scientists call for boycott, launch open-access project" More press coverage for the Public Library of Science and a journal boycott at the University of California, San Francisco. From the article, In another move, two prominent UCSF scientists called last week for a global boycott of six molecular biology journals, accusing the publisher, Reed Elsevier, the Goliath of science publishing, of charging exorbitant new subscription fees for online access. The boycott, led by Keith Yamamoto, UCSF's vice dean for research, and Peter Walter, a professor of biophysics and biochemistry, appears to have touched a nerve. It quickly won the support of librarians, scientists and administrators throughout the University of California system.
Briefly LexisNexis Reaches Single-Day Record of More Than Three Million Searches -- ProQuest Releases eLibrary Curriculum Edition -- Factiva and Verity Partner
Web Search--Google Source: Chilling Effects More Google DMCA Requests Posted on Chilling Effects Site 1) Fuerteventura Tourism Site Complains to Google 2) Perfect Paws Asks Google to Remove Boxer Site 3) Video Production Product Key Posted on Google Groups (#6) and in other Google legal news...Luis Vuitton Sues Google Tuesday, October 28, 2003
Congressional Research Service CRS Source Goes Offline Over the past couple of years ResourceShelf has worked hard to keep you updated with recently published or recently updated Congressional Research Service material. A favorite source was via a gateway on Congressman Chris Shay's or Congressman Mark Green's web site to a server on the U.S. House web server. What follows is a reprint of an article from Secrecy News that discusses the fact that these two sites have been taken down. Thanks to Secrecy News editor, Steven Aftergood, for allowing ResourceShelf to reprint. ---- ACCESS TO CRS REPORTS (TEMPORARILY?) CURTAILED Secrecy News Publicly accessible links from congressional web sites to an internal database of Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports suddenly went dead last week without explanation. But they may yet be restored. For about three years, the Congressional Research Service has provided online public access to hundreds of selected reports through a portal like this one: http://www.house.gov/markgreen/w3ccrs.htm No longer. The publicly accessible CRS portals were part of a "pilot program," explained a congressional staffer in Rep. Green's office. "The pilot program has just expired." Goodbye, CRS reports. But fortunately, there's more to it than that. Members can still opt to provide public access through their websites to the internal database of selected CRS reports, explained another staffer from the House Committee on House Administration. Or they can provide online access to individual reports of special interest, as they see fit. In either case, they must make new arrangements through the Administration Committee. FAS has written to Rep. Mark Green (R-WI) and Rep. Christopher Shays (R-CT) asking them to restore at least the same level of access to CRS reports that their web sites have provided for the past three years. A selection of recent CRS reports on aspects of national security policy, including some that were never presented in the public database, is available on the FAS web site here: http://www.fas.org/irp/crs/index.html ----- In addition to the FAS site listed above, here are a few other sources for CRS reports. All of these sites not only do a good job of posting new reports but also update older reports. This is very important. * Via the Foreign Press Center * Via the U.S. Embassy in Rome * Via the National Enviromental Library * Via the Federation of American Scientists ---Military and National Security ---Intelligence ---Nuclear, Chemical and Missile Weapons and Proliferation ---Civil Space ------ CRS Reports: Intellectual Property, Cyberlaw, Electronic Commerce
Web Search--Google Google Studies Creation of Book Database First Amazon. Now, a few days later, word of Google's project leaks out. They're sure good with marketing and keeping the Google brand in the news. From the article, "Google.com has begun talks with book publishers to compile a searchable database of the contents of thousands of volumes, a publishing executive briefed on the project said yesterday." See Also: "Google Looks to Add Book Content" (via PW)
BIOSIS Sold to Thompson Scientific Source: Information Today NewsBreaks BIOSIS Sold to Thomson Scientific "Five months after announcing its search for a partner [see “BIOSIS Looks for a Partner,” [http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb030519-1.shtml], Biological Abstracts’ board of trustees announced that it had entered final negotiations with Thomson Corp. The deal would involve the sale of publishing assets for both Biological Abstracts, Inc. and BIOSIS UK, including the Zoological Record."
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents (4 Items) Veterans--United States--Statistics Source: U.S. Census Fast Facts About the U.S. Veteran Population A new fact sheet from Census. It was prepared in honor of Veterans' Day, November 11, 2003. -- Health--Senior Citizens Source: National Institute on Aging and the National Library of Medicine New Web Site, NIH SeniorHealth.Gov From the announcement, To do this, the NIA and NLM brought together researchers who study cognition, web site designers, and communications experts at the two institutes to fashion a site that is easy for older adults to read, understand, remember, and navigate. For example, the site features large print and short, easy-to-read segments of information repeated in a variety of formats -- such as open-captioned videos and short quizzes -- to increase the likelihood it will be remembered. Consistent page layout and prompts help older adults move from one place to another on the site without feeling lost or overwhelmed. Each topic provides general background information, quizzes, frequently asked questions (FAQs), open-captioned video clips, transcripts for the videos, and photos and illustrations with captions. NIHSeniorHealth.gov will have a "talking" function, which will allow users the option of reading the text or listening to it as it is read to them. Finally, in addition to being senior-friendly, the new site also complies with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, making it accessible for persons with disabilities. -- Children--Media Source: Kaiser Family Foundation Full-Text Report, Zero to Six: Electronic Media in the Lives of Infants, Toddlers and Preschoolers New study finds children age zero to six spend as much time with tv, computers, and video games as playing outside. Summary ||| Direct to Full-Text ||| Additional Resources -- Cancer--United Kingdom-Statistics Source: NHS New, Full-Text, NHS Cancer Plan: Maintaining the Momentum Summary ||| Direct to Full-Text
Patriot Act Source: The Wall Street Journal Full-Text, "Patriot Act Riles An Unlikely Group: Nation's Librarians" From the article, Library associations in most states have passed resolutions against the Patriot Act's Section 215, which gives the FBI broader access to the "business records" of people who aren't suspected of any crime. Speaking to Congress this past June, Attorney General John Ashcroft said that could include educational records and genetic data -- and information gathered in libraries. Libraries that say they might once have kept information on their patrons have purged it in a show of defiance. In Skokie, Ill., library director Carolyn Anthony says the only patron records she now keeps are on Skokie's small population of home-bound borrowers. In tiny Paulding County, Ohio, library director Susan Hill is one of many librarians nationwide who posted signs on public computers warnings users that "due to national security concerns," their "Internet surfing habits, passwords and e-mail content" might be monitored by federal agents. After being dogged by librarians and other protesters during a cross-country tour to boost support for the Patriot Act, Mr. Ashcroft last month accused librarians of being "duped" by liberals, and for two days running accused them of "hysteria." He also announced that the FBI hadn't requested any business records under the Patriot Act. "Section 215 has not been used. Period. Zero times," says Mr. Ashcroft's spokesman, Mark Corallo, who adds that "the 20% of the people who oppose the Patriot Act get 95% of the publicity." The full-text of this article will be available (free) for the next week. Monday, October 27, 2003
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents (3 Items) Cable Television Rates Source: GAO Issues Related to Competition and Subscriber Rates in the Cable Television Industry Some rocket science here: "Competition leads to lower cable rates and improved quality." However, competition exists in only a few U.S. cable markets. Over the past three years, cable rates have risen 34%, "driven by the high cost of original programming, among other things." Sports programming in particular is very expensive. Report highlights See also: GAO: Rising Sports Tab Ups Cable TV Rates (Reuters via FindLaw) -- Military Law Source: Air War College Military Law and Legal Links Collection of links to both general and specific military legal sources, including Judge Advocate Generals offices, military courts, military commissions and tribunals, laws of war and war crimes, court martial procedures, DoD appropriations laws, international law, Islamic law, space law and treaties. -- Crime Statistics--United States Source: FBI Crime in These United States 2002 "Crime in the United States (CIUS) is an annual publication in which the FBI compiles volume and rate of crime offenses for the nation, the states, and individual agencies. This report also includes arrest, clearance, and law enforcement employee data." Statistics are compiled from 17,000 law enforcement agencies across the country. Figures for 2002 show a slight overall rise in serious crime, but crime is well down (16%) over the levels of a decade ago, with far fewer murders in 2002 than there were in 1993. Report available in HTML or PDF. FBI Press Release Index of Crime (crime data by state) See also: F.B.I. Figures for 2002 Show Slight Rise in Serious Crime (The New York Times)
Professional Reading Shelf (3 Items) Systems Librarians Source: Library Hi-Tech (via author's website) The Self-Education of Systems Librarians Mark Jordan, acting director of library systems at Simon Fraser University, "outlines the common duties and responsibilities of systems librarians, and describes how library school students and others interested in entering the field can take advantage of freely available tools to gain relevant experience." Extensive notes and bibliography. -- Libraries Should Mind Their Own Business Source: The Globe and Mail "They should leave feng shui and grief counselling to others, and expand on what they do best -- the collection and dissemination of information." (via LISNews.com) -- Open Access Publishing Full-Text, Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities
Web Search--Google Will an IPO damage Google's corporate culture? Source: Guardian Unlimited Google must keep searching for balance From the article: If the culture of the company is irreparably damaged, then it will suffer. Brin and Page insist they can retain the company's identity and please the moneymen. But for a cautionary tale of what not to do they need look no further than Alta Vista, the site Google toppled as the web's search engine of choice, and is now nothing more than an online also-ran. I think the author has a point about how an IPO could/will change the Google culture. Can Google be all things to all people? Are we starting to see this? The company does a good job these days making it appear that Google is just a bunch of people hanging out in California, running a company, having a good time. However, it's far from that. It's a big company, period. Will it be a bigger company if it goes to an IPO? Yes. Also, while AltaVista is not what it once was, I think calling it an also-ran is a bit much. In many respect's AV plays in the same league with Google. For the power searcher, AV technology often beats Google. + The AltaVista's News and Image Search databases are first rate. + In terms of pure search power (what the database is capable of) AltaVista is still more powerful than Google. AV allows you to nest searches (Google doesn't), AV allows truncation (Google doesn't), AV allows more than ten search terms (Google doesn't). What Google does and does better than anyone else is market their product. To overtake Google the war would be as much about the marketing of the product as it would be with the search technology. Thursday, October 23, 2003
Searchable Databases--Books Breaking News: Amazon Debuts New Search Tool, Acccess the Full-Text from 120,000 Book Titles The new service (online today) is called "Search Inside the Book" and allows you to search the full-text, over 33 million pages from over 120,000 titles. CBS Marketwatch reports that over 190 publishers are participating including Wiley, Time Warner Book Group, Simon & Schuster, Inc., Random House, Inc., Publishers Group West, Incorporated, McGraw-Hill Professional, Holtzbrinck Publishers and HarperCollins Publishers. Of course the full-text from 120,000 titles can have enormous research and reference value. However, Amazon's primary motivation for offering this service is to sell books. netLibrary is an example of a service geared toward the researcher. The company is calling this new service, "a significant extension" to "Look Inside the Book" service which has been online since October, 2001. How Does "Search Inside the Book" Work? + Access is via any Amazon search box. + Enter your search terms. Phrase searching with quotation marks. + No advanced search capabilities or search limits are available. + A list of all titles is returned. However, some titles contain extra information and links appearing directly below the pricing information. They begin with the word "exceprt." Click here and you'll see a scanned image of the page with your search term(s) highlighted. You can then browse (forward or backwards one page at a time) using links above the page image. You can also move forward by simply clicking on the page image. + You'll need to be registered with Amazon.Com to access the full-text. + Amazon is using optical character recognition technology to find words embedded in the scanned images. + Searching for phrases can be imprecise. I ran a search for "sports broadcaster" and received many false drops. + Implied "AND" between terms. + It's also possible to find a title and then search within it. For example, note the "search inside this book" label above the cover image. + Table of Contents and Index pages do not contain hyperlinks. + An illustrated example page is available here. An FAQ is also online. ---- + I've noticed that the full-text from many of IDG's "...For Dummies" books are included. If you do a keyword search add "for dummies" to help focus your search. ---- + Some of you might be interested to learn that many libraries offer access to thousands of web accessible full-text titles via netLibrary. This service offers full-text searching and many other options. Ask your librarian if you have access to it. If you do, you'll most likely be able to can access the database from ANY computer. Ebrary is another company in this space. The National Academy Press continues to offer free web accessible full-text access to over 2500 titles. --- -- See Also: Publishers Grudgingly Cooperate With Amazon Database Effort (via Publishers Weekly) See Also: "Amazon Plan Would Allow Searching Texts of Many Books" (via the NY Times, 7/21/03)
Web Search--Google Source: Financial Times "Google considers online IPO auction" From the article, Google is considering holding a massive online auction of shares early next year in an initial public offering that investment bankers predict could value the internet search-engine company at more than $15bn. An electronic auction would be designed to prevent a recurrence of the sort of financial scandals that have engulfed Wall Street since the collapse of the dotcom bubble, according to a person close to the company...Google executives, led by George Reyes, chief financial officer, met a number of leading investment bankers last week to sound them out about an IPO. The meetings marked the start of a process that is likely to lead to a stock market listing by about March next year, a person familiar with the IPO said. The early discussions have not touched on how much Google is worth. You've got to once again hand it to the marketing geniuses at Google for coming up with an interesting way to go public. Even if they don't use the auction method this is yet another way of keeping the "Google Buzz" at a fever pitch. See Also: "Google reportedly exploring IPO tactics" (via News.Com)
Web Resources of the Week Upcoming Event Lists, News Planning Guides, and Calendars This compilation contains 15 items (more entries coming) that can help inform you about various upcoming events. --- News Planning + BBC Monitoring: The Week Ahead "Lists key political and economic events expected to take place over a period of 10 days and is a valuable tool for planning." -- + APTN (AP Television) Weekly Editorial News Planner -- + NewsAhead A free preview provides a list of upcoming events (1-2 weeks). A fee-based database containing events up to one year out is also available. The Profile Group is another U.K. based company offering numerous resources (fee-based). -- -- Government, Politics, and Elections + World Events Calendar From the Council on Foreign Relations. -- + U.S. State Department: Public Diplomacy Calendar -- + Campaign Calendar for the 2004 Election Cycle--United States Compiled by AScribe. Available as a pdf file. You'll need to register (free) to download a copy. -- + Direct Links to Calendars and Schedules: 2004 Presidential Candidates -- + Upcoming Elections Around the World -- + Major Futures Compilation (via ABC's The Note) The list near the bottom of each issue. -- -- Academic Events + MInd: The Meetings Index "Most listings are for conferences, congresses, meetings and symposia that eventually will result in published proceedings." -- + Conference Alerts "...constantly updated database of conferences..." -- Science + Space Calendar From NASA. -- Business + TSNN.Com Searchable database of trade shows. Global coverage. -- Various Categories + Whatsonwhen.Com Searchable database for events, festivals, etc. Global in scope. Here's a review of WhatsonWhen that I wrote for SearchDay. + Festivals.Com From the site..."largest resource on the Internet for information about community festivals, fairs and special events. With more than 40,000 community events worldwide."
