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Monday, May 31, 2004
Search Engines--Google Source: The Scotsman Zero tolerance as Googol plans to take Google to court From the article: "A dispute over a very large number of zeroes is threatening to distract attention from a $2.7 billion stock sale by the internet search engine Google. News of the deal has brought a threat of legal action from the family of Professor Edward Kasner, who invented the word "googol" in the 1930s to describe a very big number. He wrote about the concept in a 1940 book, describing a googol as the number one followed by a hundred zeroes. Kasner's great-niece, Peri Fleisher, now insists that the US-based company has gained financially at the expense of the family. She said: "If we do have a legal right, we're certainly going to exercise that. And now is the time." However, experts in intellectual property said that bringing a successful legal action would be problematic. "It would be an uphill struggle to try to assert any legitimate claim," said David Gourlay, a senior associate at the Dundas and Wilson Technology Group."
Professional Reading Shelf Archives Source: Library and Archives Canada Just Released, Full Text Report, Evaluation of the Canadian Archival Information Network (CAIN)
Search Engines - Ask Jeeves Another Search Shortcut at Jeeves It seems that there is yet another shortcut at Jeeves (part of their Smart Search program) among the many that have been mentioned in the past. If you enter a stock symbol you get the latest prices. See Also: A Complete List of Ask Jeeves Smart Search Options
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents Health Information New/Updated Topic Pages/Compilations from MEDLINEplus + Muscular dystrophy, Duchenne and Becker types + Primary pulmonary hypertension -- Intellectual Property Source: Parliamentary Library, Australia New Report, Full Text, Intellectual property rights and the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement -- Government Regulation--United States Source: AEI-Brookings Joint Center Is Regulation Good For You? "Will all federal regulations soon pass a benefit-cost test? If the OMB's 2003 report is any indicator, the answer may be yes--at least for some categories of regulations.... We argue that OMB's numbers are plausible, given the methodology that OMB uses. Whether they are reasonable is less clear." Full Report (PDF; 444 KB) Sunday, May 30, 2004
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents Development Source: UCTAD Just Released, Full Text, Least Developed Countries Report 2004 The report includes a 49-page statistical annex. -- Data Mining--United States Source: GAO New Report, Full Text, Data Mining: Federal Efforts Cover a Wide Range of Uses Summary ||| Direct to Full Text -- Hurricanes Source: Colorado State University Tropical Meteorology Project 2004 Atlantic Seasonal Hurricane Forecast "The recent upturn in Atlantic basin hurricane activity which began in 1995 is expected to continue in 2004. We anticipate an above-average number of Atlantic basin tropical cyclones and an above-average probability of U.S. hurricane landfall." Annual forecast by Dr. William Gray. -- Beaches--United States Source: Dr. Stephen P. Leatherman, Florida International University America's Best Beaches 2004 Annual list by "Dr. Beach." Photos of the top ten are available for download.
Professional Reading Shelf Libraries and Librarians Source: Council on Library and Information Resources The May/June Issue of CLIR Notes is Now Online Articles includes: + Library Periodicals Expenses: Comparison of Nonsubscription Costs of Print and Electronic Formats on a Life-Cycle Basis + A New Blueprint for the Library? -- Libraries Source: The Daily Star (Bangladesh) Libraries in Search of a Future "As the non-existence of a viable public library movement shows, Bangladesh faces formidable or -- perhaps more accurately -- overwhelming challenges to providing adequate library services. Consider that, there is no automation, no climate controls, no security procedures to protect against the theft of library materials, no adequate salaries to attract quality recruits to the library profession, no electronic databases and no adequate funding. In short, Bangladesh has one of the world's most underdeveloped library systems." Saturday, May 29, 2004
RSS Rocket News Updates Its RSS Reader with New Features Rocket launched their Java based RSS reader a couple of months ago. Here's our post from 3/9/04. Yesterday, the Canadian company announced a couple of new features. What's New + Rocket RSS Channl Directory - The company has developed a Directory of RSS Channels and has been busy categorizing and organizing thousands of RSS & Atom newsfeeds. Using the Rocket RSS Channels Directory is simple - click on the Channels button on the top toolbar and navigate through the categories to find & add interesting feeds to your account. + Enhanced Channel Search Functionality - You can also Search for RSS feeds using the Rocket RSS Reader. Click on the Search button on the top toolbar and enter your search terms in the text box to find RSS channels (from the 70,000+ sources in the database) that include your search terms in the channel name, channel URL or channel description. + Create RocketNews RSS Channels - Click on the Create button on the top toolbar to build your own RSS Channel with search results from the award-winning RocketNews current news search engine. Btw, the Rocket News database now aggregates (and makes searchable) content from more than 11,000 sources. Google News searches about 4500 sources. Yahoo News about 7000.
Professional Reading Shelf Fugitive Documents? Source: Houston Business Journal Desert Paper Trail Leads to Shell Oil File this one under how NOT to archive your documents.... "A buried 'treasure' could come back to haunt Houston-based Shell Oil. A total of 190 boxes full of documents have been dug up in the New Mexico desert near a pipeline formerly owned by a Shell subsidiary, the Texas-New Mexico Pipeline Co. The documents apparently pertain to operation of the pipeline and to environmental damage caused by an oil spill in the early 1990s." -- Libraries Wi-Fi--Open Access Source: Wi-Fi Planet An Open Source Wi-Fi Roundup "(T)here are a number of freely available tools that will enable you to create and manage a public access hotspot. There are three projects in particular that are under community development and in use today that are deserving of mention: Sesame Wi-Fi, ZoneCD from Public IP and the Less Networks Hotspots Server (popularized by the Austin Wireless City Project in Texas)."
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents Military Intelligence--United States Source: U.S. Army (via FAS/Secrecy News) Full Text, Just Released (Unclassified), U.S. Army Field Manual on Intelligence Secrecy News (compiled and edited by Steven Aftergood), has obtained a copy of this new document. From his newsletter, "The U.S. Army has issued a new Field Manual on intelligence that sets forth in detail the roles and functions of intelligence in Army and joint military operations. The new Field Manual (FM) 2-0 is 'the Army's keystone document for military intelligence doctrine.' With conceptual rigor, the manual proceeds from "the fundamentals of intelligence operations" to 'intelligence considerations in strategic readiness" and beyond.'" The document is a 3.2MB PDF; 211 pages. -- U.S. Army--Iraq Source: Center for Army Lessons Learned Full Text, Just Released, On Point: The United States Army in Operation Iraqi Freedom "On Point tells the compelling story of America's Army in OIF, and is of interest to a broad audience. However, it aims at a specific audience -- soldiers and defense professionals. Within the Army, On Point has two specific goals: to educate soldiers on the conduct of combat operations in OIF and to suggest some preliminary implications for the Army's continued transformation." Friday, May 28, 2004
Web Search--Yahoo Even More Yahoo! Search Shortcuts They keep coming! You can find a complete list here and a few comments in our 4/21/04 post. + Area Codes: "To find the area code for a city or see what cities are within an area code, search on the area code or city name and 'area code.'" Example: area code seattle) + Calculator: "Use Yahoo! Search to do basic mathematical calculations. You can add (+), subtract (-), multiply (*) and divide (/)." Example: 4*(12-6/3) + Exchange Rates: "To find the exchange rate for a unit of currency or convert one currency to another, search on "convert" and the currency or currencies you would like to convert." Example: convert yen dollar + Time Zones: "To get the current time or determine the time zone for a location search on 'time' or 'time zone' and the location." Example: time in paris + Weights and Measures: "To convert any number of metric or Imperial/English units in whole or decimal form, search on 'convert' and the units you would like to convert. Use * to indicate degrees." Example: convert miles to km + Zip Codes: "To find the area code for a city or see what cities are within a zip code, search on the city name and 'zip code.'" Example: zip code austin See: Yahoo! Search Shortcuts Cheat Sheet See Also: Help Using the Yahoo Calculator and while we're on the Yahoo! Beat... ResearchBuzz Has Info on Yahoo's Linkdomain: Syntax
Search Engines Source: BBC News Search Business Turns Serious From the article: "Although the web has given the person in the street access to more information than ever before and Google has made it easy to search through that vast pile to find what you want, typically business users need even more. So argues Clare Hart, boss of search firm Factiva which was formed in 1999 from Dow Jones Interactive and Reuters Business Briefing. When you do a search you're not interested in quantity," said Ms Hart, "you want relevant research and quick access to relevant results. I think people get very frustrated by Google results," she said. "The lack of quality results and the fact that they have to register with more and more websites." A great story for the librarians to mention to their patrons who think that Research = Google.
Professional Reading Shelf Books Source: BBC News Books Get Interactive Makeover "New Zealand researchers have developed a way to overlay detailed animations and images on textbooks, children's picture books and any other title that uses illustrations." -- Information Source: internetnews.com Report: 25% of Critical Data is Flawed "Many major companies are making crucial business decisions based on flawed data, according to a new study from Gartner Inc. More than 25 percent of critical data within Fortune 1,000 companies is incomplete and inaccurate, say analysts from Gartner, a major industry research firm based in Stamford, Conn. Although many executives aren't even aware that they're working with flawed data, the ones that do often reach for the wrong technology to fix the situation, reports Ted Friedman, principal analyst for Gartner." -- Information Systems Source: IMS Global Learning Consortium and the Coalition for Networked Information New Report (White Paper), Just Released: Interoperability between Library Information Services and Learning Environments - Bridging the Gaps -- Digitization Projects--Canada Source: Heritage Canada Full Text, Virtual Museum of Canada: The Next Generation A paper by Steve Dietz, Howard Besser, Ann Borda and Kati Gerber (with Pierre Lévy). "This Study Paper was produced in the context of the redevelopment of the Virtual Museum of Canada (VMC). The VMC has been a great success since its launch in March 2001. Since then, it has evolved in response to information technologies and the needs of the Network?s members. In order to help us make choices and prepare the ground for further innovation, a group of internal and external experts was mandated to produce a study paper that would stimulate exchanges and debates within the museum and heritage community."
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents Computer Security Source: CSO and CERT Just Released, 2004 E-CRIME Watch Survey Summary ||| Direct to Full Text -- Health Information--Australia Source: Parliamentary Library, Australia New Report, Healthy measures - key health statistics Thursday, May 27, 2004
Resources of the Week Three selections this week. 1) Employment--United States Source: Wall Street Journal CareerJournal.com: Salary and Hiring Information As far as juicy information goes, salary data is among the juiciest. Who makes what? How do you stack up against your peers? If you relocate to a city in a different part of the country, can you expect to earn what you earn now? What's a good ballpark figure to hold in your head when you've been called back for that second interview? Or maybe you need hard data to prove to your boss that you are, in fact, underpaid. There's a real good chance you'll find just the numbers you need on this page, specifically, from the scroll menu in the blue box at the top of the right column. Let's choose...uh, Librarians. Highlight it and click "GO" at the bottom of the box. In the center column, up pops an article about hiring trends for corporate librarians. Beneath the blue box on the right, you'll see another blue box labeled "Salary Tables." Here's the good stuff, folks. For Librarians, you'll find links to five different salary tables -- Library Department Heads, Librarians by Experience, Top Research Librarians, Librarians at Nonprofits in the Washington, D.C., Metro Area, and the decidedly generic...Librarians. For each table, the source/data is indicated in italics at the bottom. Go ahead...satisfy your curiosity now. Other fishing holes for salary data: + Bureau of Labor Statistics: Weekly Earnings Data (See especially the table Median weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers by detailed occupation and sex.) + GovExec.com: Salary and Benefits (federal employee pay schedules, etc.) + JobStar: Salary Info Index + Occupational Outlook Handbook + Portico's collection of salary guides (resources for "advancement professionals") + Salary Guides and Guidance (The Riley Guide) + Salary.com -- 2) Economics Source: Economic History Association EH.Net "EH.Net operates the Economic History Services fileserver and several electronic discussion lists to provide resources and promote communication among scholars in economic history and related fields." What's here: + Abstracts in Economic History: "AEH is a service designed to assist economic historians in sharing information about their work. Abstracts are welcome for all types of work in the field, including dissertations, working papers, conference presentations, journal articles, and contributions to anthologies." + Ask the Professor: "Professors who have done research in Economic History are volunteering to assist others interested in learning more about the field." Searchable archive of previous questions and answers. + Book Reviews + Course Syllabi + Database Directory: "EH.Net provides an on-line location for researchers in economic history to make their data series available to other professionals and interested scholars. Several data series have been given to EH.Net and are available as downloadable files, while many other titles may be accessed through our Database Registry." + Economic History in the Popular Press: Selected recent articles of interest. + Encyclopedia: "EH.Net Encyclopedia of Economic and Business History is designed to provide students and laymen with high quality reference articles in the field. Articles for the Online Encyclopedia are written by experts, screened by a group of authorities, and carefully edited." + How Much Is That?: "Have you ever wondered what the value of a dollar was in 1895? Or what the GDP was in 1929? Here is a place where you can ask questions of comparative value covering purchasing power, exchange rates, and other variables between the past and today." Includes data for the UK, gold prices, "the relative cost of unskilled labor," some exchange rates. + Membership Directory: "(C)ontains a complete list of the members of the Business History Conference, The Cliometric Society, and the Economic History Association." + Related Websites: "The materials listed here are primarily WWW sites with information of use to economic historians. Because there is presently a great deal more on the Internet in economics than in history, that discipline is more heavily represented, but over time the distribution will even out." -- 3) Naval Studies NOSI: Naval Open Source Intelligence "NOSI is a digital library of world naval operational news curated from open source intelligence. Links to naval operational news stories are posted daily after scanning over 100 international news sources...NOSI is curated by Michael P. D'Alessandro, M.D. Dr. D'Alessandro has been a member of the U.S. Naval Institute since 1981.... Dr. D'Alessandro's research is in the field of digital libraries; he established the Virtual Hospital digital health sciences library as the 250th Web site on the Internet in 1993." See Also: GlobalSecurity.org Another excellent source of open source security, intelligence, and related material.
Multimedia Search New Resource: CampaignSearch.com We've mentioned many multimedia search tools on ResourceShelf. Today, in a News.com article, word of a new one. Say hello to CampaignSearch.com. This site uses voice recognition technology from StreamSage. From the site, "CampaignSearch.com has gathered campaign-related video and audio files from a number of Web sites: George Bush's and John Kerry's campaign Web sites, C-SPAN, PBS, NPR and more. CampaignSearch.com uses complex spoken-language-analysis software created by StreamSage to automatically identify the sections of audio/video news and speeches that are relevant to a voter's interests." More info about the technology here. Here are some other multimedia search tools that we've featured on ResourceShelf. + Virage demos from PBS, keyword search segments from several PBS programs + Speechbot, keyword search (voice recognition technology) over 17,000 hours of radio programming + NPR Audio Archives Search, keyword search abstracts of program segments back to 1996 + ShadowTV.Com, fee-based, keyword search (real-time) major news networks + The Feedroom Browse or search (abstracts), and view news segments from various television stations.
Professional Reading (and Viewing) Shelf Information Architecture Usability Source: The Library of Congress (Video Lecture) Krug and Rosenfeld on loc.gov: An Interactive Evaluation From the site, "Usability guru Steve Krug and information architecture expert Lou Rosenfeld bring their expertise to bear as they perform a live review of the Library of Congress Web site. The presentation runs 101 minutes. This Luminary Lecture took place on May 4, 2004. See Also: Direct to Video -- Digital Preservation Source: GCN Library starts digital preservation research program From the article, "The Library of Congress is launching a research program to develop digital preservation technologies, announced William LeFurgy, digital project manager for the Library of Congress. The Digital Archiving and Long Term Preservation Research Program will ultimately provide new tools for the Library of Congress? $175 million National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program, a congressionally mandated initiative to preserve the rapidly increasing number of culturally significant digital materials. The National Science Foundation will administer the program." -- Government Documents--United States Source: The Memory Hole Government Documents Pulled Out of Public Circulation Russ Kick of the The Memory Hole comments and offers a list.
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents National World War II Memorial--United States--Databases Registry Database Available on the National World War II Memorial Web Site The National World War II Memorial will be dedicated in Washington, DC, on Saturday. The web site contains construction facts, images, and design info. It also contains an online database. From the site, ""he Registry combines four distinct databases that can be searched for names of those whose service and sacrifice helped win the Second World War. The Registry includes the names of Americans who are: + Buried in American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC) overseas military cemeteries + Memorialized on ABMC Tablets of the Missing + Listed on official War and Navy Department Killed in Service rosters now held by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) + Honored by public enrollment in the Registry of Remembrances." Search by name and State/Territory. An advanced interface is also available. -- United Nations--Directories Official Website Locator for the UN System of Organizations "This site serves as a portal to web sites of the United Nations, its funds and programmes, and specialized agencies. It also includes links to key projects and initiatives and to various joint programmes of the UN System." Browse alphabetically or click the "Thematic Index" link in the navigation bar on the left-hand side to see a dropdown menu that allows you to browse sites by subject area. Fairly straightforward way of navigating the sometimes byzantine collection of UN websites. See also: United Nations System Organization Chart (PDF; 96 KB) -- Playwrights eO'Neill.com "An electronic Eugene O'Neill Archive," which offers: + Audio Archive: "Complete broadcasts of O'Neill's plays in RealAudio format" + Library: "Online texts, including complete plays, Travis Bogard's Contour in Time, an archive of essays by O'Neill scholars, and The Eugene O'Neill Newsletter" + Production Archive: "Artifacts from theatrical, film, television, and radio productions of O'Neill's plays, including programs, cast listings, photographs, reviews, and more" + Reference Catalog: Annotated bibliography "of resources relating to O'Neill and the theatre" Also includes reviews of productions of O'Neill's plays, curriculum materials, a theatre guide (upcoming productions of O'Neill's plays around the world), online discussion forum, links to related resources. Site is keyword searchable.
