| |
ResourceShelf |
|
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
Looking For More Info? News? Search Help? News Tips?
New Site Suggestions?
Archives 06/01/1990 - 06/30/1990 03/01/2001 - 03/31/2001 04/01/2001 - 04/30/2001 05/01/2001 - 05/31/2001 06/01/2001 - 06/30/2001 07/01/2001 - 07/31/2001 08/01/2001 - 08/31/2001 09/01/2001 - 09/30/2001 10/01/2001 - 10/31/2001 11/01/2001 - 11/30/2001 12/01/2001 - 12/31/2001 01/01/2002 - 01/31/2002 02/01/2002 - 02/28/2002 03/01/2002 - 03/31/2002 04/01/2002 - 04/30/2002 05/01/2002 - 05/31/2002 06/01/2002 - 06/30/2002 07/01/2002 - 07/31/2002 08/01/2002 - 08/31/2002 09/01/2002 - 09/30/2002 10/01/2002 - 10/31/2002 11/01/2002 - 11/30/2002 12/01/2002 - 12/31/2002 01/01/2003 - 01/31/2003 02/01/2003 - 02/28/2003 03/01/2003 - 03/31/2003 04/01/2003 - 04/30/2003 05/01/2003 - 05/31/2003 06/01/2003 - 06/30/2003 07/01/2003 - 07/31/2003 08/01/2003 - 08/31/2003 09/01/2003 - 09/30/2003 10/01/2003 - 10/31/2003 11/01/2003 - 11/30/2003 12/01/2003 - 12/31/2003 01/01/2004 - 01/31/2004 02/01/2004 - 02/29/2004 03/01/2004 - 03/31/2004 04/01/2004 - 04/30/2004 05/01/2004 - 05/31/2004 06/01/2004 - 06/30/2004 07/01/2004 - 07/31/2004 08/01/2004 - 08/31/2004 09/01/2004 - 09/30/2004 10/01/2004 - 10/31/2004 11/01/2004 - 11/30/2004 12/01/2004 - 12/31/2004 01/01/2005 - 01/31/2005 02/01/2005 - 02/28/2005 03/01/2005 - 03/31/2005 04/01/2005 - 04/30/2005 05/01/2005 - 05/31/2005 06/01/2005 - 06/30/2005 07/01/2005 - 07/31/2005 08/01/2005 - 08/31/2005 09/01/2005 - 09/30/2005 10/01/2005 - 10/31/2005 11/01/2005 - 11/30/2005 12/01/2005 - 12/31/2005 01/01/2006 - 01/31/2006 02/01/2006 - 02/28/2006 03/01/2006 - 03/31/2006 04/01/2006 - 04/30/2006 05/01/2006 - 05/31/2006 06/01/2006 - 06/30/2006 Now Available Additional Web Reference Compilations direct search (Invisible Web Resources) Audio/Video Current Awareness Tools WWW Accessible Congressional Research Service Reports
|
Sunday, June 30, 2002
Web Search--Lycos Source: PC World Now Online: A Few New Things from Lycos Along With a Bit of Confusion Lycos has purchased it's database of web data from FAST Search and Transfer, the AllTheWeb people for some time. Lycos 6.0 will add the .pdf content that was added to ATW a few weeks ago. It will also integrate the News Search database that's been available at ATW since November of 2001. A few other changes (tabs, shopping resources) are also on the way. Thanks to the new FaganFinder Blog for the news tip. One More Thing: I just took a very quick look at Lycos, specifically the news search. It's a bit confusing since it appears that Lycos has 2 news search tools. Tool number one is accessed via the News button on the left side of Lycos.Com page. A search of this news database for the phrase "Chicago Cubs" retrieves one set of results. Another set of news results is accessed by doing a Lycos search and then clicking on the News tab. This database appears to be the FAST Search and Transfer product. Final Point: A quick look at the Advanced Interface shows no option to limit to only .pdf content.
Libraries Source: The Miami Herald "Dream of Library of Black Culture Nearly a Reality" From the article, "A circular driveway leads to a red brick walkway, beckoning visitors into the two-story white building. Inside, a reception desk, carved wooden columns, and carpeted walls frame rows of books in the African-American Research Library and Cultural Center. The library's grand opening on Oct. 26 will celebrate the seven-year vision -- now a reality -- of Samuel F. Morrison, director of the Broward County library system." See Also: Learn More via this Web Page Saturday, June 29, 2002
Professional Reading Shelf Source: SearchTools.Com "Things you might not know about how real people search" Avi Rappaport via her always useful and informative SearchTools.Com site is providing access to this interesting article by Marc L. Resnick and Rebeca Lergier of Florida International University.
Resources, Tools, and Full-Text Documents USA Patriot Act Source: Congressional Research Service via FAS 2 Full-Text Reports from CRS About the Patriot Act: The USA PATRIOT Act: A Sketch (RS21203) The USA PATRIOT Act: A Legal Analysis (RL31377) Friday, June 28, 2002
Search Engines--Advertising Source: AP "FTC: Disclose Paid Search Listings" From the article, "Internet search engines that take money from Web sites in exchange for prominent placement should make that practice clearer to Web users, federal regulators said Friday. Many search engine Web sites, including AltaVista, LookSmart and AOL Search, give preferred placement to paid advertisers. The Federal Trade Commission said that prime space can confuse Web users who are looking for the best response to their search, rather than ads for sites that paid up front. The commission's decision came in response to a complaint from consumer advocacy group Commercial Alert, which is backed by activist Ralph Nader" The complaint itself was orginally filed with the FTC about a year ago. You can read more about it in this 7/17/2001 article by Danny Sullivan. In my opinion, all web search instruction should include at least a brief mention of advertising on the engines and how to identify it. See Also: Read the Full-Text of the FTC Response to the Commerical Alert Complaint
Academic Libraries Libraries--Journal Costs Source: Guelph Mercury General Public Finds Out About the High Cost of Library Journals (: It's good to see this perpetual issue getting some attention in the mainstream press. The article focuses on the journal price issue at the University of Guelph in Ontaria, Canada. From the article, "At the Canadian Association of Research Libraries, executive director Tim Mark also stressed the need for academics to seek new options for sharing articles. "Almost all commercial publishing of scholarly research is in the hands of a small number of publishers. The key is that the libraries and librarians know this is a major problem, but they need to take this to researchers and university administrations, and have this discussion." Michael Ridley, chief librarian at the University of Guelph, said the problem is apparent at his institution. He tries to show professors how the budget is being sucked dry by journals that cost thousands of dollars. Some, he said, do not realize how much the materials cost. "Scholars historically were in charge of their own material, and in the 20th century that has moved over to the publishers," he said. "The producers of the material do not understand the economics of the publishing." The University of Guelph is a member of ARL. See Also: "Revenge of the Librarians: Journal Prices Under Siege" (via E-Content May, 2002)
Resources, Tools, and Full-Text Documents Philanthropy--United States--Statistics Fast Facts Source: Foundation Center Highlights from the Foundation Center's Foundation Yearbook This is a fact filled four page pdf with several charts and bullet points.
Web Search Source: WebReference Update "AlltheWeb versus Google" Richard Wiggins shares a few comments. The article also includes several comments from Jami Axelrod, Senior Product Marketing Manager for FAST. Thanks to SearchDay for the news tip. Thursday, June 27, 2002
Web Resources of the Week News Compilations 1) AsiaToday Every weekday, this service (free) from the Asia Society compiles and organizes news stories about and relating to Asia and places direct links to the content on this page. Sources include the BBC, Asia Times, The Economist, and Sydney Morning Herald. Categories include East Asia, South Asia, AustralAsia, Business & Economics, and Magazine Articles. A complete archive of each days links are available and can be browsed by date or searched by keyword. AsiaToday was launched in September of 1999. AsiaToday is also made available via e-mail (note registration box, upper-left side of page). The compilation is usually delivered by 11 a.m. Eastern time. --- Road Construction--United States and Canada--Searchable Database 2) Rand McNally's Road Construction Database (U.S. and Canada) This database allows you to find information about road construction projects in all 50 states, D.C., and all Canadian provinces. The database can be searched by state, type of roadway, highway number, and date.