Librarians Source: Wall Street Journal/CareerJournal.Com Full-Text article, "The Hiring Tide Turns For Corporate Librarians" In a several hundred word article on The Wall Street Journal's CareerJournal.Com site, a positive look at the world of corporate librarianship. Included in the article are quotes from former SLA President and Wayne St. Professor, Judy Field, Rachel Singer Gordon of LISJobs.Com, and Carol Berger of C Berger Group. Key Passages: * Recruiters say the hiring spurt also is due to the increased need for professionals who can help locate and organize competitive information. "Smart organizations realize that a librarian or information specialist is critical to the business-development process, which is where most senior executives are spending their time right now," says Samantha Whitney-Ulane, director of research and a managing director of Whitney Group, a New York-based search firm. - * After six years of supporting the global health-care practice at Heidrick & Struggles International Inc., a Chicago search firm, Jeanine Amilowski, 34, saw her job as an information specialist eliminated in a round of layoffs in August 2002. Unable to find a full-time position she wanted, Ms. Amilowski started working as a research contractor to search firms, eventually gaining six clients. "A lot of companies were letting go of information professionals, but they really needed the help," says Ms. Amilowski. "That's why it was a good opportunity to do contract work." - * "Companies will call the same job or skill set different things, so you might look for jobs [on the Internet] under librarian and find very few postings," says Rachel Singer Gordon, Webmaster of LISjobs.com, a career site for library professionals. "But if you look under knowledge manager, information specialist or taxonomist, you would find more." - * Regardless of the name issue, Ms. Field notes that the profession is changing and librarians who want to remain employed must align themselves with their employer's mission and find ways to improve the bottom line. She predicts that even as corporate libraries start disappearing, more specialists with library skills but with varying job titles will be hired.
Professional Reading Shelf Institutional Repository Software Source: Open Society Institute New, Full-Text, Guide to Institutional Repository Software Available as an 18 page pdf or in html. From the announcement, OSI is pleased to announce the release of the Guide to Institutional Repository Software. The guide describes the five open source, OAI-compliant systems currently available. As many institutions are developing repositories, OSI thought it would be helpful to produce such a guide so that each institution could select the software best suited to meet its needs. Included in the guide is a brief narrative overview of each system followed by a summary of the systems technical features. The guide will be updated as additional systems are developed. -- National Libraries--Canada The September/October Issue of the National Library of Canada Bulletin is Online
Depository Libraries Source: GPO GPO Announces Winner of First-Ever Federal Depository Library of the Year Award It goes to the Tulsa City-County Library. and speaking of the GPO...The Virtual Chase mentions a Roll Call story about the GPO is "considering charging fees" for some web accessible documents. -- UPDATED...Superintendent of Documents, Judith Russell, has sent a Letter to the Editor about the story. She has been kind enough to allow ResourceShelf to reprint it along with a few additional comments
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents (4 Items) Legal Industry--United States Source: U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Full-Text Report: Diversity In Law Firms, 2003 A new study by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) entitled "Diversity in Law Firms" reveals that women now comprise 40% of legal professionals (resembling associates) in the private sector, a significant gain from 14% nearly three decades ago. Thanks to S.B. for the news tip. -- Technology Companies--United States--Lists & Rankings Source: Deloitte & Touche Fastest-Growing Technology Companies 1) 2003 Long Island Technology Fast 50 -- School Crime Source: National Center for Education Statistics Two New Reports: 1) Indicators of School Crime and Safety: 2003 2) Violence in U.S. Public Schools: 2000 School Survey on Crime and Safety -- Health Information Two New Topic Pages/Resource Compilations From MEDLINEplus * Emphysema * Cosmetic Dentistry Wednesday, October 22, 2003
Web Search Source: The Herald Mooter, A New Web Engine From Australia, Launches Beta Today From the article, "What Mooter does is that we look at the long lists of results from other search engines and then we group them using artificial intelligence algorithms..."But also we look at what you're doing and while you're working we actually move with you and push up things that you seem to be interested in...."Search is something that a lot of us spend a lot of time doing (but) it is just built by tech people instead of people who understand humans." See Also: Direct to Mooter See Also: ZDNet UK Story
Info Retrieval--Patents Another Selection of Recent Search-Related Patents Source: USPTO I've compiled another select list of search-related patents and patent applications. All entries have been either awarded or published in the last 4-6 weeks. In this update you'll find patents awarded to Yahoo, NEC, and IBM.
Professional Reading Shelf (2 Items) Digital Libraries Source: Human-Computer Interaction Lab / University of Maryland Full-Text, "What Children Can Teach Us: Developing Digital Libraries for Children with Children" This paper by Allison Druin has been submitted to The Library Quarterly. -- DVDs Source: NIST/CLIR Full-Text Report, Care and Handling CDs and DVDs : a Guide for Librarians and Archivists We first mentioned this report in September. Today, the guide also became available on the CLIR web site. From the abstract, This report describes in nontechnical language the various types of CDs and DVDs now in use, how they are made, and how they work. It then distills current industry knowledge about disc longevity, conditions that affect life expectancy, and how to care for optical media. The guide is amply illustrated and includes a glossary and bibliography...The guide was written for use by librarians and archivists; however, it will be equally useful to any business or individual wishing to safeguard CD or DVD collections.
Government Documents--United States Source: OMB Watcher "Ideas Wanted for 10 Most Wanted Government Docs" From the article, We are looking for a few good documents--the Ten Most Wanted government documents for 2004, to be precise. And we're hoping you, as an expert in this area, can help. As part of an effort to fight increased government secrecy, we would like your help in identifying: (1) the ten or twenty government documents -- or categories of documents -- you would most like to see the government make available to the public (2) problems you have faced finding government information Send your ideas to info@openthegovernment.org. The complete article has more information.
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents (5 Items) United States Congress--Directories Source: GPO New, Congressional Directory, 108th Congress -- Legal Industry--Lists and Rankings Source: Law.Com Who Represents America's Biggest Companies, 2003 See Also: Chart: Who Represents America's Biggest Companies? -- Property Information--United Kingdom Pilot Project: Land Register Online From the site, Details of individual properties in England and Wales can be obtained from our database of over 18 million registered records. These represent the majority of English and Welsh properties. Individual records cost £2. -- Missile Proliferation Source: Congressional Research Service via FPC Full-Text Report, Missile Proliferation and the Strategic Balance in South Asia -- Spam Source: Pew Internet and American Life Project New Report: "Spam: Hurting email and degrading the Internet environment" Summary ||| Direct to Full-Text Tuesday, October 21, 2003
Trade Statistics--United States Source: U.S. Department of Commerce/Federal Computer Week New Web Site: Commerce rolls out trade info site From the announcement, A new, state-of-the-art Web tool for accessing U.S. merchandise trade statistics at both the national and state levels. The TradeStats Express (TSE) features a user-friendly interface that enables visitors to retrieve, visualize, analyze, print and download trade data with ease. Graphics, data tables, and thematic maps can be custom-tailored to user needs and generated on-the-fly. Data on major geographic regions (e.g., Middle East) and trade preference regions (e.g., NAFTA) are pre-aggregated, permitting quick retrieval. Visitors also can tabulate national trade statistics using any of three major product classification systems (HS, NAICs, or SITC). See Also: "DataWeb: The Bottom Line for Trade Data" A new "Research Notebook"from the Baker Library Staff/Harvard Business School.
Online Information Source: Managing Information An Overview of "Microsoft Office 2003 Information Enhancements" Managing Information offers an overview of Factiva, OneSource, and Outlook enhancements to Office 2003. LexisNexis has also announced that they'll be included. See Also: More About Factiva's Integration See Also: More About OneSource Integration
Professional Reading Shelf Libraries and Librarians Source: Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals Selected Articles from the November Issue of CILIP's Library + Information Update Are Now Online Articles available online include: + "A museum library in transition" by Victoria Stott + "Getting down to business" by Catherine Prosser + "Developing accessible library services" by Karen Hannah + Phil Bradley's Internet Q&A
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents (4 Items) Robots--Statistics Source: United Nations Economic Commission for Europe/International Federation of Robotics Highlights: World Robotics 2003 Three key findings detailed in this 15-page press release: + Robot orders in first half of 2003 were up by 26% to the highest level ever recorded. Growth rates reached 35% in North America, 25% in Europe and 18% in Asia. + Worldwide growth in the period 2003-2006 will reach an average annual rate of 7.4%. These annual rates will fall in a broad range: 4.5% in Japan, 5.3% in Europe, 9.9% in North America. + Household robots are starting to take off. Report says there are 770,000 robots now at work, including 350,000 in Japan, 233,000 in the EU and roughly 104,000 in North America. Thanks to Shirl Kennedy for the link and annotation. -- Fraud Source: Community Oriented Policing Services/USDOJ Full-Text, Check and Card Fraud Although the audience for this guide is law enforcement it might also be of interest to others. The guide covers fraud involving all types of checks and plastic cards, including debit, charge, credit, and "smart" cards. -- Small Business--Legal Issues--United States Updated, BusinessLaw.Gov Adds State and Local Government Content Quickly connect to the growing number of online transactions and business wizards offered by your state and local government, as well as sources of in-person business and legal assistance that exist in your community. Resources available in many states include: Online licensing and registration Legal guides for employers Online tax filing Sources of export assistance Lawyer referral services Government contracting opportunities Online building permit applications Contractor licensing checks -- American Indians Alaskan Natives Source: U.S. Census Fast Facts About the American Indian and Alaskan Native Populations Another list of "fast facts" in honor of American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month that will take place in November. Monday, October 20, 2003
Web Search--Google Source: Computerworld All About Google's "Cheap and Fast" Hardware Highlights from a recent speech by, Craig Nevill-Manning, a senior research scientist at Google. A few noteworthy points follow. * "Cheap hardware allows more computation per query" * "Google resonates through the more than 10,000 servers" * "One full day of Google use on a server is the equivalent of 40 machine years" * "Because the system is built this way, if a machine goes down, it doesn't have to be repaired right away," he said. "We can save money by doing this in a lazy fashion." * "Nevill-Manning said that keeping the index server updated -- where there are over 390 million images stored -- is probably the most time-intensive task..." * "The amount of time a query spends in Google is small," he said. "Search in five years will be even more accurate and more user-centered."