Web Search--Yahoo! Source: CNET Yahoo Embraces Antispyware From the article: "Yahoo on Thursday is expected to release an upgrade for its downloadable toolbar to help people detect and remove spyware, or malicious files, on their PCs. For now, the Web portal will be testing the technology, which has been supplied by antispyware company PestPatrol. It will offer the toolbar upgrade only to a select number of people at beta.toolbar.yahoo.com, Yahoo spokeswoman Stephanie Iwamasa said. The software can perform a high-level scan of files on a PC to detect viruses or other applications that were installed surreptitiously and are used to spy on computer behavior." See Also - Yahoo Press Release via Business Wire See Also - Yahoo Antispyware Community (NEW)
Web Search--Microsoft Source: AP Microsoft turns its might to growing field of search From the article, "Microsoft Corp. is looking beyond Internet searches, heading into its battle with Google Inc. with technology designed to allow people to scour their e-mails, personal computers and even hefty databases for information...The search system will give consumers 'an end-to-end system for searching across any data type,' Yusuf Mehdi, head of Microsoft's MSN division, told analysts at a Goldman Sachs Internet conference Wednesday in Las Vegas. The technology is designed as a major search improvement for users trying to grapple with an increasing amount of digital information, offering a single hunting system instead of several different search engines, file management systems or other tools." See Also: Another Recent AP Article About MS Search See Also: News.Com Interview with Yusuf Mehdi Wednesday, May 26, 2004
Web Search--Google Useful? Interesting? Fun? Another List of "Recently Registered" Google-Based Domain Names Domain name squatting with names that include the name Google continues to be a popular activity. This is the third compilation and contains more than 250 "recently registered" domain names. Links to the first two lists are included on the page.
Professional Reading (and Listening) Shelf Data Mining Source: The Kojo Nnamdi Show/WAMU Radio Program Discusses Data Mining (RealAudio) From the description, "Data mining searches large databases for unexpected patterns of data - and it's used by everyone from Amazon to political campaigns to government and law resources. But some say the technology crosses the lines of public versus private information." Guests: + Usama Fayyad, Founder and president, DMX Group, a business and technology consulting group + Lee Strickland, Visiting Professor and Director, Center for Information Policy, University of Maryland, College Park + Nick Gillespie, Editor-in-Chief, Reason magazine + Angelique Waller, artist, author "Data Mining the Amazon" The program was broadcast on WAMU, a public radio station in Washington, DC, and runs about one hour. -- Scholarly Communication Source: C&RL News New Article, Information Access Alliance: Challenging anticompetitive behavior in academic publishing This intro to the IAA was written by Mary M. Case, Director of the Office of Scholarly Communication at the Association of Research Libraries.
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents Women--United States Source: Harvard University Library Open Collections Program Women Working, 1870-1930 "The Open Collections Program has chosen the subject Women Working from 1870 to 1930 as its first topic to demonstrate the feasibility of bringing together books, manuscripts, and images from across the Harvard Libraries and Museums and integrating them into a digital collection using the Web as a primary access tool." + Browse by topic. + Browse by dates and events + Search full text. -- U.S. Military Source: U.S. DoD Office of Force Transformation New, Full-Text Report, National Military Strategy of the United States of America 2004 (PDF; 460 KB) From Richard B. Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: "The 'National Military Strategy' conveys my message to the Joint Force on the strategic direction the Armed Forces of the United States should follow to support the National Security and Defense Strategies in this time of war. This document describes the ways and means to protect the United States, prevent conflict and surprise attack and prevail against adversaries who threaten our homeland, deployed forces, allies and friends." Focuses on three priorities: Winning the war on terrorism, enhancing joint warfighting and transforming the armed forces for the future. -- United States Census + Census of Population and Housing (1790-2000) See Also: Selected Editions of the Statistical Abstract (1878-2001) See Also: Mini Historical Statistics Files available in pdf or xls formats. -- Environment--United States--Database Source: EPA Updated, UV Index Search by zip code or city name. -- United States--History Presidents--United States Source: National Archives and Records Administration (U.S.) Released Today, National Archives Releases New Materials Related to the Nixon Presidency From the overview, "The National Archives and Records Administration will release approximately 20,000 pages of transcripts of Dr. Henry Kissinger's telephone conversations during his tenure as Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (1969-74) and Secretary of State (1973-74) during the Nixon Administration. These telephone calls, which took place at various locations, were recorded between January 21, 1969-August 8, 1974. The National Archives will also release approximately 7,000 pages of materials from the "White House Central Files: Subject Files," including Pardon Files from 1973; and 1,600 pages of "White House Central Files: Name Files," including a small amount of material relating to John Kerry and Roger Ailes. See Also: Addional Info in this AP Report
Briefly + Solcara and LexisNexis Launch News Monitoring Tool (via ManagingInformation.com) & LexisNexis Expands Presence in China -- -- + Vivisimo Continues Rolling Along with Six New Biopharma Clients The company launched their ClusterMed product at the end of March. -- + 9/11 Panel Chooses Publisher for Report (via NY Times) "[W.W] Norton has announced plans to publish 500,000 copies of the report and sell them for $10 each, which competitors acknowledge is a relatively low retail price for a book expected to be hundreds of pages long. The federal government's printing agency, the Government Printing Office, is expected to sell its own version within several days of the report's release."
Search Engines--Legal Issues Source: Findlaw Why You Can't Sue Google From the column by Julie Hilden: "As Google prepares for its Initial Public Offering, it's worth reflecting on a special advantage the law gives to it, and to other, similar search sites: Such sites are, in effect, immune from much of the liability risk a traditional publisher of news and other factual information faces. For publishers of books, magazines, newspapers and the like, publishing, or even re-publishing, a false statement can trigger defamation liability. But, for reasons I will explain, the same is not true for search sites like Google. Search sites can provide access to information that may be false, without worrying about the risk of a defamation suit. (No wonder, then, that Google's stock may turn out to be valuable; some of the value it will have doubtless comes from this special legal bonus.)" Tuesday, May 25, 2004
Professional Reading Shelf Source: ACM Queue From IR to Search and Beyond This article was written by Ramana Rao, CTO at Inxight Software. He writes, "searching has come a long way since the 60s, but have we only just begun?" See Also: More Search Articles from ACM Queue -- Enterprise Search Source: Intelligent Enterprise/Intelligent Portals Consumer and Enterprise Search: Not an Exact Match
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents Privacy--United States Source: The Technology and Privacy Advisory Committee Full Text Report, Recently Released, Safeguarding Privacy in the Fight Against Terrorism From a FCW article, "The 140-page document resulted from Congress canceling the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency's controversial Terrorism Information Awareness program in 2003. TAPAC officials concluded that TIA represented "a flawed effort to achieve worthwhile ends." The report runs 140 pages. -- Congressional Research Service Source: FPC/CRS Two Recently Released CRS Reports + Greece: Threat of Terrorism and Security of the Olympics + Terrorist Identification, Screening, and Tracking Under Homeland Security Presidential Directive 6 -- Housing--United States--Statistics Source: U.S. Census New, Housing Data Between the Censuses: The American Housing Survey -- Taxes--Australia Source: Parliamentary Library, Australia New Full Text Report, Less tax or more social spending: twenty years of opinion polling -- e-Government--United States Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project Use of E-government Increases 50% from 2002 to 2003, but Citizens Want Multiple Channels Available to Contact Government "New research by the Pew Internet & American Life Project shows that 97 million adult Americans, or 77% of Internet users, took advantage of e-gov in 2003, whether that meant going to government Web sites or emailing government officials. This represented a growth of 50% from 2002. At the same time, citizens who contact government said they are more likely to turn to traditional means either the telephone or in-person visits rather than the Web or email to deal with government." Download full report, by sections or just a summary of the findings.
Web Search Update Web Search--Yahoo Source: San Jose Mercury News + Plaxo,Yahoo make deal on search From the article, "Today Plaxo integrates Yahoo's search engine directly into the Outlook e-mail program. Under the deal with Yahoo, Plaxo will get paid for channeling people to Yahoo's search engine. The search box will be placed beside a Plaxo icon that sits atop Outlook. Plaxo will eventually make Web searching possible from individual e-mails, according to Masonis. Ultimately, he wants Plaxo to search individual words within the e-mails. You would click on the word and Plaxo would do a Web search through Yahoo." Thanks to Searchblog for the tip. J.B. also comments on the deal. See Also: Direct to Plaxo -- Web Search Source: SearchDay Search Engine User Attitudes D.S. and C.S. with a thorough overview of some recently released numbers from iProspect. Here are a few points that caught my eye. + "What do people do when they can't find the information they're looking for? 26 percent said they'd give up on a search and try again if they didn't find a match in the first two pages of results, more than any other choice. This was followed by 23 percent who said they'd review only the first few matches on the first page, then 19 percent who said they'd review only the entire first page of results. 15 percent said they'd give up after reviewing three pages. The remainder said they'd look at more than three pages." + "Nearly half of those surveyed -- 49 percent -- said they use one or more search toolbars. This is based on the fact that respondents were asked to answer which toolbar they had installed: Google, Yahoo, MSN or None Of The Above. Yahoo was ranked top among those choices, at 22 percent, followed by Google at 20 percent and MSN at 17 percent." + "In other findings, both men (65%) and women (57%) preferred natural results over paid listings, though the 43% of women who said they favored the paid listings suggest that the preference for organic results is not as strong in women as men." -- Web Search Source: News.com Study questions Google's long-term dominance A couple of comments: + The study points out that, "Google's results vary little from those found on other search sites." However, SearchDay recently noted that, " A new comparison tool shows that the major search engines have surprisingly little overlap, even for popular search terms. Search engine guru Greg Notess has long studied search engine overlap -- the number of pages found by more than one search engine. Greg's findings have consistently shown that there is very little overlap in the web page databases of the major search engines, meaning you'll likely get very different results depending on the engine." The article also says, "Google users searching for the leading cause of death for people between the ages of 25 and 34, found the information they were looking for 55 percent of the time. The company's rivals fell close behind with between 52 percent and 54 percent success rates, Vividence observed." So I guess the question is, what did the study participants consider a good result? Were those surveyed satisfied with whatever they found? Did time constraints come into play? What were the search terms? How many search terms were used? Those of us who use specialized info databases (free and fee-based) -- along with things called books (no kidding) -- realize that the web/web engines are just one of many research tools. However, I think the general public has little or no idea about "other" existing resources that could not only be helpful, but also SAVE them aggravation and effort. We also know that with a little effort, general web search tools like Google and Yahoo can become much more powerful and precise. This will become even more noticeable as these resources grow in size. I guess the most interesting news is that more and more users are realizing that general web search tools (other than Google) are useful. + "The company found that Google clearly remains consumers' favorite, largely because of the search engine's less-cluttered interface." I can't figure out why Yahoo doesn't spend some effort promoting the search.yahoo.com interface? Heck, you can even customize the tabs! I also think Teoma.com is far from cluttered, and it also gives refinement options not available at Google. Again, creating and purchasing an info resource is one thing, but getting people to use it is something else. Google does it very well (better than just about anyone); others, including traditional vendors and libraries, need to do better. + "Watkins said part of the reason why Google lags behind its competitors is the company's stringent practice of keeping ads well marked, while the other sites sometimes mix solicitations in with regular search results." Google deserves mega kudos for their work in labeling web results and making everyone else follow. That said, everyone else is better, and it's hard to find examples of where the other engines mentioned in the article don't clearly mark ads vs. organic results. + I'll conclude with two comments that I think are relevant. The first from our friend Tara Calishain, who said in a 8/03 AP article, "Google has a lot of smart people who have built a great search engine, but there are a lot of other smart people out there looking for ways to make search engines even better." The other comment is found in a 5/03 Forbes article, "Even Google's engineers admit FAST and Teoma deliver results comparable to theirs." Monday, May 24, 2004
Science--Specialized Search Tools Source: Info Today NewsBreaks More on Science.gov 2.0 On May 11th we mentioned that Science.gov 2.0 had just launched. Today, Paula Hane offers an excellent overview of the enhanced service and new technology. One weakness Paula doesn't mention in her column that I've found while testing Science.gov 2.0 is that direct links to citations found via this metasearch tool are not available. This could cause problems in trying to return to a citation or including it in a bibliography. An example, I ran a quick search for the phrase "global warming" and, as expected, got many results. When I clicked on an entry, I was unable to find a direct url to that specific entry. However, if I went directly to one of the underlying databases I was able to find a unique url.
Web Search Source: Wired And More Link Bombs I agree with Danny S. and have started to call these types of things "link bombs." The writer seems to have a problem understanding the differences between "bombs" and keyword advertising. He also doesn't mention that AltaVista, Lycos, and Yahoo all use the same underlying database. Oh well. I do find it worth noting that once again Jeeves and Teoma seem more resistant to link bombing and manipulation than other web engines.
Professional Reading Shelf Librarians Source: American Libraries Librarians Are Not Search Engines In his latest column (a must read), Dr. Joseph Janes writes, "Maybe it's just me, but I don't see the obvious comparisons between that [web search engines] and what a librarian does. To be sure, both are ways to get answers to questions; so in a sense both librarians and search engines are 'answerers.' It does seem an odd parallel, though; we never got ourselves compared (much less compared ourselves) to databases, catalogs, reference books, or the like. I think I know where this notion comes from: Some librarians, not without justification, might see search engines as competition. It's not at all difficult to look at the rise of free and easy Internet searching and the simultaneous and sometimes precipitous drop in reference statistics and put two and two together. And that may well be a big part of what's going on. So why not portray ourselves as the preferred alternative, in the same ballpark? Because it's dangerous, that's why. Sure, you can get an answer out of Vivisimo or Teoma, and you can also get an answer out of one of your local public library's telephone reference service. The answer from Vivísimo might even be faster. (It might even be right.) But it'll also be mindless. And unconcerned with quality, evaluation, instruction, or meeting your specific needs. There's also a good chance it'd be a good answer to a question you weren't really asking." I would add to Dr. Janes' comments that we also see the idea of the open web as the world's largest library mentioned in many articles. I can understand where this comes from (large amounts of info in one "virtual" location), but it's a real stretch. A library is a controlled, well-maintained, selective and organized collection of resources. We all know that the open web is not close to this idea. This doesn't mean that some of the massive amounts of material found via web engines is not valuable -- it ABSOLUTELY IS -- but this alone doesn't make a general web engine a library. That said, I think the general web engines (Yahoo, Google, Ask, etc.) could work more with the library community to solicit our thoughts on how to make their products more valuable tools for all users (including many librarians).
Web Browsers Source: News.com Start-up Looks to Add Pluck to Browsers From the article, "Start-up Pluck on Monday launched its first product, a set of tools designed to help people add capabilities to Microsoft's Internet Explorer Web browsing software. Pluck's self-titled package of browser add-ons promises to affix a range of extensions to IE, including expanded Web searching capabilities, live content folder sharing and a so-called rich site summary (RSS) reader. The product also includes an online community aspect, as it lets people exchange information saved in documents or folders." See Also: Pluck Press Release See Also: Netcaptor, another browser that's been described as "IE on steroids."
