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Resources and News for Information Professionals
ResourceShelf is Compiled & Edited By Gary Price, MLIS Librarian Director of Online Information Resources, Ask.com Editor and Compiler, The ResourceShelf Editor and Compiler, DocuTicker
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Friday, November 30, 2001
Economic Resources The Dismal Scientist Becomes A Subscription Site One of the better free economics resources has moved to a pay format. An monthly suubscription will be $16.95. A site license will cost $2995 per year. Thanks to GT for the news tip. Information Navigation Source: Information World Review(Registration Required, Free) Fractal Mapping of Information Helen Jezzard from Information World Review reports on Fractal Edge. The company is developing mapping technology to aid in info retrieval. From the article, "According to chief executive, Roger Wilcocks, fractal maps solve the problem of displaying large amounts of information on PC – or even PDA – screens by making the complete information structure visible with a minimum of clicks." Web Browsers--Opera Opera 6.0 Released One of my favorite pieces of software. If you've never tried Opera give it a try. It's a quick download and an ad sponsored version is free to use. $39 to turn the ads off. Be prepared to say wow! See Also: Learn More About Opera 6.0 New, Updated, & Newly Discovered Resources Online Translation--Arabic Ajeeb.Com Offers Instant Arabic to English Translation Like you should do with all mechanical translation tools,. use with caution. Thanks to S.S. for the site tip. Thursday, November 29, 2001
Web Search--Google Google Makes Searching Phrases Containing "Stop Words" Easier Nate Taylor of Google informs the VAS&ND of a new feature that will make searching for exact phrases containing stop words (common words including a, be, by, to, etc.) easier. Google permits you to search on a stopword by placing a + in front of the term(s). Previously, searching a phrase with stop words required the searcher to place a + in front of each term. For example: "+to +be +or not +to +be". This is NO LONGER necessary. Google now automatically recognizes phrases that contain stopwords and will the complete phrase searchable without having to add the + in front of each term. Examples: "to be or not to be", "how are you", "what you see is what you get". Remember, place your phrases inside "quotation marks". Web Search--AltaVista UK Report: AltaVista UK Increases Index Size, Content From the annoucement, "AltaVista’s new search index, which in the UK has increased threefold in the last year combines all their regional and global indexes into one. This means that on the AltaVista UK site, users can continue to access all worldwide (.com) information or specifically request. UK site." So, AV has combined all of their regional indexes and main index into a signal database. What this means for the database in terms of currency is yet to be determined. Reports and tests have shown the primary database to be many months old. Hopefully, this may signal a conplete AV database refresh coming soon. Stay tuned. See Also: Direct to AltaVista UK Engine See Also: Mirago (Another UK only engine. Several unique ways to sort results) Online Information--Fee Based--ISI'S Web Of Knowledge Official Product Launch: ISI (Institute for Scientific Information) Releases Web of Knowledge 1.0 The service has been online for some time but yesterday was apparently the "official launch". From the announcement, "The ISI Web of Knowledge content is multidisciplinary, and supports research conducted at academic, corporate, government, and not-for-profit organizations worldwide. From a single point of entry, ISI Web of Knowledge integrates ISI Web of Science(R) and ISI Current Contents Connect(R) with patent data (Derwent Innovations Index(SM)), proceedings information (ISI Proceedings(SM)), life sciences literature (BIOSIS Previews(R)), structural chemistry (ISI Chemistry(SM)), analytical and evaluation tools (ISI Essential Science Indicators(SM) and ISI Journal Citation Reports(R)), bibliographic management tools (EndNote(R), ProCite(R), Reference Manager(R)), and evaluated Web content." "CrossSearch is one of the unique features of ISI Web of Knowledge. CrossSearch empowers the researcher to uncover essential information regardless of where it resides. With CrossSearch, users can access a specific ISI Web of Knowledge product or search across multiple products in the platform. Users can choose to search by specific fields (such as topic and author), or they can conduct natural language searches by entering words, phrases, sentences, or paragraphs. In ISI Web of Knowledge version 1.0, four products will be CrossSearch enabled: ISI Web of Science, ISI Proceedings, BIOSIS Previews, and Derwent Innovations Index. Future versions will CrossSearch enable a suite of ISI Web of Knowledge products. CrossSearch will also extend its capabilities to content sources -- such as Agricola and PubMed -- residing outside the ISI Web of Knowledge environment. See Also: Barbara Quint's June 6, 2001 ITI News Break About Web of Knowledge See Also: Read A Company Sponsored Essay On Web of Knowledge (includes a brief history of citation indexing). Learn More: Read Eugene Garfield's 1955 Science Article, "Citation Indexes for Science: A New Dimension in Documentation through Association of Ideas" Web Search--Excite Source: Reuters "InfoSpace Wins Approval to Buy Excite Assets" From the article, "Bellevue, Washington-based InfoSpace also said the Excite assets, which include trademarks, domain names and user traffic, would be at the center of a new service agreement with iWon, a privately held portal that offers daily cash giveaways to draw traffic. Under the deal, InfoSpace said it would power the search and directory portions of the Excite Web site, while the portal's other pieces would be sold or licensed to iWon." Chris Sherman reports this morning that Excite's crawler will no longer be used to build the database. Keyword search results will be provided by the Dogpile metasearch engine. A search using Excite or Dogpile will return the same results. Dogpile search results primarily come from pay-per-click and paid inclusion engines such as Overture, Looksmart, FindWhat, Sprinks, About.Com, ePilot.com, Ah-ha.com, Kanoodle, direct hit, and others. Another change will see the directory at Excite moving to results provided by Looksmart. Bottom line: Another "unique" crawler and database of web content bites the dust. Media Libraries Source: SIMILE (Studies in Media and Information Literacy Education) "The Evolution of Media Librarianship: A Tangled History of Change and Constancy" This article is available in full-text. Thanks to RLG ShelfLife for the link New, Updated, & Newly Discovered Resources (3 Items) AIDS United Nations, World AIDS Day Resources December 1st is World AIDS Day, a UN sponsored Webcast is scheduled for November 30th. See Also: More World AIDS Day Resources (via The Guardian) --- Geographic Information--United States GeoCommunicator Portal containing several geographic information tools and services. "GeoCommunicator is provided by the Bureau of Land Management & the U.S. Forest Service." Of Special Note: GeoCom Explorer (ability to limit search to "Free Data") Land Manager Viewer See Also: Learn More About the GeoCommunicator Site -- Computer Security--Lists & Rankings Top 10 Computer Viruses of 2001 Compiled by ranking calls to the Sophos (a well-known computer security firm) helpdesk. Wednesday, November 28, 2001
British Library The British Library Launches New Version of Web Site You can learn more about the changes here. Department of Transportation Library--United States DOT Library Updates Web Home Of special note to all researchers: * Transportation Bibliographies * Online Digital Special Collections Web Search--Google Source: ZD Net "Google Votes to Put Surfers in Charge" I've been a big fan and user of the Google toolbar since it came online late last year. A real timesaver when I want to search using Google. Now, word of a beta release that allows users to vote and help determine the popularity of a given page. This is only a test according to Google spokesperson David Krane. We will have to wait and see if this is something Google begins to use on a full-time basis as part of its relevancy algorithm. Question? This article also provides a good overview of the search engine optimization world and how Google ranks pages. If your interested in a detailed discussion about Google, this paper Larry Page and Sergey Brin presented at a 1998 WWW conference is well worth a read. See Also: Direct to Download Google Toolbar BETA WITH Voting Option See Also: Direct to Download Google Toolbar Without Voting Option (A Must Have, IE Only) See Also: Not a IE User, Try Google Buttons with Netscape Standards--OpenURL Elsevier Announces Update To Ulrichsweb.Com, New SFX OpenURL Interface See Also: Gale Group Announces Adoption of SFX OpenURL Standard See Also: Direct to SFX OpenURL Home Page See Also: Peter Jacso's Recent Review of Ulrichs CD-ROM Product Natural Language Processing Source: South China Morning Post Learn About ISilk Search in Chinese get results in English. See Also: Direct to the ISilk Web Site Professional Reading Digital Resources "Integrating Digital Resources Into the Library Information Infrastructure" This paper was written by Peter Haddad Director, Technical Services National Library of Australia and presented at the 14th National Cataloguing Conference earlier this month. New, Updated, & Newly Discovered Resources (2 Items) Information Technology--Lists & Rankings Source: Computerworld Emerging Companies to Watch in 2002 Direct to the Emerging Companies List (Entries include Name, Location, CEO, # Employees, Founding date, Priv/Pub, Product(s) or Service(s), Company claims) ---- Economics--United Kingdom Economics--United States Source: OECD OECD Releases Two Economic Surveys Now available online: Economic Survey of the United States Economic Survey of the United Kingdom Tuesday, November 27, 2001