Web Search--Microsoft Source: Puget Sound Business Journal "Microsoft to develop its own search engine" From the article, Karen Redetzki, an MSN product manager, said the development of search technology is one of Redmond-based Microsoft's biggest priorities. MSN is an Internet portal Microsoft launched in 1997 and has one of the highest traffic rates on the Web. "We need to be in this bigger and better," she said. "We have been aggressively hiring and continue to do so to build a team that can support this very large effort." See Also: ResourceShelf's Compilation of Microsoft Search Patents and Technical Writing See Also: "MSN sticks with Overture" (via News.Com)
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents (5 Items) Department of Homeland Security--United States Source: Carroll Publishing Daily Update of DHS News/Personnel Changes -- Museums--United States Source: The American Association of Museums New Web Site, Nazi-Era Provenance Internet Portal The mission of the resource is, "...to provide a searchable registry of objects in U.S. museum collections that changed hands in Continental Europe during the Nazi era. Over 8500 objects are currently included in the database. An email alert service is available. Additional information can be accessed in an International Herald Tribune article and an AAM news release. -- Agriculture--Country Profiles Source: Food And Agriculture Organization Of The United Nations Updated, Country Profiles and Mapping Information System From the announcement, The FAO Country Profiles and Mapping Information System which presents the Organization's vast archive of knowledge on agriculture and food security within a single Web-based portal with groupings by country, has a new look, content and features. -- Marriage--United States--Statistics Source: U.S. Census New, Marital Status: 2000, a Census 2000 Brief Summary ||| Direct to Full-Text From the summary, A new analysis of Census 2000 data released today shows that of the more than 221 million people age 15 and over, there were 86 unmarried men for every 100 unmarried women. -- Magazines--Lists & Rankings Source: Ad Age Magazine A-List: Top Ten U.S. Magazines of the Year "Advertising Age's annual Magazine A-List report spotlights the best magazine work of the year. The A-List report is an outgrowth and an expansion of Ad Age's Best Magazine honors, and now includes honors for Editor of the Year, Launch of the Year and Publishing Executive of the Year. The Magazine of the Year honor goes to the No. 1-ranked title on the A-List. Magazines are selected for the A-List based on circulation and ad page prowess as well as overall achievement." This year's Magazine of the Year? Lucky. Editor of the Year? Cullen Murphy of The Atlantic Monthly. See Also: Synopsis of top ten A-List winners See Also: Full 10-page .pdf A-List and Magazine of the Year report
Professional Reading Shelf (2 Items) Public Libraries--United States Source: IMLS Three Public Libraries Receive National Award for Library Service Congrats and kudos to the Bozeman Public Library, Free Library of Philadelphia, and Pocahontas County Free Libraries. Each organization has been awarded the National Award for Library Service by the The Institute of Museum and Library Services. The Carnegie Science Center, San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts, and USS Constitution Museum were chosen in the museum category. From the announcement, The awards were created to underscore the vital role of museums and libraries as leaders in our democratic society. The winners are as diverse as the cultural landscape of our county: small and large, urban and rural. They have one thing in common: they have each found innovative ways to make serving the community central to their mission. They use their collections and programs to address real community needs. -- Association of Research Libraries Full-Text, ARL Bimonthly Report 230/231 Julia C. Blixrud takes stock of new measures in research libraries in a special issue of the ARL Bimonthly Report.
Briefly FAST Search and Transfer Lands Nordstroms - Biological & Agricultural Index and Essay and General Literature Index From H.W. Wilson Now Available via EBSCOhost
Web Search--Google Glossary Comes to English Language Versions of Google Today Google made its glossary "feature" available with all English language versions of the search engine. Google Glossary has been available on the Google Labs site since May of 2002. A direct link to a specialized interface remains available. So exactly what's new? Starting today, you can use the syntax define and <*term*> (it works with or without the colon) to see if a "glossary" definition taken from open web content is available. If one is, you'll find it at the top of the results list. In addition to beginning a glossary search with the word define, as in define skyscraper, starting a search with "definition", "what is", and "what are" will also invoke a glossary lookup. If more than one definition is available, a link labeled "more definitions" will appear. Click the link to see all definitions. This is important because only one definition is listed on a results page. Like I said last December, critical information skills are a must when using Google Glossary. One of the definitions for CNN notes that it's owned by Ted Turner. It's not. CNN has been part of Time Warner since 1996. The entry for NBA (National Basketball Association) mentions that two Canadian teams will enter the league in 1995. Yes, that's correct but only one Canadian team remains. The database is also far from comprehensive, especially with abbreviations. The building next door to the White House is often referred to as the OEOB (Old Executive Office Building). A Google Glossary search turns up nothing. As do searches for CPO (chief petty officer), MLIS (Masters of Library and Information Science, ASPCA (American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals), NHL (National Hockey League). I was also unable to find an entry for the term weblog. Finally, many definitions come from the WordNet database at Princeton University. Sunday, October 19, 2003
American Factfinder Source: U.S. Census A Redesigned American FactFinder Database Is Now Available An overview of what's new/changed is available here.
Librarians Source: Contra Costa Times "Wishing for a dynamic librarian action figure" This piece, a response to the library action figure, was written by Julie Winkelstein. Ms. Winkelstein is a librarian at the Albany, CA Public Library. From the column, So, my disappointment isn't with whom they picked as the model, but the way she is presented. She is dressed in what could be described as predictable librarian clothes -- a conservative suit, probably extremely comfortable shoes and glasses. I'm sure it is the shallow part of me that makes me want this, but I wish she could look snazzier -- you know, shiny or elegant or glittery -- so maybe some girl somewhere might see her and say to themselves: Wow, I want one of these, she's cool; or something like that. And she would then want to be a librarian because her action figure looks not only intelligent and capable, but also exciting and brave and modern. See Also: The New York Times Publishes Letter From Librarian Regarding Action Figure
Library Schools Source: American Libraries Clark Another Library School Set to Close From the article, Clark Atlanta University will close its School of Library and Information Studies—the only accredited library-education program in Georgia—at the end of the 2004–2005 academic year. The CAU board of trustees voted October 17 to end its library-school curriculum despite efforts by library leaders from across the country asking them to spare a program that earned its initial American Library Association accreditation in 1942.
Professional Reading Shelf (2 Items) Libraries Full-Text, Speech, "Cultural Policies in Knowledge Societies: the United States of America" This speech was given by Dr. Robert S. Martin, Director, Institute of Museum and Library Services, at a UNESCO Meeting on October 10, 2003. -- Archives Source: SAA Full-Text, Speech "Archives or Assets?" A speech by Peter B. Hirtle, President, Society of American Archivists, given at the SAA Annual Meeting on August 21, 2003.
Search Engines Source: New Scientist "Air aces show fame is not fair" From the article, Mikhail Simkin and Vwani Roychowdhury from the University of California, Los Angeles, analysed the fame of "ace" pilots who fought for Germany during the World War I by comparing the number of web pages that now mention each pilot with the number of planes that the pilot shot down...They now plan to test the fame of modern celebrities such as tennis players and musicians, to see whether the same relationship still holds between achievement and fame. An interesting idea from two academics who have written on similar topics. I wonder how the study deals with the fact that page estimate totals at every engine, even Google, are just estimates and can vary from search to search. Saturday, October 18, 2003
Health Information Source: Univ. of Michigan/Journal of Medical Internet Research "Teens struggle to find accurate, useful health information online" From the announcement, "In a study of how teen-agers search the Internet for answers to health questions, University of Michigan researchers found that misspelled words, ambiguous search terms and an imprecise approach to scanning a Web site often prevented students from finding the information they sought. The study, published today in the online Journal of Medical Internet Research, suggests the importance of teaching teens better search strategies as well as encouraging Web site designers to target teens." The full-text of the article from the article is available online. Thanks to P.W. for the news tip.
Libraries--United States New National Library Advocacy Group Formed From the announcement, The Americans for Libraries Council, a new leadership group comprised of civic, education, business, library and philanthropic leaders, has been established to advocate for libraries at the national level and promote solutions for sustaining and developing libraries in the 21st century. This new national entity aims to raise awareness of challenges facing the nation's libraries and new demands for services, programs and connections to learning resources. Additionally, the Council will work to increase public-private funding for libraries.
Web Search--Google Source: Reuters Google Ordered to Pay Fine in French Trademark Case From the article, A French court has ruled against Internet search powerhouse Google Inc in an intellectual property rights case that could have far reaching technological and financial implications for Web search firms, who process tens of millions of queries a day. The civil court in Nanterre, near Paris, fined privately held Google 75,000 euros [$87,500/U.S.] for allowing advertisers to link text Internet advertisements to trademarked search terms and gave the company 30 days to stop the practice, common at Internet search services. See Also: Google France fined for trademark violation (via News.Com) Friday, October 17, 2003
Web Search--Ask.Com Ask Jeeves Now Offering Advanced Search Interface The Ask.Com advanced interface offers the same options that have been available at Teoma.Com for about a year. It allows limiting to words in the title or url of the web page, by language, to a specific domain/site/geo region and by date. A help page is available. The advanced interface is a feature of Ask Jeeves 6.0. The complete 6.0 release is scheduled for sometime in the next few months. At the moment, a link to the advanced page only appears at the top of a results page or by going to this url. Finally, some of the advanced syntax introduced last year at Teoma appears to work at Ask.Com. + site: + intitle: + inurl: + Language Syntax: lang:fr = French lang:es = Spanish lang:it = Italian lang:no = Norwegian lang:da = Danish lang:pt = Portuguese lang:de = German lang:nl = Dutch
Product Search Yahoo Releases "SmartSort", A Personalized Product Recommendation Tool Available on Yahoo Shopping. From the news release, SmartSort helps narrow the search for a specific product by taking a broad category like digital cameras, which has hundreds of choices, and asking a user to rank criteria (i.e. price, brand, optical zoom) according to importance. SmartSort then instantly recommends the top ten models based on the selected criteria. To further expedite the search, all product recommendations remain on one interface and are instantly refreshed when the consumer adjusts criteria "sliders" or scales, which either place more or less value on a specific product attribute...SmartSort is available in the following categories: digital cameras, MP3 players, personal digital assistants, desktop computers, notebook computers, printers, mobile phones, televisions, and DVD players. Here's what the SmartSort interface for pda's looks like. I've also noticed that with a Yahoo membership (free) you can set e-mail alerts to when prices for products in selected categories change. Note the "set an alert" link to the right of the product name.
Professional Reading Shelf Research Libraries Group The October, 2003 Issue of RLG DigiNews is Online Articles include: + "The Digital Opportunity Investment Trust: An Interview with Anne G. Murphy" + "PRONOM—A Practical Online Compendium of File Formats"
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents (4 Items) Education--United States Source: National Center for Education Statistics New Version Available, School District Demographic System The NCES School District Demographic System (SDDS) version 2.0 is now available. The latest release of SDDS adds 3 new universes of Census Bureau School District Tabulation data. The new universes are Children's Own, Households with Children and Parents with Children. This dataset is one of the largest special tabulations developed from the 2000 census and includes more than one billion demographic estimates. The tabulation provides more than 100,000 unique demographic characteristics per school district. The tabulation creates one of the largest, most current sources of children's demographics available from the U.S. Census Bureau. In addition to new data, the SDDS Map Viewer has also been enhanced to allow more "Adjust Legend" options and 35 more available demographic selections to overlay on the school district maps. -- Women--United States--Statistics Source: BLS Full-Text Report, Highlights of Women’s Earnings in 2002 -- Halloween Source: U.S. Census Fast Facts About Halloween in the U.S. All sorts of interesting statistics including: + 790.7 million pounds: Total U.S. pumpkin production in 2002. Illinois, with a production of 299 million pounds, led the country. + 24 pounds: Per capita consumption of candy by Americans in 2002 -- Weather--United States Source: NOAA/NWS National Weather Service Issues 2003 Winter Weather Outlook
Databases--United States--Legislation Source: Reuters "Database protection bill advances in Congress" From the article, An effort to protect school guides, news archives and other databases from wholesale copying won the approval of a congressional subcommittee on Thursday, despite objections of lawmakers who said it is not necessary. See Also: Additional Background via this ResourceShelf Post Thursday, October 16, 2003
Resources of the Week Two items this time around. 1) FullDisclosure.Com CCBN (Corporate Communications Broadcast Network) is a company that licenses its services/database to many sites, including Yahoo Finance. The company also offers services to institutional investors. This past week CCBN released a new site aimed at the individual investor called FullDisclosure.Com. The new site offers a clean and easy-to-navigate interface with conference calls, an earnings release calendar, company presentations and more from over 6500 companies located in North America, Europe, and Asia. In most cases, webcasts are directly accessible via FullDisclosure.Com. Each company determines how long materials remain publicly available so archive sizes vary. Web sites that license content from CCBN might not provide access to all of the companies and services in CCBN's database. By using FullDisclosure.Com you're accessing the most comprehensive resource of company information that CCBN makes available to the general public. Access to FullDisclosure.Com is free. -- WHOIS Lookups Network Tools Another Great WHOIS Resource and Other Network Tools About a month ago ResourceShelf was allowed to reprint an article from Bob Berkman's Information Advisor newsletter. It reviews several free and fee-based tools to find domain ownership information. As we all know, things change very rapidly in the web world. Since we made Bob's article available, I've discovered a free WHOIS lookup tool from CentralOps.Net that's my new favorite. Additionally, CentralOps also offers access to several other network tools. Here's a quick look at what's available. 1) Domain Dossier This is the CentralOps WHOIS lookup. It works with all domains and country codes. You can also search by IP number. 2) Domain Check Quickly determine if a domain is available. 3) E-Mail Dossier Information about specific email addresses. Potentially useful for tracing spam. 4) Browser Mirror "See what your browser reveals." 5) Other Network Tools for the Geek Web-based versions of traceroute, nsLookup, and other tools.