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents Television--Database Source: Yahoo (Info supplied by Tribune Media Services/Zap2it.com) TV Show Database A browsable database containing basic directory info (premiere date, description, stars, brief history) for hundreds of television programs new and old. Browsing by category is not a good idea since these categories contain only a few of the many entries available if you browse by title. See Also: The Encyclopedia of Television (Full-Text) From the site,"...includes more than 1,000 original essays from more than 250 contributors and examines specific programs and people, historic moments and trends, major policy disputes and such topics as violence, tabloid television and the quiz show scandal. It also includes histories of major television networks as well as broadcasting systems around the world and is complemented by resource materials, photos and bibliographical information. The book is not searchable but does contain hyperlinked cross-references. -- Webliographies Source: Science, Technology, and Business Division, The Library of Congress New Research Guides + Wedding Industry Research - Selected Internet Resources + 17-Year Periodical Cicadas (2004) - Selected Internet Resources + Ricin (Toxic Substance) -- R&D--United States--Statistics Source: NSF New Info Brief, Largest Single-Year Decline in U.S. Industrial R&D Expenditures Reported for 2002 This InfoBrief will focus on statistics from the 2002 Survey of Industrial Research and Development. It announces the availability of survey results on the World Wide Web (WWW) and the publication of the forthcoming annual detailed statistical tables (DST) and methodology reports; presents statistics on levels and sources of industrial R&D support, sales, and employment for manufacturing and nonmanufacturing industries; highlights the funding of R&D from companies' own resources and from the Federal government; and details R&D spending per R&D scientist and engineer by R&D-performing companies. -- Maps Source: U.S. Military Academy Department of History Department Maps "In 1938, the predecessors of what is today The Department of History at the United States Military Academy began developing a series of campaign atlases to aid in teaching cadets a course entitled, 'History of the Military Art.' Since then, the Department has produced six atlases and nearly one thousand maps, encompassing not only America's wars but global conflicts as well. In keeping abreast with today's technology, the Department of History is providing these maps on the World Wide Web. The maps were created by the United States Military Academy's Department of History and are the digital versions from the atlases printed by the United States Defense Printing Agency." Direct to Atlases -- Taxes--United States Source: U.S. Census Bureau New, State Government Tax Collections Up 2.4 Percent; Biggest Increase in Tobacco Taxes "According to data from the 2003 Annual Survey of State Government Tax Collections, general sales taxes were up 2.8 percent to $185 billion and taxes on individual income declined overall by 1.5 percent to $182 billion. These taxes made up more than two-thirds of all state tax collections. Among other major taxes, levies on tobacco products increased the most (29 percent), followed by severance taxes (24 percent) and documentary and stock transfer taxes (23 percent)." See Also: 2003 Annual Survey of State Government Tax Collections -- Traffic Information--United Kingdom Relaunched, Highways Agency Web Site From Kablenet.com, "The site was launched on 24 May 2004. It has been designed to be easier to navigate than its predecessor, and incorporates four new services to help drivers plan their journeys. Visitors to the site can get real time traffic information from the National Traffic Control Centre. The site provides regional maps that include icons at points where there are roadworks and accidents, and a click of the mouse will provide details and forecasts of any delays. They will also be able to get traffic flow forecasts, information on future roadworks from an online database, and a stream of updated information on the road network."
Briefly Ohio Libraries Launch e-Book Service -- Kathleen de la Peña McCook Named Inaugural Recipient of Achievement in Library Diversity Research Award Sunday, May 23, 2004
Professional Reading Shelf Weblogs Source: BBC News Gates Backs Blogs for Businesses "In a speech to an audience of chief executives, Mr Gates said the regularly updated journals, or blogs, could be a good way for firms to tell customers, staff and partners what they are doing." Here's the actual quote from Bill Gates: "Another new phenomenon that connects into this is one that started outside of the business space, more in the corporate or technical enthusiast space, a thing called blogging. And a standard around that that notifies you that something has changed called RSS." The full text of his speech along with his PowerPoint slides are also available online. -- Web Design Source: Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox Guidelines for Visualizing Links "Textual links should be colored and underlined to achieve the best perceived affordance of clickability, though there are a few exceptions to these guidelines." -- Digital Libraries Source: OCLC Distinguished Seminar Series: Jim Gray on Digital Libraries "Jim Gray's presentation provides an overview of his work with the World-Wide Telescope effort from the perspective of a digital library, focusing on metadata, schema, curation, and preservation issues." Slides are in PPT format. Audio is in MP3 format. The seminar took place on May 17, 2004 in Dublin, Ohio. See Also: Materials from Other DSS Presentations
Library Briefs + North Carolina...NC Live Databases Receive Press Attention (via Kinston Free Press) -- + Texas... School libraries dig in to keep providing resources (via Midland Reporter-Telegram) -- + Illinois...Library stands by controversial book (via UPI)
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents Iraq Source: Export-Import Bank of the United States Useful Links for Exporting to Iraq Collection of links organized by headings: United States Government, United States Government Commercial Information, Information on Iraqi Businesses and Organizations, Contracting Opportunities, International Organizations. -- History of Medicine--Gateways Source: The Wellcome Trust (UK) MedHist "MedHist is a gateway to evaluated, quality Internet resources relating to the history of medicine and allied sciences, covering all aspects of the history of health and development of medical knowledge." Saturday, May 22, 2004
Metadata Source: NISO Workshop Presentations: Metadata Practices on the Cutting Edge Workshop The NISO workshop took place in DC yesterday. Here's a list of the presentations. All presentations are in PowerPoint format. + Metadata Practice and Direction: a Community Perspective, Lorcan Dempsey, OCLC + RSS: Really Simple Syndication - A Publisher's Perspective by Howard Ratner, Nature Publishing Group + New Developments Relating to Linking Metadata, Chuck Koscher, CrossRef + Metadata Standards for Managing and Discovering Image Collections, Oya Rieger, Cornell University Libraries + Addressing Metadata in the MPEG-21 and PDF-A ISO Standards, William G. LeFurgy, Library of Congress + Using MODS (Metadata Object Description Schema) for Rich Descriptive Data, Rebecca Guenther, Library of Congress + The Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard (METS), Morgan Cundiff, Library of Congress + ONIX for Serials and the NISO/EDItEUR Joint Working Party for the Exchange of Serials Subscription Information Nathan Robertson, Johns Hopkins University Libraries + Metadata Interaction, Integration, and Interoperability, William Moen, University of North Texas + DSpace SIMILE: using semantic web technology for metadata support, MacKenzie Smith, MIT Libraries + Beyond Parsing: Metadata Quality Management, Bruce Rosenblum, Inera, Inc.
Professional Reading Shelf Citation Indexing Information Industry--Elsevier Source: Access Scopus to challenge Web of Science? From the article, "Elsevier is developing a bibliographic database called Scopus, which several industry observers believe will compete with ISI's Web of Science for library dollars. At the heart of Scopus is the world's largest abstracts database of over 12,900 journal titles from 4,000 publishers providing access to over 25 million abstracts going back to 1966 and 5 years of reference back years, building up to 10 years by 2005."
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents Military--Multimedia Resources Military Clip-Art & Multimedia Source: Dudley Knox Library, Naval Postgraduate School Briefly annotated collection of links to graphics and audio/video resources for all branches of the military. See Also: The Air War College Also Offers an Excellent Collection of Links -- The following two items were culled from the Infomine What's New Newsletter -- Ornithology Source: Cornell University Laboratory of Ornithology All About Birds Everything you wanted to know about birds and birding, including where to go, how to identify different species, choosing and using binoculars/spotting scopes, attracting birds to your yard, studying birds and conservation. -- Politics Source: Georgetown University Political Database of the Americas "The Political Database of the Americas is a non-governmental Internet-based project that provides reference materials, primary documents, comparative studies and statistical data for countries in the Western Hemisphere." Available in English, Spanish, French and Portugese.
Update Alibris Ends Plans for IPO Five weeks ago we mentioned that online used book marketplace Alibris had filed to go public. Well, things change. The company has withdrawn the IPO. Nevertheless, the S-1 filing offers some interesting info about the used book industry. Thanks to Tara C. for the news tip. Friday, May 21, 2004
Web Search Source: Microsoft Watch Search Titans Talk Futures "Microsoft is known to be prepping new search technologies that are expected to allow users to search seamlessly across their local machines, corporate networks and the Internet. The new MSN Search part of the equation is expected to debut later this year or early next. A first version of the WinFS file-system subsystem will be integrated into Longhorn when it ships in 2006+. And A9 recently unveiled a beta version of a new search site that builds on top of Google." Report on World Wide Web Conference on presentations by Rick Rashid, senior VP in charge of Microsoft Research, and Udi Manber, CEO of Amazon.com's A9 subsidiary. See Also: ResourceShelfPLUS Has a Compilation Containing Links to Many of the Papers Presented at This Week's World Wide Web Conference See Also: Udi Manber the head of a9 spoke at the University of Washington in November. You can watch an archived version of his lecture here. It's titled, "The World's Information at Everyone's Fingertips."
Web Search--Ask Jeeves A New Smart Search Feature from Jeeves: Movie Info In April we ran an item about Ask Jeeves launching Famous People Search. I just noticed that a new Smart Search feature is available and, like the others, can potentially save the searcher time and effort. If you search for a new movie you'll find a box at the top of the page containing movie plot info and DIRECT links to the trailer, the official site, reviews (via RottenTomatoes.com), showtime info and more. Hopefully, they'll continue to add more film info and include entries for older films. No special syntax is required to trigger this feature. I also noticed that you will find info for some films released in the past year. You can find more Ask.com SmartSearch shortcuts here.
Web Search--Vivisimo Source: Pittsburgh Tribune-Review More Press for Vivisimo From the article, "At the same time Google's founding duo began their journey to fame and fortune as researchers at Stanford University, a group of Carnegie Mellon University computer scientists initiated their own project in the summer of 1998 to tackle the problem of information overload. 'The only way to address the problem is to let users see a lot more of what's out there, but with less effort,' said Raul Valdes-Perez, 47, who led the CMU effort [now CEO of Vivisimo]." I've mentioned several times that Vivisimo calls this idea "selective ignorance." It's explained in this paper.
Web Search--Google Source: The Wall Street Journal A Contest to Manipulate Google Results (registration required) From the article, "An online ad company and a search-themed Web site are sponsoring a contest that shows how easy search results can be manipulated. The winners: sites that rank highest in Google searches on June 7 and July 7 for the "invented" term (actually a play on Dark Blue Sea Ltd., an Australian company that is a contest sponsor)." The apparent ease that some people have manipulating Google (and other web engines) is not good news for the company, web search and most importantly the typical searcher who enters 2.5 terms and clicks the search button." Library Stuff's Steven Cohen was kind enought to share a couple of comments with ResourceShelf. He writes, "While this article shows the public an important lesson on the ability to manipulate results in Google, it also displays what librarians have been teaching our patrons for years. That what is found on the first ten hits can lead the searcher to results that may not be the best for the particular issue at hand. In fact, we also preach the use of numerous other resources to gain quality results (LII, etc). Google does not equal quality research, as this article implicitly demonstrates." See Also: Andy Beal points out that the report is incorrect in stating that "cheating" is not allowed.
Information Architecture Information Access Peter Morville Launches Findability.org Guru, President of Semantic Studios, and co-author of what for many people is the bible of web info architecture has a new site. It's loaded with reading, links, and discussion. Findability.org is, "dedicated to findability and the design of findable objects." I'll be spending plenty of time here.
Professional Reading Shelf Public Libraries Source: The New Yorker High Tech Bibliophilia Paul Goldenberger, The New Yorker's architecture critic, calls Seattle's new Central Library, designed by Rem Koolhaas, "the most important new library to be built in a generation, and the most exhilarating." See Also: Libraries dust off stuffy image -- Libraries Inclusion of Library Ets Haim in Memory of the World Register Celebrated in Amsterdam "The Library Ets Haim, a unique collection of Judaica held in the Portuguese Synagogue complex in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, became officially part of UNESCO's Memory of the World Register, when the Memory of the World Certificate was handed over by UNESCO's Elisabeth Longworth to the President of the Board of Governors of the Library during a ceremony yesterday evening in Amsterdam." -- Institutional Repositories ARCHIMEDE : A Canadian software solution for institutional repositories From the announcement, "Laval University Library recently launched the third component of its institutional repository. Called « Archimede (http://archimede.bibl.ulaval.ca), this component covers e-prints, pre-prints, post-prints and other research publications from faculty members and research communities."
Federal Government--United States--Databases Source: FCW FedBizOpps Up for Bids From the article, "The General Services Administration has issued a solicitation for a new contractor to take over FedBizOpps, a Web site that gives contractors and agencies access to information about federal contracting opportunities." The article includes highlights from the RFP.
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents Business--United States--Statistics Source: U.S. Census Just Released, 2002 Economic Census: Advance Nonemployer Statistics Summary ||| Direct to Full Text -- Population--United States Source: U.S. Census New, Fact Sheet: Facts About the Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander Population in the United States -- Health--Statistics--United States Source: CDC Fact Sheet: Facts about Prevalence of Arthritis--U.S., 2004 -- Labor--Statistics Source: BLS Just Released, International Comparisons of Hourly Compensation Costs for Production Workers in Manufacturing, revised data for 2002 -- Legal Resources--United States Source: National Center for State Courts CourTopics "Over 100 NCSC topic folders contain overviews, research reports, information about programs and services, frequently asked questions, best practices, and publications." Topics covered include everything from Acquiring Technology to Workload and Resource Assessment. Most (but not all) topics an overview, FAQ and resource guide (PDFs); some include additional related NCSC documents. The resource guides are basically extensive bibilographies. Some of the topics are likely to be of interest to consumers, such as Adoption, Custody and Support, Impaired Driving, Mental Health, Traffic Offenses. Also available at this site: Court Statistics Project + Examining the Work of State Courts + State Court Caseload Statistics + Caseload Highlights
Briefly + Major Site Redesign Released: PubMed Central + New URL, Updated Site: The Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions + Information Today, Inc. Acquires Faulkner Information Services Thursday, May 20, 2004
Resource of the Week Web Tools All About Seruku This week we have another example of innovative and useful work coming from a small company in the search and info retrieval space. Say hello to Seruku. Seruku is toolbar-based application that helps you find and access ANY and ALL web pages that have appeared in your browser. Its simplicity, along with its ability to save the user plenty of time and aggravation, makes it a resource that will appeal to the masses. As we "work the web", most of us are constantly looking at and reading hundreds of pages in our browsers. Trying to go back and fine previously viewed material, however, can be time consuming and, in some cases, pretty much impossible. Why? Reviewing your browser's history file isn't always easy since it contains only urls and page titles. And the ephemeral nature of material on the web can pose many problems. Pages you looked at on Monday can be gone for good the following Friday -- if not sooner. Seruku Toolbar 1.1 ($24.95/Windows only/45 day free trial) solves many of these problems. As you visit web pages, it automatically makes a copy (called a snapshot) of every html web page you?ve viewed in your browser, stores it locally, indexes the content and then, when needed, allows you to keyword search the full text of this material. Very cool and very useful. After downloading (3.5MB) and installing the program, you'll be up and running in a matter of minutes. The Seruku site offers plenty of background about how the product operates. In a nutshell, it's really two separate programs: a toolbar and an indexing/database program that is completely separate from the Internet Explorer cache. Those with privacy concerns will be relieved to know that these have been addressed by Seruku. The company mentions many times that all of the material you save is kept on YOUR computer. No information about what you've saved and when you saved it is transmitted over the web. Using Seruku is very easy. All html pages that appear in your browser are automatically saved -- or recorded -- into the database. Of course, you can click to toggle the recording function on and off. Searching your local datastore (where the material is stored on your computer) is straightforward. Enter your search terms and go. Seruku utilizes an implied AND between terms. You can also limit your search by date. For example, you can search only those pages you?ve seen within the last three days, week, month, or between two specific dates. A search results page includes links to live versions of each page along with links you can click on to view copies of the recorded pages. The toolbar also offers a button that will run your query in Yahoo, Google and other web engines. William Grosso, the owner and lead developer of Seruku told me that most users will use about 3-5 gigabytes of hard drive space a year. Of course, Seruku makes managing the datastore easy. For example, you can remove a specific page, a group of unused pages, and backup the datastore. At this point Seruku is only available for Internet Explorer but a version for Mozilla is in development. Grosso also let me know that future releases will offer an option to add any web engine to the toolbar similar to what's currently available from NeedleSearch or the Copernic Toolbar. Improving the format and content of snippets on result pages is also a priority. I'm glad to see that the development team realizes that work is needed in these areas. Improvements will make Seruku and even more valuable tool. Other personal search products like SurfSaver or the web-based service Furl can also be useful tools for the web researcher. These products allow you to add keywords, descriptions and other info to each page after you decide to save it. You can also organize the saved material into folders. The problem is that you must first decide to save the page. The beauty of Seruku is that all of the saving takes place automatically. It's always on and recording (unless you decide to toggle it off) what's in your browser. It's all there. If additional access points are needed or having access to saved pages from various computers is required, SurfSaver and Furl can help. It all depends on your needs. Btw, another personal search tool, Scopeware, ceased operations on May 15th. In his legendary 1945 essay, "As We May Think," Vannevar Bush writes: Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library. It needs a name, and, to coin one at random, "memex" will do. A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory. Seruku is not exactly the memex device that Bush describes; it can only save html content. But it is certainly a useful step forward in realizing Bush's vision in today's web world. Kudos to Grosso for not only developing this product (it's been needed for a long time), but also for making it so easy to use. See Also: Direct to the Seruku FAQ
Professional Reading Shelf RFID Source: Public Library Association New, Full Text, RFID Technology for Libraries "Tech Notes are short, Web-based papers introducing specific technologies for public librarians." Other Tech Notes and tech overviews published or revised in the last month: + Weblogs (Written by Steven Cohen) + Filtering Technology and CIPA Compliance + E-Books -- Scholarly Publishing Source: SPARC New, Open Access: Unlocking the Value of Scientific Research A paper presented by SPARC Director Rick Johnson at a conference on digital resources sponsored by the University of Oklahoma Libraries reviews some of the market forces that are pushing towards a tipping point in scholarly communication. -- Digital Archiving Source: ERPANET/CODATA New, Final Report: Seminar on the Selection, Appraisal and Retention of Digital Scientific Data From an announcement, "Rapid advances in technology are impacting the way scientists work, allowing greater amounts of digital data to be produced in the majority of scientific disciplines. These technological advances are also changing the way scientists interact, creating opportunities for collaborations across disciplines, institutions, and countries. The ever-increasing data that are generated through these advances require active curation to ensure their longevity. The international EPRANET/CODATA seminar examined the current state of practice of the selection, appraisal and retention among diverse scientific communities and discussed how archival concepts can best be applied to the management and long-term preservation of digital data. The seminar, held from 15th-17th of December 2003 at the Biblioteca Nacional in Lisbon, brought together more than sixty-five researchers, data managers, information specialists, archivists, and librarians from thirteen countries to discuss the issues involved in making critical decisions regarding the long-term preservation of the scientific record."