Distributed Computing--Google Source: ExtremeTech Now Available: Distributed Computing Feature via Google Toolbar This service has been available to a selected group for several months. Today, it has become available for those toolbar users who choose to activate the feature. From the article, "Users with the Google toolbar enabled can add the Google Compute functionality, which allows an idle PC to evaluate proteins used by Stanford University as part of the Folding@home project for distributed-computing cancer research. By turning on this feature, you allow your computer to work on complex scientific problems when it would otherwise be idle. Google Compute runs only while you are away from your computer and stops as soon as you begin using your machine again," the introduction to the toolbar states. "The work it does is automatically sent via the Internet to researchers who combine it with information sent by thousands of other users." See Also: To Add this Feature to the Google Toolbar, Click Here See Also: Google's FAQ About this Feature
Web-Based Archival Projects Business--Internet Start-Ups Source: S.F. Chronicle "Archivist Seeks Dot-com Plans, Cycle May Prove Instructive" From the article, Kirsch is collecting the business plans of dot-coms -- the living and the deceased -- hoping to glean lessons from the industry's collapse. The Web site he will unveil today is an online archive for the material, asking survivors of the bust to contribute whatever documents they can." See Also: Direct to www.businessplanarchive.org
Libraries Source: The New York Times "In Remote Library Stacks, an All-Seeing, Scanning Robot" Learn about the Comprehensive Access to Printed Materials project at Johns Hopkins. From the article, "Unfortunately, the bulk of resources in most libraries is still available only in conventional printed form: bound, numbered and arranged on shelves. You can try doing all your research electronically but at some point, you will have to hunt down a book on one of those shelves, sit down and thumb through its pages. As the first step toward building such a system, the researchers have designed a robot that can move about inside a library and locate a book requested by a user, take it off the shelf and carry it to a nearby scanning station. In the system's envisaged final version, a second robot at the scanning station would scan specific pages of the book that the user was interested in. The user would then be able to leaf through the book over the Internet from any location." See Also: Learn More via the Comprehensive Access to Printed Materials Web Site
Professional Reading Shelf Digital Projects--PictureAustralia "PictureAustralia - A Collaborative Digital Project" Apaper presented by Danielle Freeman, Manager, PictureAustralia, National Library of Australia at the National Digital Forum, Wellington, New Zealand, 15-16 May 2002, hosted by the National Library of New Zealand.
Resources, Tools, and Full-Text Documents (1 Item) Political Action Committees--United States--Statistics Source: Federal Election Commission Financial Activity of Political Action Committees (1/1/2001-3/31/2002) Several Top 10 and Top 50 lists are available. Some lists can be downloaded in Excel fomat.
News Briefs (2 Items) Tools to Help Stop Pop-Up Ads (via The NY Times) -- Tools To Help Stop Spam (via The NY Times)
Just for Fun Our friends at Pandia have alerted us to a "Fun" logo at Ask Jeeves in Honor of the World Cup! Wednesday, June 26, 2002
Public Libraries--United States Source: CNN Judith Krug and Emily Sheketoff of the American Library Association Discuss FBI Issue on CNN Krug, is the Director of the ALA Office of Intellectual Freedom appeared on an afternoon program yesterday. Shektoff, is the Executive Director of the ALA D.C. Office appeared on the network's Talkback Live program yesterday. You can access the transcripts at: Transcript of Emily Sheketoff on CNN's Talkback Live (begins mid-page) Transcript of Judith Krug on CNN Note: As of 10pm ESDT, 6/25, the Krug Transcript is Incomplete, I've Contacted CNN
Libraries--United States Source: Library Journal netConnect (from Library Journal) Announces Winners of First Annual Library Web Site Awards From the site, "These new awards recognize the unique contributions that libraries have made in building the World Wide Web. Public, School, and Academic Libraries are all being recognized. Each category includes an award for a large library followed by the award for a small library. The awards are accompanied by grants of $1500 from Jones e-Global Library." Congrats to all of the winners.
Library Journals This Week Only: Free, Full-Text Access to the Journal, OCLC Systems and Services Once again Emerald is providing full-text access in their "Journal of the Week" program. Free access begins with Volume 5 Number 1 (1989, Abstracts Only) and runs to the current issue, Volume 18 Number 2 (2002). Plenty of interesting reading here!
Web Search--Google--Legal Issues Source: Law.Com "The Google Way" From the article, "Kulpreet Rana was caught between religion and commerce. This spring Rana, director of legal affairs at Google Inc., received several letters from the Church of Scientology International alleging copyright infringement. If Web surfers looked for information about the church using Google's search tools, the results brought up confidential documents. The church insisted that Google remove the links." See Also: TVC Alert reports that another Scientology complaint against Google has been filed. A copy of the complaint is available via the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse.
Librarians in the News Source: Chicago Tribune Meet the Librarian: Ruth Ketchum of the Chicago Public Library, Sulzer Regional Library Ruth does a Q and A for the Trib's "On the Job" column.
Professional Reading Shelf Online Databases Source: Library Journal "Online Databases- Trends from the Industry Perspective" Dr. Tenopir writes, "...company representatives were asked what major issues or trends will impact database availability and distribution in the next year. While budget woes are clearly the major issue for libraries and vendors alike, other trends are also expected to shape online information services." These trends include "expanded linking", "back file building", and "single access points". -- Librarians Study Results: "You Don't Look Like a Librarian!" By Ruth A. Kneale (Via E-Mail Note, The Shifted Librarian, and Library Stuff)
News Briefs (2 Items) Water Causes More Damage To Materials at National Library of Canada - U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Upgrades Web Site: New Look and Database Output Options
Resources, Tools, and Full-Text Documents (3 Items) Consumers--United States--Credit Cards New Web Site, "Web Site Lets Consumers Check for Credit Card Theft" From an AP article, "An anti-fraud education group that tipped federal authorities to a major Internet credit card scheme has opened a Web site that will let Americans check to see if their card numbers are in the hands of thieves." See Also: Direct to the CardCops Site -- Undergraduates--United States Student Financing--United States Source: NCES Three New Reports Profile of Undergraduates in U.S. Postsecondary Education Institutions: 1999–2000 Student Financing of Undergraduate Education: 1999–2000 Student Financing of Graduate and First-Professional Education, 1999–2000: Profiles of Students in Selected Degree Programs and Their Use of Assistantships -- Family Violence--Canada--Statistics Source: Statistics Canada Full-Text Report, Family Violence in Canada: A Statistical Profile Tuesday, June 25, 2002
Web Search--Teoma Teoma Launches Toolbar As noted on the blog late last week, Teoma's Toolbar is now available online. Teoma's Search Bar includes: -- The Highlight feature, which lets users highlight search terms as they appear on a Web page whether accessed through the Teoma Search Bar or a Web browser and highlights terms in up to six colors; -- The Email this page to a friend feature that lets users email any Web page along with a personal message with a click of a button; -- The Dictionary Search function that lets users look-up words with Merriam-Webster online; and -- Web browser functionality allowing Teoma Search Bar users to type specific Web addresses into its search box and be taken directly to the desired site. Note: I have both the Google Toolbar and Alexa Toolbar on my system. I haven't run into any conflicts by adding the Teoma toolbar.