Professional Reading Shelf (3 Items) Metadata Source: OCLC Full-Text Paper, "Two Paths to Interoperable Metadata" This paper was written by Carol Jean Godby, Devon Smith, and Eric Childress. It was presented at the 2003 Dublin Core Conference in Seattle. See Also: Complete DC-2003 Conference Proceedings -- Open Access Scholarly Publishing Source: Library Journal Full-Text article, "Open-Access Journals" Roy Tennant writes, The current system of scholarly communication is in need of major changes. Journal price increases have been so dramatic and devastating that faculty who typically don't know or care about library expenditures are now front and center in the battle to change the dominant paradigm. -- Librarianship Now Available Online, Full-Text, Journal of the Medical Librarian Association, October, 2003 Articles include: + Emerging ethical issues in instructions to authors of high-impact biomedical journals + MEDLINE SDI services: how do they compare? + Testing the Database of International Rehabilitation Research: using rehabilitation researchers to determine the usability of a bibliographic database Book Reviews Include: + Internet Power Searching: The Advanced Manual + The Virtual Reference Librarian's Handbook
News Resources NewsNow Passes the 13,000 Source Mark NewsNow has been one of our favorite news aggregators for a couple of years. We've mentioned it numerous times on ResourceShelf. Yesterday, NewsNow announced that they now crawl over 13,000 sources from around the world. Although NewsNow offers limited search functionality (only single words) for non-subscribers (the company offers several fee-based services) the hundreds of prefabricated categories, accessible via pull-down menus on the left side of the page, make NewsNow a very usable tool with content not accessible from other aggregators.
Government Printing Office Source: The IBM Endowment for The Business of Government Listen to a Radio Interview with Bruce James, Public Printer of the United States You'll need RealAudio. A print transcript is also available.
Internet Domains Web Searching Source: Computerworld "ICANN grills VeriSign over Site Finder service" From the article, VeriSign Inc. faced a series of questions about last month's launch of its Site Finder search page from members of an Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) committee yesterday, with members asking why the company didn't poll the technology community about the ramifications before launching Site Finder...VeriSign will also look into providing the Site Finder Web site search page in languages other than English and said it would give the Web community a 30- to 60-day notice before relaunching... According to The Register, Verisign will relaunch the service.
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents (3 Items) Technology Companies--United States--Lists & Rankings Source: Deloitte & Touche Fastest-Growing Technology Companies (Various Parts of U.S.) 1) 2003 Orange County (California) Technology Fast 50 List 2) Fastest Growing Technology Companies in New York City Area 3) Delaware Valley Technology Fast 50 Ranking of Fastest-Growing Technology Companies -- U.S. Government--Spanish Language Resources FirstGov Launches Spanish Language Version of Portal Hola to http://www.espanol.gov. -- Health Information New Topic Page/Resource Compilations From MEDLINEplus * School Health
Text Mining Source: The New York Times "Digging for Nuggets of Wisdom" Lisa Guernsey introduces the general public to text mining. Products from SPSS and ClearForest are mentioned.
Web Search--Google Source: Wall Street Journal Google: The Advertising Agency The article discusses Google's contextual ad program. From the article, "The jury's still out whether the program is successful," says Mr. Sherman [SearchDay], who acknowledges hearing anecdotally from some advertisers that they're "not happy" with the new ad program. We've also heard stories and seen many examples of contextual ads being out of context with the material on the page.
Web Search--Images Source: AP Cataloging for the Masses: Researchers Hope to Improve Web Searches From the article, The ESP Game tries to improve upon that by asking two players who don't know each other to type in words that describe a series of images. Players win points when they match words - and those matches become labels von Ahn and Blum can affix to the image in question. See Also: Direct to the ESP Game Wednesday, October 15, 2003
Professional Reading Shelf (3 Items) Digital Libraries The October, 2003 Issue of D-Lib Magazine is Now Online Articles include: + Opinion: "On-line Publishing in the 21st Century" by Geneva Henry, Rice University + "Patterns of Journal Use by Faculty at Three Diverse Universities" + "Who Uses What? Report on a National Survey of Information Users in Colleges and Universities" + "The Digital Book: A Medial Revolution without a New Medium" + "Building a Digital Library the Commons-based Peer Production Way" -- Information Retrieval The October, 2003 Issue of Information Research is Now Online Articles include: + "On conceptual models for information seeking and retrieval research" + "Human studies and user studies: a call for methodological interdisciplinarity" + "A proposed general model of information behaviour" + "Five personality dimensions and their influence on information behaviour" Book Reviews include: + "The virtual reference librarian's handbook" + "Effective financial planning for library and information services" + "Developing Web-based instruction: planning, designing, managing, and evaluating for results" -- Conference Report Source: ARL Summary: “Exposing Hidden Collections” Conference From the report, Over 190 librarians and archivists gathered September 8-9, 2003 at the Library of Congress to address the challenges of providing access to uncataloged and unprocessed archival, manuscript, and rare book materials. “Exposing Hidden Collections” was a working conference planned by ARL’s Special Collections Task Force. The two-day meeting enabled interaction among communities of people who seldom come together and also set the stage for defining North American-scale efforts to address these arrearages of unprocessed content. Along with the summary you can access materials from the conference here. See Also: (White Paper) "Hidden Collections, Scholarly Barriers: Creating Access To Unprocessed Special Collections Materials In North America’s Research Libraries"
Scholarly Publishing Source: News.Com "Traffic overwhelms new online science journal" From the article, A new online science journal aimed at changing the paradigm of scholarly publishing has proved so popular it's been mired in a crush of traffic since its Sunday night launch.
Citation Analysis--Lists & Rankings Scholarly Publishing Source: Institute for Scientific Information • Science in the United Kingdom, 1998-2002 • AI, Robotics & Auto Control: High-Impact U.S. Universities, 1998-2002 • Journals Ranked by Impact: Dentistry, Oral Surgery & Medicine • Japan "Rankings for Japan among the 150 top-performing countries in all fields..." See Also: Thomson ISI Announces Research Superstars (via ManagingInformation.Com) ISI announces 50 most-cited researchers of the last two decades.
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents (5 Items) Information Technology--Security Source: NIST Full-Text Report, Guide to Selecting Information Technology Security Products 67 pages .pdf. -- Homeland Security--United States Source: Department of Homeland Security Full-Text: Initial National Response Plan A fact sheet is also available. -- United States Congress Source: Congressional Quarterly/Washington Post CQ & Washington Post Launch Two Charts Containing Legislative Info Appropriations Tracker Bills to Watch See Also: THOMAS Appropriations Status Check -- Education--United States--Statistics Source: National Center for Education Statistics Full-Text Report, Status and Trends in the Education of Blacks Status and Trends in the Education of Blacks draws on the many statistics published by NCES in a variety of reports and synthesizes these data in one compact volume. In addition to indicators drawn from existing government reports, some indicators were developed specifically for this report. The objective of this report is to make statistical information about the educational status of Blacks easily accessible to a variety of audiences. 195 pages .pdf. -- Bioterrorism Public Health Source: GAO Bioterrorism: Public Health Response to Anthrax Incidents of 2001 Highlights ||| Full-Text
Briefly Australia...Neglect of library resources a national trend, Murdoch says (via ABC) - San Francisco...Editorial: "Spying at the Library" (via San Francisco Bay Guardian) In addition to the editorial, an article about the use of RFID at SFPL appears in the paper. Tuesday, October 14, 2003
Access to Information Source: FAO (Food And Agriculture Organization Of The United Nations) AGORA: "Online scientific information on food and agriculture for poorest countries" The AGORA (Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture) initiative will provide access to more than 400 key journals in food, nutrition, agriculture and related biological, environmental and social sciences. Founding publishers of AGORA are : Blackwell Publishing ; CABI Publishing ; Elsevier ; Kluwer Academic Publishers ; Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins; Nature Publishing Group ; Oxford University Press ; Springer Verlag ; and John Wiley and Sons.
Information Industry Source: BIOSIS BIOSIS Pursues Final Negotiations with Bidder From the annoucement, Today, the Board of Trustees of Biological Abstracts announced that it has voted to pursue final negotiations with The Thomson Corporation leading to a potential sale of the publishing assets of Biological Abstracts, Inc. and BIOSIS, UK....Chairman of the Board, Dr. James H Beach, explained the Board’s choice to finalize negotiations with Thomson/ISI: “Thomson/ISI has a history of providing quality services to the global community of life sciences researchers in both academic and corporate markets. Of the many potential bidders we considered, Thomson/ISI seems best prepared to successfully manage and enhance BIOSIS publishing services, while increasing the products’ dissemination in the life science research community.” Thanks to Jill O. from Information Community News for the news tip.
Professional Reading Shelf Controlled Vocabularies Source: IFLA Full-Text paper, Fast (Faceted Application Of Subject Terminology): A Simplified LCSH-Based Vocabulary The paper was written by Edward O'Neill, OCLC and Lois Mai Chan, University of Kentucky. It was presented at the World Library and Information Congress (Berlin, 2003). See Also: Additional Papers Presented at the World Library and Information Congress
The Internet Archive Source: Wired News "Fighting to Preserve Old Programs" From the article, Brewster Kahle wants the world to know that old software is an important part of our cultural history and -- like books, films and other media -- should be preserved. The problem is, most software is stored on media that is rapidly degrading. Before long, the data on those original WordStar or Lotus 1-2-3 floppies will be about as useful as a piece of cardboard. That's why Kahle and his nonprofit Internet Archive have petitioned the U.S. Copyright Office about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA, which governs the circumvention of anti-piracy measures.
Web Browsers Opera 7.21 For Windows and Linux Released From the announcement, Kiosk mode is reintroduced with Opera 7.21, as was previously implemented in Opera 6. Kiosk mode is a customizable browser setting to limit functionality, blocking menus, preventing downloads, or adjusting other system preferences. Opera's kiosk mode is the most secure way to restrict access appropriate for computer labs, libraries and other kiosk providers.
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents (5 Items) Internet--Statistics Source: Verisign New Publication, VeriSign Internet Security Intelligence Briefing From the announcement, The briefing draws upon data gathered from VeriSign's operation of key Internet infrastructure services and will be issued quarterly to provide enterprise technology managers and the Internet community at large with a deeper understanding of key Internet usage, security, and fraud trends. Access is free and you can register to have future issues sent via e-mail. Thanks to P.W. for the news tip. -- Employment--United States Source: U.S. Department of Labor/U.S. Department of Education New Web Site, Career Voyages From the announcement, Career Voyages helps young people learn about the high growth industries where many opportunities await them, and employers find the skilled workers they need to keep our country strong and competitive." The new web site features detailed information about the fastest growing industries and occupations, the skills and education required to prepare for them, job openings by area, and wages, licensing requirements and growth rates for numerous occupations. -- Small Business--United States--Lists & Rankings Source: Forbes 2003 List Available, Hot Shots: 200 Best Small Companies -- Philanthropy--Worldwide--Statistics Source: The Foundation Center Hightlights, International Grantmaking Update 4 pages. pdf -- Children Source: Department of the Parliamentary Library, Australia New, Full-Text E-Brief, Children in Detention
Web Search Source: News.Com "Are search engines confusing surfers?" Stefanie Olson writes about the labeling of search results, paid inclusion, and paid placement. Like a Business Week article from 10 days ago, Olson's article makes no mention about how the work of the search engine optimization industry influences the results you see, even with Google. What does this mean for the researcher? 1) Knowledge of the problem 2) The ability to use several web engines in an advanced manner. This can help you get to the most precise results possible in the shortest amount of time. See Also: "Web Searches: The Fix Is In" (via Business Week)
Web Search--Google Source: Chilling Effects More DMCA Requests from Scientology To Google 1) Scientology to Google #11 2) Scientology to Google #10 And 3) KaZaA to Google #10 4) Google Requested to Take Down Hijab Article Monday, October 13, 2003
Archives Source: SAA It's Archives Week 2003! Learn more about this, "annual celebration of the importance of archives and historical records."