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents Iraq--Media Source: Institute for War and Peace Reporting Iraqi Press Monitor "IWPR's Iraqi Press Monitor is a daily survey of the main stories in Iraq's newspapers. It features the top 7 stories of the day, along with a political cartoon. Stories are selected and summarised by Ali Mohammed Jawad and Ali Kadhim Marzook in Baghdad. The selections are edited by Eric Watkins. Monday through to Thursday, the service focuses on key news stories, while on Friday it reviews the leading opinion pieces." -- Congressional Research Service Source: CRS (via Franklin Pierce Law Center) Franklin Pierce Law Center Updates CRS Page With Numerous New/Recently Updated IP-Related CRS Reports + Internet Taxation + H.R. 1417: The Copyright Royalty and Distribution Reform Act of 2004 + Computer Security: A Summary of Selected Federal Laws, Executive Orders, and Presidential Directives + Protecting Noncreative Databases: Bills Before the 108th Congress + Internet Privacy: Overview and Pending Legislation + Internet Commerce and State Sales and Use Taxes + Obscenity, Chil Pornography, and Indecency: Recent Developments and Pending Issues -- Armed Forces--United States The Pentagon Launches Streaming Video News Site This site is powered by FeedRoom technology. The "company line" direct from the Pentagon. From the site, The Pentagon Channel broadcasts military news and information for the 2.6 million members of the U.S. Armed Forces through programming including: * Department of Defense news briefings * Military news * Interviews with top Defense officials * Short stories about the work of our military You can also find the video at http://pentagonchannel.feedroom.com. According to the web site, The Pentagon Channel is also distributed via satellite. See Also: More About FeedRoom in this 2002 Posting -- Baby Names--United States--Lists & Rankings Source: SSA Recently Released, Most Popular Baby Names 2003 You can more info (geographic breakdowns, names by decade, historical lists) here. See Also: Most Popular Baby Names in the United Kingdom 2003 Wednesday, May 19, 2004
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents Iraq--Environment Source: United Nations Environmental Programme Recently Released: Desk Study on the Environment in Iraq (PDF; 2.11 MB) "The approach of this Desk Study is environmental and technical. The intent is not to attach blame for various environmental problems. Rather, it is to provide an overview of chronic and war-related environmental issues, and to identify the steps needed to safeguard the environment. Top priorities include environmental issues that have a direct link with easing the humanitarian situation, especially the restoration of water, power, sanitation networks and ensuring food security." -- Conventions--Glossary Source: Convention Industry Council Convention Industry Glossary "Do you know podium from lectern? Lavaliere microphone from handheld? Search this glossary of almost 3,800 terms, acronyms, and abbreviations and save yourself time, money, and trouble." -- Lobbyists--United States Source: Meriam Library, California State University, Chico Political Advocacy Groups: A Directory of United States Lobbyists "To research the ideology of an editorialist or understand why a group was consulted, refer to their homepage through the alphabetic list found here. To find a source for a story or a perspective on an issue, browse the subject arrangement to choose an appropriate group." Maintained by Kathi Carlisle Fountain, Reference/Political Science & Social Work Librarian. -- State Courts--United States Source: National Center for State Courts Public Access to Court Records "This site is an information clearinghouse on the topic of public access to court records and the current debate on privacy concerns that arise as courts improve and expand their court information systems and put more information on the Internet." -- Election 2004 Factiva Media Visibility Index (SM) Tracks the Hot-Button Issues for 2004 Presidential Election During the Week Ending May 9, 2004 -- Butterflies Butterflies of North America Source: USGS "The Butterflies of North America Web site is a 'work in progress,' consisting primarily of the following information: + Distribution maps showing the counties in which occurrence of a particular species has been verified + Photos of the adult and caterpillar (when available) + Species accounts containing information on size, identifying characteristics, life history, flight, caterpillar hosts, adult food, habitat, species range, conservation status, and management needs + Species checklists for each county in the U. S. and state in northern Mexico" -- Plants Source: Cornell University Animal Science Department Poisonous Plants Information Database "This is a growing reference that includes plant images, pictures of affected animals and presentations concerning the botany, chemistry, toxicology, diagnosis and prevention of poisoning of animals by plants and other natural flora (fungi, etc.)." Search by scientific name, common name, primary poisons, species most often effected. Browse alphabetical lists of common names or botanical names. Includes FAQ about poisonous plants, information on toxic and medicinal agents in plants, identification of species of animals most commonly affected, links to related sites. An extra special thanks to Shirl Kennedy, ResourceShelf Contributing Editor, for all of her help today.
Online Research Web Search Source: San Jose Mercury News Sites to try when other engines fail you Thanks to Michael Bazeley for soliciting my comments (he also asked Tara at ResearchBuzz). I'm happy to see that he decided to include a mention of the vast online resources that public libraries offer. It's also exciting that Bazeley and the editors at the Merc realize that other online search tools exist.
Professional Reading Shelf Scholarly Communication Source: C&RL News Report: Scholarly Communication in Europe "SPARC Europe Director David Prosser writes an article for the May issue of C&RL News presenting recent developments from a European perspective." -- Weblogs Academic Libraries Source: Library Journal UM Library Offers Free Blogs "With the April launch of UThink, a program under the library's auspices to offer free blogs to the university community, Minnesota is among the first university libraries to become the center for blogging."
Citation Analysis Scholarly Publishing Source: ISI + Science in Japan, 1999-2003 + Mathematics: High-Impact U.S. Universities, 1999-2003 + Journals with Multiple Hot Papers + Space Science: High-Impact Institutions, 1993-2003
Enterprise Search Endeca Now Powers Abebooks Database We try to keep you informed with what large public facing web sites begin using new search software. This is currently the case at Abebooks, the used book database/vendor. The site now uses Endeca Search and "Guided Navigation" technology. Here's an overview of what's available. It's also possible to browse titles by category. What I like most about Endeca is the ease with which a user can refine their results by simply pointing and clicking the refinements listed on the right side of a results page. See Also: Direct to Abebooks Advanced Search Interface See Also: More About Endeca from SearchTools.com
Digital Archives Source: GCN Feds help create PDF archiving standard From the article, "A number of federal agencies are working to create an archiving version of the Portable Document Format, offered by Adobe Systems Inc. of Mountain View, Calif. The version will be submitted to the International Organization for Standardization for approval as an international standard. The committee hopes to release a draft of the PDF/A standard by early next year with a final standard out by the end of 2005...Federal agencies are grappling with the issue of archiving documents for long-term storage. 'The task is a difficult one given the ever-changing nature of the IT industry,' Levenson said. 'Software or operating systems in use today may be hard to locate 50 years from now. Agencies need to ensure the information they have is available for the public.' Levenson said that his own agency, the U.S. Courts, is in the midst of converting to an electronic filing system, so the agency wants to ensure that the files it archives will remain easily readable for the ages." See Also: Direct to PDF-Archive Committee Home Page
Web Search--Google Source: The New York Times Google and Desktop Search More hype or yet another business that Google is getting into. John Markoff reports that Google is preparing to launch a desktop search tool. Google declined to comment (what else is new). The article does not mention that Hotbot/Terra Lycos already offers a free tool (using dtSearch technology) that allows you to search your hard drive. It also allows you to keyword search your RSS feeds. I also like Scopeware for desktop searching. and in other Google News... GEICO Sues Google and Overture over Trademarks (via News.com) Lawsuits over trademarks will be a major search-related news story. I think it's a bit ironic that GEICO, a company owned by Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway, is suing the company. You may remember that the Google IPO letter was inspired by Buffet and includes a quote by the legendary investor. Tuesday, May 18, 2004
Web Search--Nutch Source: ACM Queue All About Building Nutch: A Case Study This article from the April issue of ACM Queue was written by Mike Cafarella and Doug Cutting from the open source search engine Nutch. From the article, "...we started the Nutch software project, an open source search engine free for anyone to download, modify, and run, either as an internal intranet search engine or as a public Web search service. As you may have just read in Anna Patterson's "Why Writing Your Own Search Engine Is Hard," writing a search engine is not easy. As such, our article focuses on Nutch's technical challenges, but of course we hope Nutch will offer improvements in both the technical and social spheres. By enabling more people to run search engines, and by making the code open, we hope search algorithms will become as transparent as their importance demands. See Also: Additional Search-Related Articles from the April Issue of ACM Queue + A Conversation with Matt Wells (Gigablast's Developer) + Searching Vs. Finding By William A. Woods from Sun Microsystems Laboratories. + Enterprise Search: Tough Stuff This article was written by Rajat Mukherjee and Jianchang Mao from Verity.
E-Mail Source: Revolution E-Mail Wars 1.0--Lycos Europe Launches 1GB Email Service Forget search, it seems to be all about email these days. From the article, "Lycos Europe is the first major player to launch a 1Gb service to consumers beating rivals Yahoo! and Google to the punch. The service, which went live on Tuesday 18, May trumps US rivals Yahoo! and Google, which have announced plans for similar services, and Google has announced beta tests of a 1Gb service but neither has been able to confirm when they will be available. The portal said that Lycos the service will be ad-free. Mail Personal 1Gb is ad free with anti-spam and anti-virus software, and fully secure. The service will cost £3.49 per month [$6.17/U.S.] ." Reuters reports the service the service is only available in the UK. The service went live in the United Kingdom today with other European countries coming soon. See Also: Lycos Europe beats Google to market with 1GB email (via Reuters) See Also: Direct to Lycos Europe Email Home Page + UPDATED 5/19 9am EDST News.com has a story today that some Gmail users have been given 1 Terabyte of hard drive space. Google would not comment. ++ UPDATED 5/19 2:30 PM EDST 1GB of Hard Drive Space was a Glitch Reuters reports that the 1GB of space that some Gmail users noticed was just a "glitch". It also did a good job of deflecting attention from what Lycos and Yahoo are up to.
Information Industry--Reed Business Web Search--Ask Jeeves Reed Business Information CEO [U.S.] Named to Ask Jeeves Board of Directors From the announcement, "James ("Jim") Casella has joined the Ask Jeeves' board of directors. Casella is the former president and CEO of PennNet -- now PennEnergy -- and the former COO of integrated media company IDG, among other positions throughout his career. He joins current board members Skip Battle, Steve Berkowitz, David Carlick, Joshua Goldman, Garret Greuner, James Kirsner, and Geoffrey Yang...Casella has also been tapped to consult with the Ask Jeeves executive team on optimizing consumer and advertiser relationships: "Jim and I both believe there is a tremendous opportunity to bring more traditional offline advertisers into the online search environment, where the consumer and advertiser are connected through relevant, powerful search," continued [Jeeves CEO Steve] Berkowitz.Reed Business Information is largest business-to-business information provider in North America with more than 100 publications and 75 Websites, as well as a range of services." See Also: Learn More About Reed Business Information (U.S.)
Professional Reading Shelf Digital Libraries The May 2004 Issue of D-Lib is Now Online A special issue on georeferencing and geospatial data. Articles include: + The Alexandria Digital Library Project: Review, Assessment, and Prospects + Issues in Georeferenced Digital Libraries + Combining Place, Time, and Topic: The Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative -- Government Printing Office--United States Source: GPO Keeping America Informed in the 21st Century: A First Look at the GPO Strategic Planning Process - "A Work in Progress" Presented by Bruce R. James, Public Printer of the United States at the Spring 2004 Depository Library Council Meeting -- Libraries Chemical Heritage Foundation Receives Rare Early Texts Valued in Excess of $10 Million From the announcement, "The Chemical Heritage Foundation (CHF) has received the most important private collection of rare chemical texts in the world. The Roy G. Neville Historical Chemical Library adds depth and breadth to CHF?s extensive holdings of chemical books and manuscripts, alchemical artwork, scientific instruments, apparatus, and other artifacts. The conservation of this magnificent collection for future generations was made possible through the generous action of Gordon and Betty Moore. Gordon Moore, a chemist, is the cofounder of Intel Corporation and author of what has become known as Moore?s Law (the observation that the processing power of computers increases exponentially)...Acquiring and cataloguing the books in this collection has been the work of a lifetime for Roy G. Neville. A consulting chemist by profession, and a passionate bibliophile by avocation, Neville began collecting books almost 60 years ago, while he was still an undergraduate. The earliest books in his library date from the late 1400s; the most recent are from the early 20th century. Neville?s collection includes many of the most important works in the history of science and technology between these periods." Thanks to Garrett E. for the news tip. -- Libraries and Librarians The June 2004 Issue of Walt Crawford's "Cites & Insights" is Now Online More "must read" material from Mr. Crawford.
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents Iraq Source: Congressional Research Service (via FPC) New CRS Report, The Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA): Origin, Characteristics, and Institutional Authorities 38 pages; PDF. -- Hurricanes Source: NOAA Just Released, NOAA: 2004 Atlantic Hurricane Outlook See Also: More Info, Related Sites, and Images in this News Release See Also: NOAA Atlantic Hurricanes Database -- United States Air Force--Facts U.S. Air Force Almanac 2004 Source: Air Force Magazine "On the following pages appears a variety of information and statistical material about the US Air Force, its people, organization, equipment, funding, activities, bases, and heroes." See also: Navy League Almanac 2004 See also: Army Magazine Green Book See also: U.S. Navy Owners and Operators Manual 2004 (All Hands Magazine - PDF; 4.75 MB) -- Employment--United States--Statistics Source: U.S. Census Two New Reports 1) A Profile of Older Workers in Missouri Summary ||| Full Text 2) A Profile of Older Workers in Iowa Summary ||| Direct to Full Text Monday, May 17, 2004
Research Tools--Gurunet Source: GLOBES [online] Web-Based Research Tool Gurunet Files for IPO From the article, "Jerusalem-based GuruNet (formerly Atomica) has filed its preliminary prospectus for an IPO on the Nasdaq Small Cap index, under the ticker GURU. GuruNet will issue $7.8 million worth of shares at an estimated company value of $15 million, before money." Gurunet offers a fee-based database of ready-reference material. The company relaunched the product in March. The new release allows the user to access Gurunet's reference content without having to download client software. If you haven't given Gurunet a look, you should. It continues to develop into a "must have" resource. See Also: Full Text of IPO Filing See Also: Peter Jacso's 2001 Review (Very Positive) Note: Gurunet was formerly known as Atomica See Also: Walt Mossberg's Review of Gurunet He writes, "First of all, in most cases Google doesn't actually provide you an answer, just a list of links to Web pages where information might be found. So getting the exact information you want requires more steps: You have to browse through the links Google offers, pick out one that looks good, then go to it and look for the relevant material."
The British Library--Digitization Projects Source: BL Medieval masterpieces go online From the announcement, "A grant of £300,000 has been awarded to the Institute of English Studies, School of Advanced Study University of London, in partnership with the British Library, to produce the first ever digitally illustrated and searchable catalogue of western illuminated medieval and renaissance manuscripts held in the British Library's collections...A pilot project was previously conducted by The British Library, with the support of the Getty Grant Program, entailing a survey of the collections at shelf and the creation of a pilot website. This currently holds descriptions and selected images of some 250 manuscripts, drawn from different periods and regions. It can be consulted at www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts."
