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ResourceShelf |
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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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Thursday, October 31, 2002
Resource of the Week Elections--United States Resources for Election 2002 Next Tuesday is Election Day here in the U.S. Here's a small set of resources that I hope will be of value to you during the next week and after the election. I've also included a link to a wonderful calendar of election info from most countries that have them. - Bios, Congressional Candidates and Gubernatorial Candidates (via Leadership Directories) - Charts, State Election Laws (via ElectionLine and NCSL) - Database, Candidate Finder (Search by Address, via Capwiz) - Directory, Election 2002-Candidates and Race Info (via Capwiz) - Directory, Elections 2002 (via Council of State Governments) Lists of ballot initiatives by state, numerous chats from the The Book of the States, 2002. - Directory, Election Statistics 1920-2002 (via Office of the Clerk, U.S. House) "Since 1920, the Clerk of the House has collected and published the official vote counts for federal elections from the official sources among the various states and territories." - Directory, Guide to the Governors' Races (via National Governors Association) - Directory, State Election Offices (via NASED) - Directory, Secretary Of State Offices (via NASS) Many of these offices provide live vote counts. - Directory, StateVote 2002 (Info/Resources on State Elections via NCSL) -- See Also: Calendar, ElectionGuide.Org From the International Foundation for Election Systems (IFES). A calendar with linked resources for just about every major election held around the globe. Material from 1998 though 2009.
Web Search--Google Libraries "Does Search Engine's Power Threaten Web's Independence" Comments from various people on Google's "power". Earlier this week the News.Com's Stefanie Olson contacted me and I'm happy to report that a sidebar includes a mention of librarians, remotely accessible databases, and some a few links to info pro compiled directories often mentioned on the VAS&ND.
Professional Reading Shelf Information Credibility Source: Consumer WebWatch/Stanford University "How Do People Evaluate a Web Site's Credibility? Results from a Large Study" (Abstract) From the abstract, "With more than 50 percent of the U.S. population having Internet access, the World Wide Web has become an important channel for providing information and services. As the Web becomes a part of people's everyday lives-booking travel, finding health information, buying products — there is a growing need to help people figure out whether a Web site is credible or not: Can I trust the information on this site? Can I trust in the services this site describes?" Thanks to NFAIS for the tip. See Also: Direct to Full-Text of the Report
Resources, Tools and Full-Text Documents (2 Items) Small Business--United States--Lists & Rankings Source: Inc.Com Updated, The 2002 edition of the Inc. 500 is Now Available -- Recently Updated Congressional Research Service Reports Source: Congressional Research Service Afghanistan: Current Issues and U.S. Policy CRS Issue Brief: Africa: U.S. Foreign Assistance Issues CRS Issue Brief: Egypt-United States Relations CRS Issue Brief: Palestinians and Middle East Peace: Issues for the United States CRS Issue Brief: The Middle East Peace Talks CRS Issue Brief: North Korea's Nuclear Weapons Program See Also: Additional CRS Reports Relating to International Issues Wednesday, October 30, 2002
Telephone White Pages--United States--SuperPages.Com Five Points of Info About the White Pages Database at SuperPages.Com I was spending a few minutes looking at some of the services provided at MyWay.Com. The new portal offers telephone directory info provided via a direct link to Verizon's SuperPages.Com. Since it's always useful to know about several online telephone directory, here's what I learned about SuperPages.Com. 1) The only required field is "last name". Other searches will work for the entire U.S. without specifying city, state, or first name. Caveat, only one thousand records are available per search. 2) The asterisk(*) works as a wildcard. If you use them you will be asked (in most cases) to specify state and city. 3) Clicking the "More Info" link next to each entry will offer a "Find Neighbors" search. 4) Searching on a first name will also return matches on an initial. For example, searching John Doe will also return entries listed as J. Doe. 5) Content in this database is provided by Acxiom.