Librarians The New York Times Publishes Letter From Librarian Regarding Action Figure The Letter to the Editor comes from a law librarian who is opposed to the action figure, "because it perpetuates a stereotype that is demeaning to our profession." See Also: "A Librarian Is Making a Big Noise" (via The NY Times) See Also: Another Article About and an Image of the Action Figure (via Seattle Times)
Professional Reading Shelf (2 Items) Libraries and Librarians Source: Emerald Starting Monday, One Week Only: Free Full-Text Access to Library Hi Tech News and The Electronic Library Free access (10/13-10/19) for non-subs will be available via the Emerald "Journal of the Week" program. + Library Hi Tech News Beginning with vol. 16, no. 3., 1999 + The Electronic Library Beginning with vol. 17, no. 1., 1999 -- Information Architecture--Intranets Source: AlertBox Jakob Nielsen Releases His Ten Best Intranets of 2003 List
School Libraries Source: Orlando Sentinel Good school libraries boost readers "Donna Baumbach, a professor at the University of Central Florida, analyzed more than 1,700 media centers at Florida schools. She found that well-staffed, well-stocked libraries drive up elementary reading scores by 9 percent, middle-school scores by 3 percent and high-school scores by 22 percent." Link contributed by Shirl Kennedy. Sunday, October 12, 2003
Web Search--Gigablast Gigablast Now Supports Generic Meta Tags Matt Wells, Gigablast founder and sole proprietor, continues his work on the search engine with the engine now recognizing generic meta tags. Matt writes, "As of now Gigablast supports the indexing, searching and displaying of generic meta tags. You name them I fame them. For instance, if you have a tag like in your document, then you will be able to do a search like foo:bar or foo:"bar baz" and Gigablast will find your document." Examples and instructions in this post. An example of how a results page might look. A few weeks ago Matt announced that Gigablast will also support geographic sensitive metatags. See Also: An Interview With Matt Wells, Gigablast Founder and Sole Proprietor (via SearchDay)
Scholarly Publishing Source: Reuters "New Scientific Journal Challenges Establishment" From the article, A new scientific journal that challenges the expensive heavyweights that have dominated the world of research hits the Internet on Monday. The journal, called the Public Library of Science Biology, is backed by leading scientists such as Dr. Harold Varmus, former director of the National Institutes of Health and now chief executive officer of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. They want to speed up the pace at which research is published, and also make it accessible to even the poorest of graduate students. It will be available on the Internet at http://www.plosbiology.org. The non-profit group that backs PLoS is based in San Francisco and will launch a second journal, PLoS Medicine, next year. The scientific journals that now control the world of scholarly publishing can cost tens of thousands of dollars a year. They usually require a lengthy "peer review" process in which experts raise questions about studies and suggest changes to written reports. PLoS Biology (Public Library of Science Biology) has also been added to PubMedCentral. See Also: Pat Schroeder, President of the Association of American Publishers, Share Her Opinion About the Launch See Also: "Intro to Open Access: The Public Library of Science" by Marydee Ojala See Also: The Scientist and is Also Running a Story About the Launch See Also: Open Access News
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents Open Archives Initiative New "Experimental" Open Archives Initiative Registry Database Available At the moment, this searchable database has information about 423 repositories.
Industry Briefs LexisNexis Names New Senior Vice President, Global Strategy and Business Development -- Ingenta Grows Network of Library Users by 25%
Virtual Reference Colorado Launches Statewide Virtual Reference Service AskColorado is sponsored by the Colorado Department of Education and Colorado State Library. Here's how the launch was covered in a local paper. AskColorado uses Tutor.Com (formerly LSSI) for back up, late night service, and Spanish language research requests. Sharon Morris, AskColorado Coordinator, provided ResourceShelf with a few additional facts. * AskColorado officially launched on 9/2 * AskColorado's virtual reference service in Spanish launched on 9/22 * 43 libraries around the state are part of the project * Numbers: +++In September, 865 questions +++So far in October, 1176 questions UPDATE: More Info About AskColorado Here Saturday, October 11, 2003
Web Search--Google Source: Barron's Full-Text article: Barron's: Google IPO By April (at the Latest) What do we have here? Something not that usual. More Google IPO speculation. This time the speculation appears in the latest issue of Barron's out today. I wonder if a betting line exists about if/when Google will go public? Here are a few highlights from the article. + "A Google deal would boost the spirits of a Silicon Valley struggling to find new sources of growth. And for the 1,000-plus Google employees, an IPO represents an opportunity for 1999-style instant riches." + "The whispering in the Valley is that Google's revenues this year could be in the range of $700 million to $1 billion, with profits well north of $100 million." + "But it [Google] must, of course, comply with the securities laws, and that provides an overlooked clue on the timing of an IPO. Mark your calendar: April 2004. (Or sooner.)"..."Google appears to have triggered a fairly obscure provision of the 1934 Securities and Exchange Act that lays out circumstances under which companies not listed on a securities exchange must report financial results in public filings to the SEC."..."To trigger the provision, a company must have at least $10 million in assets -- as Google surely does -- and at least 500 shareholders of record of any class of equity securities, a definition that includes employee stock options"..."Google almost certainly has more than 500 employees with stock options. For one thing, its Website says that the company has more than 1,000 employees. And most probably get stock options: Its online job listings site ranks "pre-IPO stock options" as one of the "top 10 reasons to work at Google." + Much more detail about the SEC provision in the Eric Savitz article.
E-Books Source: Reuters "Bubble bursts for electronic book" From the article, At the height of the Internet boom, e-books were hailed as the shining new tomorrow for publishers and paper books were heading for the scrap heap. But the bubble has burst and electronic books are still the poor relation to the printed word with consumers preferring to turn the pages themselves when they curl up by the fire with a good book. "The limitless euphoria of the beginning belongs to the past," said Arnoud de Kemp, a leading electronic publisher with the science and business media firm Springer.
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents (2 Items) Copyright--Canada--Database Source: CIPO Enhancements Now Online at Canadian Copyrights Database A number of enhancements have been made to the Canadian Copyrights Database (CCD) on the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) Website. The CCD includes all copyrights which were registered as of October 1, 1991, pursuant to the Copyright Act as well as some registrations prior to 1991, for which certified copies had been requested. The search function has been optimized, the display improved and new linkages created within the database. Here's a complete summary of enhancements. -- Women in Medicine Source: National Library of Medicine New Online Exhibit, Changing the Face of Medicine From the site, The National Library of Medicine is pleased to present this exhibition honoring the lives and accomplishments of these women in the hope of inspiring a new generation of medical pioneers. Included in the exhibit is a bibliography, lesson plans, and a searchable database. Friday, October 10, 2003
Databases--Legal Issues Information Industry Source: FoxNews.Com Database Legislation Introduced in U.S. Congress From the article, Critics warn that under new federal legislation, writers and Web designers could be hauled into court over something as simple as publishing a list of local sporting events or creating a Web site offering consumers price comparisons on car parts. Though the Database and Collections of Information Misappropriations Act was only introduced Thursday, special interests have been lining up on either side to sing its praises or curse its existence. The legislation, crafted by members of the House Judiciary and Energy and Commerce Committees, seeks to place legal protections on online and offline databases. In short, the measures contained in the bill would prevent the reproduction of information gathered in databases for commercial and competitive purposes. The full-text of the legislation and bill sponsor info can be found here. Thanks to M.O. for the news tip. See Also, Congressional Hearing: “Database and Collections of Information Misappropriation Act of 2003” A couple of weeks ago a hearing took place in DC about this legislation. You can view the entire hearing online and/or read the prepared testimony. Here's a ResourceShelf post with all of the links. See Also: ALA's Latest Washington Office Newsline with Additional Info
Academic Libraries Source: The News-Gazette (Champaign, IL) University of Illinois Library Adds 10 Millionth Volume to Collection A big day in Champaign-Urbana! From the article, The University of Illinois Library – the largest public university library in the world – will be adding the 10 millionth volume to its collection in a dedication ceremony Friday. The volume is a one-of-a-kind, handmade book of personal reflections and artwork about the library, contributed by those associated with the library over the years. It is titled "Unlocking Our Past, Building Our Future: A Commemorative Publication Celebrating the University of Illinois Library at Urbana-Champaign as Resource, as Place, and as Experience." The U of I Library acquired its 1 millionth volume in 1935 and its 9 millionth volume in 1998. See Also: "Love for the library revealed in 10 millionth volume" (via Univ of Illinois News Bureau)
Information Technology Source: NIST Tech Beat From Movies to Minutia: DVDs Eyed for Archival Uses From the article, Computer scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are launching an effort to develop specifications for “archival quality” CD and DVD media that agencies could use to ensure the procurement of sufficiently robust media for their long- term archiving needs (i.e., 50 years and longer). NIST is spearheading the standards effort under the auspices of the Government Information Preservation Working Group, a newly formed group that includes representatives from a variety of agencies.
Public Libraries--Canada Just Released, Best Practices 2003: Innovative Internet Use in Canadian Public Libraries The 12 libraries listed are all winners of LibraryNet's Best Practices Awards for 2003.
Military Libraries Source: DefenseLINK News First 101st On-base Library Opens in Mosul "What was once nothing more than a boxed collection of books became Iraq's first 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) library...." The library offers fiction, nonfiction, new magazines, CDs and DVDs. Help and donations were obtained from publishers, the New York Public Library and the R.F. Sink Library at Fort Campbell, KY. "'It's going to have a huge (morale) impact when it's completely finished,' said Maj. Steve Leonard of Lewiston, Idaho, 526th FSB executive officer."
American Factfinder Redesign and More Coming Soon to American Factfinder The primary web database for U.S. Census info will unveil a new look and other changes sometime next weekend. You can get a preview here.
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents Labor--European Union--Statistics Source: European Union Full-Text, Released Today, Employment in Europe 2003 Includes detailed statistical annex with key employment indicators and macroeconomic indicators. Thursday, October 09, 2003
Resources of the Week Two specialized databases this week. Consumer Information--Product Reviews Consumer Search This specialized database is an essential tool for finding consumer product reviews on the open web. Consumer Search is put together by a team based in DC. Here's what the Librarians' Index to the Internet has to say about Consumer Search, This resource reviews products, analyzes other reviews, and provides top-rated products listings. Their reviewers include "former writers for Consumer Reports, PC Magazine, and The New York Times; a Wall Street research analyst; and talent from dozens of major magazines and newspapers." Product categories include electronics, sports, office, kitchen, health, automotive, and garden. Material can be accessed by browsing or by keyword searching. Here's a link to a Consumer Search page with PDA product information. It cites 18 review sources (links are provided), summarizes findings, provides a very useful product comparison chart, and concludes with a fact-filled "review of the reviews." This is what Consumer Search calls the "full story." It's probably worth a few minutes of your time to take a look at Consumer Search FAQs. This section contains answers about review selection and how they separate editorial content from advertising. Each product reviewed also contains a direct link to several comparison pricing databases. -- Note: A big thank you to Karen Schneider for allowing ResourceShelf to use the Librarians' Index to the Internet (LII) annotation for Consumer Search. Visitors to ResourceShelf for the past few years have seen numerous mentions about how this web directory is a "must have" resource. The LII is an example of a directory where the quality of the sites it provides access to is most important. If you're new to ResourceShelf and/or have never visited the LII you should stop by asap. I think you'll be more than impressed with what's available. New material is added to the directory each week. We look forward to featuring more LII annotations and other content on ResourceShelf in the future. -- Military Periodicals--Bibliographic Database Source: Joint Forces Staff College Library Staff College Automated Military Periodical Index (SCAMPI) "The Joint Forces Staff College Library is a specialized military library, focusing on research in joint and multinational operations, military history and naval science, operational warfare, and of operations other than war. Library staff members regularly scan the weekly news magazines, monthly and bimonthly journals such as Military Review, Armed Forces Journal, and quarterly publications, including NATO's Nations and Partners for Peace, RUSI Journal, and the Naval War College Review. Miscellaneous reports from RAND and the General Accounting Office are also indexed for SCAMPI. The resulting database serves as a current (1997 - present) guide to articles on military and naval art and science, operational warfare, joint planning, national and international politics, and other areas researched by JFSC faculty, staff, and students. The index is updated quarterly. Retrospective conversion for records from the past 40+ years is ongoing." Hosted by the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC). Many thanks to ResourceShelf contributor Shirl Kennedy for providing the info about SCAMPI. See Also: Direct to SCAMPI Search Interface See Also: List of journals indexed by SCAMPI
Standards--United States NIST Makes Free CD Available to Help Demystify Complex Standards System From the announcement, A new CD from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) can help steer engineers, novice trade-association representatives and new government staffers through the thicket of organizations, activities, policies and laws related to standards and measurement in the United States. With an easily digested helping of technical detail, the free electronic primer* provides an integrated view of major public and private-sector components of the nation’s measurement and standards system. These elements are sized up from several key perspectives, including global trade and regulatory affairs. Additional details and ordering information is available at the conclusion of this article.