Digital Reference Source: LJ "Time To Get the Numbers on Digital Reference" A report from the recent 2001 Virtual Reference Desk Conference in Orlando. From the article, "After studying seven libraries that provide digital reference services, a team of researchers has concluded that, to improve future projects, better evaluation and assessment methods must be found and implemented." "Usage of such live reference service varies markedly, the study observed, as some libraries field only a few questions a week, while others answer many more. McClure also noted that, even though libraries may want to advertise 24/7 service, usage from midnight to 6 a.m. has been minimal." See Also: Complete Proceedings from the 2000 VRD Conference Business-Public Company Filings EDGAR Online To Provide Real-Time Feed To SEC.Gov Site From the news release, "EDGAR(R) Online(R), Inc. (Nasdaq: EDGR) announced today it has reached a non-exclusive arrangement with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) whereby the SEC will link its Web site ( http://www.sec.gov) to EDGAR Online for real-time access to SEC filings. The SEC currently posts delayed documents on its Web site. EDGAR Online, Inc. is a provider of financial information derived from U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission data and developer of financial and business systems solutions." See Also: Clarification and Explanation from EDGAR Online Thanks to GT for the news tip. Web Search--Lycos Web Portals Source: ZD Net Lycos Tells U.S. Employees To Take A Vacation From the article, "NEW YORK--Spanish Internet media giant Terra Lycos has told its U.S. employees to take a mandatory five-day paid vacation around Christmas and New Year's as the company tries to save some money, a company representative said Monday." New, Updated, & Newly Discovered Resources New Material from ERIC Various ERIC affiliated organizations online with several resources of potential value. ERIC Database Search Tutorial "This online search tutorial created by the ERIC Clearinghouse on Teaching and Teacher Education takes users step-by-step through a methodical search of the ERIC Database on the topic of "Professional Development." The tutorial can be used by either opening two browsers (one for the search tutorial and one for the actual search) or printing the tutorial and following the directions online." --- ERIC Statistics, How Many People Search the ERIC Database Each Day? --- Update: Test Review Locator The ERIC Clearinghouse on Assessment and Evaluation and the Buros Institute of Mental Measurements are pleased to announce that the Test Review Locator now includes links to ordering information for more than 400 test reviews. The Test Review Locator has also been updated to include citations from the 14th edition of the Mental Measurements Yearbook." ---- Site Redesign: ERIC Clearinghouse on Elementary and Early Childhood Education Federal Communications Commission FCC Unveils New "Site" Search Tool From the news release, "The new FCC search engine searches throughout the FCC's web site, collecting information from web pages and many types of documents including Word, WordPerfect, Acrobat, Excel, and ASCII Text. The new FCC search engine also searches the Electronic Document Management System (EDOCS). However, the new search engine cannot collect information from other FCC databases and electronic filing systems, such as the Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS)." Automobiles--Environment Source: EPA Update: EPA's Green Vehicle Guide Adds Data for 2002 Models Home Ownership--United States--Statistics Source: U.S. Census Housing Characteristics: 2000 Summary ||| Direct to Full-Text Monday, November 26, 2001
Web Search--Google Source: News.Com Issues with Google Providing Access to More Formats A few weeks ago we mentioned that Google was now crawling and making available content from MS Word files, Excel spreadsheets and more. Now, an article expressing concern over security issues. I agree with Google on this one. If a document is "on the Internet" (publicly available) than it should be the responsibility of the document owner and/or webmaster to block the crawler from accessing the material. Remember, the document(s) were placed in a publicly available location in the first place. Perhaps this story and information will be a wake-up call for many webmasters. From the article, "Our specialty is discovering, crawling and indexing publicly available information," said Google spokesman David Krane. "We define public as anything placed on the public Internet and not blocked to search engines in any way. The primary burden falls to the people who are incorrectly exposing this information. But at the same time, we're certainly aware of the problem, and our development team is exploring different solutions behind the scenes." Bottom line: Yes, security is an issue. However, a great deal of info that might be of value exists in PUBLICLY available formats other than html and pdf. Let's hope a happy medium between security concerns and potentially useful material. Info Industry--ProQuest Proquest Makes an Acquisition: SoftLine Information From the news release, "The company's [SoftLine] critically acclaimed full-text databases will become available from ProQuest immediately. SoftLine offers more than 500 newspapers and magazines from ethnic, minority, native, gender, alternative, and independent press. Prior to SoftLine's introduction of its databases, most titles were not available in electronic formats. The titles are organized into five specialized databases covering ethnic, cultural, and demographic diversity, including: Ethnic NewsWatch, Ethnic NewsWatch History, Alt-Press Watch, Gender Watch, and Diversity Your World." Info Industry--Eliyon Biographical Information--Databases Source: Information Today NewsBreaks Eliyon Offers Business Database Built with Web Information Business research expert and author, Sheri Lanza offers a review of Eliyon, a database, "that uses Web data-extraction technology to build a database on the business history of 6.4 million people and 560,000 companies in the U.S." Lanza's review also shares several, "glaring weaknesses" with the system. New, Updated, & Newly Discovered Resources (4 Items) World War II--Digital Archive New, Digital Archive of Historic World War II U.S. Government Documents Online, Impressive Search or browse, then view scanned images of documents. All of the actual content resides on the Invisible Web. This database is provided by Southern Methodist University. ---- Demographics--United States U.S. Census Releases Data About Families From the announcement, "The Census Bureau will release the most comprehensive and detailed data on American families in 64 cities across the country today. The Census 2000 Supplementary Survey (C2SS) data detail housing, language, income and other statistics." "C2SS data can be accessed through the Census Bureau's new search-and-retrieval database, American FactFinder, at http://factfinder.census.gov. C2SS operational information, narrative and tabular profiles for all summary levels and rankings at the state, county and place levels also may be found at http://www.census.gov/c2ss/www. ---- School Districts--United States Source: NCES School District Demographics System From the site, "CES' new School District Demographics Website provides access to school district demographic data useful for describing and analyzing characteristics of school districts, children, and K-12 education." ---- Health--Canada Redesigned Site: Health Canada Sunday, November 25, 2001