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents Civil Rights--United States Source: Teachers' Domain.org Launched Today, Teachers' Domain Civil Rights Special Collection From an IMLS announcement, "Produced by WGBH Boston in partnership with the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute of Alabama, and the libraries of Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, the free [registration required] multi-media online collection includes dramatic archival news footage, first-hand accounts of civil rights activists, oral histories, and primary source images and documents. Designed as a resource for classroom use and independent study, the Civil Rights Special Collection gives teachers and independent learners rich digital tools to present this important part of our nation's history in engaging and interactive ways. The main Teachers' Domain site went live in October and offers a treasure chest of resources for educators." Here's the ResourceShelf overview from 10/4/2003. -- Labor--United States--Statistics Source: BLS Just Released, Women in the Labor Force: A Databook (PDF) Also available as html document. -- HIV/AIDS--United States Source: Kaiser Family Foundation Recently Updated Report, Financing HIV/AIDS Care: A Quilt with Many Holes "...provides a comprehensive overview of the current financing system for HIV/AIDS care in the U.S." -- Drugs--Australia Source: Parliamentary Library, Parliament of Australia New, Current Issues E-Brief, Illicit Drugs in Australia: Use, Harm and Policy Responses -- Migration Source: International Organization for Migration Recently Released, World Migration 2003 "The World Migration Report 2003 provides a global overview and nine regional updates on international migration trends and policies, useful to the general reader as it is to students, academics and government officials and migration experts." -- Elections--Canada Source: Library of Parliament New, Federal Election Trivia Sunday, May 16, 2004
Information Retrieval New, ALVIS: Open Source Semantic Web Search Project from European Consortium A recently released open source, semantic web project from several research organizations based in Europe. Not much on the web site but here's what I was able to piece together. + From the web site, "The new economy is based on innovation, and innovation is based on up-to-date information. The semi-static Internet alone has in the order of 1000 million pages of information, and search has become a fundamental service required both by individual citizens and businesses alike." + From the web site, "The project will conduct research in the design, use and interoperability of topic-specific search engines with the goal of developing an open source prototype of a distributed, semantic-based search engine. Existing search engines provide poor foundation for semantic web operations, and US companies such as Google are becoming monopolies, distorting the entire information landscape." + Goal #1 -- Implement a semantic-based search engine, with the code as Open Source. A public demonstration of a topic-specific search engine in a topic to be determined will be done. + Project began at beginning of 2004 and will continue through 2006. + Consortium includes members from France, Switzerland, Finland, Denmark, Slovenia, and Spain. See Also: Next Generation Information Search (via CoSCo at the Helsinki Institute of Information Technology) The site mentions that demos will be available beginning next monnth.
Briefly + St. Petersburg's Public Library Director says library is being misused (via WTSP) + Prison Libraries in Florida: Romance novels, legal references best sellers behind bars (via HeraldTribune.com) + Elsevier Announces Initiatives, Office in China
Web Search--Microsoft Source: AP AP Article on Microsoft's Search Plans Nothing really new here. A few quotes. + "Microsoft efforts are so sweeping that painting its strategy as a simple matchup with Google is a 'narrow, narrow way of looking at it,' said Jim Desler, a Microsoft spokesman." + "'Eventually,' [MSN director Lisa] Gurry said, 'Microsoft hopes to make search more personalized. For example, the search engine would use past behaviour to guess whether a user who types in "saturn" is looking for the planet or the car.'" + "Such record-keeping evokes complex privacy issues that Gurry concedes still must be worked out. And such issues illustrate what Gartner's [David] Smith said may be Google's key advantage over Microsoft. 'It's not just technology, it's trust,' Smith said. 'Google is trusted, and Microsoft is not as trusted.'" + The article also includes a mention of Microsoft Researcher Susan Dumais and the "Stuff I've Seen" project. See Also: A Review of Some of Microsoft's Search-Related Intellectual Property See Also: "Microsoft: Built From Scratch, The Interface Migrates to the Web" John Battelle on his day at Microsoft. See Also: Direct to the "Stuff I've Seen" Project Home Page See Also: Direct to MSN Newsbot Demos
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents United States--History Source: Smithsonian Institution/National Museum of American History New Exhibit, Separate Is Not Equal: Brown v. Board of Education The exhibit opened at the NMAH on Saturday. "The [virtual exhibit] presents material from the exhibition plus educational resources and a Reflections area where visitors may tell their own stories." See Also: Brown v. Board of Education Annotated Bibliography See Also: Brown v. Board of Education Annotated Timeline See Also: Additional Brown v. Board of Education Resources (via CCNY Government Documents Division) -- Environment--United States Source: USGS New, Full Text Report, Water Quality in the Nation's Streams and Aquifers: Overview of Selected Findings, 1991-2001 See Also: Report Highlights See Also: Summary publications from 51 NAWQA study units sampled in 1991-2001
Web Search--Google Is Google Catalogs Kaput? Just wondering if Google has given up on the Google Catalogs beta? Yes, the site is still online and offers a great demo of optical character recognition search BUT many of the catalogs I accessed were old* and the total number of catalogs in the database (about 6,600 according to the web site) has not increased in several months. * Examples: + The Dell catalog is from 8/2003. + The L.L. Bean catalog is dated Holiday 2003. + The Office Max catalog is dated Spring 2003. Saturday, May 15, 2004
Information Retrieval Source: ACM Queue The top five reasons why search is still way too hard A short rant by David Brown (I agree with most of his points) that's worthy of your attention. A few comments from me. Brown's Reason 1) The lack of a controlled vocabulary is a problem with open web searching. This is why federating specialized databases (that do offer controlled vocabs) at the time of search might be a positive move. One database can't be all things to all users. Also, dynamic clustering can also help users easily focus their searches since building and implementing a controlled vocab on the open web poses many major problems including scaling issues. Natural language search, still far from perfect, continues to improve and might help search tools become answer engines for certain types of queries. -- Brown's Reason 2) Brown is right again. However, what about using a focused database for a specific need vs. a general tool? It's no different than using the right book at the right time. We all have many reference books on our shelves. One general research tool can't answer each and every question. Craig Silverstein, Google's CTO, said again this week (it's a point he's made many times), "...[the goal is to develop a] computer be as smart as a reference librarian. That's interesting, because reference librarians, of course, use computers, use Google to help them search, but they put some element of intelligence into it that the computer cannot do by itself." Often this "librarian intelligence" helps the researcher understand their information need, develop their query, and select the right tool for the job. Silverstein says that we're close to 300 years away from computers having the level of intelligence that a reference librarian offers. -- Brown's Reason 3) Just asking, but is it time for a information company like Dialog, LN, Factiva, etc. to create a fee-based and advertising-free general web database that offered plenty of search features? How about a non-profit group? Is the user base large enough for this type of service? Remember how Dialog tried to get into the web search business several years ago with WebTop? It was awful. However, with better technology from one of many companies or even Nutch is the time right to try it again? -- Brown's Reason 4) I'll admit that tools like Teoma's "Refine" feature and Gigablast's Giga Bits services aren't perfect but they are steps in the right direction. The same goes for tools that dynamically cluster (like Vivisimo) or map search results to a controlled vocab. Of course, a small amount of education can also make searching more precise and less time consuming. -- Reason 5) Well said Mr. Brown! Everything is not "on the web." Much exists in proprietary databases (yes, info still costs money) or hasn't been digitized. Yes, this means that books and other printed publications are still crucial. The library profession and info industry has done a poor job of explaining this to the masses. Don't blame people for not using resources other than Google since they've done a brilliant job of marketing their product. Many people have asked me during the past year or so, where was the library and info profession in 1999 or 2000? Why weren't we creating resources for the masses? This is a good question. See Also: More Articles from ACM Queue About Search
Professional Reading Shelf Source: Seattle Times Catalog Librarian Felicia Uhden "Felicia Uhden is the manager of bibliographic services at the Seattle Public Library." Profile includes information about what she does, how items get cataloged, etc. (via DrWeb) -- The following two items were culled from the Infomine What's New Newsletter XML Source: XML.org XML Beginner's Guide XML.org's "Beginner's Guide" is actually a set of links to tutorials and FAQ's posted elsewhere. There are links to three FAQs, one glossary, three XML specifications, six tutorials, and more. Some sample links: + XML for the absolute beginner; + 20 Questions on XML; + XML Namespaces FAQ; + Pros and Cons of XML; + XML: 11 Best Practices -- Preservation European Commission on Preservation and Access "European Commission on Preservation and Access (ECPA) was established in 1994 by a group of scholars, librarians and archivists out of concern for the fate of millions of books and documents that are being threatened by acidification, embrittlement and decay... This site has been created to keep a large audience of professionals informed and involved. It is meant as a gateway for information on work directed at the preservation of the documentary heritage in Europe: first of all paper-based materials, but also sound, film, photographs, and digital archives. We focus on preservation as an integral element in collection management." The site includes a searchable map of preservation organizations and projects in Europe. Friday, May 14, 2004
Professional Reading Shelf Copyright--United States Source: American Library Association ALA's Legislative Counsel Testifies Before Congress From an ALA Newsline post, "ALA Legislative Counsel, Miriam Nisbet, testified on May 12, 2004, at the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection Subcommittee hearing on H.R. 107, the Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act. Speaking on behalf of ALA, AALL, ARL, SLA, and MLA, Ms. Nisbet pointed out the ways that the current prohibitions resulting from passage of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) stifle a library's ability to make fair use of digital materials, to preserve and archive digital content and to take advantage fully of the other library exceptions provided by federal copyright law." You can find the prepared statements from Ms. Nisbet and others including Lawrence Lessig here. On a related note, a new report from Canada... Full Text, Interim Report on Copyright Reform Source: The Standing Committee On Canadian Heritage -- Freedom of Information--United Kingdom Source: Kablenet FoI under scrutiny From the article, "Ministers attempting to veto the Freedom of Information Act will be subject to detailed Parliamentary scrutiny, the UK information commissioner said on 12 May 2004. When the Act comes into force in January, cabinet ministers will be able to use a special procedure to override rulings calling for government information to be released to the public." More in this news release from the Info Commissioner.
National Archives--United States Government Documents--Declassification--United States Source: NARA Thousands of Intelligence Documents Opened under the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act From the announcement, "Hundreds of thousands of pages of FBI, CIA, and U.S. Army intelligence records related to Nazi and World War II war crimes and perpetrators have been declassified and opened to the public under the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act of 1998. On May 13, the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group (IWG) announced the release, which included approximately 240,000 pages from the FBI, 419 additional CIA name and subject files, and more than 3,000 pages documenting U.S. Army involvement with German spymaster Reinhard Gehlen."
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents Baseball The Baseball Index Source: Society for American Baseball Research The Baseball Index Searchable catalog to baseball literature available for free. "It encompasses books, magazine articles, programs, pamphlets, films, recordings, songs, poems, cartoons, advertising, or anything else that may be of interest to the baseball fan or researcher." Currently contains bibliographic information on 194,200 documents. Offers People Search, Topic Search and an Advanced Search interface that allows for searching by title, author, topics, people and copyright year. "The Society for American Baseball Research is an international organization headquartered in Cleveland, OH. The Society's mission is to foster the study of baseball, to assist in developing and maintaining the history of the game, to facilitate the dissemination of baseball research and to stimulate interest in baseball." -- Education--Statistics Source: NCES New International Education Indicators Added to Website From the announcement, "International Education Indicators is a compilation of indicators from a multitude of data sources which provides a rich array of information on the current state of education internationally. They are intended to provide snapshots of the U.S. education system in comparison to systems in countries around the world. New indicators are always being added." -- Military Justice--United States The Army Lawyer Source: U.S. Army Judge Advocate General's Legal Center and School Magazine covering topics of interest to military lawyers. Full text (PDF) available back to 1971. See also: The Military Law Review, "the premier U.S. Armed Forces journal of military legal scholarship," available in full-text back to 1958 (PDF). A variety of other law-oriented publications are available from this site by clicking on "Other Publications" in the list at the left side of the screen. -- Air Travel--United States FAA Makes Real-Time Airport Status Info Available for Wireless Devices Simply enter http://www.faa.gov/wireless into your web-enabled PDA, phone, etc. I'm a Treo 600 kind of guy (it's awesome). Also available via wireless device are airport status updates sent to your pager, phone, PDA or e-mail address. Of course, all of this content remains available on the web page at http://www.faa.gov/Passengers/highlights/airportstatusinfo.cfm. Real-Time updates are available for the nation's top 35 airports. Thursday, May 13, 2004
Resources of the Week 2 articles and a database this week. ++ Competitive Intelligence Information Retrieval Full Text Articles This is the second post on ResourceShelf that features useful and interesting writing by members of The Association of Independent Information Professionals. The first post in the series is here. It also contains a brief overview about the organization. -- 1) Using FOIA for Competitive Advantage Source: Comeptia Magazine The article was written by Bill Crowley of Competitive Analysis Technologies. A special thank you to Ian Smith at Competia for creating a non-subscriber link to this article. -- 2) Is Boolean Dead? Source: E-Content This article was written by Mary Ellen Bates of Bates Information Service. ++ Stock Footage--Databases Footage.net "Since 1994, FOOTAGE.net has been the premiere stock footage resource to reach the trade's best stock footage sources - news, creative, archival, and RF. Now find better content faster than ever before." Find better content faster than ever before? OK, we're listening. This site offers a powerful search engine that probes the databases of two dozen diverse stock footage archives -- from the familiar (CNN, National Geographic, network TV news outlets) to the esoteric (StormStock, "the world's premier storm footage library featuring tornadoes, lightning, hurricanes, storm clouds, flash floods, giant hail, microbursts and other spectacular storm imagery." (You can link to/search these archives invidually from here as well.) A dropdown menu on the search interface provides Boolean options, and a second dropdown menu allows you to choose a global search or an individual database. A variety of sample clips is available for viewing. Don't have time to rummage around here? Take advantage of Footage.net's Zap Request feature -- "your free, instant e-mail pipeline to footage companies, archives and footage researchers who can help you find your exact shot." Now...the next time one of your customers wanders into your purview and starts telling you about something that was on CNN -- not sure when...maybe a couple weeks ago...is there any way to find this -- you can act like a magician. See also: ITN Archive, for stock footage from UK archives, including Reuters and a number of historical sources.
Web Search Source: News.com Search engines take the stand This might be as scary as it gets. Do we need research tools other than Google and other open web engines. Does the public understand how they work? Do they have the critical information skills to use them properly? More to say on this one later. Btw, you'll also read how a judge used Google's page ESTIMATES in a published decision. From the article, "In one case in Ohio, a judge who ordered a mother not to smoke near her 8-year-old daughter cited medical journals and a Google search that lists 60,000-plus links for "secondhand smoke" and 30,000-plus links for 'secondhand smoke children.'" Another example of Google page estimates being used incorrectly.
Professional Reading Shelf Online Information--Australia Source: National Library of Australia Full Text Paper, Keeping Online Information Accessible for E-governance and E-democracy A paper by Margaret E Phillips, Director Digital Archiving, National Library of Australia, and Adrian Cunningham, Director Recordkeeping Standards and Policy, National Archives of Australia. From the abstract, "Democracy, governance, consultation and participation all depend on the availability of authentic and reliable information. Government agencies at the federal, state and local levels, as well as educational and research institutions, are producing increasingly large volumes of information in electronic formats only. While Australia has done more than most countries to date to address the need to identify, collect, store and preserve publications and organisational records in electronic formats, large amounts of information are still at risk of loss." -- Information Industry STM Publishing Articles from the March/April Issues of Research Information Articles include: + You can't read e-journals when the lights go out + An agent's view An interview with Eric van Amerongen, CEO of Royal Swets and Zeitlinger. -- Open Access Now Available, Latest evidence for UK government inquiry This uncorrected transcript features testimony from: + Professor Sir Keith O'Nions, Director General of the Research Councils + Mr Rama Thirunamachandran, Director of Research and Knowledge Transfer, Higher Education Funding Council for England + Professor John Wood, Research Councils UK See Also: UK Parliament's STM Inquiry Continues: Librarians "Wimps"?(via Library Journal) See Also: House of Commons Science & Technology Committee Inquiry into Scientific Publications (via Open Access Now)
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents Student Learning Source: C&RL News New, Webliography: Assessing student learning A compilation of resources by Amy E. Mark. -- Child Labor--Statistics Source: U.S. Department of Labor Just Released, The Department of Labor's 2003 Findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labor "The Labor Department today released its third annual report on the worst forms of child labor in 144 countries and territories that receive U.S. trade benefits." 704 pages; PDF. Summary ||| Direct to Full Text ||| Older Reports -- Opinion Polls PollingReport.com "PollingReport.com is updated whenever new polls are released. Click a subject area from the web site directory above, use the CONTENTS page or site SEARCH engine, or access featured topics via the links on the right. Data are from national probability-sample surveys of the American public. Additional data -- including state-by-state presidential, congressional, and gubernatorial polls -- plus analyses by leading pollsters, are available to subscribers." -- Information Technology--Lists & Rankings Source: Red Herring New, Red Herring 100 (2004) The top 100 private info tech companies.
Web Search--Yahoo Source: AP, Reuters, News.com Forget the Search Wars, It's Mail Wars! Here are a few highlights and quotes from Yahoo's meeting with analysts that took place today in California. + Yahoo has announced that they will offer 100MB of free storage space for Yahoo Mail users. + Customers who pay for access to Yahoo Mail will have "virtually unlimited storage" space. + A "face-lift" of Yahoo Mail will debut this summer. + "'We will continue to lead and not follow,' said Dan Rosensweig, Yahoo's chief operating officer. 'We know where the Internet is going.'" + "Yahoo gave Google credit for its leadership position in online searching ? an area where Yahoo is spending heavily to gain an advantage. In Thursday's presentation, Yahoo rated its search brand strength as "moderate" while praising Google's as 'strong.'" + "'All we want to do is win and it's the only thing that excites us,' Semel said, who added that the company's management bench has expertise in all forms of media and everything that relates to the Internet." -- and in other Yahoo News... CNN, SI.com, and CNNMoney Switch to Yahoo Search As of today (this new arrangement was first reported in April) all of these sites are offering search "powered by" Yahoo. Until today these sites offered search "enhanced" by Google. CNN has had an advertising deal with Overture since late 2002. Thanks to L.C. for the tip.