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents (3 Items) Internet Security--Lists & Rankings Source: SANS Institute Just Released, The SANS Top 20 Internet Security Vulnerabilities 2003 -- Consumer Issues Source: Consumer WebWatch/Consumers Union New Full-Text Report, Renting Cars Online: An Analysis of the Potential Benefits and Challenges of Booking Through a Car Rental Web Site Abstract ||| Direct to Full-Text ||| Full-Text (PDF) -- Research & Development--Statistics--United States Source: NSF New Info Brief, U.S. Industry Sustains R&D Expenditures During 2001 "The National Science Foundation's (NSF's) annual Survey of Industrial Research and Development shows that companies spent $198.5 billion on research and development (R&D) that they performed in the United States during 2001. "
Meet the Librarian Source: Sarasota Herald Tribune Librarian known as 'answer man' Great article! From the article, Stumped by a complex algebraic equation? Perplexed by a term paper on the origins of the Reformation? For scores of local students, Jerry Falgowski is the answer man. Falgowski, a reference librarian, leads he Homework Help for Teenagers program every afternoon at the Jacaranda Public Library. "I love this job because you learn something new every day," Falgowski said. "We offer help to about 20 students a day."...Wearing a Winnie the Pooh tie and a button-down jean shirt, Falgowski, 42, bucks the stereotype of the stern librarian. Wednesday, October 08, 2003
Web Search Source: News.Com "Craving for 'clicks' bogs down search" More stuff to be aware of. Stefanie Olson writes, Hackers and mainstream Internet companies are beginning to take extreme measures to grab Web search "clicks"--sowing confusion for consumers and posing new challenges for search providers. Search experts point to domain name registrar VeriSign's controversial attempt to redirect mistyped domain names to its own search page as one high-profile illustration of the trend. Also, security consultants last week discovered a Trojan horse called QHosts that changed browser domain name system (DNS) settings to redirect visitors to Web sites, including Google.com, to an alternate search site laced with ads.
National Archives--United States NARA to Dedicate Records Center Facility in Ohio From the announcement, The 217,000 square foot facility will employ 45 staff, and can host 30 visitor researchers. Its five bays can accommodate 1.2 million cubic feet of records. The Kingsridge building is one of four NARA facilities in the Dayton area that provide storage for Federal records, bringing the projected total capacity for the region to nearly 4 million cubic feet...The facility was built primarily to store and service approximately 540 million tax returns for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Plans for the development of the Kingsridge facility were made when the IRS, Dayton's single largest customer, reorganized its system of processing tax records. This reorganization resulted in a very large increase in the volume of IRS documents to be stored in the Dayton records centers. The IRS stores a total of 1.8 million cubic feet of records in NARA's Dayton facilities.
Academic Libraries--Canada Source: Thunder Bay Chronicle Journal "Changing times for college libraries" From the article, Canadian college libraries have seen more changes over the past decade than ever before. To keep up with changing times, and the changing needs of students who rely on the Internet and other electronic resources, libraries across the country have had to re-evaluate their standards. Laraine Tapak, director of the Challis Resource Library at Confederation College, has been chosen to lead a national task force to upgrade college library standards in Canada.
Web Search--Google Source: News.Com Google's Eric Schmidt Speaks at Conference "The primary mission of Google is to get you what you want, rather than what someone thinks you want," Schmidt said. The article also discusses Google's "rigorous hiring system."
Professional Reading Shelf (3 Items) Libraries Source: OCLC/Journal of Library Administration Full-Text, "The recombinant library: portals and people" This 28 page article by Lorcan Dempsey (VP of OCLC Research) will appear in a forthcoming issue of Journal of Library Administration. -- Libraries Source: The Gale Report "Libraries in 2020: The World is Changing — Are We" This article appears in Gale's monthly newsletter. It was written by Bruce Newell, director, Montana Library Network. From the article, Libraries rely on networks to gain access to materials and services. Working as a partner with Montana libraries, MLN promotes the delivery of quality networked library materials and services to Montana citizens through standards-based library automation systems, materials, and services. MLN helps libraries work together, so that library patrons get what they need. But patrons' needs are changing and the world is changing — are we? Libraries need to revisit how they see themselves in light of these changes. It's important for libraries to remember that the social aspect of information seeking has become just as important to people as the information seeking itself. -- Web Resources The October Issue of Peter's Digital Reference Shelf is Online This month Dr. Jacso reviews the Britannica GeoAnalyzer and the "Fact for Features" section of the U.S. Census web site. Btw, most of the reports posted at "Fact for Features" are linked from ResourceShelf soon after they become available.
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents (4 Items) Population Source: United Nations Population Fund Released Today, State of the World Population 2003 The report is available in pdf or can be read in html. Previous editions of the report are available. Statistical indicators along with graphs/tables can be accessed via direct links. -- Digital Libraries--Quilting U.S. History Launched yesterday, QuiltIndex.Com From the announcement, The Quilt Index, www.quiltindex.org, brings together the resources of four separate archives, including the Michigan State University Museum, the University of Louisville Archives and Records Center, the Illinois State Museum and the Tennessee State Library and Archives. From a Civil War-era family graveyard quilt to variations on a hexagon theme to an original contemporary design featuring Elvis Presley, the Index provides central, searchable access to more than 1,000 quilts documented in the four archives. Quilts can be viewed by archive as well as searched across the collections for patterns, individual quilters, themes, techniques and many other characteristics. About the Technology: The Quilt Index architecture and Web site interface design were constructed by MATRIX, a center devoted to the application of new technologies in humanities and social science teaching and research. The technological challenge was to create a sophisticated database structure for an integrative index and a distributed, Web-based posting and delivery system. Each archive needed flexible and individualized access to manage records remotely and to accommodate information unique to its region or quilt documentation project. "The synergy of our research in digital library preservation initiatives has permitted this broad application for public humanities, art history, folklore and history," said Mark Kornbluh, director of MATRIX and associate professor of history at MSU. "This is a powerful example of humanities technology at work." The Quilt Index also required a comprehensive, controlled vocabulary and common descriptions and fields to promote meaningful searching and sorting capabilities. The faculty and curatorial staff at the MSU Museum's Great Lakes Quilt Center worked with experts in quilt research, collections management, documentation and interpretation to develop, define and test the data fields. See Also: Learn More About MATRIX, View Other Projects -- Language--United States Source: U.S. Census New, Full-Text Report, Language Use and English-Speaking Ability: 2000 "Nearly 1-in-5 people, or 47 million U.S. residents age 5 and older, spoke a language other than English at home in 2000, the U.S. Census Bureau said today. That was an increase of 15 million people since 1990." Summary/Highlights ||| Direct to Full-Text -- Chemisty Source: Chemical & Engineering News It's Elemental: The Periodic Table "The periodic table is so central to chemistry that it seemed natural to devote a special issue to it and the elements that compose it as we celebrate C&EN’s 80th anniversary. The 89 essays are delightfully varied. We hope they will give you a new perspective on and appreciation of the building blocks of our science." Essays from 89 notable folks who were asked to write about their favorite element. Link and annotation contributed by Shirl Kennedy. Each entry contains an "at a glance" box that might have ready reference value.
Briefly Elsevier Launches THE LANCET Backfiles On ScienceDirect All articles back to 1823 are available. Tuesday, October 07, 2003
Reference Linking Source: National Federation of Abstracting and Information Services "NFAIS Releases Guiding Principles in Support of Industry Wide Collaboration on Reference Linking" From the announcement, The organization strongly believes that industry-wide collaboration in support of reference linking is essential to managing the flow of scholarly communication," stated NFAIS President, Marjorie Hlava. "Reference linking provides a seamless navigation between bibliographic and full text databases, speeding the research process and ultimately accelerating discovery across all scholarly disciplines as well as in business." Hlava noted that NFAIS established a Linking Committee several years ago to determine the interest of members - and their customers - in promoting information linking as an industry norm. Interest proved to be quite high and resulted in the creation of the Guiding Principles. See Also: Full-Text, "NFAIS Guiding Principles: Reference Linking" See Also: Membership List, National Federation of Abstracting and Information Services (NFAIS)
Web Search--Google Source: SethF.com "Google Spam Filtering Gone Bad" Several weeks ago we began noticing problems with Google's page estimates. Here's a posting from about 6 weeks ago with a "company line" response from a Google spokesperson stating that Google's estimates are just that-estimates. Today, noted anticensoreware researcher Seth Finkelstein takes a look at the problem (which has gotten worse) and files a report claiming that Google's spam filter is out of alignment. Allow me to repeat what I've said for the past couple of years, if Google doesn't work for you (for whatever reason(s)), use another web engine. In fact, even if Google does work for you, checking results from other tools isn't a bad idea.
Digitization Projects--Medical Journals PubMed Central's Back Issue Digitization Project The project was announced several months ago but we missed the news. )-: Thanks to ResourceShelf reader GP for alerting us to it.
Professional Reading Shelf (5 Items) User Interfaces Source: Univ of Maryland, Psychology Dept, Computer Science Department Full-Text paper, "A Study of Search Result Clustering Interfaces: Comparing Textual and Zoomable User Interfaces." -- Document Clustering Web Search--Vivisimo White Paper, "Needed: A More Selective Ignorance" From the paper, "Overlook is the main web search problem. Today, the information that a user overlooks is picked unknowingly and indiscriminately, for example by ignoring all unseen search results beyond the 10th. Instead, we should adopt tools that empower people to ignore information more knowingly." -- Information Organization Source: KMWorld "Automating perception part 3" Tony McKinley provides introductions to NStein, Text Analysis, and Vivisimo. -- Job Search Source: Occupational Outlook Quarterly Full-Text article, "Job search in the age of Internet: Six jobseekers in search of employers" 16 pages. -- Internet The October, 2003 Edition of First Monday is Now Online Articles include: + "Studying special collections and the Web: An analysis of practice" + "Copyright and authors"
Web Search--AOL AOL/Google Strengthen Alliance The news release touts tabbed searching (2 of the 4 tabs are only available to those who use the AOL service), "enhanced local searching capabilities", and a new "hot search" box that lists recently submitted search terms to the service. Finally, AOL touts their search engine's "ultra-fast" capability which "mean less time waiting for results." Again, this is the result of a new download accelerator service only available to AOL subscribers.