Video Search Video Clipping Source: Technology Review "All the News That's Fit for You" Learn about research that will allow you to develop a customized VIDEO news clipping tool. From the article, "At its tenth anniversary this fall, Microsoft Research unveiled prototype software that analyzes and indexes news footage. Q-Video, as Microsoft calls it, lets viewers find a CNN story as easily as a New York Times article." See Also: "Upstream: Video Searching" See Also: Keyword Search PBS NewsHour Video, VIEW Results Using Real Player Saturday, November 24, 2001
Professional Reading A Selection of Recent Articles from Library Journal For your reading pleasure, here is a selection of articles that might be of interest. ---- Online Databases--Lists & Rankings "Online Databases" What are the most popular database systems? ---- Reference Linking "A Lesson in Linking" From the article, The ability to click on a citation to a work and obtain the full electronic text of the work itself is called 'reference linking.' The idea of reference linking is so conceptually simple it is almost intuitive, but robust, scalable, open systems of reference linking are enormously complex, and the standards and technical infrastructure to support them are only now being developed. ---- School Libraries--Databases Source: School Library Journal "The Search is On" "A team of librarians reviews the top periodical databases for the K–12 market." See Also: Direct to the Database Reviews Friday, November 23, 2001
New, Updated, & Newly Discovered Resources (2 Items) Educational Technology--Portals Source: UNESCO Now Online: Information and Communication Technology Portal (ICT) for Teacher Training From the site, "The Information and Communication Technology Portal (ICT) for Teacher Training is the gateway to Internet resources and websites dedicated to training the teachers in utilizing information and communication technologies to enhance their teaching skills." Electronic Commerce Full-Text Document Source: United Nations Conference on Trade and Development E-Commerce and Development Report 2001 Full-Text available until 12/20, Complete report 292 pages .pdf Thursday, November 22, 2001
Online Reference--Oxford University Press Coming Soon: OUP Creating Online Library (Fee-Based) of Core Reference Titles Set to debut in March, 2002 with content from "100 well-known and trusted dictionaries and reference books". See Also: List of Titles See Also: Learn About Semantico, the Company who Designed this Product New, Updated, & Newly Discovered (3 Items) Transportation--Great Britain--Statistics Source: Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions Transport Statistics Great Britain: 2001 Edition -- Music--Canada Now Available: Encyclopedia of Music in Canada From the site, "Hosted by the National Library of Canada and developed through the cooperative efforts of the board of the Encyclopedia of Music in Canada and the Library’s Digital Library of Canada Task Force, the site features some 4000 searchable articles, in both official languages, documenting a wide range of Canadian musical endeavours, from the Guess Who, to La Bolduc, and from Maureen Forrester to Monsieur Pointu." -- Information & Communications Industry--Canada--Industry Overview Source: Industry Canada The ICT Industry in Canada Handy overview of the industry, several charts and graphs 3 pages .pdf See Also: Canada's Information & Trade Technologies Trade Performance 1993-2000 34 pages .pdf Wednesday, November 21, 2001
Almanacs Reference Newsletters The World Almanac And Book of Facts 2002 Hits Bookstores, Free Newsletter Available to All One of the essential ready reference tools is now available in both virtual and bricks and mortar bookstores. This Amazon.Com entry allows you to preview 88 pages from the book. Pure bliss for the reference geek! ---Did You Know? The World Almanac publishes a FREE monthly e-mail newsletter? Each month you'll receive info about that particular month including notable birthdays, "on this day" history, chronology of events, and a set of useful urls. This link also provides access to all newsletters from 2001. See Also: Learn About the History of The World Almanac Winter Olympics 2002 Debut of Official Winter Olympics 2002 Sites All three "Official Sites" are joint ventures between Microsoft, NBC Television, and the Salt Lake City Organizing Committee. From the article, "Microsoft's MSN network and MSNBC.com, the joint venture between Microsoft and General Electric's NBC, are now responsible for hosting the Web sites and creating all of the content and services that will be available online, [Perkins] Miller says. The Web properties managed by Microsoft and NBC are online at NBCOlympics.Com and SaltLake2002.com. For the first time, the Olympic Committee's official site at Olympics.com will also fall under the management of the Microsoft-NBC venture. Notes: Each site is a "gateway" for content targeted to a particular audience. Olympics.Com site includes French language content. Olympics News Alerts provide real-time delivery of news and results. See Also: International Olympic Committee Official Site New, Updated, & Newly Discovered (3 Items) Yearbooks--United Kingdom Source: National Statistics UK 2002 - The Official Yearbook of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland The entire yearbook can be viewed or downloaded from this url for FREE!!! This page also includes a link to download all tables in Microsoft Excel format. Entire Document 577 pages .pdf -- Higher Education--United States--Salaries Chronicle Of Higher Educaton Salary Survey Salary data for most institutions. Searchable database, lists, and tables. Data back to 1996. -- Energy--United States--Statistics Source: EIA State Electricity Profiles 1999 Tuesday, November 20, 2001
Online Services--Questia Electronic Libraries Source: Houston Chronicle Poor Sales Continue at Questia, Workforce Cut By Another 50% Last week we had news of the possible takeover of netLibrary by OCLC. Today, word of continuing problems at Questia. From the article, "Questia Media cut its workforce in half last week, reducing the number of employees to just 68 because of lower than expected demand for its online library and research service. "This is the second round of layoffs at the Houston firm, which laid off 140 out of 280 employees in May. The firm is cutting back because relatively few high school and college students have been willing to make monthly payments for the service, said spokeswoman Ann Brimberry, adding that the weak economy played a part. "We're seeing good week-over-week growth but not at an aggressive rate as we anticipated," she said. "Our priorities now are to make the service work as well as we can for subscribers." Thanks to P.E. for the news tip. Web Search Source: PC World "Search Engines Still Sputtering Along" The author makes a few valid points however he fails to realize that a bit of education about using a few engines in a more sophisticated than two keywords and click can go along way to making currently available engines even more valuable resources. Of course, plenty of room for improvement exists. The author writes, "Search engines still return way too many results for the average query, forcing users to comb through sites that are either marginally related to the topic or, if related to the topic, most likely to feature low-quality, useless content." Two comments. 1) You are what you input. Search queries should use as specific language as possible. 2) Regarding content. Many people, including the author of this PC World article, think it's all "on the Internet" for free. How wrong they are. We all no content varies "on the net". If it's there, great, but don't expect to find "everything" for free via a general-purpose search tool. New, Updated, & Newly Discovered Resources (3 Items) -- The British Library Coming Soon: New British Library Site To Debut November 28th -- Law--U.S. Source: GPO Online Today, Update: United States Code (2000) The general and permanent laws in effect as of January 23, 2000 -- Titles 1 through 7 -- Criminal Justice--United States--Statistics Source: BJS Federal Criminal Case Processing, 2000: With trends 1982-2000, Reconciled Data "Between 1994 and 2000, investigations initiated by U.S. attorneys increased 25% -- from 99,251 to 123,559." Monday, November 19, 2001