Briefly + Library of Alexandria discovered -- + Florida...Local School Libraries Struggle While Prison Libraries Get Millions (via WFTV) Wednesday, May 12, 2004
Professional Listening Shelf Libraries and Librarians Librarians on the Radio 1) RealAudio: The Diane Rehm Show An hour conversation with: + Toni Garvey, director, Phoenix Public Library and past president of the Public Library Association + Carla Hayden, executive director, Enoch Pratt Free Library and president of the American Library Association + Winston Tabb, dean of university libraries and director of the Sheridan Libraries at Johns Hopkins University. This program aired on 5/6/04. -- Non-Commercial Web Directories 2) The Librarians' Index to the Internet Featured on Voice of America Program Congrats to Karen Schneider and the LII team! You can listen to the segment via RealAudio.
Web Search--Google A New Beta (via Google Labs): Google Groups 2 You've got to hand it to them, they're always making news. Google has joined Yahoo (and continues to become a portal) with a new "groups" service (beta, of course). What's New? Instead of only offering access to Usenet groups (Alt., Rec. etc.), Google Groups now allows you to create your own e-mail based group. This is a service that Yahoo has offered for a long time. + Users can create, join, and search email-based mailing lists (registration required). You don't need to register to search and read group postings. + Google promises that posts will be added within 10 seconds of posting and be searchable within 10 minutes + Users can track and mark favorite topics using the "My Groups" feature and view postings in a variety of ways including by message summary, title, or conversation view + Access Usenet archive remains available + You can compare Google Groups features to Yahoo Groups offerings here. At the moment, it looks as if Yahoo Groups offers more features. and in other Google news... Google Adding Image Ads (via Search Engine Journal) Can you say banner ads? More details in this News.com article.
Question Answering Services Source: Reuters UK: Cell phone search takes on Net engines From the article, "A new mobile phone service is challenging big Internet search engines by providing exact answers to any question, such as the number of steps of the Empire State building, the 1928 manager of British football club Chelsea, or which color hat to put on in the morning. The service, dubbed Any Question Answered (AQA), provides an unusual mix of computer-automated search and human research to come up with answers that cost one pound ($1.76) apiece. Three major cellular carriers in the United Kingdom--Orange, Vodafone and O2--have introduced the service to subscribers in the last three weeks." On a related note...UK Government Agency Launches "Web Over Phone" Service (via Kable's Government Computing) "Cynics may suggest that there is not much new in providing a service down a phone line but the DCMS claims it is leading other Whitehall departments in making its internet site available to blind and partially sighted people through "web-over-phone" technology." You can learn more about the technology here.
Professional Reading Shelf Enterprise Search Source: TechWeb Using Enterprise Search Tools As Your Secret Weapon This article was written by Ali Raiz, the Chief Operating Officer and CFO of Fast Search & Transfer. -- International Federation of Library Associations IFLA Announces Theme of 2004 Conference Libraries: Dynamic Engines for the Knowledge and Information Society From the announcement, "In recent years, society has been changing rapidly with the onset of a new digital era and rapid developments in information technology and digital communications. It is time for libraries to work together with library scholars and professionals in order to fulfill the role and functions of 21st century information centres to meet the challenges of this fast moving world. This theme has been chosen because we believe that libraries should act as a dynamic engine for the knowledge and information society. This is to be the mission of library scholars and professionals worldwide in the new era."
Industry News--Alexander Street Press New Fee-Based Database: Global Views and Voices From the announcement, "Global Views and Voices delivers contemporary perspectives on current events, globalization, the media, development, culture, and the arts from writers around the world. The database is produced through the collaboration of openDemocracy, Ltd., for editorial selection, and Alexander Street Press, for structure and expert indexing. The result is a truly innovative resource for studies in international affairs, foreign policy, political science, the media, diversity, anthropology, history, journalism, the environment, sociology, comparative cultures, religion, defense/war/peace issues, globalization, and social policy..." Free access to the database is available through 6/4/04.
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents Health Source: WHO New, Full Text Report, The world health report 2004 - changing history -- Wireless Access--United States--Statistics Source: Pew Internet Project New Data Memo, 28% of American adults are wireless ready -- R&D--United States Source: NSF New, Info Brief, U.S. Academic R&D Continues to Grow as More Universities and Colleges Expand Their R&D Activities -- FBI Source: National Academies New, Full Text Report, A Review of the FBI's Trilogy Information Technology Modernization Program Summary ||| Direct to Full Text -- Campaign Finance--United States--Statistics Source: FEC Just Released, Congressional Fundraising Continues To Grow "Congressional campaigns raised a total of $583.3 million in the 15 months of the 2003-2004 election cycle ending March 31, an increase of 35% from the comparable period in the 2001-2002 campaign, according to a compilation by the Federal Election Commission." Included in the release are numerous lists available in xls and pdf formats. Examples: + Top 50 Senate Campaigns by Receipts + Top 50 House Campaigns by Contributions from Individuals + Financial Activity of House Candidates -- 1994-2004 -- Election 2004 Factiva Media Visibility Index (SM) Tracks the Hot-Button Issues for 2004 Presidential Election During the Week Ending May 9, 2004
Briefly OpenURL Implementation by Infotrieve Highlights Growing Value of Digital Object Identifiers Standards Initiative ++ Web Browsers...New Version of Opera Released (via News.com) Absolutely worth a look!!! Tuesday, May 11, 2004
Science--Specialized Search Tools Source: FirstGov FirstGov Unveils Science.gov 2.0 We just learned about this new release and need some time to check it out; you might want to join us. "Science.gov [version 1.0 was launched in 12/2002] is a gateway to authoritative selected science information provided by U.S. Government agencies, including research and development results." The new version offers improved relevancy (their words) and an advanced interface. The site utilizes federated search technology called Explorit. It comes from Deep Web Technologies. More later.
Web Search Source: ACM Queue Why Writing Your Own Search Engine is Hard Another article from the April 2004 issue of ACM Queue is available online. Anna Patterson, Google engineer and developer of The Wayback Machine's Recall database shares some interesting insights. A great read for the search geek. See Also: More Search-related Articles from ACM Queue
Professional Reading Shelf Libraries The pattern is new in every moment: observations on issues affecting libraries and archives within the framework of the 2003 OCLC environmental scan The slides from a recent presentation by OCLC's VP of Research, Lorcan Dempsey, at Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa. -- Libraries--Children Source: University of Maryland, Human-Computer Interaction Lab Just Released, The Role of Books, Libraries, Technology, and Culture in Children's Lives: An International case study -- Copy Machines Source: CFO Magazine The Secret Life of Copiers "Most copy machines are now full-blown IT devices, with network and E-mail server connectivity. Any information stored on them can often be accessed by employees and targeted by hackers or thieves."
Web Search--Google Phone the Neighbors, Wake the Kids (Just Kidding): Google Has a Weblog! Thanks to Steve C. at Library Stuff for sharing the news. The current post on the weblog invites people from around the world to consider Google as a place to work. According to Ev Williams (he's also the founder of Blogger) the weblog could have Google news (they're very careful what they say these days with the IPO coming) but you'll be likely to find more "bloggy" things. For example, "What Larry had for breakfast. What Sergey thinks of that Hellboy movie. Which Dawson's Creek character reminds us most of Eric." See Also: Google Has Already "Edited" Its First Blog Posting (via News.com) From the article, "Google edited itself in a Monday note about the Mountain View, Calif., company's recent expansion to Bangalore, India. In an earlier, more lighthearted version of the posting, Google said too much has been made out of U.S. companies outsourcing jobs in India. A later version of the note, posted Tuesday without identifying the changes, takes a less opinionated tone over what is a topic of heated political debate." You can read what was edited here. Thanks to Pamela C. for the news tip.
Industry Briefs xrefer Introduces Library Advisory Board I think it would be great if a general web engine(s) created this type of group. -- EBSCO Introduces New Hospitality and Tourism Database --
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents Education--United States--Lists & Rankings Source: U.S. Census College Education Rankings "With nearly half its population 25 years and older having at least a bachelor's degree, Seattle has one of the highest rates of college education among large U.S. cities, according to a ranking of American Community Survey (ACS) data released today by the U.S. Census Bureau. The new Census Bureau analysis of 2002 ACS data shows that 48.8 percent of Seattle's 25-and-over population has earned at least a bachelor's degree. Other large cities (250,000 population or more) with high college-education rates were: Raleigh, N.C. (48.0 percent); San Francisco (47.8 percent); and Atlanta (41.2 percent). The national college graduation rate was 25.9 percent. See Also: Percent of People With a Bachelor's Degree or More (By State) See Also: Percent of People With a Bachelor's Degree or More (By City) See Also: Percent of People With a Bachelor's Degree or More (By County) -- Home Improvement Source: PR Newswire The Home Depot and 'This Old House' Expand Partnership to Television, Publishing and Internet "The Home Depot, the world's largest home improvement retailer, today announced the launch of the 'This Old House' Video Library, a new online channel...that features instructional advice on home-related projects delivered via streaming videos." See: This Old House Video Library -- Space--Images The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth Source: NASA - Johnson Space Center "Beginning with the Mercury missions in the early 1960s, astronauts have taken photographs of the Earth. Our database tracks the locations, supporting data, and digital images for these photographs. We process images coming down from the Space Shuttle and International Space Station on a daily basis and add them to the more than 558,357 views of the Earth already made accessible on our website. These images include 120,056 from the International Space Station." See also: Cities Collection -- "This collection hosts the best views of cities around the globe as photographed by astronauts while in orbit." -- Geographic Information Directions Magazine "Directions magazine is an internet-centered publication delivering news, analysis, commentary and product information to people who need timely, insightful and accurate information about geo-demographic trends and the tools to analyze them." Resources available here include: + Industry directory + Feature articles + Map Gallery (static GIS-based maps) + Web Map Gallery (showcase for interactive GIS mapping technology) + Searchable database of GIS training programs and libraries at schools worldwide + Downloadable tools and applications See also: GISUser.com -- Documents in the News--Iraq Source: International Committee of the Red Cross Full Text, Report on the Treatment by the Coalition Forces of Prisoners of War and Other Protected Persons in Iraq 24 pages; PDF. Monday, May 10, 2004
Information Retrieval Research Knowledge Extraction Answer Engines Source: New Scientist Learn About: KnowItAll From the article, "KnowItAll, a search engine under development at the University of Washington, Seattle, trawls the web for data and then collates it in the form of a list. The approach is unique, says its developer, Oren Etzioni, because it generates information that probably does not exist on any single web page." From the KnowItAll site, "KnowItAll --- a domain-independent system that extracts massive amounts of information from the web in an automated, open-ended manner." See Also: Direct to KnowItAll Home Page See Also: We First Mentioned KnowItAll on ResourceShelfPLUS in March A paper about the project will be presented at the 2004 WWW Conference next week.
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents Digitized Images The Library of Congress Source: The Prints and Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC) Two New Collections added to LC's Prints and Photographs Online Catalog 1) The Matson Negatives "Negatives made by the American Colony Photo Department and its successor, the Matson Photo Service, illustrating Middle East culture, history, and political events including people and locations in Israel, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, and Turkey." About 7500 images are available. The entire collection has been digitized and is available outside of the Library of Congress. Sample images. -- 2) Performing Arts Poster Collection Cool!!! About 2100 posters, most digitized and available outside of LC. "1840-1936 (bulk 1879-1910). Posters from three collections: Theatrical Poster Collection (ca. 1,775 posters); Minstrel Poster Collection (ca. 175 posters); and Magic Poster Collection (ca. 150 posters)." Sample images. ++ Outcome Measurement Source: United Way of America Outcome Measurement Resource Network "The Resource Network offers information, downloadable documents, and links to resources related to the identification and measurement of program- and community-level outcomes." See also: Introduction to Outcome-Oriented Evaluation: Selected Resources (IMLS) -- Older Americans--Legal Resources American Bar Association Commission on Law and Aging "The mission of the ABA Commission on Law and Aging is to strengthen and secure the legal rights, dignity, autonomy, quality of life, and quality of care of elders. It carries out this mission through research, policy development, technical assistance, advocacy, education, and training." Available here: + Legal Guide for Older Americans (Downloadable PDFs, chapter by chapter) + Law and Aging Resource Guide ("Comprehensive listing of the state-wide resources available to help older persons with law-related issues") + Consumer’s Tool Kit for Health Care Advance Planning ("Contains a variety of self-help worksheets, suggestions, and resources") + Useful Links to federal and state agencies, professional organizations and interest groups, and resources related to such things as end-of-life care, legal and consumer issues. + Online brochures: ++ Good Guardianship: State Court Partnerships with the Aging Network ++ 10 Legal Myths About Advance Medical Directives ++ Shape Your Health Care Future with Health Care Advance Directives (MS Word format) ++ Understanding Health Plan Dispute Resolution (PDF; 384 KB)
Archives Source: Newsweek Kicking Up Dust A Q&A with Russ Kick, writer/editor and frequent FOIA filer. Thanks to Dana G. for the news tip. See Also: Direct to The Memory Hole Web Site
Professional Reading Shelf Web-Based Resources The May 2004 Issue of The Internet Resources Newsletter is Available. More interesting and useful material from Roddy M., Catherine U., and Catherine F. in this, "free, monthly newsletter for academics, students, engineers, scientists and social scientists." -- Open Access Source: Managing Information National Open Access Agreement For Finland "Finland has become the first country to make a nationwide commitment to Open Access. All universities, polytechnics and research institutes in Finland have become BioMed Central members. The membership agreement covers the cost of publication, in BioMed Central?s 100+ Open Access journals, for all 25000 publicly funded researchers and teachers in Finland." Sunday, May 09, 2004
Web Search--Ask Jeeves A Mother's Day Logo From Ask Jeeves A special logo to celebrate the holiday. Jeeves ran another special logo last week to celebrate Cinco de Mayo. Google also has a holiday logo today.
Web Search--Google News.Com's Executive Editor Blasts Google Wow! In a commentary titled, "The Essence of Googlism," News.com's exec editor Charles Cooper rips the IPO letter by Brin and Page apart one section at a time. Strong stuff from the top guy at a news organization that has published plenty of "isn't Google great" material.
Business Research Source: The Toledo Blade Private archive in Ann Arbor tracks consumer marketing From the article, "A marketing specialist, Ms. Raymond is managing director of NewProductWorks, a consumer-products consulting unit owned by Arbor Strategy Group, a management advisory firm. But she also is custodian of the "collection" - an extraordinary assortment of every new consumer food or health and beauty aid product introduced in North America since the early 1970s. Housed in a former Ferrari car dealership in a business park on Ann Arbor's south side, the 80,000-item collection is displayed on supermarket-style shelves. The museum-like place, which is not open to the general public, adds 500 items a month and contains products that date to the 1960s."
Professional Reading Shelf Scholarly Publishing Just Published, Full Text, Electronic Scientific, Technical, and Medical Journal Publishing and Its Implications: Proceedings of a Symposium -- Electronic Information Recently Updated, Subject Index to Literature on Electronic Sources of Information Compiled by Marian Dworaczek, University of Saskatchewan Library. "The page-specific "Subject Index to Literature on Electronic Sources of Information" and the accompanying "Electronic Sources of Information: A Bibliography" (listing all indexed items) deal with all aspects of electronic publishing and include print and non-print materials, periodical articles, monographs and individual chapters in collected works. This edition includes 1,614 indexed titles."
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents The following two items were culled from the Infomine What's New Newsletter Printing Source: Rochester Institute of Technology Cary Collection "The Cary Collection is one of the country's premier libraries on the history and practice of printing.The original collection of 2,300 volumes was assembled by the New York City businessman Melbert B. Cary, Jr. during the 1920s and 1930s. ... Today the library houses some 20,000 volumes and a growing number of manuscripts and correspondence collections. Also included are impressive holdings on bookbinding, papermaking, type design, calligraphy and book illustration. The goal of developing the digital image database is to enable users all over the world to sample the wealth of rich materials housed in the collection. There are currently close to 80 very high quality images." -- U.S. Military Source: DOD Military Casualty Information "The Department of Defense site lists United States war casualties from the Revolutionary War up through the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. It also lists all active military deaths from 1980 through 2002. The data for Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom includes the names of those killed as well as other personal information." Other sites wtih military casualty information: + America's Wars (fact sheet from the V.A.) + State Summary of War Casualties from World War II for Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard Personnel (NARA) + State-level Lists of Casualties from the Korean Conflict (1951-1957) and the Vietnam Conflict (1956-) (NARA) + Statistical Information About Casualties of the Vietnam Conflict (NARA) + World War II Honor List of Dead and Missing -- Army and Army Air Forces Personnel (NARA) See also: Military Assistance Program: Casualty and Mortuary Affairs (DoD Directives, links to related resources, etc.) Saturday, May 08, 2004
Search Engines--Legal Issues Web Search--Google Source: Chilling Effects A Selection of DMCA Notices Recently Filed with Google We haven't posted a list of DMCA notices in several months. To see all of them, simply go to the ChillingEffects.org site. Here are a few of the most recent ones: + AzeoTech Requests Takedown of Cracks + NakedNews Requests Removal of NekkidNews from Google + Complainant Requests Photographs of Self Be Removed + Drum Magazine Article Requested to be Removed from Google News + Self-Storage Site duz.com Claims Infringement
Professional Reading Shelf Academic Libraries Source: ARL Learning to Work Together--The Libraries and the University Press at Penn State
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents Information Security Source: UK Department of Trade and Industry/PWC Good practice in information security - Factsheets "...a series of seven themed factsheets about various aspects of the results and good practice in information security." + Backups & Recovery Factsheet + Viruses & Malicious Code Factsheet + Identity Management Factsheet + Intrusion Prevention Factsheet + Spam Factsheet + Remote Access Factsheet + Internet Misuse Factsheet -- Government Benefits--United States Source: DOL GovBenefits.gov Expands, Spanish Language Version Now Available Expanded state program information now available. "More than 500 federal and state assistance programs now participate on the website..." Direct to GovBenefits.gov in Spanish. Friday, May 07, 2004
Web Search--Ask Jeeves Web Search--Teoma Jeeves/Teoma Database Now Includes PDF Content It looks as if the folks at Jeeves/Teoma (same database used at both sites) have decided (finally) to include pdf content in their database. Documents are labeled with the text [PDF File] next to the title/hyperlink on the serp. At Teoma the text is in green and at Jeeves it's in red. No syntax is available to limit your search to only pdf content. The closest you can get (far from perfect) is using inurl:pdf in the search string. I have yet to find other formats (.xls, .doc, .ppt, etc.) in the database.