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents (4 Items) Privacy Source: European Union New Report, Digital technologies post-September 11th: more security but less privacy for the European citizen? Summary ||| Direct to Full-Text -- Cooperatives--United States--Lists & Rankings Source: National Cooperative Bank Now Available, NCB Co-op 100, 2003 "The nation's 100 highest revenue-earning cooperative businesses." -- Transportation--United States--Statistics Source: BTS New Material Added to State Transportation Profiles Profiles for Florida, Oklahoma, and Washington have been added to the collection. -- Higher Education--Worldwide--Lists & Rankings Source: EIU Economist Intelligence Unit MBA Program Rankings 2003
Briefly Copernic Gets Into the Enterprise Search Market (via E-Week) The product, called Copernic Enterprise Search, can support searching repositories of up to 2 million documents. It will be offered free to companies with less than 5,000 documents to search. -- Information Industry--ProQuest ProQuest Launches UMI Dissertation Digital Archiving and Access Program Monday, October 06, 2003
Information Industry--CSA Source: NFAIS Cambridge Scientific Abstracts Pulling All Databases From SilverPlatter A note on the NFAIS weblog informs us that CSA will soon announce (tomorrow?) that they will withdraw all of their databases from the SilverPlatter platform over the next seven months. Thanks to Jill O. for the news tip. UPDATE 10/07: Statement and Details from CSA
Information Industry--Gale Source: InfoToday News Breaks Gale Databases Link to Google Image Search From the article, Convenient, competent, and cheap—the qualities in Google appreciated by searchers everywhere have been found appealing by a major traditional information industry player. Responding to demands from users, Gale Group (http://www.galegroup.com), a subsidiary of Thomson, has created an easy transparent bridge from most of its InfoTrac products to Google’s image collection. An embedded link will let users search Google’s more than 425 million images–or at least those that make it through Gale’s selection of the strictest of Google’s SafeSearch filter options. InfoTrac users will pay no extra for searching Google. In my opinion, the image search database from AltaVista is also worthy of your attention. A Gale product announcement states, "To ensure that the search does not return inappropriate images, the feature will automatically default to the Google SafeSearch "strict" filtering option." Come on. Google's image filtering is good but it's far from perfect. It doesn't take to much time to find material that some might deem inappropriate.
Web Search--Google Source: The New York Times "Frequent Search Engine Users, Google Is Watching and Counting" From the article, The Web search service Google has quietly started placing a counter on its home page for a small number of its most frequent users...Most Google users do not have it, but a select few now have a no-frills counter that with each search clicks higher, noting "You have done 479 searches," or whatever the actual number..."Do users know that Google is spying on them?'' said Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, "From a privacy viewpoint, the question you'd ask is, 'Why they are logging this?' ''While simply logging information for fun may be harmless, Mr. Rotenberg said he would be concerned if a company linked such software to other data that could specifically identify a user." See Also: Chris Sherman has More Details in SearchDay
Professional Reading Shelf (2 Items) Library Consortiums Source: Chronicle of Higher Education "Libraries' Consortium Conundrum" From the article, Banding together has become the way to save money by making deals with publishers, but rising competition threatens cooperation...Libraries are using consortia as their main tool for making deals with publishers and one another. Although publishers often sell their products to consortia members for less than single buyers would pay, the publishers are happy to make such deals. Consortia allow one company to corner the market for sales in competitive markets, offer a wide distribution of new products, and generally eliminate the hassle of making deals with many individual libraries...Big library consortia, they say, are facing increasing competition from smaller groups -- those with a handful of members compared with several hundred -- that are being created all the time. And they wonder how consortia will be able to keep up with the rising cost of journals and databases. "Right now it looks like a lot of competition," says Catherine C. Wilt, executive director of Palinet, a consortium that covers mid-Atlantic states. "And sometimes the competition is between us and our members." Thanks to PW for the news tip. -- Technical Information Source: National Academy Press Full-Text Online, The Role of Scientific and Technical Data and Information in the Public Domain: Proceedings of a Symposium (2003)
Web Search--Google DMCA Source: Chilling Effects 1) Argentinian Web Site Owner Files DMCA Request 2) Chinese Blogger Complains of Infringement
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents (2 Items) Labor Source: BLS New Material Available, Foreign Labor Trends "The Foreign Labor Trends (FLT) report series is designed to be an informative and authoritative source of information on labor institutions, practices, and recent key developments in the countries reported." Reports have been added for Argentina, Australia, Belize, Brazil, Korea. Reports also available for European Union, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Namibia, Singapore, Sri Lanka. Thanks to S.B. for the news tip. -- Criminal Investigation/Forensic Science--Webliography Source: College and Research Library News New, Full-Text, "Criminal investigation and forensic science: Sources for scholars and aficionados" This webliography was compiled and annotated by Kristine M. Alpi, library manager of the Public Health Library of the New York City Department of Health & Mental Hygiene. Sunday, October 05, 2003
National Commission on Libraries and Information Science Source: American Libraries President Bush Announces 12 NCLIS Nominees From the article, President Bush announced October 1 that he will nominate 12 individuals to be members of the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science. Once they are confirmed by the Senate, they will complete a full 16-member roster. Some NCLIS positions have been vacant for up to four years, so the nominees will serve only the remainder of the various five-year terms they are filling, with expirations ranging from 2004 to 2008. Beth Fitzsimmons, president of Information Strategists in Ann Arbor, Michigan, will serve until 2006 and, once her appointment is confirmed, will succeed Joan R. Challinor as NCLIS chair. Challinor was designated chair in July and she will remain on the commission until next year. - The other nominees, the year in which their terms expire, and the capacity in which they will serve are: Jose Antonio Aponte of Colorado, 2007, librarian and information specialist; Sandra Frances Ashworth of Idaho, 2004, expert on elderly people; Edward Louis Bertorelli of Massachusetts, 2005, public representative; Carol L. Diehl of Wisconsin, 2005, public representative; Allison Druin of Maryland, 2006, librarian and information specialist; Patricia M. Hines of South Carolina, 2005, public representative; Colleen Ellen Huebner of Washington, 2007, public representative; Stephen M. Kennedy of New Hampshire, 2007, public representative; Bridget L. Lamont of Illinois, 2008, librarian; Mary H. Perdue of Maryland, 2008, public representative; and Herman Lavon Totten of Texas, 2008, librarian and information specialist.
Weblogs Source: Perseus Development Corporation Full-Text Report, The Blogging Iceberg - Of 4.12 Million Hosted Weblogs, Most Little Seen, Quickly Abandoned Perseus surveyed 3,634 weblogs on eight leading hosting services. "The most dramatic finding was that 66.0% of surveyed blogs had not been updated in two months...." Extrapolating this data to the larger blogosphere, Perseus estimates that 4.12 million blogs have been created on these services, and 2.72 million of these "have been either permanently or temporarily abandoned." A brief comment: This is not a surprise. As I've said many times on ResourceShelf the lasting legacy of weblogs is not the fact that everyone can have one. As this white paper points out many people start one but soon stop. The legacy will be the software and the ease of publishing on the web. So, when the time comes and material needs to be posted, weblog software can make it a simple, quick, and efficient process. Thanks to Shirl Kennedy for submitting the story and annotation. See Also: 'Blogosphere' to reach 10 million, almost all dead - report (via The Register)
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents United States--Images New Compilation from FirstGov: State Photo Galleries From the site, The photos and graphics on these pages are generally used to promote travel and tourism to the States. Check each website or contact the site's webmaster for restrictions on use of these photos. Some states prohibit use of these photos for promoting individual, for-profit businesses or for resale. Others require appropriate photo credits to be used. Links for 41 of the 50 states are available. Did You Know: In August, FirstGov released a compilation of Federal Government image sources. Many of these images are in the public domain and can be "reproduced without permission or fee". Saturday, October 04, 2003
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents Science Education--K-12--Multimedia Database Source: WGBH New Multimedia Database For K-12 Educators Now Available Teachers Domain is a brand new digital library and offers "multimedia resources for the classroom and professional development." Access is free but you will need to complete a simple registration form. The site contains both multimedia content and lesson plans. According to the site, "each resource is tailored to specific grade levels and correlated to national and state standards." Multimedia content includes video, audio, images, and interactive content. Presently, over 150 video clips are available with content coming from programs like Nova, A Science Odyssey, and Zoom. Funding for Teachers Domain comes from an NSF grant. This resource is also accessible via The National Science Digital Library. See Also: Did you Know? PBS also offers several searchable video databases of video content. In many cases you can keyword search the video and then view the segment on your computer monitor. This ResourceShelf post from July contains direct links to many of them.
Public Libraries Source: AP "Library Wants to Put Chips in Books" From the article, A civil liberties watchdog group [EPIC] is expressing concern over the San Francisco Public Library's plans to track books by inserting computer chips into each tome. Library officials approved a plan Thursday to install tiny radio frequency identification chips, known as RFIDs, into the roughly 2 million books, CDs and audiovisual materials patrons can borrow. The system still needs funding and wouldn't be ready until at least 2005. The article mentions that both the Santa Clara Public Library and Seattle Public Library are in the process of installing RFID systems. I think it's interesting maybe even ironic that after the library world's strong defense of the patron record privacy (especially in the past few months) that this type of story is now making the rounds. Thanks to LISNEWS for the tip. See Also: EPIC, the watchdog group, quoted in the article offers a page with RFID info. See Also: RFID Glossary (via RFID Journal)
Internet Domains Source: News.Com Verisign Ends Site Finder Service From the article, VeriSign, the administrator of the .com and .net domains, made plans to shut down its new Site Finder service Friday, after the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers ordered the company to undo controversial changes...Site Finder, introduced Sept. 15, includes a "wildcard" feature that redirects all misspelled or unassigned .com and .net domain names to a search page owned by VeriSign. Before that, requests for nonexistent, reserved or inactive domain names would generate an error message. See Also: Full-Text of Letter Sent to Verisign Demanding the Site Finder Cease See Also: Advisory About Site Finder
Web Search Source: News.Com "Diller wants Google real estate", More on Local Search From the article, During this week's Goldman Sachs conference in New York, Diller said InterActiveCorp aims to partner with every major Internet operator for its various services, which include personals site Match.com; the CitySearch family of local guides; travel services Expedia, Hotwire and Hotels.com; and mortgage-referral service LendingTree. InterActiveCorp already works with Microsoft's MSN and Yahoo to drive traffic to some of these Web properties. But now, it wants help from Google, one of the most popular destinations on the Web for finding information. "Google and our companies are in continuing conversation about different ways we could maybe join in participation in--local search, things like that," Diller said during a speech at the conference Tuesday. Friday, October 03, 2003
Online Information Source: Searcher Interviews with Two Online Pioneers: Carlos Cuadra and Roger Summit Susanne Bjørner and Stephanie C. Ardito continue their "Online Before the Internet: Early Pioneers Tell Their Stories" series of interviews in the latest issue of Searcher. This month parts 3 and 4 of their conversation with Dr. Carlos A. Cuadra, originator and champion of ORBIT Search Service and Dr. Roger K. Summit developer of the system used to power Dialog. See Also: This ResourceShelf Post From June, 2003 Contains Additional Material About Online Pioneers
Web Search Source: Business Week "Web Searches: The Fix Is In" Business Week alleges that paid inclusion (not the same as sponsored links) get a boost in relevance from engines that have these types of programs. One point this article DOES NOT MAKE (it should have) is that although Google does NOT offer paid inclusion thousands of people reverse engineer it and every other web engine for that matter to improve their own or their clients' ranking on a search results page. As many of you know, this is called search engine optimization. Is it good or bad? It's not for me to say. It's simply the way it works. This is why all searchers should be aware that the optimization industry and these techniques are out there and that it also affects what you see on a search results pacge with all engines including Google. The article includes a chart that tries to explain the difference between "pure search", "paid placement", and "paid inclusion." The "pure search" section makes no mention of what I just explained. It should. The bottom line is that results from all engines are truly not pure. This is yet another reason for all searchers to become more adept at their searching techniques and also take advantage of focused, niche, and/or targeted web search tools.
Professional Reading Shelf (2 Items) Information Science Source: ASIST The October/November Issue of the Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology is Now Online Articles include: + Copyright's Dilemma Today: Fair Use or Unfair Constraints?' Part 1: The Battle Over File Sharing + Citation Analysis and Research Assessment in the United Kingdom -- Dictionaries The September Issue of OED (Oxford English Dictionary News) is Online Articles include: + "Exotic words in the OED" + "Interesting antedatings"
Public Libraries--California Source: American Libraries California Survey Reveals FBI Visited 16 Libraries From the article, "A statewide survey conducted this summer by the California Library Association reveals that since September 11, 2001, FBI agents have formally contacted 14 libraries with requests for patron-record information."