Subject Bibliographies--U.S. Government Publications Source: NTIS Six Subject Bibliographies About Current Events From NTIS These bibs contain citations to government resources. From the web site: Afghanistan: A bibliography listing 22 research and background reports. Anthrax: A collection of 67 scientific government reports on Anthrax released during the past ten years. Bioethics Reports: A series of reports from the National Bioethics Advisory Commission giving the latest scientific views on a variety of ethics issues affecting medical research including stem cells and human cloning. Cybersecurity Training: A collection of interactive multimedia training for computer information systems security personnel. Emergency Response to Terrorism: A collection of multimedia training materials relating to antiterrorism in the area of explosives, emergency medicine and first response, for use by fire service and police academies. Terrorism: A list of government research reports and audiovisual training materials — updated weekly. New, Updated, & Newly Discovered Resources (4 Items) Business--Corporate Earnings Source: Business Week "Confused About Earnings" A series of articles, tables, and charts written to help investors better understand company earnings. -- Highway Safety--United States Full-Text Document Source:NHTSA Highway Statistics 2000 Available in HTML, .pdf, or .xls formats. ---- Campus Safety--Post-Secondary Education----United States Source: U.S. Department of Education Database Update: New Campus Crime Data Online From the news release, "Calling it a powerful tool for students and families, U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige today announced that the most recent crime statistics for the nation's 6,269 colleges, universities and career schools are now available on the U.S. Department of Education Web site: http://ope.ed.gov/security." See Also: Direct To Database Interface -- Canada--Consumers New Site: The Financial Consumer Agency of Canada (FCAC) "The Financial Consumer Agency of Canada (FCAC) is a newly created agency working to protect and educate consumers in the area of financial services." Sunday, November 18, 2001
Web Search--Google Small But Useful Change at Google.Com When Google began crawling .pdf documents (February 2001), they also began converting the content to text and providing a link to it in addition to a direct link to the .pdf content. This is a great resource, particularly if the computer you are using does not have a.pdf reader or you don't want to take the time to open the reader. The problems with this service -- difficult-to-read converted documents because of display and formatting problems. The second link was labeled "view as text". Recently, Google changed the conversion from text to HTML. The formatting and display of converted material appears to be greatly improved. The link now reads "view as HTML". Btw, the conversion of material to HTML is also available for most of the formats Google has just started to crawl and making available. Here is the list: Yes, converted to HTML, Lotus 1-2-3 (wk1, wk2, wk3, wk4, wk5, wki, wks, wku) Yes, converted to HTML, Lotus WordPro (lwp) Yes, converted to HTML, MacWrite (mw) Yes, converted to HTML, Microsoft Excel (xls) Yes, converted to HTML, Microsoft PowerPoint (ppt) Yes, converted to HTML, Microsoft Word (doc) Yes, converted to HTML, Microsoft Works (wks, wps, wdb) Yes, converted to HTML, Microsoft Write (wri) Yes, converted to HTML, Rich Text Format (rtf) No, but converted to text, Adobe PostScript (ps). Example: Here's a search for a .pdf file. Note the "View as HTML" link with each entry. Example: Here's a search for a .xls (Microsoft Excel) file. Note the "View as HTML" link. Clicking it will convert the spreadsheet (cells and all) into an HTML document . Search Tip: To limit your search to any filetype use the syntax, filetype: Full-Text Books Electronic Libraries Source: News.Com Ebrary To Announce Deals With More Publishers From the article, "Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Ebrary said it has agreed to distribute titles online from academic publisher Greenwood Publishing Group and from John Wiley & Sons, a publisher of scientific, technical and medical books. The company expects to announce a similar agreement with Penguin Putnam in the next few weeks...Ebrary's service, dubbed Ebrarian, lets people read articles and books online for free but charges them to copy text or print pages." Direct to Ebrary Search, View, Read, and Purchase Full-Text Content from Ebrary Saturday, November 17, 2001
Web Search--FirstGov Source: Online Journalism Review "FirstGov: A Gift Horse for the Federal Government" More on the history and politics behind FirstGov.Gov. Note: The FirstGov report is part of a larger article about e-government. The FirstGov section appears in the mid-section of the article. New York Times Source: NYT A Very Brief History of the New York Times Index Friday, November 16, 2001
Online Databases--10K Wizard Corporate Filings 10KWizard Offers Free Access For Full-Time Students And Faculty In case you missed it, 10KWizard, a robust real-time EDGAR filings database offers FREE access for full-time students and faculty. From the site, "10KWizard will waive the subscription fee to full-time students and teachers... Note: The free guest pass is not valid for use in fundraising, advancement, development or other business functions within an educational institution." Currently, it costs $99 per year to access the database. 10KWizard was free to all users until Summer, 2001. 10KWizard features include the ability to download tables in .xls format, text into .rtf., and the ability to set e-mail alerts. Web Search--Yahoo Source: News.Com Yahoo Unveils Plan For the Future, Cuts About 300 Jobs Changes are underway at Yahoo. From the article, "Before Thursday, the former Warner Bros. executive had refused to tip his hand except to downplay expectations of a major overhaul, suggesting last month that pending changes will be evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Semel reiterated that view Thursday, saying he plans to move from the company's historical approach of aggregating free content. Going forward, he said he expects Yahoo to own more content that carries a price tag. "We will continue to offer content fundamentally for free, but we will offer additional options for pay," he said, adding that the company will pursue acquisitions and partnerships for more content." Also, Semel pointed to Yahoo's recent partnership with Overture Services for paid search listings as rich soil for future growth. He added the deal is a makeshift solution to garner revenues from search until the company introduces its own for-fee sales. "It's a large business we left on the table for all these years," Semel said. "But it's something we can do ourselves." With Yahoo and Looksmart focusing more and more on paid entries, web "collection" development (building local web catalogs and directories) is becoming more and more crucial. For more on new Overture paid content and info on web directories compiled by librarians see the 11/12/01 postings. See Also: Wired News Coverage U.S. Army--Intranet Source: Wired News Learn About the World's Largest Intranet From the article, "The United States Army has flicked the switch on the world's largest Intranet -- a giant computer network that will connect more than 1 million soldiers, support personnel and veterans all over the globe. It's called the Army Knowledge Online Portal (AKO), because it acts as a portal to hundreds of the Army's internal websites, servers and information sources. The network will have at its disposal 70 terabytes of storage. According to figures compiled by the Internet Archive, that's three times the size of the Library of Congress, the world's largest library." National Library of Medicine Web Tools--Web Browsers Wireless Browsers Coming To National Library of Medicine From the annoucement, "GOMID, the developer of innovative Internet browsers, has won a National Institute of Health (NIH) contract to supply the National Library of Medicine (NLM) with desktop and wireless all-Java browsers. The award will help the NLM to meet its goal of wider and more timely dissemination of information. GOMID's iConnecter and iConnecter Mobile, for desktop and wireless, respectively, will be used by the NLM's Specialized Information Services (SIS) division for onsite and remote access to a variety of toxicology and environmental health databases." Thursday, November 15, 2001