Public Libraries--United States--Privacy Source: Office of Intellectual Freedom, American Library Association New, "FBI in Your Library" Web Compilation This new compilation features links to news articles, materials on the USA Patriot Act, Privacy: An Interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights, and other resources.
Health Information--Information Quality Source: The Washington Post "Rx for the Future: Get an Ix" From the article, "[Donald] Kemper has a radical solution to end patients' exhausting, disorienting and hazardous Web searches. Doctors should write "information prescriptions" that direct patients away from e-health's more suspect specimens and to the more wholesome and nutritious health information on the Internet. Kemper and Molly Mettler, a senior vice president at Idaho-based Healthwise, have laid out a manifesto in their book "Information Therapy: Prescribed Information as a Reimbursable Medical Service"(Center for Information Therapy, 2002). The book urges doctors to harness technology for patients by administering "information therapy" -- an "Ix" to accompany the usual Rx -- rather than send them out alone to sort through the glut of Web health pages. For providing this service, doctors would be paid."
Resources, Tools, and Full-Text Documents (6 Items) Wildfires--United States Source: NIFC/NICC National Interagency Fire Center Key Resources from the Site: National Fire News (Includes State-By-State Summaries, Updated Daily) National Situtation Report (Updated Daily, Includes Some Canadian Information) Incident Management Situation Report (Updated Daily ||| Archived Reports) Directory of Regional Centers (Arizona ||| Colorado Image Portal Database (Searchable) National Fire Maps (Access to Real-Time Maps via GeoMac) Wildland Fire Statistics Glossary of Wildland Fire Terms National Fire Weather Page (NOAA) ------ Workplace--United States--Lists & Rankings Source: Fortune Best Companies For Minorities, 2002 ed. ------ Information Technology--Lists & Rankings Source: Business Week The Information Technology 100/200 See Also: PDF Version Also Available -- Internet Usage--United States Source: Pew Internet and American Life Project Full-Text Report, The Broadband Difference: How Online Americans' Behavior Changes with High-Speed Internet Connections at Home -- Software--Economics--Statistics Source: NIST Full-Text Report, The Economic Impacts of Inadequate Infrstructure for Software Testing See Also: Article about this New Study (via Computerworld) -- Smuggling--United Kingdom Shopping--United Kingdom Source: House of Commons Library Full-Text Report, Cross Border Shopping and Smuggling
Professional Reading Shelf Information Architecture--Vocabulary Source: ASIST Bulletin New Issue of ASIST Bulletin Features Three Articles About Vocabulary Control on the Web The articles included are: "Do Your Links Stink? Techniques for Good Web Information Scent" "Redesigning an E-Business Taxonomy: Egreetings Project Case Study" "New Course Design: Classification Schemes and Information Architecture" Monday, June 24, 2002
Electronic Library Projects Source: Detroit Free Press "Michigan's Pioneering e-Library Has New Look" Mike Wendland alerts Free Press readers to many changes now available at MeL including access to proprietary research databases for residents of Michigan. According the the article, users will access by simply entering their drivers license number or state ID number. Thanks Mike for alerting the general public to these services. See Also: Direct to the Michigan Electronic Library
Web Search--Vivisimo Vivisimo Receives 3rd Round of Funding Another round provided to the Pittsburgh based company from Innovation Works. If you've never used Vivisimo's document clustering technology, it's worthy of your time. The company provides an opportunity to use its technology with several specialized search tools as well as with several general search engines to create a meta type search tool. When running a meta search note the preview option for each result. This feature allows you (IE Only) to open a live version of the page directly "inside" the result set.
Information Industry--Thomson Source: Information Today NewsBreaks "Thomson Corp. Now Listed on the New York Stock Exchange" Marydee Ojala writes, "On June 11, Thomson Corp. was listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), one of the largest companies added to that market this year. The lead underwriters were Merrill Lynch & Co. and Morgan Stanley."
Linking Issues Source: Financial Times "Reasons to Think Before you Link" Richard Poynder provides a review of the current legal issues.
Resources, Tools, and Full-Text Documents (3 Items) Crime--United States-Statistics Source: FBI Crime Trends 2001 (Premiminary Data) Summary ||| Full-Text Report -- Demographics--United States--Lists & Rankings Source: U.S. Census Ranking Tables for Places of 100,000 or More Population by Race Alone, Race Alone or in Combination, and Two or More Races Materials are available in .pdf, ASCII, or Excel formats. -- International Relations Source: Department of Parliamentary Library (Australia) Full-Text Research Report, India-US Relations In a Changing Strategic Environment
Professional Reading Shelf CLIR Issues (July/August, 2002) Is Now Available Selected Article Titles: "Perspectives on Digital Preservation" "Digital Libraries Seek Interoperability" "Who Says the Library Won't Survive?" Sunday, June 23, 2002
Web Search Industry Source: E-Commerce Times "The Serious Business of Internet Search Engines" From the article, "There is money being made, although it doesn't seem like it," Sue Feldman, research vice president at IDC, told NewsFactor. "And there is definitely money to be made in the future. The shakeout is happening now."
Libraries--United States Source: S.F. Chronicle "FBI Checking Out Americans' Reading Habits: Bookstores, Libraries Can't Do Much to Fend Off Search Warrants" From the article, "For the first time since the Cold War, the FBI is visiting public libraries to keep tabs on the reading habits of people the government considers dangerous...In a nationwide survey of 1,020 public libraries in January and February, the University of Illinois found that 85 -- or 8.3 percent -- of them had been asked by federal or local law enforcement officers for information about patrons related to Sept. 11, said Leigh Estabrook, director of the school's Library Research Center."
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Source: Forbes ASAP The Job of a Patent Examiner Spend some time with patent examiner, Patrick Nolan. From the article, "More than anything, he depends on the USPTO's technological system. Nolan's computer accesses vital information on all approved patents; the complete information of eight large industrial databases, each following the latest published research; more than 700 commercial databases offering less-rigorous information; 8,000 electronic books; and 700 journals."
News Briefs "Pop-Up Ads On Rise in Spite of Criticism" (via Contra Costa Times) Article includes information on several pop-up stoppers that are available for downloading. Saturday, June 22, 2002
Web Search--Teoma Coming Tuesday: Teoma Set to Introduce Toolbar App Teoma is getting into the toolbar game. Amongst its features will be an option that allows users to e-mail any web page and message to a friend or colleague. More details on 6/25.
Enterprise Search Source: eWeek "Taking a Swing at Enterprise Search" From the article, "Two new software products and an upgraded appliance are attempting to solve the vexing problem of enterprise data search. AskJeeves Inc. this week announced the latest version of its natural language search product, JeevesOne Enterprise, while relative newcomer Recommind Inc. last week debuted its MindServer 2.0 suite, which groups search results by categories and topics."
Search Engines National Public Radio Will Reevaluate New Linking Policy Various discussion group postings, including a post from NPR's V.P. of Communications, have informed us that NPR is going to reevalute the new linking policy with the hope of finding a better solution. Complete details can be found on this updated page from NPR. From the page, "...NPR also recognizes that the majority of the linking on the Web is not infringement. We are working on a solution that we believe will better match the expectations of the Web community with the interests of NPR. We will post revisions soon at www.npr.org."