Web Search--AlltheWeb AtW Adopts Standards, Will Post New "Skins" Tomorrow From the announcement, "AtW is the first major search site to fully adopt XHTML (Extensible Hypertext Markup Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). In doing so, AlltheWeb is now faster to load and can be displayed consistently across a wider range of Web browsers and browser platforms. FAST has also revealed several new “skins” for AlltheWeb, enabling millions of users to personalize the look and feel of AlltheWeb, while still obtaining the same quality, advanced search features of the site. To celebrate FAST’s XHTML and CSS compliance, and in an effort to showcase these new skins, FAST will be posting a special, commemorative Halloween skin on October 31st as AlltheWeb’s default page. Starting on October 31st, users wishing to choose from the new variety of skins available for AlltheWeb can do so by going to AlltheWeb’s skins gallery, located at (http://www.alltheweb.com/gallery)."
Information Industry--Reed Elsevier Source: Forbes Profile: Reed Elsevier From the article, "Amid a media recession, Crispin Davis is coining money at Reed Elsevier. How did he pull that off? " Also from the article, "James Neal, who as head of Columbia University's libraries in New York is a big customer, gives Reed Elsevier top marks for creating user-friendly research products, but he also has a six-point gripe list with the company that includes price-gouging and concerns that scientific journals are increasingly being consolidated under one corporate banner. Britain's Office of Fair Trading calculates that Reed Elsevier's price increases since 1999 compounded at a 22% rate, versus 8% for the U.S. consumer price index."
Information Industry--Reuters Source: AP/ITWorld.Com Criminal Complaint Filed Against Reuters From the article, "Swedish information technology company Intentia International AB has filed a criminal complaint against Reuters Ltd. alleging that the U.K.-based news agency illegally obtained Intentia's third quarter financial results by hacking the company's corporate Web server. Reuters has denied the charge, according to a published report..."We are rejecting (Intentia's) allegations completely. Information was accessed from company's Web site and in the public domain. It wasn't a private site. It wasn't password protected. (The report) was on their public Internet site; it was published, and therefore we reported it," said company spokeswoman Susan Allsop...Allsop confirmed that no link to the report was provided on the Intentia Web site. Citing the legal actions taken against the company, however, she refused to say how the file was located on the site. "The journalist located it on their site, but not using any illegal means. The journalist didn't hack into their system. The report was on their site in an area where you would expect it to be. Anybody looking for it at that site would have found it," Allsop said. The issue may come down to a dispute over what constitutes "private" content on a Web server that is accessible to the public. If the earnings report was posted ahead of time in a location that was accessible to the public and where previous quarterly earnings statements had been posted, a knowledgeable Web user could derive the URL (uniform resource locator) of the file and download it, even if no visible link to the file was provided on Intentia's Web site." See Also: Intertia News Release #1 ||| #2 See Also: Read the Complete Reuters News Release
Web Search--Google Source: Internet.Com Google "Publicly Launches" Google Answers From the article, "After six months of testing, Google this morning publicly launched a new paid search service to help users who don't have the tech savvy or time to perform Web searches of their own." As of 3:15pm today the site says beta on it. See Also: "Information for Sale: My Experience With Google Answers" (via Searcher) See Also: The Original VAS&ND Post About Google Answers Includes Comments from a Google spokesperson, Scroll to the April 28th Postings. See Also: Google As A Homework Helper?
Resources, Tools and Full-Text Documents Energy--United States--Statistics Source: EIA Now Available, Annual Energy Review 2001 From the site, "U.S. energy history from 1949-2001 recorded in data tables and figures. Covers all major forms of energy (fossil fuels, nuclear electricity, and renewable energy) and total energy by key activity (e.g., production, consumption, trade, stocks, and prices)."
Professional Reading Shelf Web Resources A New Issue of the Internet Resources Newsletter (No. 98) is Now Available Tuesday, October 29, 2002
Portals--My Way A New Portal Launches: Hello to MyWay.Com MyWay.Com is part of the Excite Network and touts "one the Internet's most protective privacy policies and -- most importantly -- does not contain a single banner or pop-up advertisement throughout the entire site." The search and directory portion of the site features Google content. All formats are available but unlike Google.Com, documents converted to html are listed as cached. Other portal features include free e-mail (5mb inbox), page personalization, toolbar, and more. See Also: Read the My Way News Release See Also: NY Times Article About MyWay.Com Note: If you dive into the MyWay.Com site you might come across a "search glossary" page. The definition of Boolean includes the following sentence, "The Boolean words that will work with My Way search are: AND, NOT, OR, and NEAR." This statement is not accurate. OR works (as it does at Google.Com) but AND, NOT, and NEAR are a no go. The only search engine to offer NEAR (10 words in either direction) is AltaVista. Thanks to Greg Notess for confirming. As I've said many times, Greg's Search Engine Features Chart is THE place to go to find what each engine does and does not offer.