Criminal Justice--United States--Statistics Invisible Web Source: BJS The Bureau of Justice Unveils a New Database: Data Online Here is the description from the BJS site, "Data Online [is] a new way to get State and local data about crime and justice on the Internet. Content covered includes -Criminal offenses from the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports for all 50 states and about 3,900 local agencies -Homicide trends and characteristics for all 50 states and localities with a population of more than 250,000 -Law enforcement management and administrative statistics for State and local agencies with 100 or more sworn officers Info Industry--NetLibrary Source: The Daily Camera (Boulder, CO.) Updated 11:00am EST OCLC Makes Offer To Purchase NetLibrary From the news release, "Subject to the approval of the bankruptcy court, OCLC Online Computer Library Center announces that it has made an offer to purchase substantially all the assets of netLibrary and assume certain netLibrary liabilities. netLibrary is a leading provider of eBooks, eTextbooks and Internet-based content/collection management services. Concurrently, netLibrary announced that it has voluntarily filed a petition with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Colorado for relief under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. The transaction includes a loan from OCLC, to be repaid upon the consummation of the asset sale, to fund netLibrary's on-going operations through the transition period. OCLC's purchase of netLibrary's assets and its operating-funds loan to netLibrary are both subject to approval of the bankruptcy court." ---- Original Post NetLibrary News: Considers Buyout Proposal, Lawsuit Filed Against Company From the article, "An offer is on the table for Boulder-based netLibrary, a technology firm struggling with a series of major financial woes. "We do have an offer, and it's being reviewed," said company spokeswoman Marge Gammon. She didn't name the company or discuss the nature of the offer. An announcement of a possible sale could come as soon as a day or two, she said." More NetLibrary News. From the article., "...Boston venture capital firm Parthenon Investors said netLibrary overstated its annual revenues by more than 30 percent. Parthenon said, based on those statistics, it was misled into investing millions. It filed a lawsuit on Friday, The Associated Press reported." See Also: More on the NetLibrary Law Suit Online Industry--Gale Source: EContent A Conversation with Gale Group Leadership Jeff Pemberton and Bill Mickey of EContent magazine chat with Gale Group's Allen Paschal and Chris Morton, CEO and executive vice president, business development, respectively. Online Industry--Infotrieve Document Delivery Infotrieve Names New President/Chief Operating Officer New, Updated, & Newly Discovered Resources (3 Items) Business--Technology--United States--Lists & Rankings Business--Technology--Canada--Lists & Rankings Deloitte and Touche Technology Fast 500, 2001 Rankings Now Available "To recognize the fastest-growing technology companies and their contributions." See Also: Fast 500 Fact Sheet See Also: Overview Article (contains charts/graphs) --- Education--United States--Statistics Source: NCES Dropout Rates in the United States 2000 ---- Energy--United States--Statistics Source: EIA Early Release of the Annual Energy Outlook 2002 The early release is now available. Complete report will be available on December 21, 2001 Wednesday, November 14, 2001
Web Research--Free Pint Free Pint Newsletter Celebrates 100th Issue Kudos to Will and the Free Pint team. Issue 100 contains a solid review of web-based health resources and a webliography about resources to keep current with web-based digital content. Online Info Industry--Wiley InterScience Online Books--Science, Technical, Medical Wiley InterScience Launches OnlineBooks From the announcement, The database will integrate the content of Wiley InterScience journals and reference works with more than 200 of Wiley's scientific, technical, and medical titles by the end of 2002. It will be segmented into three main subject collections, each of which will be further divided into three smaller collections: -Chemistry: Organic & Biochemistry; Polymers, Material Science & Industrial Chemistry; Analytical Chemistry -Life and Medical Sciences: Medicine; Clinical Trials & Pharmacology; Molecular Biology -Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications: Communications Technology; Wireless; Electrical Engineering Direct to Wiley InterScience Web Search--Yahoo Yahoo Announces Alliance With Pay-Per-Click Powerhouse Overture (formerly GoTo.Com) From the announcement: "Under the agreement, Yahoo!’s search results pages will feature Overture’s top five Pay-For-Performance search listings submitted by its growing base of 49,000 advertisers. In order to differentiate between paid and editorial placements within Yahoo!’s search results, enhanced placement listings will be distinguished in clearly demarcated sections. The program will begin on November 15, 2001." Comments: 1) I do hope this content is "demarcated" as promised. It's also important for end users to understand the differences between pay-per-click, paid-entry, sponsored entry, and paid crawl/recrawl and other means of being included into the database or having a link on the results page. One of Many Types of "Paid" Content: Yahoo and Looksmart have programs where commercial entries (non-commerical can also use the service) must pay a fee for possible inclusion in their directories. Yahoo and Looksmart charge $299, a non-refundable fee, and will review and decide IF it can be included. Paying the fee does not guarantee placement. Yahoo promises an answer within 7 business days. Looksmart within 2 business days. Looksmart also offers a $149 service that will notify you within 8 weeks if your site will or will not be added. 2) Once again, if Yahoo does not find anything in the Yahoo database it delivers results from Google. These results are labeled as "Web Page Matches". As I've mentioned in other posts the Yahoo/Google database is much smaller than the Google.Com database. Click here to see a results page with Yahoo/Google results and here to view the same search on the Google.Com database. Also, Yahoo/Google results do not provide access to the Google cache. 3) Info Professionals should also use non-commerical web directories. Many of these are compiled and organized by colleagues. Here are three of my favorites: Librarians' Index to the Internet, Infomine, and Academic Info. 4) Bottom Line: Paid listings, placement, etc. and the like are not bad things. A little knowledge about how they work can help make a better searcher and information consumer. Challenges? Knowledge of the many types of web directory entries. Abilty to judge info quality, validity. Letting end-users know all directory entries are not the same and the top-entry does not mean the "best". Making use of non-commerical directories. Why? As you can see many of the commercial directories are focusing on adding commerical content and not creating directory entries for research oriented material. More on this topic later. UPDATE 11/15: New Article on Yahoo's Future Diection from the New York Times Scholarly Publishing Peer Review Source: Chronicle of Higher Education "New Online Service Lets Biologists Vote on Most Important Articles" From the article, "The new service, called Faculty of 1000, is meant to help scientists weed through the growing body of research in biology. Each month, the service's volunteers will be asked to recommend the two or three most interesting papers they have read that month. For each paper they recommend, the reviewers will assign a rating -- "recommended," "must read," or "exceptional" -- and also write a brief comment about why they think the paper is important." Direct to the Faculty of 1000 Web Site New, Updated, & Newly Discovered Resources (7 Items) -------- Bioterrorism New NOVA Site: Bioterror Includes a Global Guide to Bioweapons, Agents of Bioterror chart, and a short webliography/bibliography. ---- Missile Defense Weapons of Mass Destruction FREE CD Resource from Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: Proliferation 2001 From the press release, "A new CD-ROM released today by the Carnegie Endowment provides a virtual seat at the table for the global discussion of missile defense, weapons of mass destruction and global threats. A new type of publication for Carnegie, the CD brings to everyone's desktop: video, audio and documents from the June 2001 Carnegie International Non-Proliferation Conference, "New Leaders, New Directions," the world's leading non-proliferation conference. The CD has an extensive amount of information integrated into a familiar "browser" format, including video, audio, papers, web links, photos, and full-text publications. Video excerpts and transcripts of keynote speeches are included for Igor Sergeyev, an advisor to Russian President Vladimir Putin; Abdul Sattar, Pakistani foreign minister; U.S. Senators Joseph Biden and Richard Lugar; Uta Zapf, German Bundestag member; and Jessica Mathews, president of the Carnegie Endowment." Directions on where to order a copy of the CD are listed on the web page. UPDATE: All of the content from this CD is also available in a web-based format at: http://www.proliferation.info ---- Higher Education--United States--Statistics Source: NSF Science and Engineering Doctorate Awards: 2000 ----- Parliament--House of Commons--United Kingdom Source: House of Commons Library Parliamentary Pay and Allowances: Current Rates 50 pages .pdf ---- Supercomputers--Global--Lists & Rankings November Rankings Now Online: TOP500 Supercomputer Sites See Also: Top500 Home Page ---- Telecommunications Internet Industry Source: GAO Telecommunications: Characteristics and Competitiveness of the Internet Backbone Market 43 pages .pdf ---- Web Tools--Browsers--Opera Opera 6.0 Beta (Windows only) Released I've been a big fan of this browser for a long time. This new beta is the first step in making an already great product even better. Make sure to test it out. Tuesday, November 13, 2001