Resources, Tools, and Full-Text Documents Poverty--Worldwide--Statistical Reports Source: UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development) Full-Text Report, "The Least Developed Countries Report 2002" The full-text of the report is free to download and/or read online until July 18th. Included in the report is a 47 page statistical annex that includes basic data on the least devleoped countries Friday, June 21, 2002
Search Engines National Public Radio's New Linking Policy and Search Engines Much is being written about NPR's new linking policy. I'll save the big legal and enforcement discussions for later, but I wanted to share a thought or two. I'm wondering how NPR is going to monitor for non-authorized links? My guess, using web search engines (note: other, more sophisticated approaches are possible). However, this might not be a good idea. Why? Will they only use one search engine? Remember, each of the major engines have unique databases. How will they track down pages that are completely indexable but not accessible from any engine? Will the search engines get involved and not allow the engines to be used for this purpose? Another point (it was coincidentally mentioned on the weblog yesterday), is the fact that any server owner can place a file on the server and not permit the crawler/spider to crawl, what the engines send out to build their databases, and make the content on the page non-accessble via a search engine. It would be very easy for someone to place his or her pages with NPR links in a directory and then tell the Google spider to crawl the content except for the pages in that directory. Heck, it's even easier than that and you don't even have to have server access. All a web page author needs to do is place a META tag in the html coding of a page and that tells the crawler/spider NOT to crawl that particular page. Finally, what are the long term implications if NPR and other organizations with linking policies use search engines to monitor for violators? Will the amount of material not accessible to the general web engines grow because page authors use META tags and methods? Note: I'm doing my best to get a comment from NPR. (Updated 6/22) NPR To Reevaluate Linking Policy, See Current Posts
Internet Filtering--United States Source: The Washington Post CIPA (Children's Internet Protection Act) Heading To U.S. Supreme Court From the article, "In a case that tests the limits of constitutional free speech rights on the Internet, the Bush administration today asked the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold a law that denies federal funds for public libraries that allow patrons to look at pornographic Web sites...The Supreme Court likely will hear arguments in the case early next year. Assuming the high court does not dismiss the appeal, it probably "won't issue some type of ruling on the case until this time next year," a Justice Department spokesman said."
Resources, Tools, and Full-Text Documents (2 Items) E-Government--Worldwide Source: United Nations Online Network in Public Administration and Finance Full-Text Report, Benchmarking E-Government: A Global Perspective This report, 148 pages .pdf, "assess the progress of U.N. member states". The Office of Management and Budget, from the U.S., has issued a press release commenting on the report. - Celebrities--Lists & Rankings Source: Forbes Now Available, Forbes Celebrity 100, 2002 ed. Several related articles are also available. This list can be sorted by several criteria. Links to the lists are located on the right side of the page. Thursday, June 20, 2002
Resource of the Week Health and Medical Research--PubMed Alert Tools--PubCrawler Relax and Search at the Same Time? Yes It's True, Thanks PubCrawler! Those of you who use Pubmed via the National Library of Medicine will appreciate this alert tool developed at the Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. In a nutshell, Pubcrawler allows you to formulate searches on the PubMed database (you can utlize all available syntax and limits) and have the search run automatically at an interval you desire. New results are returned directly to you, via one of several methods, including e-mail. There's no limit on the amount of searches you formulate and run on the service. Set-up takes just a few minutes. Oh yes, almost forgot, PubMed is a completely free service. For those tech types out there, you can learn more about precisely how the system operates on this page. Finally, if you want to learn more about why it's called PubCrawler, this photo will help clue you in. Another clue, the programs trademarked is, "It goes to the library. You go to the pub." ™
Copyright--United States The Copyright Office at The Library Of Congress Posts Webcasting Rates The rates were announced at 5pm. You can learn more about the process on this web page from LC.
Internet Filtering Source: The New York Times "The Librarians Web Dilemma" From the article, "So with the issue back where librarians say it should be — at the local level — libraries face two issues: protecting children from stumbling onto pornography while surfing the Web and dealing with adults who seek out materials that are either blatantly obscene or at least inappropriate for children."
Web Search--Spam Source: News.Com Spammer Attacks AOL's Search Engine Always something new! From the article, "Search engines beware: Web spammers are becoming more sophisticated. The latest case occurred Wednesday when America Online's AOL Search and its technology partner Inktomi began displaying thousands of search results that linked to a Web site based in Russia. Web spamming, a term used to describe how sites trump legitimate search results with their own pages, has been going on since the birth of search engines. But this time, Web spammers have found a savvier technique."
Web Search--Legal Issues Source: Bloomberg "Google Seeks to Invalidate Rival Overture's Web Search Patents" From the article, "Google Inc. is asking a federal judge to invalidate a patent owned by rival Overture Services Inc. that lets businesses, for a fee, have Web sites listed in the results of Internet queries. Google, based in Mountain View, California, denies that it infringes the Overture patent. In court papers responding to Overture's patent-infringement lawsuit in San Francisco, Google also challenges the validity of a patent issued to Overture under its former name, GoTo.com.
Resources, Tools, and Full-Text Documents - A Couple of Webby Award Winners - Tolerance--United States Source: Southern Poverty Law Center Webby Award Winner: Tolerance.Org I noticed that this important site was awarded a Webby Award the other night. While the entire site is highly useful and valuable, here are a few portions of the site that could be of use in a ready reference situation. 1) U.S. Map of Hate Groups, 2) Identify Hate Incidents in the U.S. (Stories in the Mainstream Press, Limit by State/Type of Incident), Hate in the News upcoming events and recent events. -- Nature Source: National Wildlife Federation Webby Award Winner: eNature.Com Ready reference suggestions: eNature Online Field Guides, Native Plant Guide, Zip Guides, (Wildlife Guides by Zip Code), ParkFinder. See Also: A List of the Other Webby Award Winners (Many of Other Quality Resources) -- Web Search Engines--Robots.Txt Another Webby Award Winner: The Food and Dining Site, Epicurious.Com The Epicurious Recipe Database has a great advanced interface and is home to over 14,000 recipes. However, most of these recipes are NOT crawled, indexed, and made searchable by the major general search tools. That's right, the only way to get at these resources is by using this database. Why can't you find these pages in Google, AllTheWeb, or AltaVista? It's quite simple. After running a search and finding a recipe, you'll see that the recipes sit in a directory called /run http://www.epicurious.com/run/recipe/view?id=10141. The site owners have placed a file on the Epicurious.Com server telling robots/crawlers, the software used to build web search databases, to "Keep Out" of this directory. The file (it sits on the web server) that directs the crawlers to "keep out" of this or any other directory or entire site, is called a robots.txt file and can be viewed here. Web page authors can also tell web crawlers to specifically stay away from specific pages by placing a meta tag in the html coding of the page. If you want to learn more about robots.txt and related protocols this is a great place to start.
Professional Reading Shelf Web Resources--Reviews The June Issue of Peter's Digital Reference Shelf is Now Online This month Peter Jacso takes a look at the AP Multimedia Archive and Greg Notess's Search Engine Showdown. Wednesday, June 19, 2002
Hooray, RSS Beta is Now Available As promised, the VAS&ND is beginning to offer a RSS feed. You can find the feed at http://resourceshelf.freepint.com/resourceshelf.xml For those of you who are unfamilar with RSS, let the library world's RSS evangelist, and our friend, Steven Cohen get you up to speed.
Commentary: Librarian Salaries in the U.S. Source: Marketplace (MPR/PRI/NPR) ALA's President-Elect Mitch Freedman shares a few comments about librarian salaries with Marketplace, a public radio program, heard on many NPR stations. You'll need RealAudio to listen to the segment. Mitch's comments begin at the 16:01 mark of the program. Here's a blurb about the segment, "In just 7 years, nearly 1 in 4 librarians will be of retirement age. But where will the new librarians come from? Many library science Masters degree programs have been forced to close their doors from sheer lack of students. Commentator Mitch Freedman thinks this apathy may have something to do with the meager paycheck most new librarians can look forward to." Note: If the primary link does not work properly, click on the "listen to today's show" link on this page.