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents (3 Items) Health--United States--Statistics Source: NCHS New Edition Released Today, Full-Text Report, Health, United States, 2003 -- Documents in the News Weapons of Mass Destruction Full-Text, Statement By David Kay On The Interim Progress Report On The Activities Of The Iraq Survey Group (Isg) Includes several images. Presented to House Permanent Select Committee On Intelligence, The House Committee On Appropriations, Subcommittee On Defense, And The Senate Select Committee On Intelligence -- Transportation--Statistics--United States Source: NTSB Just Released, Transportation Fatalities in the United States, 2002 Includes link to table/chart. Thursday, October 02, 2003
Resource of the Week With so many new databases scattered throughout the site, we're going to limit "Resource of the Week" to just one item. Although ResourceShelf posted news about SMEALSearch (don't miss it) yesterday , this new resource is also worthy of ROTW placement. ----- RLG's New Web-Based Union Catalog, Holdings from Many Research Libraries, Debuts on the Web First things first...ResourceShelf has tracked the development of the RLG's RedLightGreen union catalog/database with a post over the past couple of years. Now, it's available for public use. Details follow. Many thanks to ResourceShelf friend, David Dillard, for letting us know that RedLightGreen is ready for use. -- RLG's RedLightGreen (formerly known as the Union Catalog Project) is now online. According to RLG Program Officer, Merrilee Proffitt, the database went live on September 22nd when word went out to four of RLG's 160 member institutions who are piloting the service. In the past two weeks via various RLG discussion lists word has begun to circulate about the RedLightGreen's availability. -- This union catalog searches bibliographic records from RLG's member libraries, archives, and museums around the world. RedLightGreen is home to over 130 million bibliographic records (42 million titles). You can learn more about the development of this product by accessing background on the RLG web site. -- RedLightGreen was developed with the undergraduate student in mind. However, that doesn't mean it's not of use to many other types of researchers. It will remain available to the public at no charge for at least the next year. I'm sure those of you who watch the library database world closely will be closely watching this new product. -- Ok, that's the basic info but you need to check it out for yourself. Here are a few points before starting your own demo. RLG just released this resource so be ready for tweaks and changes. - * The basic interface is a simple search box, what a student is used to seeing from any web engine. Actually the design of the entire interface looks very similar to popular web engines. This is no surprise. At the moment Boolean connectors cannot be used. * An advanced interface is available allowing you to limit your search using one of 7 fields and by language at the moment. At the moment you can only search one field. * Results pages are clear and straightforward. The right side lists hits (you can change the number returned on a page), title info, and star "ratings" of relevance and availability. * The left side of a results list allows you to narrow your search (for example you can choose a better or a more focused subject heading, limit to an author, or limit by language) by simply pointing and clicking. * Individual entries contain plenty of info. First, you'll get basic bibliographic info, a full entry (with subject headings) is just a click away. * Searching on different subject that is associated with the material is a click away, right side of page. * In addition to bibliographic material RedLightGreen also runs a search for the title using the Amazon.Com database and Google. Url's are not provided and in many cases the only thing you'll find are (via Google) are additional links to buy the book. * A button (upper right) allows you to determine where the material is held. After selecting it for the first time you can set a cookie for the libraries most interested in. * Searches for fiction material will also query the Online Books Page database at the University of Pennsylvania to see if a full-text copy is available on the web. * Formatting a citation for a bibliography is very easy and can be completed directly from the database. According to RLG, this was a feature that was at the top of the list of services that undergraduate students wanted to have available. Simply click the format citation button (right side of page) a select the style required. MLA, Chicago, Turabian, and APA are available. You will need to register (free) to use this service. -- A Couple of Comments: I also hope that if RedLightGreen continues to add "open web" content to records they look to databases other than Google. I think adding links from the "Resources" section at Teoma would be very useful as would direct links to specialized searchable databases (see the SMEALSearch post below) if they are related to the search.
Web Search Another Source for Cached Pages On his new blog, Michael Fagan, of FaganFinder fame mentions a new engine that also provides cached pages. It's called "Family Source" and provides access to a small database of about 1 million "family friendly" web pages. The criteria that Family Source uses to determines what is and is not family friendly is not provided. I'll see what else I can find out. The primary reason I'm mentioning this source is that it offers cached pages. Btw, in terms of layout, wording, advanced search page, etc. Family Search is very, similar to Google. See Also: And since we're mentioning Google today, Greg Notess offers some info about how Google handles the ampersand and the underscore.
Intelligence Source: Central Intelligence Agency New Issue, Studies in Intelligence (Unclassified) Two articles of note: + "Intelligence in the Internet Era" + "Developing a Taxonomy of Intelligence Analysis Variables"
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents (5 Items) Academic Conferences--Calendar Conference Alerts Search/browse academic conference information. Global in scope. Advanced search interface allows you to limit by date and location. -- Ready Reference--Timelines Source: GESource Updated, Geography and Environment Timeline Search/browse, "...significant dates and events that have shaped the geographical world, from the formation of the Earth to the present day. This section is divided into a number of key areas. " -- Television--Market Sizes--Lists & Rankings Source: Nielsen Media Research Nielsen Media Research Local Universe Estimates (U.S.) This list was updated in September, 2003. See Also: Universe Estimates for Canada are Also Available -- Population--United States--Statistics Source: U.S. Census Full-Text Report, Moving to America — Moving to Homeownership: 1994-2002 Summary ||| Direct to Full-Text -- Food Service--Lists & Rankings Source: QSR (Quality and Speed for Restaurant Success) Online The Best Drive-Thru in America '03 The best drive-thru chain restaurants, ranked by speed, order accuracy, menu board appearance and speaker clarity. See also: What the Numbers Tell Us See Also Survey Methodology Wednesday, October 01, 2003
Business Research New Search Engine Focused on Business Documents is Now Available on the Web For several years I've been an admirer and frequent user of ResearchIndex/CiteSeer, a focused or "niche" web engine that retrieves full-text articles and other documents in the information technology, computer science, and telecommunications disciplines. It not only offers links to the material but also provides information (if available) as to other authors who have cited the paper in their bibliography. To my knowledge, CiteSeer/ResearchIndex was the first engine, using open web content, that allowed for citation searching. CiteSeer was developed at NEC Research. A member of the team at NEC that developed the engine was Lee Giles. Giles is now a professor at Penn St. University and in the past year introduced a search tool with many of the features available from ResearchIndex called eBizSearch. This "niche" tool focuses on e-business content. -- Today, Dr. Giles and his team at Penn St. have introduced SMEALSearch . This niche engine (named after the business school at Penn St.) focuses on, "academic articles as well as commercially produced articles and reports that address any branch of Business." The following comes from the SMEALSearch engine's web site. -- SMEALSearch is the only search engine focused on Business that can: - automatically gather and index specific research information such as author, title, abstract, and citations. - perform key-word searches on the full content of all documents selected. - conduct citation searches to identify the most influential articles. - accept article submissions from users, ensuring the most complete and current database in the Business world. The search engine crawls websites of universities, commercial organizations, research institutes and government departments to retrieve academic articles, working papers, white papers, consulting reports, magazine articles, and published statistics and facts. -- In July I posted highlights/links from a published interview with Dr. Giles. His work is not only of the highest quality but also illustrates that specialized engines or has he calls them "niche" engines will play an important role now and in the future. In a news release Giles says, "General-purpose search engines can only carry researchers so far," said Lee Giles, holder of the David Reese Professorship in Penn State's School of Information Sciences and Technology and creator of the technology on which SmealSearch is based. "In the future, we predict the evolution of increasing numbers of powerful niche search engines that address specific needs of specific audiences." Kudos Dr. Giles and keep up the great work. Thanks to P.W. for the news tip. See Also: The Work of Lee Giles (7/2003) Btw: Other members of the NEC Research team included Dr. Gary Flake (now at Overture Research) and Dr. Steve Lawrence (now at Google).
Open Access Movement Scholarly Publishing Source: Wellcome Trust Released Today, UK's Wellcome Trust Publishes, "An Economic Analysis of Scientific Research Publishing" From the summary, This report [41 pages pdf] provides a comprehensive analysis of an industry that generates some £22 billion annually...The report has been published to support constructive dialogue between key players in the scientific publishing field - publishers, researchers, academic institutions and funders. The ultimate aim of this dialogue would be to develop a publishing system that meets the needs of all groups, and best promotes the public good of scientific work - that is, disseminates research outputs to all who have an interest in them. Along with the report, the Wellcome Trust has also released a position statement in support of open access publishing. Thanks to P.S. for the news tip. See Also: Report Summary/News Release See Also: "Wellcome support for open access" (via The Scientist)
Database Trials Geoscience During the Month of October, Ovid is Offering Free Trial Access to GeoRef The latest offering from Ovid's Database of the Month program. From the site, GeoRef [from the American Geological Institute] contains more than 2.4 million references to geoscience journal articles, books, maps, conference papers, reports and theses, covering the geology of North America from 1785 to the present, and the geology of the rest of the world from 1933 to the present. It includes references to all publications of the U.S. Geological Survey as well as masters' theses and doctoral dissertations from U.S. and Canadian universities. To maintain the database, GeoRef regularly scans more than 3,500 journals in 40 languages as well as new books, maps, and reports. Each month between 6,000 and 7,000 new references are added to the database.
United States Government Printing Office GPO Makes Searchable/Browsable Knowledge Base Available of Help Desk Type Questions Available It's new on the GPO "Help" page. Keyword search or browse the database of ask/answered questions by category. Categories include GPO Access, Online Bookstore, and Federal Depository Libraries. Numerous sub-categories can help narrow your browsing. Here's an example of what answers from the knowledge base look like. It's a question about finding Congressional district maps. The knowledge base also provides an interface to submit questions to the GPO. The database will be updated on a very regular basis.
Web Search--Google DMCA Source: Chilling Effects Fourth and Fifth DMCA Requests from Sharman Network (KaZaA) to Google, CNET Complains to Google About Cached Material Links to DMCA requests 3, 4, and 5 from Sharman to Google. On 8/28 (just posted on Chilling Effects), CNET Networks contacted Google about copywritten material being available in the Google cache. It appears Google has removed these links. Getty Images has also filed a complaint with Google. In this case it's over an image appearing on a blog hosted by Blogspot. See Also: Other DMCA Requests to Google Posted on ResourceShelf #A ||| #B ||| #C ||| #D
Domain Names Source: IDG Net ICANN Investigates Site Finder From the article, ICANN's Security and Stability Advisory Committee is calling for public comments and reports on Site Finder and has scheduled a "fact-gathering meeting" for October 7 in Washington, D.C., ICANN said. The committee plans later to issue a report on the effects of Site Finder on the stability of the Internet. "VeriSign introduced its wild card service, and although I am told there was some kind of advance notice, it came upon the world as a surprise and after some hours it became clear that it is a pretty big deal," said Steve Crocker, chairman of ICANN's Security and Stability Advisory Committee. "The preliminary evidence suggests Site Finder has impacted the stability of the Internet." See Also: Search Engine Developer Matt Wells Explains How Versign's Site Finder Has Impacted Gigablast's Crawling
Professional Reading Shelf (3 Items) Health Information on the Web Source: Health Improvement Institute and Consumer WebWatch (Consumers Union) New, Full-Text, A Report on the Evaluation of Criteria Sets for Assessing Health Web Sites -- Online Research Source: Searcher NET EFFECTS: How Librarians Can Manage the Unintended Consequences of the Internet This article, a very interesting read, excerpts material from an upcoming book with the same title by Internet and library guru Marylaine Block. Congrats Marylaine! -- Federated Searching Source: Library Journal "Trumping Google? Metasearching's Promise"
Citation Analysis--Lists & Rankings Scholarly Publishing Source: Institute for Scientific Information • Language & Linguistics: Most Prolific U.S. Universities, 1998-2002 • Science in South Africa, 1998-2002 See Also: The Institute for Scientific Information Posts Its Nobel Laureate Predictions
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents Technology Companies--United States--Lists & Rankings Source: Deloitte & Touche Fastest-Growing Technology Companies (Various Parts of U.S.) 1) 50 Fastest-Growing Technology Companies in New England 2) Fastest-Growing Technology Company In North Carolina 3) Fastest-Growing Technology Companies in Texas See Also: This database provides lists from all regions of the U.S. as well as offering to search by company. In some cases rankings are available back five or six years.
Library Briefs (2 Items) Layoffs--Alaska Source: Anchorage Daily News Library Layoffs in Anchorage: 22 staffers lose their jobs From the article, "The layoffs, targeting primarily college-educated, higher paid professionals, would save the city $1.25 million next year out of an annual library budget of $6.5 million, Begich told the gathering in the Anchorage Assembly chambers. There will also be cuts to library programs. But no branch library will close, operating hours will stay the same, and the library will buy new books and other materials at the current rate, said [Mayor Mark] Begich and municipal librarian Art Weeks." -- Library Schools--Clark Atlanta University Source: Atlanta Journal Constitution "CAU supporters rally to save library school" From the article, A group of angry librarians gathered Monday to protest the possible closing of Clark Atlanta University's school of library and information studies -- the only accredited library education program in the state." x |