Academic Libraries Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education Students Work Online, Not Visiting Library Buildings From the article, "University libraries bring to mind undergraduates rooting through dusty stacks or sitting in reading rooms with their noses buried in tomes. These days, however, more and more students are entering libraries not through turnstiles but through phone lines and fiber-optic cables." See Also: This article mentions Mark Y. Herring's April American Libraries article, "10 Reasons Why the Internet Is No Substitute for a Library" Make sure to read this interesting, informative, and useful list. ----- See Also: The Chronicle of Higher Education is sponsoring on online discussion about this topic on Thursday, November 15th, at 2pm EST. Online Info Industry (2 Items) Micromedia (Canada) Micromedia/Cold North Wind Introduce Digital Archive of Toronto Star Content Back to 1894 From the announcement, "The Toronto Star - Pages of the Past is the one-of-a-kind, digitized version of the complete Toronto Star newspaper archives. This ground-breaking archive product is the only electronic, full-text and full-image database of recorded history in Canada, dating back to January 1, 1894. It is also the only online volume of archives of its kind currently available in the world." ---- Factiva "Factiva Adds Harvard Business Review to Content Collection" Visual Search Tools--eVision Demo eVision Visual Search Technology A few days ago, eVision announced a deal with Corbis to use some of their content to demo eVision visual search technology. For those of you interested in testing and learning about visual/image search tools these demos and white paper are "must visits". Direct to 3 eVe Visual Search Demos Direct to the eVision White Paper, "A New Vision for Internet Search" New, Updated, & Newly Discovered Resources (5 Items) Terrorism--United States--Chronology Source: United States State Department--Office of the Historian Chronology: Significant Terrorist Incidents, 1961-2001 -- Terrorism--Global Coalition Against Terrorism--Chronology Source: United States State Department--Office of the Historian Chronology: The United States and the Global Coalition Against Terrorism, September-November 2001 --- Travel--North America--Statistics Trade--North America Full-Text Source: Bureau of Transportation Statistics North American Trade and Travel Trends Report available in pdf, html, and xls formats. ---- Education--United States--Statistics Source: NCES Web Version Now Available: "Characteristics of the 100 Largest School Districts" ----- Energy--United States Source: EIA Update: State Electricity Profiles, 1999 Now Available From the site, "This report presents a compilation of information about the electric power industry over the last decade for each State, the District of Columbia, and the Nation. Each profile shows the generating capability and largest power plants, the net generation of electricity by energy source, air emissions attributed to the generation of electricity at fossil-fuel burning plants, and the consumption of electricity and average retail price for each consumer sector." Monday, November 12, 2001
Web Search--All The Web News Search from AllTheWeb Now Online Last Thursday we mentioned a few new services that were being planned for AllTheWeb. Today, these new tools became available. Here is a quick orientation to get you started. 1) Near Real-Time News Indexing of web-based material. You can access news content either from the main search interface where a keyword search will return a few hits (if available) in a gray box at top of results list or DIRECTLY from the News Search interface. 2) Each result link includes the approximate time the link and content was indexed. 3) The Advanced NEWS Search permits you to limit by type of news source (ie. International, Business, Sports). 4) You can also limit the news search engine to the approximate time the material was indexed (last two hours through the last week). 5) I was unable to find a complete list of all of the news sites ATW crawls. A few test searches offered links from CNN, BBC, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, and The Economist. ---Additional New Tools From ATW--- 6) Debut of FAST Topics (Beta). A keyword search on the main database will return hits "dynamically mapped" to relevant categories from Fast Topics (ontology borrowed from the Open Directory Project). 7) New: The Advanced Interface (main search database) now permits you to limit your search by page size (bytes, kilobytes, megabytes). 8) Linguistic analysis of queries to improve relevance, anti-phrase detection. See Also: Learn More about AllTheWeb See Also: Read The AllTheWeb Press Release Professional Reading Souce: ARL Collections & Access for the 21st Century Scholar: Presentations and Notes Materials from the October 19-20, 2001 ARL meeting in Washington D.C. Of special interest, "Building Sustainable Collections of Free Third-Party Web Resources" by Lou Pitschmann, University of Alabama. News Brief Web Search--Excite Excite.Com Name Purchased by InfoSpace From the article, "InfoSpace, a Bellevue, Wash., online directory firm, said it struck a tentative agreement to buy the Excite.com domain name and related trademarks. But the deal does not include any offices or other physical assets, and InfoSpace does not plan to take on ExciteAtHome's employees." "Under an unusual three-way deal, InfoSpace plans to replace the Excite.com search engine, directory and white pages with its own, [InfoSpace spokesman Steve] Stratz said. It will then lease the rest of the site, including e-mail and news listings, to Iwon.com, an Irvington, N.Y., portal backed by CBS and best known for giving away cash to random users. Btw, a search of the InfoSpace web database (via the InfoSpace.Com site) currently delivers results from pay-per-click engines including listings from Overture, Sprinks, and FindWhat.Com. New, Updated, & Newly Discovered Resources Corruption--Global Full-Text Source: Transparency International Global Corruption Report 2001 From the site, "The Global Corruption Report 2001, launched on 15 October 2001, is the new publication of Transparency International (TI), the leading global anti-corruption NGO. It provides an overview of 'the state ofcorruption' around the globe." Saturday, November 10, 2001
Web Search--Teoma Web Search--WiseNut Teoma and WiseNut: Important Technology, Out of Date Databases Both Teoma and WiseNut are exciting entries into the web search arena. All web searchers should be aware of these tools and how they differ from other search tools. However, a quick caveat. Both the Teoma and WiseNut databases are NOT very current. So, learn and experiement with these new tools but be very careful. You may want to use other web search tools that will query fresher databases. Note: Simple search experiments have found that material in both Teoma and WiseNut was last crawled in early to mid-Summer, 2001. Example #1 From Teoma (Note Date in Result Listings) Example #1 From WiseNut (Note Date in Result Listings) Example #2 From Teoma (Note Date in Result Listings) Example #2 From WiseNut (Note Date in Result Listings) Friday, November 09, 2001
News and Public Affairs--Streaming Audio Politics--United States Current Events C-SPAN Radio, Replays of Sunday Morning Public Affairs Programming Available on the Web This post could be of special interest to those of you who don't have access to American television. Every Sunday morning the major television networks run public affairs talk shows. They feature political leaders from the U.S. and the rest of the World discussing current events and related issues. A local radio station here in Washington DC and available on the web, WCSP/C-SPAN Radio, replays the audio portion from all of these programs beginning at Noon EST/1600 GMT. Here is the current schedule, make sure to check this page for changes. Noon EST/1600GMT--NBC--Meet the Press 1pm EST/1700GMT--ABC--This Week With Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts 2pm EST/1800GMT--Fox--Fox News Sunday 3pm EST/1800GMT--CNN--Late Edition 4pm EST/1900GMT--CBS--Face the Nation Direct to the C-SPAN Radio Stream Public Company Info--Databases Invisible Web What's Up With SECInfo.Com The site hasn't been online for the past couple of weeks BUT good news, it will be back soon. I just had a brief chat with Fran Finnegan, the site owner and he informs me that the SECInfo.Com database is currently being rebuilt on a new, faster server. It will also return with a new ISP which should also improve performance. Fran told me that he hopes to have his very useful database back online in the next week or two. Stay tuned. If you would like to get an idea about how SECInfo is designed, check out a cached version of the homepage via Google. New, Updated, & Newly Discovered Resources (4 Items) Private Companies--Lists and Rankings Source: Forbes Forbes 500 Largest Private Companies, 2001 List Lists back to 1995 are available along with several search, customization features. Also Available: Global 50 (50 Largest Global Private Companies) ---- Science and Engineering--Employment Source: National Science Foundation Employment Preferences and Outcomes of Recent Science and Engineering Doctorate Holders in the Labor Market From the site, "This issue brief examines the differences between the preferences for employment sector and job activities of recent Science and Engineering doctorate holders at the beginning of their doctoral programs to their actual labor market experiences some years after graduation." -- Distance Education--United States Source: ERIC Clearinghouse for Higher Education The U.S. Department of Education and Student Financial Aid for Distance Education: An Update 7 pages .pdf -- K-12 Education New ERIC Digest-Successful K-12 Technology Planning: Ten Essential Elements Thursday, November 08, 2001