Archives--United States Source: FCW "NARA Overwhelmed, Report Says" From the article, "The torrent of electronic records being generated by federal agencies has overwhelmed the ability of the nation's official recordkeeper, the National Archives and Records Administration, to identify and preserve them, a congressional audit concludes." Note: You Can Find a Link to the Full-Text of the Report Mention in this Article in Yesterday's Postings
Electronic Archives--Government Documents "Washington Breaks Ground on Digital Archives Building" Source: GovTech.Net From the article, "The Secretary of State, Sam Reed, announced on Tuesday that the state is taking steps to create a Digital Archives building that will use storage area networks (SANs) to store electronic records from the various branches and levels of state government. "We've had a problem in the state, which I'm sure is generally found around the country, of actually losing some of our electronic records," Reed said. "We have e-mails from a previous governor's administration that have disappeared. We also have Wang disks from another governor's administration that we don't have the right equipment to read what is on those disks. We currently have a situation where there's a considerable amount of public policy discussion, and, frankly, development, going on via e-mail, and we need to have a set up to be able to capture that for history."
Digitization Projects--Mexico--Newspapers Deal Finalized: Canada's Cold North Wind To Digitize Historical Newspapers from Mexico From the announcement, "With over 490 titles, this unprecedented project will create the single largest portal of Spanish-language historical newspapers on the Internet and will allow for access to be available to researchers and students in Mexico and around the world. Covering 3 centuries and over 20 million pages of news, the portal will allow a unique view of Mexican history that in some instances has been neglected. The project will be facilitated by the creation of a new organization called Cold North Wind de Mexico. The company is a joint venture between Cold North Wind and Carlos Alvarez del Castillo Gregory, publisher of the Guadalajara newspaper, El Informador."
British Library--OPAC (Online Public Access Catalogue) "British Library Catalogue Enabled for Simultaneous Searching" From the annoucement, "The British Library has today [6/7] launched its new BLPCZ service, which provides Z39.50 compliant access to the British Library Public Catalogue for the first time...The service allows quick and easy access to bibliographic records from the catalogues of the main British Library collections - already available online at http://blpc.bl.uk. In addition to this, the new feature will allow users with suitable retrieval software to download and make use of the Library's bibliographic citations for their own personal research purposes. This should prove of particular use to researchers and students compiling bibliographies for monographs, research reports or theses." See Also: Learn More About the British Library Catalogue
Patents--United States Source: GCN LexisNexis, Others Win Contract to Sell E-Filing Services for Patent Applications From the article, "The Patent and Trademark Office today negotiated zero-dollar contracts with five companies to sell electronic-filing services for patent applications. The companies will integrate their applications with PTO’s existing Electronic Filing System. EFS has proven so difficult to use that PTO receives about 3 percent of patent applications through it. The five companies are Aspen Grove Inc., of Needham, Mass.; AutoDocs LLC. of Falls Church, Va.; First to File Inc. of Menlo Park, Calif.; LegalStar Inc. of Williamsville, N.Y.; and LexisNexis Group of Atlanta, Ga."
Web Search--Google Source: Fast Company "How Google Searches Itself" From the article, "To stay on top, Google needed a stream of new ideas. But where could the company look for them? And more important, how? "We always had great ideas, but we didn't have a good way of expressing them or capturing them," says Craig Silverstein, Google's director of technology. Mayer's proposal: Search for ideas in the same way that the Google search engine combs the Web. Google's Web searches succeed because they roam far and wide, scouring billions of documents. Also, search results are ranked by relevance ( taking into account how many links a page has, among many other factors ), and they come back fast."
Resources, Tools, and Full-Text Documents (3 Items) Fast Facts--4th of July Source: U.S. Census Fast Facts: The U.S. and the Fourth of July Facts about fireworks, flags, your holiday barbecue and more. -- Security--United States Source: Joint Economic Committee, U.S. Congress Full-Text Report, Security in the Information Age: New Challenges, New Strategies 134 page .pdf document. Papers include: "Critical Infrastructure Assurance: A Conceptual Overview" "Cybersecurity Policy: Moving from Nouns to Verbs" "National Security: The Definitions Landscape" -- Public Records--Web Compilations URL Update: The URL for the Comprehensive Public Record Compilation, PAC-Info.Com, Has Changed The official address is now http://www.searchsystems.com. This "must have" compilation contains links to over 7700 public record databases from around the world.
News Briefs Webcasting Rate Information Due From Copyright Office/Library of Congress at 5pm Thursday Tuesday, June 18, 2002
United States Army--Publicly Accessible Information Source: Government Computer News "Army Cleaning Up Web Sites" From the article, "Col. Thaddeus Dmuchowski, director of information assurance in the Army's Chief Information Officer Office, said the service was "caught blindsided" when it first learned of more than 70 examples of publicly accessible Army Web sites containing "inappropriate information." Also from the article, "The latest problem, which was identified by the Army in the past week, involves "hidden" sites that are no longer visible to basic searches or indexes, but can still be found through more sophisticated digging. Dmuchowski likened it to a Microsoft Corp. PowerPoint presentation with hidden slides that may not be visible, but are still there." See Also: This Article Also References a 6/5/02 DoD Inspector General Report (Summary), Full-Text of DoD Report Web Search--Google Source: ABCNews.Com If and When Will Google Go Public? More thoughts and opinion about this popular topic. SearchDay's Chris Sherman is quoted. Online Industry--LexisNexis LN Serves Up Several Enhancements for Academic Universe From the announcement, "The enhancements include faster access to search forms for news, legal and company financial information, all of which now appear on the home page. Another feature designed especially with students in mind is a “Quick News Search” feature. For the first time ever, users will be able to search across all news files within LexisNexis Academic Universe for the previous two years with a “one-box” search interface." Online Industry--ProQuest Coming July 28th, Launch of ProQuest 6.0 From the announcement, "The new ProQuest 6.0 interface will include enhanced tools and features for linking, extensive coverage date information, a new title list system, French and German user interfaces..." Resources, Tools, and Full-Text Documents (5 Items) Energy--Statistics Now Available, Full-Text: The BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2002 Summary ||| Full-Text Some material can be downloaded into Excel format. -- Parliament--Canada Source: Library of Parliament, Canada New, Full-Text: Inside Canada's Parliament 41 pages .pdf -- U.S./Iraq Relations Source: Division of Parliamentary Libraries, Australia Research Note, Full-Text, U.S. and Iraq: Immediate Options -- Information Preservation Source: GAO Full-Text, Information Management: Challenges in Managing and Preserving Electronic Records -- Documents in the News Energy--United States Source: GAO Full-Text, Energy Markets: Concerted Actions Needed By FERC To Confront Challenges That Impede Effective Oversight News Briefs (2 Items) "Libraries in Need of Librarians" (via AP) -- British Library Names Head of Science, Technology, and Innovation Monday, June 17, 2002