Online Industry--Micromedia ProQuest Digitization Projects--Canada New Content Added to Canadian Business and Current Affairs Database From the announcement, "...33 new full text titles have been added to the production database, with an additional 4 more titles coming as issues are produced. This adds approximately 2,500 new 2002 full text records to the CBCA database." -- and in Other News From Micromedia... Now Available: Canada’s Heritage from 1844 From the announcement, "...represents the online digitized full-image version of the complete works of The Globe and Mail newspaper since its inception as The Globe in 1844. It is available on a subscription basis for libraries, businesses and institutions worldwide."
Academic Libraries--United States Source: LJ "In Slumping Economy, Academic Libraries Face Crisis" From the article, "Academic libraries in nearly every state are experiencing fiscal pain. Although legislators across the country profess their earnest desire to shield higher education as best they can, such massive shortfalls mean cuts are inevitable. "This is a budget crisis," declared Helen Spalding, Associate Director of Libraries at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and President of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL)."
Resources, Tools and Full-Text Documents (2 Items) Health--Canada--Calendars Source: Health Canada New, Calendar of Health-Related Days - 2003 -- Information Technology--Salary Surveys Source: Computerworld Now Available, 16th Annual Computerworld Salary Survey Monday, October 28, 2002
Web Search--Alexa/Google New Services from Alexa Search On April 30th of this year the VAS&ND featured a lengthy review of Alexa's version of the Google database. In recent months Alexa has added several new features. Here's a brief list. 1) After you conduct a search (you're searching the full Google database) a new section and link is provided to see who's linking to the page. In other words, this section contains the same info you'd find by doing a reverse link (link:) search . The sites are listed at the bottom of the info page as "Other sites that link to...". What's useful is that this link: filters out links to itself (not available with Google.Com). However, Alexa will only list other "sites" that link to a specific url, not specific pages. 2) "You can see daily traffic rank history going back one year for every site on the web. The graphs are located on the site detail pages. Just click the link labeled "Trends" in the navigation menu (upper left side of the page.)". These rankings come from Alexa's research. Here's a trends graph for FBI.Gov. The graphs contain info at the site level. 3) Although it's been available for some time, don't forget that every Alexa page (left column) contains a direct link (url specific) to The Wayback Machine. This can save you a few clicks if you need to check if archived material is available. 4) New For the Alexa Toolbar A "new feature that allows toolbar users to customize the layout of the search results. You can can choose the number of site thumbnails to show [from zero to all], include traffic rankings in the search results, and more. Look for this feature in your Alexa Toolbar Options page."
Fee-Based Content--eLibrary Source: InfoToday NewsBreaks "eLibrary Articles Now Included in Inktomi Search Results" From the article, "Alacritude, LLC, the Chicago-based start-up that purchased eLibrary.com and Encyclopedia.com earlier this year, has announced that documents available from eLibrary will now be indexed by Inktomi and included in search results on portals that use the Inktomi search engine. Sites include MSN, About.com, Overture, LookSmart, HotBot, and others." See Also: Additional Comments Can Be Found in Last Tuesday's Postings
Professional Reading Shelf Libraries and Librarians The November Issue of Walt Crawford's Cites & Insights is Now Available
Resources, Tools and Full-Text Documents (4 Items) Privacy in the Workplace--United States Source: GAO Full-Text Report, Employee Privacy: Computer-Use Monitoring Practices and Policies of Selected Companies -- Crime--United States--Statistics Source: FBI New, Full-Text Report, Crime in the United States - 2001 Summary ||| Direct to Full-Text -- Veterans--United States--Fast Facts Source: U.S. Census New, Fact Sheet: Veterans Day 2002 Fast facts about veterans in the U.S. -- Education--United Kingdom--Statistics Source: National Statistics Office Full-Text, Statistics of Education - Schools in England, 2002 See Also: Full-Text, Higher Education Statistics for the United Kingdom 2000/01 Sunday, October 27, 2002