Web Search--Gigablast Gigablast Database Passes Milestone Congrats and kudos to Gigablast's Matt Wells. This small but impressive general web search tool passed the 300 million page mark today. Matt will soon increase the Gigablast daily crawl to 10 million pages per day. Want to learn more about Gigablast's developer and sole proprietor? Take a look at this recent interview with Wells published in ACM Queue. More? Here's another interview from Search Engine Watch.
Online Research Academic Libraries Source: Minneapolis Star-Tribune Students check out the Web instead of library No need to comment on this one. We've heard it before. From the article, Among the challenges identified in a library survey of undergraduates [at the University of Minnesota]: • Everything worth knowing is on the Internet. • The "Target mentality": "One of our missions is to build informational literacy among students, but the pressure among students is, 'Give me the book, give me the answer, gimme gimme gimme.' It's like running into Target and getting it and going. There isn't the patience anymore." • Libraries are boring: Some students go to Borders or Barnes and Noble and study there, putting the books back on the shelf when they're done. "They have the latest books, the greatest covers, nice displays," Veldof said. "What we're giving them instead is row after row of books with no [dust jackets]. We've had students say, 'All your books are old,' because they don't have covers." • Fear: "There's a lot of library anxiety out there," Veldof said. "We are big ... the library system online is not easy. It takes getting used to." Also, "'Faculty members are so annoyed by the low-quality research students do,' [Jerilyn] Veldof [a librarian at the University of Minnesota] said. 'I don't want to let that happen. So what do we do to entice them here and make it welcoming and easy to use the library?'" Thanks to Suzanne S. for the link.
Professional Reading Shelf Preservation Source: News.com Using high-energy physics to preserve old records From the article, "Carl Haber and Berkeley Labs colleague Vitaliy Fadeyev are working on a breakthrough way of digitizing and archiving old recordings, such as wax cylinders and traditional flat records, that are too far gone for a standard stylus. If successful, the pair may be able to help archivists at The Library of Congress and elsewhere rescue swaths of recorded musical and audio history that are today in danger of being lost. -- Scholarly Publishing Source: OCLC Audio and Slides Now Available: Scholars and Scripts, Eyeballs and Epistemes: What it Means to Publish The lecture was given by Professor Blaise Cronin on April 29th as part of the OCLC Distinguished Lecture Series. + Abstract ||| Audio (mp3, large file) ||| PowerPoint Slides -- Digital Libraries Source: Syllabus Magazine Deep Infrastructure Supports Digital Library Services "Libraries have always been central to the exchange of knowledge, but never have they been closer to the creation and dissemination of scholarly content, and to the fundamental processes of teaching and learning. Duke University has recognized the strategic importance of the digital library as a change agent." -- Social Networking (3 articles) Need a Job? How About a Date? Networking Services Want to Help Source: Knowledge@Wharton "Networking services – Internet companies that offer to bridge the six degrees of separation between the friend of a friend we might marry, or the colleague of a colleague who might hire us – are the hot e-businesses of the moment." ++ The Ethics and Etiquette of Social Networks Source: Darwin Magazine "As social networking solutions become part of the everyday fabric of business life, we need some guidance at the meta social level. When and how should we apply these tools, and how should we respond to others who are applying them in ways that we don't want to go along with? What are the rules of engagement?" ++ A Working Model "A Working Model is a research, analysis, and consulting firm, focused on collaborative technologies, and their impact on business and society." Weblog featuring news and commentary about such things as "instant messaging, collaboration and community tools, real-time conferencing, and other social tools."
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents Elections--United Kingdom Source: House of Commons Library New Research Report, Election Timetables
Industry Briefs Thomson...Thomson ISI Announces the Release of BIOSIS Previews 3.0 IEEE...Full-text Searching and Reference Links in IEEE Computer Society Publications Added to IEEE Xplore
Web Search How Search Engines Teach Users To Search Thanks to Garrett French for mentioning ResourceShelf in this article. Thursday, May 06, 2004
Resources of the Week 1) Citation Indexing This week three articles for your reading list. + The FUTURE of Citation Indexing: An Interview with Eugene Garfield With so much talk about PageRank and web link analysis these days, I think featuring a link to Peter Jacso's interview with the father of citation analysis, Dr. Eugene Garfield, is very appropriate. This interview was first published in the January 2004 issue of Online magazine. Many of the concepts at the core of citation analysis form the foundation of link analysis. Btw, citation analysis is mentioned in the Brin/Page paper, The Anatomy of a Search Engine. It's also mentioned in this article by the IBM CLEVER team (which preceded Google) that included Jon Kleinberg. CLEVER was never publicly released but many of its concepts are being used by Teoma/Jeeves. See Also: Dr. Garfield's Home Page and Links to Almost of His Publications Interesting and important reading! See Also: Full Text, "Citation Indexes for Science: A New Dimension in Documentation through Association of Ideas." The 1955 article that Dr. Jacso mentions at the beginning of the interview. See Also: More Interviews with Dr. Garfield -- 2) Semantic Weblogging Source: Hewlett-Packard (Steve Cayzer, Research Engineer) + Semantic Blogging: Spreading the Semantic Web Meme "The semantic web promises to make the web more useful by endowing metadata with machine processable semantics. Blogging is a lightweight web publishing paradigm which provides a very low barrier to entry, useful syndication and aggregation behaviour, a simple to understand structure and decentralized construction of a rich information network. Semantic blogging builds upon the success and clear network value of blogging by adding additional semantic structure to items shared over the blog channels. In this way we add significant value allowing view, navigation and query along semantic rather than simply chronological or serendipitous connections." See also: Semantic Blogging for Bibliography Management by the same author See also: Semantic Blogging Demonstrator See also: Semantic Blogging (PDF; 164 KB) -- a talk by Cayzer at BlogTalk 2003, a European conference on weblogs. Also available in PowerPoint format. See also: Semantic Blogging and the HP demonstrator, a lucid explanation of how this concept might work by Phil Wolff in his knowledge weblog, a klog apart -- Web Search--Weblogs Source: b/ITe (Special Libraries Association Information Technology Division) Trends in Blog Searching (PDF; 220 KB) "Blogs are everywhere, and it is important to be able to search them or make sure you're not searching them when you are looking for authoritative, accurate, and unbiased information." Article by Christina Pikas, Technical Librarian, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, covers blog searching in both general search engines and blog-specific search engines.
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents Educational Resources Source: Library and Archives Canada Released at the Beginning of April, Canada's Learning Centre From the site, "Library and Archives Canada's Learning Centre brings together a wealth of educational resources for students and teachers, including comprehensive teaching units and strategies, lesson plans, quizzes and games. Primary-source items such as diary entries, letters, maps and photos have been specially selected from Library and Archives Canada's collection and are available in 'The EvidenceWeb.' Quality websites for students, on a wide range of Canadian topics, have been selected for their educational value and are highlighted in 'For Students,' under 'Great Sites.' Award-winning Books for children and young people are listed in 'For Students,' under 'Award-winning Books.' Educators will be interested in the workshops offered in the "Educational Resources" database, found in 'For Teachers.'" -- e-Government Just Released, Full Text, 5th Annual Accenture Report on the State of e-Government From a GCN article, "Accenture on May 4 released its fifth global e-government study, which ranked the maturity of programs in 22 countries and examined their status and future steps. This year, for the first time, the report includes a study of citizens in 12 counties, looking at their use of and satisfaction with e-government services. The United States tied for second in e-government maturity with Singapore, behind Canada, but that only scratches the surface of what is going on, said Steve Rohleder, group chief executive for Accenture's Global Government Practice." -- Science & Engineering--United States--Statistics Source: NSF/NSB Just Released, Science and Engineering Indicators 2004 "The Science and Engineering Indicators, a biennial report series published by the National Science Board, is designed to provide a broad base of quantitative information about U.S. science, engineering, and technology for use by public and private policymakers. Because of the spread of scientific and technological capabilities around the world, this report presents a significant amount of material about these international capabilities and analyzes the U.S. position in this broader context." -- War--Maps Source: Nobel e-Museum Conflict Map "In the course of the 20th century, mankind experienced some of the most devastating wars of all times. Where did these wars take place? Have some regions experienced more wars than others? Who were the main protagonists in these conflicts? This map gives you the opportunity to answer these questions. It displays wars with at least 1,000 military battle deaths." (Shockwave) See also: Wars in the 20th Century and Nobel Peace Prize Statistics -- Fast Facts Source: The World Almanac New, The May Issue of The World Almanac E-Newsletter is Online Contains a chronology of April events, holidays, "This Day in History," and much more. See Also: Back issues and subscription info (free)
Professional Reading Shelf Newspapers Nicholson Baker's Newspaper Collection Donated to Duke University Oops, we missed story one last month. From the announcement, "A 5,000-volume collection containing many rare and historically important 19th and 20th century American newspapers has been donated to Duke University Libraries. Novelist and essayist Nicholson Baker announced the transfer of the American Newspaper Repository (ANR) during a speech Thursday at Duke. Baker founded the repository in 1999 and acquired the bulk of the collection from the British Library, which like other major libraries got rid of long runs of original edition newspapers and now rely instead on microfilm editions." Thanks to L.S-B. for the news tip. See Also: Guidelines for Using the American Newspaper Repository at Duke University Thanks again to L.S-B. for sharing this info with ResourceShelf.
Business Information Major Player in Mutual Fund Info, Morningstar, Files for IPO Plenty of interesting facts about the company and industry in the S-1 filing. Wednesday, May 05, 2004
Health Research Index Medicus Will Cease as Print Publication "The printed Index Medicus, started by John Shaw Billings in 1879 and published for 125 consecutive years, will cease at the end of 2004. Once an indispensable tool for health professionals and librarians, it is now a seldom used alternative to PubMed and other Internet-based products that contain the database from which Index Medicus has been generated for nearly 40 years." and speaking of PubMed... PubMed History Feature to Include Extra Options "PubMed will be offering new options in its History feature, so users can delete individual statements from the History, as well as combine History statements in a search more easily."
Professional Reading Shelf (5 Items) Enterprise Search More Search Articles from ACM Queue Last month, we included a link to a great interview with Matt Wells from Gigablast that ran in this publication. Today, two more articles have become available online. + Searching Vs. Finding This is essential reading! It was written by William A. Woods at Sun Microsystems Laboratories. -- + Enterprise Search: Tough Stuff This article was written by Rajat Mukherjee and Jianchang Mao from Verity and asks the question, "Why is it that searching an intranet is so much harder than searching the Web?" -- Information Professionals Source: University of Michigan International Center Work Abroad: Overseas Opportunities for Information Professionals "This page describes resources for researching international opportunities for U.S. graduate students, doctoral students, and other information professionals." -- Search Strategies Source: Library Journal Spying on Search Strategies Dr. Carol Tenopir's latest column. From the article, "Complexity isn't limited to free web search. Commercial online systems that rely on Boolean logic may also put power behind the end user interface, relying both on automatic construction of a Boolean query and a predetermined set of human-generated best search strategies. Dialog's "spy" feature lets expert searchers see the complex search string that lies underneath searches, executed in the easy-to-use form fill-in interfaces of Dialog1 and DialogSelect." -- Libraries and Librarians The April 2004 Issue (#39) of Ariadne is Now Available Articles Include: + IT for Me: Getting personal in South Yorkshire public libraries "Liz Pearce and Neil Smith introduce the IT for Me Project which aims to provide personalised access to online resources in South Yorkshire's public libraries. " + Filling Institutional Repositories: Practical strategies from the DAEDALUS Project "Morag Mackie describes some strategies that can be used to help populate an institutional repository." + Towards the Digital Aquifer: Introducing the Common Information Environment + Search Engines: The Google Backlash UK-based search guru and librarian Phil Bradley writes, "Throughout the rest of 2004 and into the next couple of years beyond, my prediction is that Google will be unable to sustain its position as the major competitors, (mainly Yahoo! and Microsoft, but others such as Ask Jeeves), nibble away at it. I suspect, and am hoping, that in the not too distant future when I ask the question 'Which search engine do you use?', we'll return to the 'pre-Google' position of several different responses, and I can only see that as being a good thing."
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents (5 Items) Engineering Source: The Berkeley Electronic Press / Engineering Conferences International (ECI) Just Released, New Web Resource, The Engineering Conferences International Symposium Series From the announcement, "The Berkeley Electronic Press and Engineering Conferences International (ECI) are pleased to announce the launch of an innovative new publication site - The Engineering Conferences International Symposium Series. The Series electronically publishes presented papers, peer-reviewed articles, and other materials such as presentations, data sets, and video files associated with ECI conferences." More here. -- Law Firms Source: Periscope Ventures Corporation LawPeriscope From About Us: "LawPeriscope quickly and efficiently organizes the vast sea of information posted by the 300 largest US law firms on their individual websites, which continue to increase in volume and complexity every year. LawPeriscope helps you navigate through these websites more effectively, making it the only online tool you need to research, evaluate and compare any of these law firms. Using LawPeriscope, you may obtain each firm's contact and address details or fully investigate the firm and its attorneys, practice areas, branch offices and clients, as well as access its online resources such as articles, newsletters and seminars." -- Financial Services Industry--United States Source: Ernst & Young Just Published, State of the Industry Report 2004 Outlines the state of the financial services industry at the beginning of 2004. -- Documents in the News Iraq Source: MSNBC Full Text, U.S. Army report on Iraqi prisoner abuse -- Election 2004 Factiva Media Visibility Index (SM) Tracks the Hot-Button Issues for 2004 Presidential Election During the Week Ending May 2 ,2004
Citation Analysis Scholarly Publishing Source: ISI + Science in Canada, 1999-2003 -- + Artificial Intelligence: Most Prolific U.S. Universities, 1998-2002 -- + Political Science & Public Administration: High-Impact U.S. Universities, 1998-2002 Tuesday, May 04, 2004
Web Search--Objects Search Another Nutch Powered Search Engine Beta: Objects Search I just learned about this new engine using Nutch technology. The company is building its own database. What does Objects Search offer? + General web database A search results page contains: ++ Link to a cached copy of the page ++ A link with technical data explaining how the page was scored for relevancy ++ A link that shows a list of incoming anchors indexed for the page + Other Info: Phrase searching with quotes, implied "and", remove terms with - (minus) sign + Spell Check + General web database with clustering + News and weblog search + Directory (using ODP data) + Image Search + Interface available in ten languages See Also: More New and Small General Web Search Tools in this Post
National Archives and Records Administration New/Updated Content Added to Access to Archival Databases (AAD) System + Series: Private Foundations Study Files The Private Foundations Study Files contain records from a stratified sample of IRS Forms 990-PF filed by private foundations and charitable trusts treated as private foundations. Sampling rates ranged from 100 percent for returns with large amounts of assets to a small percent for returns with small amounts of assets. The data in AAD spans 1982 to 1995 and includes the name of the organization and information on revenues, including sources of income and investments; expenses, including distributions; and assets and liabilities. Due to the large number of columns in each record, you may experience some delay in query response time. -- + Series: Federal Assistance Award Data System, 10/1/1981 - 9/30/2002 The Federal Assistance Award Data System (FAADS) is a central collection of selected standardized data on Federal financial assistance awards, compiled quarterly. All departments and major agencies of the executive branch of the Federal Government with grant making authority are reporting to FAADS. Reporting covers approximately 600 Federal assistance programs. We have recently added four data files to FAADS, one for each quarter of fiscal year 2002. and while we're on the NARA beat... National Archives--United States Source: On the Media Real Audio: The Archivist From the blurb, "In Washington, jobs change hands every day. Most of these changes go unnoticed by the rest of us. But a recent resignation is generating considerable buzz - that of National Archivist John Carlin. In his place, President Bush plans to nominate Allen Weinstein, a historian whose work has been denounced by many of his peers, and whose nomination is raising the eyebrows of others. Among the critics is Jon Wiener, a history professor at University of California at Irvine, and a contributing editor of The Nation magazine. He discusses the controversy with Brooke." A printed transcript is also available.