Web Search--AllTheWeb AllTheWeb: An Essential and Must Use Search Engine Those of you who read this weblog on a regular basis are most likely aware of my very positive feelings about AllTheWeb.Com as an essential general web search tool. Today, news that ATW is claiming a slightly larger database than Google. I wouldn't be surprised to see Google up their total in the next few days. The announcement also claims that AllTheWeb is refreshing their complete database every 7-11 days. More on this later after we run a few tests. Regardless of these new claims, it's ESSENTIAL that information professionals use more than a single general web search tool. ATW is now "the engine" in the number two spot and should be a "must use" tool by all searchers. Actually, I've been using ATW more and more as my first choice and have been impressed. By the way, see this past Friday's and Saturday's postings for a bit more ATW news and comment. See Also: Search Engine Showdown, the definitive place to find engine size analysis and more. See Also: "AlltheWeb's Engine Chugs Past Google" (via AP, includes a comment from Google) Online Industry--Gale Group Source: Information Today NewsBreaks "Gale Group to Digitize Most 18th-Century English-Language Books, Doubles InfoTrac Holdings" From Barbara Quint's article, "Apparently they only count in hundreds at Gale Group: hundreds of sources, hundreds of clients, and now hundreds of years. Gale Group has announced a mammoth 20-million-page project that will bring to the Web most books published in the English language during the 18th century. Proclaimed as “the most ambitious single digitization project ever undertaken,” it reflects cooperation by The British Library and other leading research libraries. In another announcement, Gale has more than doubled its InfoTrac holdings with the integration of 5,400 titles from ingenta. This makes a total of more than 9,000 electronic periodicals. “We own the 18th century,” boasted Mark Holland, publisher in Gale’s U.K. office (and it sounded like he meant more than just the title of Gale’s prospective digital edition of The Eighteenth Century). When finished, the project will include the full-image text of 150,000 English-language titles published between 1701 and 1800. Gale plans to complete the project in time to put the product on the Web beginning in June 2003." The Internet Archive Source: The Seattle Times "Digital Library of Knowledge Doable Dream" Read and Learn about Brewster and the Internet Archive. See Also: Direct to the Internet Archive Professional Reading Shelf The June issue of D-Lib Magazine is Now Online Here are the titles of just a few of articles: "Evaluation of Digital Library Impact and User Communities by Analysis of Usage Patterns" "The KYVL Kentuckiana Digital Library Project: Background and Current Status" "Virtual Museum of Canada - Promoting Canada's Heritage Online" News Briefs (4 Items) Natural Language Search: iPhrase Does Deal With Lycos iPhrase nlp technology will be used on Lycos Finance site. See Also: Demo iPhrase with Yahoo Finance -- Companies Sign-Up for Google's "Search Box" -- Ask.Com Unveils New Enterprise Search Tool -- AltaVista Names New Chief Scientist Resources, Tools, and Full-Text Documents Small Business--United States Source: Fortune Small Business "America's Fastest Growing Small Companies" Sunday, June 16, 2002
Databases Learn More: Cycorp Source: Philadelphia Inquirer Another article about Doug Lenant and Cycorp. We've featured several in the past 18 months. From the article, "Although some critics question the potential of this painstaking effort, the inventors believe Cyc will form the brains of computers with supercharged reasoning abilities - which could help us work more efficiently, make us understand each other better, and even help us predict the previously unforeseeable. Cyc (pronounced "psych") has already helped Lycos Inc. generate more relevant results on its Internet search engine. The military, which has invested $25 million in Cyc, is testing it as an intelligence tool in the war against terrorism. Companies use Cyc to unify disparate databases, and they are examining a new application that warns when computer networks have vulnerabilities that hackers can exploit." See Also: Direct to Cycorp Web Site Web Browsers Source: The Washington Post "Mozilla, an Old Browser New Again" The Post's Rob Pegoraro with some very positive comments about the Mozilla browser. I've been using Mozilla quite a bit since the official launch and have been very impressed. See Also: Direct to the Mozilla Web Site (Download) Resources, Tools, and Full-Text Documents (2 Items) Demographics--United States CensusScope From the site, "CensusScope is an easy-to-use tool for investigating U.S. demographic trends, brought to you by the Social Science Data Analysis Network (SSDAN) at the University of Michigan. With eye-catching graphics and exportable trend data, CensusScope is designed for generalists and specialists." Data from 2000 and 1990 Census. Discovered via Infomine See Also: Ameristat - Health Information Source: National Library of Medicine A Selection of New MEDLINEplus Compilations MEDLINEplus: Hepatitis A MEDLINEplus Hepatitis B Saturday, June 15, 2002
Web Search--AllTheWeb AllTheWeb Adds "PDF Only" Limit To Advanced Interface It's nice to see the major engines being so quick to respond to suggestions. A few weeks ago, after ATW added .pdf content, I mentioned (along with many others) that it would be great if a limit to only search .pdf content would be available. This morning, a new box on the advanced interface, provides the "pdf only" limit. Resources, Tools, and Full-Text Documents (2 Items) Health Information--Medline Source: National Library of Medicine List of Serials Indexed for Online Users From the site, "The National Library of Medicine (NLM) designed the List of Serials Indexed for Online Users to provide bibliographic information for serials from which articles are indexed with the MeSH® vocabulary and cited in MEDLINE®, the backbone of NLM's PubMed® database. Citations from these serials date back as far as 1966 and include data from all serials indexed for the formerly separate NLM databases AIDSLINE® and HealthSTAR, and data from core serials indexed cover-to cover for the formerly separate databases BIOETHICSLINE®, HISTLINE®, and SPACELINE. The 2002 edition contains 9,930 serial titles, including 4,498 titles currently indexed for MEDLINE, cited alphabetically by abbreviated title followed by full title." -- Teaching--Webliography Source: C&RL News Full-Text article, "Navigating the Web of Discourse on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: An Annotated Webliography" Compiled and annotated by Musa Abdul Hakim a librarian at SUNY-Buffalo. News Briefs (2 Items) Factiva and ChoicePoint Form Marketing Alliance -- Coming Soon To Five Cities: One Day "Understanding Census Statistics" Workshops From the U.S. Census These hands-on seminars are scheduled for Brooklyn, Orlando, Houston, and Iowa City. Web Search Source: Law.Com "Three Upstarts Take On the Almighty Google" The author, Robert J. Ambrogi, lists WiseNut, Vivisimo, Teoma. A couple of comments: *No mention of AllTheWeb. In my mind the number two engine at the present time and always improving. ATW is rapidly increasing index size, tweaking the result ranking algorithm, and about one month ago began providing access to .pdf material. As Greg Notess points out, ATW indexes the full-text of .pdf files unlike Google which stops indexing after about 120K. Btw, Google stops indexing html documents after 101K. *While WiseNut looks promising, and it's something we need to keep on our radar, the database is extremely out of date. Three quick sample searches found urls that haven't been updated in almost a year. Also, WiseNut offers no advanced searching options. *Vivisimo is an interesting, worthwhile, and valuable product. Not mentioned in this article is Vivisimo's very useful "page preview" feature and the ability to demo it's clustering technology with many specialized search tools. Friday, June 14, 2002
Libraries--Marketing Source: Library Journal "Marketing the Worth of Your Library" A must read. From the article, "Despite all our real-time reference, web sites that rock, and exemplary programs, libraries are still missing the hook that will change our public's perception of what we have to offer. It isn't enough simply to tell potential patrons what is available at their library. What was the last Madison Avenue ad campaign you saw that just told what the product offered? That hook is selling the value of the library in real bottom-line terms." Search Engines Source: Search Day How Search Engines Look at Links From the article, "Representatives of Google, Fast, and Ask Jeeves/Teoma shared inside information about page ranking and linking analysis at the Search Engine Strategies Conference in Boston, March 4th." Resources, Tools, and Full-Text Documents (3 Items) Cultural Heritage--Searchable Database Source: Getty Conservation Institute New Database, AATA (Abstracts of International Conservation Literature) From the site, "AATA Online enhances the preservation of our global cultural patrimony by providing high quality, peer-reviewed abstracts of the international literature of conservation and heritage management in a free online database. Updated quarterly, AATA Online currently includes abstracts of over 100,000 citations, enabling practitioners from many fields of heritage preservation to identify and select resources relevant to their work." This database is available at no charge. Thanks to J.O. for the news tip. -- National Statistics--United Kingdom Source: National Statisitics Office "New Look for Interactive Neighbourhood Statistics" From the site, "The Neighbourhood Statistics website has a new look, incorporating a state-of-the-art Geographical Information System supported by data from governmental and other reliable sources. It provides new and improved search options which, for the first time, allow users to search specified areas which cross ward boundaries." Direct to the Neighbourhood Statistics Service Site -- Intelligence--Canada Source: Canadian Security Intelligence Service Canadian Security Intelligence Service 2001 Public Report Thursday, June 13, 2002