Information Visualization Source: The NY Times Learn About: Groxis From the article, "...according to the Groxis designers, 84 percent of Web surfers go no further than the first page of document titles in searching for information. While that may be appropriate for some searches, other queries, like one for the phrase "exotic vacations," may leave Web sites of interest deeply buried by search engines. The popular search engine Google uses ranking techniques to sort through thousands of possible Web pages displaying what are often the most desirable pages first. In contrast, Grokker builds a visual map of the general categories into which documents fall by using what computer software designers call metadata, which describes each Web page or document. The program currently works with the Northern Light search engine, the Amazon online catalog and as a tool for scanning a user's own PC file collection. See Also: Direct to the Groxis Web Site The Preview Release is a $99.95 Download. See Also: Antartica A Canadian Company Doing Info Visualization Work See Also, Demo: Antartica Visualization Technology Using the PubMed Database See Also, Demo: SmartMoney's Market Map Visualize the Stock Market! See Also, Various Info Visualization Demos (via Inxight) Includes Best Buy catalog, AllRecipes.Com database. Visually Browse the Open Directory Project Saturday, October 26, 2002
Professional Reading Shelf (2 Items) Information Retrieval Source: SearchTools.Com Full-Text, Faceted Metadata Search and Browse A new report from Avi R. that, like all of her work, is worthy of your attention. -- Journal Abbreviations Source: NLM Fact Sheet, Construction of National Library of Medicine Title Abbreviations "This fact sheet discusses the rules currently used by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to construct title abbreviations for items cited in NLM's online services. The majority of these items are journals indexed for MEDLINE® in the PubMed® database."
Library and Information Science Digital Library With Library and Information Science Material Now Online From the announcement, The School of Information Resources and Library Science and the Arizona Health Sciences Library at the University of Arizona have launched DLIST, the Digital Library of Information Science and Technology. DLIST is available at http://dlist.sir.arizona.edu. The objective of DLIST is to serve as a repository of electronic resources in the domains of Library and Information Science (LIS) and Information Technology (IT). DLIST is running on Open Archives Initiative (OAI) compliant Eprints v.2 software developed at the University of Southampton." See Also: Direct to the Digital Library of Information Science and Technology See Also: Direct to the "About" DLIST Page
Resources, Tools and Full-Text Documents (3 Items) Homeland Security Documents in the News Source: Council on Foreign Relations Task Force Report, America Still Unprepared - America Still in Danger Summary ||| Direct to Full-Text (HTML) ||| Direct to Full-Text (PDF) -- Individual Wealth--China--List and Rankings Source: Forbes 2002 China Rich List "China's 100 Richest". List can be sorted using seven different criteria. -- Health Information Source: MEDLINEplus New Health Topic Compilation, Calcium Friday, October 25, 2002
Web Search--The Wayback Machine A Bookmarklet For The Wayback Machine Last week I mentioned a quick-click tool for Google News. It allows you to quick locate material related to the story currently on your screen. Today, word of something similar which will allow you to quickly check for archived material in The Wayback Machine without having to open another browser window and copying the URL. What You Need to Do 1) Visit the "What's New" page at Bookmarklets.Com 2) Scroll to the May 16th Entries. 3) Drag and Drop the Link Labeled "Go Wayback" To Your Links Toolbar. They'll Work With IE and Netscape. 4) That's It! From Now On, Whenever You Want to Check and see If An Archived Versions are Available, Click the "Go Wayback" Button. See Also: Many More of these "Bookmarklets" are Available I've found several Bookmarklets in the "Page Data" Category to be Very Useful
Web Search--Daypop Daypop to Go Offline for A Few Weeks The search engine will go offline for "a few weeks" in the next day or so as its founder and sole proprietor Dan Chan makes a move to the Bay Area. Daypop is an excellent tool that searches both news and weblog content.