Web Search--AllTheWeb Current Events--Search Engines Source: InfoWorld Coming Monday November 11th: New Services From AllTheWeb This IDG article reports that Monday will bring the roll-out see of a few new services from. More comments on Monday afternoon. Here's what to expect: 1) A database with real-time news crawling/updating. Material from 3000 online news sources. According to the article some limiting will be available. Google has been refreshing it's database with content from various news sources every 24-48 hours. AltaVista provides a search interface to the Moreover news feed. Northern Light provides free full-text content, updated in real-time from 56 newswires. 2) New linguistic analysis of queries. 3) Fast Topics: A directory using Open Directory data 4) Expanded customization options Current Events--Search Engines Cool: Yahoo News Advanced Search Interface As you know, Yahoo licenses news content from many sources. The advanced search interface for news content offers numerous limiting options that could make getting to the precise article or story you're looking for easier. Limits include: title (title: Video Search--Bloomberg Streaming Media Bloomberg Television Content Now Keyword Searchable, View Video Content Online Once on this site, look for the "Video Player" link on the right side of the page. This will open up a box where you can keyword search video, then watch that segment of video using your RealVideo player. See Also: PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer Video Search New, Updated, & Newly Discovered Resources (2 Items) Information Technology--Lists & Rankings Now Available: Interactive Week 500, 2001 List From the site, "The Interactive 500 is more than a list of which companies generated the most hard dollars from their web operations in the past year. It's also Interactive Week's annual checkup on the state of e-commerce. And this year, surprisingly, the health of the online economy appears to be a lot better than most people think." See Also: Charts are also available as .pdf files. -- Criminal Justice--United States--Statisitcs Source: BJS Felony Defendants in Large Urban Counties, 1998 Summary ||| Direct to Full-Text 52 pages .pdf Wednesday, November 07, 2001
Periodicals--Tables of Contents Alerts Free Service, TOC Alerts from Infotrieve Infotrieve is a leading document delivery service that provides full-text content, delivered online, via fax, or through the mail for a fee. Infotrieve also provides tables of content alerts (delieved via e-mail) for many of these publications. A free service. You will be e-mailed the table of contents when a new edition of the publication is entered into the Infotrieve database. To begin using this service: *Sign-Up (free) for an Infotrieve Membership. *Select the TOC Page and Either Browse or Search the List of Available Journals *Select Desired Journal(s), Click the "Add to TOC Alert Profile" *New TOC(s) Will Be E-Mailed To You See Also: Search the Entire Infotrieve "Article Finder" Database (free). It Contains Over 20 Million Citations and 10 Million Abstracts Portals--Science Information Coming Soon: Science.Gov Listserv postings alert us to a new U.S. Government portal for science info, Science.Gov. Participants will include the Department of Agriculture, DOE, DTIC, NLM, and the National Air Intelligence Center at Wright Patterson Air Force Base. The new portal is set for a February, 2002 debut. Learn More: "Strengthening the Public Information Infrastructure for Science" Web Search--Google New Portion of Google Site Might Prove Useful For Web Searchers Danny Sullivan, alerts us to a new section on the Google site. It's aimed at Webmasters, might be of value to Google searchers. "Google Information for Webmasters" gives a solid overview about why pages may not be found using the search engine, a section on how Google ranks pages, and a bit on how the database is updated. Web Search--Searching Direct From the Browser Source: Wired News "IE Bug Can Lead to Strange Search" You've been advised. I've been a victim. From the article, "Internet Explorer is configured to load Microsoft's own MSN search page whenever users click the browser's search button or enter a wrong URL. But a small program embedded in a website or an e-mail can automatically change the system's default settings to direct users to websites that they may prefer not to see. Not only are users being directed to odd search sites touting the benefits of work-at-home schemes and Internet gambling, some claim that every time they attempt to do a search or happen to enter an incorrect URL, they get pop-up windows with explicit advertising for hardcore pornography." Reading Shelf Intranets Source: Darwin "Why Do Intranets Fail" ---- Online Information Source: Financial Times "Discovering Hidden Riches in Business Data" ---- Web Search Source: Financial Times "Quest to Mine the Far Corners of the Web" New, Updated, & Newly Discovered Resources Agriculture--Safety--United States Bioterrorism Source: National Library of Agriculture New Web Site: Biosecurity, Bioterror & the Threat to Agriculture Tuesday, November 06, 2001
Library of Congress International Online Resources LC Launches "Online International Project" From the annoucement, "Portals to the World serves as a kind of one-stop shopping for reliable international information," said Carolyn T. Brown, Assistant Librarian for Library Services and Acting Director, Area Studies Collections. "We expect that it will become one of the very first places that librarians, researchers, and the general public turn to for information about the nations of the world." Portals to the World (www.loc.gov/rr/international/portals.html) offers links to selective and authoritative electronic resources, arranged by country or geographic regions, with links for each, sorted in a wide range of broad categories. Each country portal is designed to be comprehensive, yet selective, and to cover topics of interest to specialists and the general public alike. Typical categories are business, commerce, economy, culture, education, government, politics, law, history, libraries, and archives, with some categories tailored to subjects of particular importance for the study of individual nations. In some cases, search engines local to that nation or language have also been included as have links to worldwide organizations, such as the World Bank and UNESCO. Direct to "Portals to the World" Online Research Source: Kentucky Kernel (University of Kentucky) Scary Stuff: No Need To Use Books, Magazines, and Other Paper-Based Resources? This article from the student newpaper at the University of Kentucky is about the underuse of LexisNexis at the school. However, this article is not being brought to your attention for this topic but, specifically for its lead. The article makes it seem that LN and other electronic tools are the only resources needed to write a paper. From the article, "Forget pulling books from the shelves and blowing dust off their covers. There's no need to thumb through books, magazines, newspapers and business reports in an attempt to accumulate enough information to draft a substantial paper.Yet many students are unaware that much of the information needed is available on Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe." New, Updated, & Newly Discovered Resources (2 Items) U.S./Canadian Border--Statistics Source: BTS Preview: "North American Trade and Travel Trends" Full report available Friday -- Minority Business--United States Full-Text Source: U.S. Census Survey of Minority-Owned Business Enterprises, Black-Owned Businesses: 1997 2 pages .pdf Monday, November 05, 2001