Web Resource of the Week Ready Reference Tools A Longtime Favorite: xrefer xrefer continues to provide high-quality reference material on the web. What's even more exciting is that a sizable selection of this content is available at no charge via a searchable database. A few of the 100 free titles, all from top reference publishers, that xrefer provides full-text access to include: Oxford Dictionary of Art The Penguin Dictionary of Economics The Penguin Dictionary of Music Bloomsbury Thesaurus Compact American Dictionary of Computer Words In addition to the free xrefer service, the company also markets xreferplus for libraries. This fee-based service provides searchable and browsable, full-text access to many more titles. A one month free trial is available for qualified organizations. See Also: Read Peter Jacso's In-Depth Review of xrefer (from Information Today) Resources, Tools, and Full-Text Documents (3 Items) Schools--United States--Maps Source: National Center for Education Statistics New, Interactive Mapping Database: 2000 Census School District Maps -- Science & Technology Source: Government of Canada New Portal, The Federal Science and Technology Community -- Law Libraries--Washington D.C.--Directory Source: Law Librarians' Society of Washington, D.C. Now Online, Enhanced Web Version: Directory of Federal Law Libraries in the D.C. Metropolitan Area See Also: LLSDC's Legislative Source Book Professional Reading Shelf Digital Preservation Source: Working Group on Preservation Metadata New, Full-Text Report: Metadata Framework to Support the Preservation of Digital Objects Librarians in the News Source: The Pantagraph (Bloomington-Normal, IL) "Normal Librarian Loves to Find the Answers" Read about Pixie Freymann, a librarian at the Normal Public Library. Freymann earned her MLIS at Dominican University. From the article, "I love to be able to find things," Freymann says, "and I don't give up easily. I'll dig and dig until I find it." This leads to her favorite part of the job. "I love the fact that I'm learning all the time," she says." Congrats To Will Hann and the Free Pint Team For Reaching the 50,000 Subscriber Mark!!! Never Visited the Free Pint Site? You Should! Wednesday, June 12, 2002
Resources, Tools, and Full-Text Documents (5 Items) Nuclear Waste Transport--United States Source: Environmental Working Group New, Interactive Database, Nuclear Waste Route Maps See Also: Learn More About the Maps, (.pdf maps also available) -- Resources in the News Catholic Bishops--United States--Database Source: Dallas Morning News New Database, "Records of the Top Leaders of the Nation’s 178 Mainstream Roman Catholic Dioceses" From the site, "The study - the first of its kind - looked at the records of the top leaders of the nation’s 178 mainstream Roman Catholic dioceses, including acting administrators in cases where the top job is vacant. Excluded from the study were auxiliary bishops who, in larger dioceses, serve in subordinate roles but still can vote on many matters before the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the 17 bishops who lead eparchies, which are diocese-like entities that worship according to the Eastern rite. In checking whether a bishop had protected priests or other church representatives accused of sexual abuse, reporters Brooks Egerton and Reese Dunklin relied on published reports, court records, interviews and church records obtained in civil litigation." See Also: Additional Background About the Study -- India-Pakistan Situation Source: Department of the Parliamentary Library, Australia Full-Text, E-Brief, India-Pakistan: Tensions over Kashmir -- Climate Source: EPA Full-Text, Climate Action Report 2002 -- E-Government New, Subject Portal, e-Gov FirstStop From a Government Technology article, After a yearlong process of research and development, the Center for Technology in Government at the University at Albany is rolling out e-Gov FirstStop, a knowledge-sharing partnership for government managers and staff. The Web site includes a carefully selected collection of e-government materials including executive-level briefings, research and best practices reports, case studies and Web sites. Officials of the Center for Technology in Government (CTG) said all resources included in e-Gov FirstStop are reviewed and selected by e-government practitioners and scholars." -- Research and Development--United States--Statistics Source: National Science Foundation Full-Text Report, Federal Funds for Research and Development: Fiscal Years 2000, 2001, and 2002 (NSF 02-321) Professional Reading Shelf Three New Articles About Reference Linking in the New Issue (6/2002) of RLG Focus "Connecting Citations and Full Text: Eureka® and OpenURL" Walt Crawford, RLG "Implementing OpenURL Linking with SFX: The NYU Experience" Gloria Rohmann, New York University "OpenURL at the University of Chicago Library" Jim Mouw, University of Chicago "Implementing OpenURL: Advice from the Library Trenches" Kimberly Parker, Yale University News Briefs Albert's Natural Language Search Teachnology to Power Forbes.Com Site -- "Six Science Publishers Create New Web Font Set: The STIX Project" From the announcement, "After years of planning, a group of scientific publishers today formally announced the Scientific and Technical Information Exchange (STIX) font creation project and the launch of the STIX web site at http://www.stixfonts.org. The STIX publishers aim to develop a comprehensive set of fonts for mathematics and other special characters used in Scientific, Technical, and Medical publishing. The web site provides information for potential users within the scientific and publishing communities, and a special area for software developers who may want to incorporate support for the STIX Fonts into their products. The six publishers – the American Chemical Society (ACS), the American Institute of Physics (AIP), the American Mathematical Society (AMS), the American Physical Society (APS), Elsevier Science, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) " (Discovered on NFAIS's Noteworthy). -- "Lawsuits Attack Site-to-Site Links" (AP via International Herald Tribune) Tuesday, June 11, 2002
Web Search--Ask.Com A Redesigned Ask Jeeves Interface is Now Online, News Search Also Available The new interface includes tabs for web and news searches. The results page page is less cluttered. Results labeled as, "You may find my search results helpful" are derived from and utilize the Teoma database and algorithm. PDF material is not available. The news database is powered with a full Moreover feed of over 3,000 sources and is updated hourly. Ask.Com also unveiled a new "popular queries" compilation similar to the Lycos 50 and Google Zeitgeist. Ask's compilation is called Jeeves IQ. Virtual Reference--QuestionPoint Source: Information Today NewsBreaks "QuestionPoint Marks New Era in Virtual Reference" Barbara Quint writes, "In the history of computing, the date to remember is the one when IBM produced the first PC. In the history of the Internet, future historians may note the date when Mosaic became Netscape or perhaps when Bill Gates finally decided Microsoft would recognize the Net. It’s not the originating date, it’s the maturing date. The Virtual Reference Desk movement may have reached such a juncture with the launch of QuestionPoint by OCLC, the world’s leading library vendor, in a joint project with the Library of Congress, the world’s largest library. The production model of the service should go online June 23." Direct to the QuestionPoint Site The Semantic Web Source: The Boston Globe Next Up: Web of Data Tim Berners-Lee with this example of searching on the semantic web, "'You'll tell a search engine, `Find me someplace where the weather is currently rainy and it's within a hundred miles of such and such a city.' Today a search engine can go and find you pages with those words on them, but with the Semantic Web, it will come back and say, `Look, I found this place and I can prove to you why I know that it's raining and why I know it's within a hundred miles of this place.' So you'll be dealing with much firmer information.'' Thanks to C.S. for the news tip. Resources, Tools, and Full-Text Documents Business Information--Canada Source: Industry Canada Improved Search Engine: Strategis Portal Upgrades Search Engine From the announcement, "...enhancements include a faster search engine, indexing done by the root of a word, improved navigation within the result pages, a better ranking algorithm, as well as more collections from which to draw. Databases include: Canadian Company Capabilities Canadian Patents Database Federal Incorporations Database Trademarks Database Professional Reading Shelf Digital Libraries Source: Journal of Digital Information "Interactional Digital Libraries: Introduction to a Special Issue on Interactivity in Digital Libraries" Articles in this Special Issue (all articles linked from the introduction): "Experimental User-Centered Evaluation of an Open Hypermedia System and Web Information Seeking Environments" "Linked Active Content for Digital Libraries for Education" "Atmospheric Visualization Collection: Developments in the NSDL" "Active Netlib: An Active Mathematical Software Collection for Inquiry-based Computational Science and Engineering Education" Monday, June 10, 2002