Online Industry--Dialog Enhancements Made to DialogPro DialogPro, a service aimed at the small business market, has made a few enhancements to the service including new flat-fee pricing options. Additionally, four new "content channels" are now available. They are biotech, competitive intelligence, consulting and defense. See Also: Direct to the DialogPro Web Site
Resources, Tools and Full-Text Documents Children--Video Games--Fact Sheets Source: Kaiser Family Foundation New, Fast Facts, Children and Video Games From the blurb, "...facts on the amount of time young people spend using video games, how use varies by age, gender and ethnicity, and the best research on the impact of video games on young players." Thursday, October 24, 2002
Web Resources of the Week 1) Country Information Country Profiles (via Eldis) Eldis, a gateway to development information, has several resources that could be of interest to all researchers. Included on the list of tools is the Eldis Country Profile directory. You'll find a one-stop shop that contains links to many country information resources. You'll find profiles with information on 12 topics including agriculture, poverty, gender, trade, and economics. Data comes from sources including The World Bank, Amnesty International, CIA, and UNIDO. See Also: Country Profiles from BBC Monitoring -- 2) U.S. Government--Directories Federal Toll-Free Phone Numbers (Various Consumer Oriented Services) Compilation of Various Federal Government Lookup/Locator Tools (Various Consumer Oriented Services)
Resources, Tools and Full-Text Documents (3 Items) Business--North America--Lists & Rankings Deloitte Touche Technology Fast 500, North America, 2002 "500 fastest-growing technology companies in North America" See Also: Search Database of Fast 500 Companies (Includes Material from Past Lists) See Also: List of "Rising Stars" -- Legal Industry--United States--Lists & Rankings Source: Law.Com/NLJ Who Defends Corporate America, 2002 See Also: Overview Article and 2001 List -- Business--United States Accounting Source: GAO Full-Text, Financial Statement Restatements: Trends, Market Impacts, Regulatory Responses, and Remaining Challenges
Web Search--Google Source: News.Com "Google Excluding Controversial Sites" From the article, "Google, the world's most popular search engine, has quietly deleted more than 100 controversial sites from some search result listings. Absent from Google's French and German listings are Web sites that are anti-Semitic, pro-Nazi, or related to white supremacy, according to a new report from Harvard University's Berkman Center. Also banned is Jesus-is-lord.com, a fundamentalist Christian site that is adamantly opposed to abortion. Google confirmed on Wednesday that the sites had been removed from listings available at Google.fr and Google.de. The removed sites continue to appear in listings on the main Google.com site." "To avoid legal liability, we remove sites from Google.de search results pages that may conflict with German law," said Google spokesman Nate Tyler. He indicated that each of the sites that were delisted came after a specific complaint from a foreign government." It will be interesting to see the complete list of sites and determine if they're still available from other general search engines. See Also: You Can Find Additional Information and a List of Sites from the Berkman Center Site
Libraries and Librarians Source: The Washington Post "Librarian Looks for Clues In Mountains of Old Maps" Meet R. Lee Hadden. "[He's] a reference librarian at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), who started indexing USGS's vast catalogue of Afghanistan-related resources soon after the 9/11 attacks. The USGS library, a scientific warehouse in Reston that collects journals and data about national resources, has 12 miles worth of books and 26 tons of maps." Wednesday, October 23, 2002
Information Industry--Yahoo Hoover's Yahoo Introduces "Industry Center" A new section of Yahoo Finance organizes resources, news, calendars, market info, and additional info by industry. Fee-based research reports are also available. You'll also find lists of the Top 10 Companies in each industry ranked by market cap. Overviews for each industy are provided and feature content from Hoover's. "Centers" are currently available for: Aerospace & Defense Automotive Biotechnology & Drugs Chemicals Computer Hardware Computer Software Construction Energy Financial Services Healthcare Internet Media & Advertising Retail Semiconductors Telecommunications Transportation Utilities
Professional Reading Shelf (2 Items) ASIST October/November Issue Now Online, Bulletin of the American Society of Information Science and Technology Articles Include: "What Can You Do with XML Today?" "Automatic Indexing: A Matter of Degree" "It's Everywhere and Nowhere, Baby!" (Paul Dillon on IA) -- Librarians--United States Source: Library Journal Results from the LJ 2002 Salary Survey Now Available -- Institutional Respositories Source: SPARC SPARC-IR, SPARC's new online discussion list on institutional repositories, by sending an email message to sparc-ir-feed@arl.org. Archives of the postings can be found on this web page.