Professional Reading Shelf (3 Items) Reference Reviews Peter's Digital Reference Shelf, May 2004 Is Now Online Dr. Jacso reviews: + Adherents.com "This is a worthy project that really does deserve some financing by one of the many publishers that make good profits on religious publications. While at first glance it is a statistical database about religions, it is much more than that. It is a valuable compendium of religion demographics with impressive sourcing, excerpts and notes providing context for the raw data." + KeepMedia KeepMedia could be a very good value at $5/month for unlimited access, but the number and types of sources included may not be attractive enough, especially when compared to XanEdu or to the free digital archive that your library may offer, which will have more magazines, journals and newspapers at no charge to you. -- Cataloging Authority Tools for Audiovisual and Music Catalogers: An Annotated List of Useful Resources Source: Subcommittee on Authority Tools, Cataloging Policy Committee, OnLine Audiovisual Catalogers, Inc. (via University of Buffalo Libraries) "This list is designed to bring together, in one place, descriptions of information sources that are useful when developing authorized headings to support audiovisual and music catalog records.... Our goal in putting together this list of resources is to highlight some of the tools that we find useful when creating authority records. We ask practitioners to contribute annotations, or short reviews, to explain why they think a particular tool is useful for authority work. Each entry also includes a suggested way of citing the work in authority records." See also: Sheet Music Information (Music Library Association, via Duke University Libraries) -- Government Printing Office--United States + Prepared Testimony by Public Printer, Bruce R. James, Before The Committee On House Administration On The Transformation Of The U.S. GPO To Meet The Demands Of The 21st Century "There are few posts in the Government and few Federal agencies that have stood the test of time as well as that of the Public Printer and the GPO. My objective is to uphold the tradition of the office while providing the leadership required to guide the GPO into a new era, to ensure that it remains as relevant and necessary to the information needs of Congress, Federal agencies, and the public in the 21st century as it was for the first 140 years of its existence." See Also: Prepared Testimony by Public Printer Before The Subcommittee On Legislative Appropriations On The Appropriations Request Of The U.S. GPO For FY 2005 See Also: New GAO Report re: GPO, Technological Changes Create Transformation Opportunities
Library Briefs (4 Items) + Arkansas...Clinton Library to have special vault for classified papers (via AP) -- + Texas...Texas libraries could lose database access (Houston Chronicle) Note: I sure hope this is not the beginning of a trend but my guy tells me that we're going to see this in other libraries. Very sad. -- + California...Council targets library material (via Stockton Record) -- + Florida...Battle over books From the article, "The emotional, protracted rhetorical battle over books in the Marion County library system heats up again this week. On Tuesday and Wednesday, Marion County commissioners will again wade into the controversy swirling around a provocative sex-laced novel, "Eat Me," which was banned and subsequently returned to the public library."
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents (5 Items) Libraries Unusual Libraries: Book Boats, Book Trains and More Source: Prince Rupert Public Library (B.C., Canada) "This section is dedicated to tracking unusual mobile libraries around the world. Since the initial launch of the bookboat site in the summer of 2000, the Prince Rupert Library staff have discovered bookboats in Venezuela, Florida, Sweden, Norway, Thailand, and Alaska. We have recently discovered other unusual libraries, which include Book Bicycles, Book Backpacks, Camel-Drawn Libraries, and Donkey-Drawn Libraries. These alternative libraries typically serve populations that would otherwise not have access to library services." -- Literature Source: Northern Illinois University The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau "The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau provides, for the first time, accurate texts of Thoreau's complete works: his writings for publication, his Journal, his correspondence, and other uncollected papers. Much of the material in this edition has never been published before." -- Fast Facts--United States New Fact Sheets from the U.S. Census + 53rd Anniversary of the UNIVAC Computer --- + Civil Rights Act of 1964: 40th Anniversary --- + Dedication of National World War II Memorial --- + Father's Day: June 20 -- U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development Source: U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development HUD USER Bibliographic Database "The HUD USER Database is the only bibliographic database exclusively dedicated to housing and community development issues. It contains more than 10,000 full-abstract citations to research reports, articles, books, monographs, and data sources in housing policy, building technology, economic development, urban planning, and a host of other relevant fields." -- Business--United States--Lists & Rankings Source: San Francisco Chronicle Just Released, The Chronicle 200 (2004) "The Bay Area's top 200 companies." Profiles for all companies, numerous charts, search based on seven criteria. Monday, May 03, 2004
Digital Preservation The Library of Congress Meet Laura Campbell: Associate Librarian for Strategic Initiatives at the Library of Congress From the article, "Librarians used to worry about preserving access to books and periodicals that their institutions owned. Preserving access to Web sites, electronic books and digital audio and video is far more complicated, Campbell said. Libraries subscribe to electronic materials and don't own physical copies. For that reason, ownership is often a bone of contention between copyright holders and libraries interested in preserving long-term access to digitally created works...Because so much about digital preservation is unknown, Campbell said the library's strategy is to learn by doing and to be prepared to make corrections along the way. Library officials and the many people they consulted during the planning phase of the program tried to think about contingencies and how future events could affect the program's outcome."
Web Search--Google People Want Google Domain Names! Can't get Google shares at the IPO price? How about purchasing a domain name that includes the word Google? This seems to be quite a popular activity these days. Surprising? Hardly. Nevertheless it's sure interesting to see the variety of names that individuals and companies have registered. These names were not registered by Google. During April and the first day of May more than 400 names were registered in the following domains: + com + net + info + biz + us + org + biz I did not check all 400 domains but spot checks revealed that most of these domains are not live. You can find the complete list (more than 400 names) here. A few highlights: googleaccounting.com googlefoods.com googleforfun.com googlelerner.com googlerecipes.com googledaddy.com googlesoap.com googlevirus.com googlewebapi.com seo4google.com googlegmail.net googlesblog.com gmailgoogle.biz googlepot.com googleproperty.com googleusa.com postgoogle.com sj-google.com google-labs.com google-labs.net google-labs.org google100.net googleandoverture.com googlebooks.net googlebt.com googled411.com logingoogle.com testgoogleadsense.com testgoogleadsense.net googleclassactionlawsuit.com googleclassactionlawsuit.net bannedongoogle.com bbgoogle.com gaggedbygoogle.com gogooglego.com google-killer.com
Professional Reading Shelf (5 Items) Project Gutenberg Source: Information Today Project Gutenberg Progresses Paula Hane chats with Michael Hart -- Institutional Repositories Source: Searcher Institutional Repositories: Hidden Treasures -- Scholarly Publishing Source: Association of Research Libraries/Information Access Alliance (via Northern Illinois University Libraries) The Academic Publishing Industry: A Story of Merger and Acquisition From the Introduction: "Some 12 companies, which are or have recently produced scholarly journals and books, are profiled here. They come from Europe and North America, and they are all multinational corporations. I have generally tracked only English language materials, since the bulk of scholarly information is now produced in English. The material listed here was gathered from public sources – news accounts, directory listings, company histories, and the websites of the companies. In general, where there was a discrepancy between accounts, I have used either the official company website or the most authoritative source. The prices of the mergers and acquisitions are not always available. If a price is reported in any of the sources I have used, I have included it." -- Open Access Now Available, More evidence to UK government inquiry This uncorrected transcript features testimony from: + British Library + Authors' Licensing & Collecting Society + Joint Information System + University of Hertfordshire + University of Reading + Cardiff University + University of Oxford + University of Liverpool See Also: House of Commons Science & Technology Committee Inquiry into Scientific Publications (via Open Access Now) -- PR Newswire Source: Information Today NewsBreaks PR Newswire Teams with Relegence on NewsPrompt (Fee-Based) From the story, " Celebrating its 50th year, PR Newswire has announced a new toolbar service designed to alert users “second-by-second” to news coming from the Web sites of some 20,000 sources. The NewsPrompt service taps financial and business news from over 18,000 sources, including television stations, online newspaper sites, international news wires, and regulatory news filed through the SEC’s EDGAR database. Users set up their own search profiles and the NewsPrompt toolbar will signal when news arrives satisfying the criteria and matching keywords; users can then choose to link through to the full-text articles. The NewsPrompt service actually represents the re-branding of Relegence Corporation’s First Track service targeted at a new marketing audience, namely individual investors, media contacts, and corporate librarians, and with lowered price options. NewsPrompt also complements PR Newswire’s own Web monitoring service, NewsWatch."
Free Database Trials This Month Only: Ovid Offers a Free Trial of Inspec Biomedical Technology & IEEE Biomedical Library + Inspec Biomedical Technology "Inspec records are selected for inclusion in the Inspec Biomedical Technology database using Inspec's unique classification code system. It comprises over 500,000 records from 1969 to date, and will be updated with over 21,000 new records per year." Learn more. + IEEE Biomedical Library "Totaling over 40,000 documents from both IEEE and the Institute of Electrical Engineers (IEE), the content is drawn from 130+ journals and periodicals, more than 350 conferences, and standards published by the IEEE since 1988." Learn more.
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents (3 Items) Documents in the News Wiretaps--United States--Statistics Source: Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts Recently Released, Full Text, 2003 Wiretap Report (For the Period January 1 Through December 31, 2003) "Federal and state courts authorized 1,442 interceptions of wire, oral or electronic communications in 2003, an increase of 6 percent over 2002." -- Digital Video Recorders Source: Technology Review New, Visualize TiVo Another useful animation from Tech Review. This time, a look at how TiVo works. -- Employment--European Union--Statistics Just released, Working time developments - 2003 "This review of developments in the length of working time in 2002 and 2003 finds that average collectively agreed weekly working time in the current European Union (plus Norway) remained relatively stable at around 38 hours." Thanks to S.B. for the link. Sunday, May 02, 2004
News Search--Findory New Features from Findory Findory, the personalized news resource, added two new services today. + RSS users will be happy to learn that Findory now offers two feeds. The first is an unpersonalized feed of the top ten most popular headlines on the site. The second, a personalized feed of your top ten headlines. + The other new service is a personalized "newspaper" delivered via e-mail each day. You can learn more about Findory and its founder, Greg Linden, in these two interviews from the Seattle P-I and the Seattle Times.
Professional Reading Shelf (2 Items) Scholarly Publishing Source: Syllabus Magazine Fat Cat Publishers Breaking the System "The scholarly publishing system is broken. At research universities everywhere, scholarly work—in the form of articles, books, editing, reviewing of manuscripts—is handed over to commercial publishers, only to be bought back by the libraries at huge cost. Libraries scramble to judiciously stretch shrinking budgets for growing runs of books and journals—books and journals that are critical to the research and teaching activities of the university’s faculty who, as authors and editors, contribute so generously to the publishers who sell them. The arrangement is bankrupting research library budgets and swelling the profit margins of commercial publishers." -- The British Library Source: BBC News Library Purchases Punch Archive "The historic Punch magazine archive, including letters by Anthony Trollope and Charles Dickens, has been purchased by the British Library. The archive boasts more than 1,000 original cartoons, as well letters from illustrious literary figures such as A.A Milne and PG Wodehouse."
Access to Information--United States Source: National Council for Research on Women Full Text MISSING: Information About Women's Lives A report about the U.S. federal government removing material from the Internet. Additional info here along with a Reuters article. See Also: MisInformation Exchange "A growing log of omissions, alterations, and distortions of vital information that was once readily available through government sources." Saturday, May 01, 2004
Professional Reading Shelf Distance Education Source: Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration Ten Efficient Research Strategies for Distance Learning "The ten research strategies that will be covered are accessing library expertise, books from your or others' library catalogs, academic journals, databases, current awareness services, subscription services, distance education Web portals, associations, listserv/discussions, and use of research assistants."
Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents (2 Items) VoIP Source: FCC FCC Consumer Facts: VoIP/Internet Voice (PDF; 160 KB) Provides background information, explains how VoIP works and what equipment is required, etc. -- Mythology World Myths and Legends in Art Source: Minneapolis Institute of the Arts From How to Use This Site: "This collection of images brings together 26 works of art in the collection of The Minneapolis Institute of Arts inspired by mythology around the world. The rich variety of images makes it possible for teachers to address a wide range of study areas, including language arts, humanities, art, social and cultural studies, and world religions. You can click on the 'Enlarge' link under each work of art to enlarge the image in a new window, and zoom in to see greater detail. The "Art by Theme" section will help you explore the relationships among the images."
Web Search--Google Source: San Jose Mercury News Comments on Google Article I've tried not to make ResourceShelf a site where I comment and offer my opinion on each and every item posted. However, from time to time, I do like to toss in a few comments, and today is one of those days. Mike Bazeley of the San Jose Mercury News -- one of the best covering the Internet beat -- included a couple of comments of mine in an article today. I was flattered when he called me to solicit them. That said, I would like to enhace and maybe even clarify the two quotes. Some seem to consider me a Google basher. However, if you read ResourceShelf on a regular basis, you've probably noticed that most of my comments are about pointing out the interesting, innovative, and often useful work that's being done in the web search space by Google AND others. Sure, from time to time Google deserves a kick, but they can take it. I think what Google has built is THE benchmark and VERY impressive technology. They also treat their highly intelligent and rapidly growing workforce very well and yes, the food at the Googleplex is mighty tasty. Most of their success is more than well deserved. What some might consider "bashing" on my part is simply an attempt to point out that other excellent web search/information retrieval work is being done by other companies and individuals. This goes for the MANY specialized search resources out there along with the work being done by the other big names like Yahoo, Teoma, a9, and MS. Perhaps what Google should be lauded for most is making everyone in the search space better. Yes, competition is a good thing for the web searcher. OK, let's get to my quotes in the MN. "But Gary Price, a Washington, D.C., area librarian and information research consultant, questions how long Google can maintain its dominance. Price, who operates the Resource Shelf Web site, said other, smaller search sites such as Gigablast, Feedster and Topix.net use more innovative technology and do a better job than Google." I probably needed to be a bit clearer with Bazeley. The tools that I mentioned are by no means competition for Google in the general web search space. Yes, Matt at Gigablast is doing great work, but direct competition is a way off. My point is that these companies (and many others) offer innovation and search capabilities that Google does not or will not offer (at least at this time). Scoble is on target when he writes, "I think the innovators will be the small engines like Technorati and Feedster." Danny S. writes, "Does that mean little players such as Gigablast, Feedster or Daypop won't survive? Not at all. Now think cable TV. These services and other specialty search engines will attract their own unique audiences." I agree with Danny 100% that web search and online information retrieval is not a winner-take-all situation. It's good to have choices. And what about content not in Google -- or in any general web engine for that matter? Focused/speciality/niche search tools -- both free and fee-based (often available for free via a university or public library) -- offer content not directly accessible from these services and, in many cases, offer more utility with this data. While it's true Yahoo and Google are making efforts to grow their databases, just adding content doesn't mean people will find it. "To me what Google has done better than anyone else is get the media believing that they can do it better than anyone else,'' Price said. "When you write the history of Google, the most interesting chapter will be the one about its public relations. They're the real geniuses.'' It's one thing to create great technology (many companies have done it and failed), but it's something else to build the brand and a demand for that brand that compares to what Google has done. Much of the credit for building the brand needs to go to the p.r./marketing team at Google. I don't think many (if any) have done it better. Wow! The media I'm talking about in the quote is not the tech press -- including those of us who watch the search industry closely like Battelle, Sullivan/Sherman, Beal, and Notess. The media I'm referring to in my quote are the mainsteam organizations who have give very little attention to everyone else -- mainly, what the other major players are up to and how these tools offer options not found at Google. Yes, we've seen a few "out to beat Google articles" lately, but it's still minimal. People regularly tell me that they had no idea what they have been missing by relying on one search tool. Tara (who often says things best) does it again in this quote from an AP story, "Google has a lot of smart people who have built a great search engine, but there are a lot of other smart people out there looking for ways to make search engines even better." These smart people are all over the place -- both at direct competitors (Gary Flake at Yahoo, Udi Mandber at a9, etc), as well as at speciality search and niche tools. Final Thoughts One of the things that attracted me to librarianship/info retrieval was that so many options and tools (both electronic and print) existed, each one with its own strengths and weaknesses. One of our many goals at ResourceShelf is to remind you that many options and tools continue to exist, and the best searcher will know about and use the right tool at the right time. This knowledge not only can make you a better searcher, but can also make you a better teacher. The info pro as educator is a role that continues to grow in importance. Update Michael Bazeley, the author of the Mecury News article, read my comments and shared his with me in an email. He has given me permission to repost. Thanks Mike! From the email: Gary, I did not intend to imply that you viewed Gigablast, et al as Google competitors, though I can see now why some people might infer that from my story. I meant to suggest exactly what we talked about, that there is great innovation happening in many places other than Google, despite Google's reputation as the top dog. I should have nuanced that better. I think the phrase "questions how long Google can maintain its dominance'' may have been unfortunate. We'll do better next time. Regards, Michael x |