Specialized Search Engines—News War on Terrorism Source: The Washington Post Full-Text Content: America at War, Material from The Washington Post As you know, many major newspapers provide full-text content at no charge for only one or two weeks. However, exceptions exist. For example, if your searching for full-text material about America's war effort and the events of September 11th using a specialized search interface on The Washington Post’s site, you can access a large archive, about 3400 stories as of today, of full-text material that the paper has published since 9/11. Remember, this material is only searchable and accessible if you use this special search tool and not using any of search engines available on The Post's search engine page. Btw, an access point on the “America at War” page also provides the ability to browse the content by subject or view a complete list of material in this archive. See Also: The New York Times “College Times" section provides a browsable directory of selected stories on many topics. This directory contains some material past the normal two-week limit. NOTE: If you know of other specialized directories and databases from major publications and news organizations, I would love to learn more about them. Enterprise Search--Software Source: Reuters New Natural Language Search Software Debuts: Inquira Direct to Inquira Resources, Tools, and Full-Text Documents (5 Items) - Internet Training--Tutorials U.K.'s Resource Discovery Network Adds 11 New Tutorials to Virtual Training Suite If you need some Internet training or an Internet trainer make sure to take a look at these great resources. The suite currently holds over 50 subject-specific tutorials. The 11 tutorials added today are: ·Internet for Art, Design and Media ·Internet for Business Studies ·Internet for Construction ·Internet for Engineering (General and Automotive) ·Internet for Hairdressing and Beauty ·Internet for Health and Social Care ·Internet for Hospitality and Catering ·Internet for Information and Communication Technology ·Internet for Leisure, Sport and Recreation ·Internet for Performing Arts ·Internet for Travel and Tourism -- XML Cataloging--MARC MARC 21 XML Schema Thanks to C.B. for letting us know about this site. -- Business--Lists & Rankings Source: Fortune "Cool Companies 2002" -- Patents Source: American Chemical Society Full-Text: What Every Chemist Should Know About Patents A very useful, even if you're not a chemist, 15 page overview of the U.S. patent system. Thanks P.S. -- Software--Piracy Source: Business Software Alliance New, Software Piracy Statistics Includes list of Top 10 Countries with the Highest Piracy Rates. News Briefs Makeover Time: Coming Soon for the Yahoo Home Page (Source: News.Com) From the article, "The simplified home page is meant to accentuate advertisements, the source said." Sunday, June 09, 2002
Audio Mining Source: Smart Business "Dig Deeper" From the article, "If you think it's hard to find your wedding tape in a box of unlabeled cassettes, imagine you're CNN and you're searching for a specific 1998 news segment in which Barry Manilow was mentioned in passing. It's a task that could take an intern all summer. But when CNN completes its massive audio mining project the task will take only seconds." FBI Source: NY Times "Computer System That Makes Data Secure, but Hard to Find" Google's CEO Eric Schmidt with a few comments on the problems at the FBI. From the article, "Mr. Schmidt of Google said that government had characteristically been slower than industry to adopt new information technology and to link its multitudinous information networks. This leads to a condition that the industry calls "stovepiped" information, which means that data is warehoused in separate, unconnected silos. That is partly by design, Mr. Schmidt said, as a precaution against wandering hackers. "They don't want a network interloper to come in on one side and do a lot of damage to other computers." Even within those various troves, Mr. Schmidt said, information is rarely stored in a way that makes open-ended searches easy. Although companies like his offer products that can be added to such networks to allow only authorized users to search the data, he said that those products cannot readily work with systems that do not conform with the industry standards." Information Sharing Source: Smart Business "Bringing Order to the Information Explosion" Several tools to assist in info organization and presentation are mentioned in this article. Law Libraries Source: Am Law Tech "Incredible Shrinking Library" From the article, "Libraries are shrinking. And technology is to blame." Saturday, June 08, 2002
Web Directories The Librarians' Index to the Internet (LII) Reaches the 10,000 Record Mark One of the web's most useful general interest directories now holds records (title, subject indexing, annotations, urls) for 10,000 resources. For those of you who've never visited, make sure to visit the directory. Congratulations to Karen Schneider and the rest of the LII team for reaching the 10K mark. A special thank you and congrats to our friend and LII founder Carole Leita for creating this important resource. See Also: Direct to the LII Resources, Tools, and Full-Text Documents (2 Items) Homeland Security--Untited States Source: The White House Full-Text: Department of Homeland Security A 28 page (.pdf) overview of the proposed new DOHS. The document is also available by chapter and in html. -- Health Information Source: National Library of Medicine A Selection of New MEDLINEplus Compilations *MEDLINEplus: Home Care Services *MEDLINEplus: Falls Also From NLM: "Management of Hepitatis C", Current Bibliographies in Medicine 2002-3 Friday, June 07, 2002
FBI Data Search Capabilities U.S. Senate Hearings Source: eMediaMillWorks/Washington Post Transcript, U.S. Senate Hearing on FBI Counterterrorism Efforts This is a complete running transcript of yesterday's hearing. If you're interested in reading about the poor information search capabilities at the FBI try an edit/find search of the transcript for the phrase "automated case system". This will lead you to several exchanges. Here's a short portion of one of them. It's an exchange between Coleen Rowley and Senator Patrick Leahy. --- ROWLEY: Our FBI search is probably the most fundamental, rudimentary thing. You can just put in a word. So, for instance, if you put in "airline" to do a text retrieval, you would get up such a volume of records that it would be impossible to review. It's almost impossible to do just a one-word text. LEAHY: You can put in "aviation schools"? ROWLEY: For instance, in Lexis-Nexis when you're searching for things you can put those qualifiers in that narrow it down. And we have no way of doing that. We can a word in. LEAHY: You can put in "aviation"? ROWLEY: I think we could. LEAHY: But you couldn't put in "aviation schools." ROWLEY: No. -- Another interesting exchange is near the bottom of the transcript between Rowley and Senator Charles Shumer. Grants--Databases--Fee-Based Source: The Foundation Center FREE TRIAL in June 2002, Foundation Grants to Individuals Online We mentioned about three weeks ago that the The Foundation Center had launched this database. We've now learned that they are offering free access this month. From the site, "...offers detailed descriptions of close to 4,800 foundation programs that provide support directly to artists, students, researchers, and other individual grantseekers." Resources, Tools, and Full-Text Documents (4 Items) Digital Preservation--United Kingdom New Web Site, The Digital Preservation Coalition Web Site From a Managing Information article, "The DPC officially launched at the House of Commons in February 2002. The aim of the Coalition is to secure the preservation of digital resources in the UK and to work with others internationally to ensure that access to our global digital memory and knowledge base is not lost." Digital Preservation Source: DPC Now Available, Full-Text, Preservation Management of Digital Materials An online edition of the handbook. - Deep Linking Source: American Library Association, Office of Intellectual Property Deep Linking Webliography See Also: New, (6/7) : "A Fundamental Premise of the Web is Challenged" (via AP) - Peer-To-Peer--Privacy Full-Text Report, "Usability and Privacy: A Study of Kazaa P2P File Sharing" This report is getting a great deal of attention in the media today. For background check this News.Com article. |