Online Industry--Emerald Source: Managing Information "Emerald Strikes Intelligent Partnership Deal With Economist" From the article, "International management information publisher Emerald, has struck a content partnership agreement with the Economist Intelligence Unit for its new, web-based Executive Briefing service. Under the terms of the agreement Executive Briefing will include selected articles from Emerald’s management journals, which can be accessed by the service’s subscribers." See Also: Direct to the EIU Executive Briefing (Fee-Based)
Music Source: IDG Learn About: Shazam From the article, "Let me start off by asking two questions: Have you ever been in a car or bar and heard a great tune but don't know or remember the name of the artist or the title? And have you ever been genuinely ticked off at the broadcaster or DJ for rattling off artists' names like a machine gun or, even worse, saying nothing at all? If so, don't despair. I can recommend a new service that delivers this information -- within seconds -- to the screen of your mobile phone and PC. Not only does the technology work, but it's also reasonably priced. The service, called Shazam, is believed to be the world's first real-time song identification service. Currently available in the U.K., it could be coming soon to a market near you." See Also: Learn More from the Shazam Web Site
Library Technology--Talking Books Source: AP "Library Shows Digital Talking Book" From the article, "It will be a talking book that even looks like a book, although most of its users will never see it. Instead of a cassette tape, it will have no moving parts but will read a volume digitally from a card smaller than a credit card. The dull silvery cover folds on a hinge to the size of a normal book from a library shelf. The section of the Library of Congress that circulates talking books for the blind exhibited on Monday the winning model among 146 entries from 28 design schools. It came from Lachezar Tsvetanov, a 23-year-old student of industrial design from Sofia, Bulgaria, studying at the University of Bridgeport, Conn. He won a $5,000 (U.S.) first prize." See Also: Learn More About and View Images of the Digital Talking Book See Also: LC Online Audio Magazines Offered for Blind, Handicapped (via LJ)
Resources, Tools and Full-Text Documents (2 Items) Emergency Management--Webliography Source: College & Research Libraries News "Crisis, Disaster, and Emergency Management: Web Sites for Researchers" A new resource by Martin P. Courtois and Claire B. Rubin of The George Washington University. -- Small Business--United States--Statistics Source: U.S. Census New, Nonemployer Statistics: 2000 "Businesses with no paid employees grew 2.3 percent between 1999 and 2000 from 16.2 million to 16.5 million, according to the Commerce Department's Census Bureau." Summary ||| Direct to Full-Text
Awards Source: Institute of Museum and Library Services National Award for Museum Service and the National Award for Library Service Winners Announced 2002 National Award for Library Service Recipients: Boundary County District Library (Idaho) Hartford Public Library (Connecticut) Southwest Georgia Regional Public Library System (Georgia) -- 2002 National Award for Museum Service Recipients: Bronx Zoo (New York) Please Touch Museum (Pennsylvania) Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art (Pennsylvania) Tuesday, October 22, 2002
Fee-Based Content--eLibrary eLibrary Content Now Available Via MSN and Other Portals Word from Alacritude today that links to full-text content (fee-based) from the eLibrary database of material (about 2 million documents) are now indexed in the Inktomi database and available from MSN Search, Hotbot, and others. Accessing via the primary eLibrary interface provides access to about 13 million documents. Once you find an article of interest in a result set, the link points you to a very brief article summary and sign-up page for the eLibary service. A monthly subscription (unlimited retrieval) to the full database (13 million docs) is available for $14.95. You're also able to subscribe at a yearly rate of $79.95 Documents are not available on a pay-per-article basis. A free 7 day trial is available but you must first register for the service (a credit card number is required) and then contact eLibrary once the trial period is over if you don't want to continue. *Northern Light's Special Collection is still available to the general public and provides pay-per-article access. You don't need to register to search (the same is true at eLibrary.Com). Additionally, many of the large info vendors also offer pay-per-article options. For example, Factiva allows free searching of about 6000 titles with individual articles priced at $2.95. *Including some of eLibrary's content in the Inktomi database is an interesting promo idea. However, it could again illustrate the poor job libraries do in marketing the services that they already offer for free! As I've said on this site numerous times, most public libraries in the U.S. and a growing number of libraries in Canada offer, AT NO CHARGE, full-text access to one or many databases (no need to go to the library) using any web browser. These databases contain massive amounts of high quality data that an unknowing patron might be paying for from eLibrary or a similar service. For the "power searcher" they also provide much more robust interfaces and search options. Of course, this also is true for patrons with access to a school, academic or special library. Additionally, many of these library accessible databases provide full-image (.pdf) of the document so graphs, charts, and some images are also viewable.