Web Search--Google Last week, we alerted you to Chris Sherman's article about some changes at Google. Today, the "official word". Google now provides access to material in the following formats: -Adobe PostScript (ps) -Lotus 1-2-3 (wk1, wk2, wk3, wk4, wk5, wki, wks, wku) -Lotus WordPro (lwp) -MacWrite (mw) -Microsoft Excel (xls) -Microsoft PowerPoint (ppt) -Microsoft Word (doc) -Microsoft Works (wks, wps, wdb) -Microsoft Write (wri) -Rich Text Format (rtf) -Text (ans, txt) You can limit your search to any of these filetypes by using this syntax, filetype: or by using the pull-down option on the advanced search interface page. You can click to view the document online or view a text only version of the content via the Google site. In other Google news, Image Search users now have an advanced search option. Users will be able to limit their search results by file type (gif or jpeg), color (black and white, grayscale or full color), or to a specific domain (just images on microsoft.com). Finally, Google now has translation support for the Arabic and Turkish. Bureau of Accuracy!!! Politics--United States--Almanacs Almanac of American Politics Was Just A Demo Oops, sorry. Last week we noted that the The Almanac of American Politics was available free on the web must have been only a demo. The site now requires a subscription. I have removed the link. Oh well! Thanks the the VAS&ND who emailed me with the update. News Brief Web Search--Lycos Lycos.Com Home Page Gets Face Lift Remember, Lycos gets it's crawled database from AllTheWeb. Keywords results are the same in either database. The ATW results are labeled as "Web Results". New, Updated, & Newly Discovered Resources Small Business--United States SBA (Small Business Administration) Updates FAQ's, FAQ Site 22 FAQ's on various subjects. They can be full-text searched using this search engine. Firearms--United States--Statistics Source: BJS Firearm Use by Offenders Describes firearm use of State and Federal prison inmates. Summary ||| Direct to Full-Text Sunday, November 04, 2001
New, Updated, & Newly Discovered Resources Fine Arts--Digital Collections Source: Associated Press Los Angeles County Museum of Art Places Digital Collection Online From the article, "The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has opened a gallery for the virtual visitor, making 10,000 of its works available on the Internet. Collections Online, part of the museum's Web site, is a digital archive that offers tastes of everything from 13th century Islamic art to antique evening gowns. Also available are 175,000 records from the art research library, Andrea Rich, museum president and director, said Friday." Direct to LA County Museum of Art "Collections Online" News Alerts Business News CBS Marketwatch.Com Improves News Alert Tool You'll first need to register (free) for the CBS Marketwatch site. Then, create news alerts that are be delivered via email either "as they move" on the news wires or at a specified time. Create keyword alerts (Boolean permitted) with content from AP, UPI, Reuters, PR Newswire, Business Wire and more. Other alerts will notify you of company news by entering a ticker symbol or selecting from a list of industries. Other alerts are also available. See Also: Northern Light News Alerts (Material from 56 Newswires) See Also: Net2One See Also: New York Times News Alerts Saturday, November 03, 2001
New, Updated, & Newly Discovered Resources and Documents Weather--Wind Chill--Chart Ready Reference National Weather Service Releases NEW Wind Chill Chart From the news release, "NOAA's National Weather Service today implemented a new method to compute wind chill temperature to provide better winter weather warnings throughout the nation. For the first time, the index will include specific wind chill threshold values showing frostbite danger at given periods of time." Direct to the New NOAA Wind Chill Chart & Wind Chill Caculator Terrorism Source: DOJ, Office for Victims of Crime OVC Handbook for Coping After Terrorism Friday, November 02, 2001
New, Updated, & Newly Discovered Resources and Documents Small Business--United States--Lists and Rankings Source: Inc The 2001 Inc 500 List is Now Available Online See Also: The Inc 500 Almanac See Also: Search 1982-2001 Inc 500 Lists U.S. Government--Office of Homeland Security Official Web Site: Office of Homeland Security War in Afghanistan Full-Text Source: House of Commons Library, United Kingdom "Operation Enduring Freedom and the Conflict in Afghanistan" A comprehensive review of activities since October 14th. 104 pages .pdf Thursday, November 01, 2001
Business Information Research--United Kingdom User Surveys "Britons Waste a Lot of Time When Trying to Find Relevant Online Information" I'm sure these numbers are not unique to the UK. More ammo for your "why we need info professionals" file. From the news release, "Over 25m British Internet users - 80% of the total users - waste time searching through irrelevant information on the web, according to a new survey commissioned by the UK search engine Mirago. The survey, which was carried out by NOP among UK-based Internet users, showed that over a third (37%) of those online waste a quarter of their time searching the web in vain, 29% waste half of their time and 9% waste three quarters of their time. Amazingly, 5% or approximately 1.5m people waste all of their time ploughing through useless information." Caveat: As noted in the news release the survey was commissioned by Mirago, a UK based search company. Btw, the Mirago advanced search screen offers several sorting options not seen elsewhere. The company also operates its own web crawler. U.S. Government Information--Post 9/11 Source: Newsbytes "Nuclear Regulatory Agency Plans Terrorist-Proof Site" As many of you know the NRC site has been down since just after the 9/11 attacks. This article reports on the plan for a new site. From the article, The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) soon plans to debut a new Web site, one that contains far less information that could be useful to terrorists planning to attack U.S. nuclear sites. According to a notice on the site this morning, the NRC "will begin deploying its newly redesigned public Web site in a phased approach." The commission pulled information offline after a question arose over whether portions of the site could provide useful maps for terrorists planning further U.S. strikes. Web Search--Google Source: News.Com "Google Tests Snapshots of Web Pages" From the article, "Google has been quietly testing a new feature that offers snapshots of Web pages alongside ordinary search results. Google spokeswoman Cindy McCaffrey on Wednesday told CNET News.com that the experimental pages have so far been shown to a random test group made up of less than 1 percent of its audience. She added that the company routinely tests new ideas in this way and has not yet decided whether it will adopt the graphical cues as a standard feature. "It depends on the feedback we get," she said. "We're really most interested in getting someone exactly to the destination that they are looking for. We're open to providing any information to accomplish that, including graphics." Library Marketing Source: Free Pint "Marketing Library and Information Services" Sheila Webber, a UK based lecturer in info science has constructed a wonderful annotated webliography of resources about this IMPORTANT topic. Impressive and useful! Information Quality Source: PC World "WTO Parody Site Accused of Harvesting E-Mails" Another article for your "beware" file. Plenty of "spoofed" sites exist but this one ranks high on many engines when searching for the legitimate WTO site. From the article, "Search engines are directing visitors to a subtle parody (Gatt.Org) of the Web site of the World Trade Organization (WTO) instead of the real thing--and the WTO is powerless to stop it, the Geneva-based body warned Wednesday in an e-mail to members of its mailing list...The parody site contains so many references to the WTO that search engines are directing people to it instead of the real thing. A search of Altavista using the keyword "WTO" returns the parody site in fifth place. I checked several other engines and here's how the "WTO" search ranked. Excite: Gatt.Org was the number 2 entry AllTheWeb: Gatt.Org was the number 6 entry Teoma: Gatt.Org was the number 7 entry in the "web pages" section Google: Gatt.Org did not rank in the top 100 results Wisenut: Gatt.Org was the number 36 entry Online Newspapers--New York Times Source: Wired News "News That's Fit to Download" "Earlier this week, the venerable print icon The New York Times launched The New York Times Electronic Edition, an exact digital replica of its New York edition that is normally not available in print outside the metropolitan New York area. Now, instead of waiting for the paper to arrive on the doorstep, you can download an electronic version overnight, open it on the laptop on your way to work and delve through articles at the office." See Also: Direct to New York Times Electronic Edition New, Updated, & Newly Discovered Resources and Documents (3 Items) --- Biological Incidents--Handbooks Source:CIA Chemical/Biological/Radiological Incident Handbook Recently released unclassified document. -- Chemical Weapons Source: National Library of Medicine Chemical Warfare Agents Includes a bibliography and webliography -- Crime--Schools--United States--Statistics Source: National Center for Education Statistics Indicators of School Crime and Safety: 2001 |