Web Search Source: Search Engine Showdown Notess Releases New Search Engine Freshness Study Like of all of Greg Notess's work, this new "Freshness Showdown" is interesting and important reading. Greg writes, "All search engines are pictures of the past, but which search engine has taken its picture most recently? This comparison tries to begin to answer that question." I would like to add a comment. While you're be seeing more and more "current" material searchable via web engines, rapid recrawl and refresh doesn't not guarantee that each and every new web page is added to the database as soon as it's discovered. Here's an example. The American Express home page is being recrawled and refreshed in the Google database every 24 to 48 hours. However, new links included on the page and elsewhereon the site (not already in the Google database) might not be searchable for several weeks. Another Example: A search for "Natural Resources Canada" via Google. The organization's home page was last refreshed about a day ago. However, a news release placed online about 5 days ago and linked from a page "inside the site", is not yet searchable/accessible from Google.
Professional Reading Shelf Online Information The November/December Issue of Information Highways is Now Online Articles Include: "Public Libraries Lead, Follow and Get Out of Their Users' Way" by Paula MacKinnon "Getting Around And" by Gwen Harris "Blogging for Business" by Rod Chapman
National Libraries--The British Library The British Library Appoints New Head of British Collections From the announcement, "John Tuck joins the British Library as Head of British Collections this month. In this new post John is responsible for the Library's collections of British material, the largest in the world, which include printed items from the fifteenth century to the present day, Manuscripts covering more than a thousand years, recorded sound and newspapers."
Resources, Tools and Full-Text Documents (6 Items) Atlases--Canada Redesigned Site, The Atlas of Canada "Completely redesigned by Natural Resources Canada and now easier than ever to use, The Atlas of Canada lets you discover our country from your computer—all you need is Internet access. Visit the See Our Maps section and you’ll find hundreds of well-organized colour maps on Canada’s climate, economy, history, people, environment, fresh water, and health, all one click away." You'll also find a gazetteer and many other tools. -- Topics in the News--Bali Bombings Source: Department of the Parliamentary Library, Australia New, Issue Brief/Full-Text, The Bali Bombing: What It Means for Indonesia New, E-Brief, Terrorism in Southeast Asia -- Parliament--United Kingdom--Webcasts Redesigned Site, ParliamentLive.TV Live coverage of the House of Commons, House of Lords and other events. -- Education--United States Source: U.S. Department of Education New/Full-Text, No Child Left Behind: A Desktop Reference From the site, "This Desktop Reference outlines what is new under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 for each program supported under the Elementary and Secondary Act of 1965 and other statues." -- Criminal Investigation Source: National Institute of Justice Full-Text Report, Using DNA to Solve Cold Cases -- Energy--Iraq Source: Energy Information Administration Updated, Iraq Country Analysis Brief Monday, October 21, 2002
Art Libraries Source: The Chicago Tribune (Free Registration Required) Learn About the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries at the Art Institute of Chicago From the article, "Just how extensive is the Ryerson and Burnham collection? According to Jack Brown, director of the libraries for almost 20 years, there are a quarter-million books, which take up 220,000 inches of shelf space. (Brown knows this for sure because he measured them to prepare a report on the library's need for more storage room.) That doesn't include 70,000 art auction catalogs, 1,500 current periodical subscriptions, 440,000 slides and 35,000 pamphlet files." One of the priceless things about the Ryerson is its ephemera," said Wendy Greenhouse, an independent art historian and former curator at the Chicago Historical Society. "It has these tiny catalog pamphlets and one-of-a-kind manuscripts relating to individual artists. And the Ryerson Index is an incredible resource for articles from periodicals." See Also: Direct to the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries Web Site See Also: Search the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries Catalog
Scholarly Publishing Source: inCite "E-prints: The Future of Scholarly Communication?" This article was written by Colin Steele, Director of Scholarly Information Strategies at the Australian National University.
Resources, Tools and Full-Text Documents (4 Items) MBA's Source: Economist Intelligence Unit New Web Site, Which MBA Online "The Economist Intelligence Unit has launched Which MBA online, a new free website that provides prospective MBA students with vital information to help them choose which business school is right for them. The launch of this website at http://mba.eiu.com coincides with publication of the 14th edition of the highly regarded annual guidebook, Which MBA?" See Also: Direct to EIU 2002 MBA Rankings -- American Indian/Alaska Native--Fast Facts Source: U.S. Census New, Fact Sheet: American Indian/Alaska Native Heritage Month Facts about both the American Indian and Alaska Native populations. -- Housing--United States--Statistics Source: U.S. Census Full-Text Report: American Housing Survey for the United States, 2001 Note, this is a very large coverage. Thanks to Paul S. for the alert. -- Philanthropy Special Issue, Philanthropy News Digest (PND) A special issue Philanthropy News Digest (PND) focusing on Funding for Children and Youth. In this issue you will find a collection of annotated links to some of the best youth-related resources on the Web.
Professional Reading Shelf Hypertext Links Source: First Monday "Hypertext Links: Whither Thou Goest, and Why" From the abstract, "The link is the basic element of hypertext, and researchers have long recognized that links provide semantic relationships for users. Yet little work has been done to understand the nature of these relationships, particularly in conjunction with the purposes of organizational/informational Web sites. This paper explores the semantic and rhetorical principles underlying link development and proposes a systematic, comprehensive classification of link types that would be of use to researchers and Web production teams." Sunday, October 20, 2002
News Search--Google Source: Rediff.Com A Conversation With Krishna Bharat, Creator of Google News From the article, "At the heart of his programme is a clustering algorithm, which functions like a librarian or clipping service, by searching out, matching and collecting articles based on one's reading interest." and on a related note, See Also: Is the End in Sight for 'Free' News on the Web? (via Reuters)
Research Libraries Source: The Miami Herald "Library Chief's Dream Comes to Fruition" From the article, "The African-American Research Library and Cultural Center is the third public facility in the country to focus on African-American books and culture. The two-story brick, steel and glass structure is a testament to one man's dogged determination: 60,000 square feet, 75,000 books and other materials, 5,000 feet of exhibit space, a 300-seat auditorium, a computer lab and an interactive youth center, among other amenities." Saturday, October 19, 2002
Specialized Search Databases Source: Searcher "Specialized Search Engine FAQs: More Questions, Answers and Issues" I've written a new article for Searcher that looks at specialized resources from AlltheWeb, AltaVista, and Google.
Resources, Tools and Full-Text Documents Health Information Source: MEDLINEplus New Health Topic Compilation, Sleep Apnea New Health Topic Compilation, Tay-Sachs Disease Friday, October 18, 2002
Government Documents--United States Source: AP "Researchers Stymied by Block on Government Documents" From the article, "The government has cut Internet links, stripped information from agency Web sites and even required federal librarians to destroy a CD-ROM on public water supplies. Researchers worry that the rush to protect national security will hurt their efforts and the public."
Information Industry--LexisNexis LN Adds New Sources of Business Content From the announcement, "LexisNexis has added nearly a dozen financial and investor news and analysis providers including CBS MarketWatch and seven Kiplinger Washington Editors newsletters; a dozen sources of corporate information and statistics on key executives, financials, brands, products and consumer trends; and nearly 50 leading industry trade publications and directories." See Also: Complete List of New Content
Professional Reading Shelf (2 Items) Web-Based Preservation Source: CLIR "Council on Library and Information Resources and Cornell Launch Web-Based Preservation Tutorial" From the news release, ""Preservation is vital to the intellectual heritage of every culture," said Deanna Marcum, president of the Council on Library and Information Resources. "This tutorial provides basic and reliable preservation information, and allows users to develop strategies and responses to preservation challenges that are distinctive to the Southeast Asian culture and climate...The tutorial will be adapted for use in other regions of the world." News Release ||| Direct to Preservation Tutorials -- Cataloging Source: Library Journal "MARC Must Die" Roy Tennant's latest column. "The very nature of the MARC (machine-readable cataloging) record is, to some degree, an anachronism. It was developed in an age when memory, storage, and processing power were all rare and expensive commodities. Now they are ubiquitous and cheap." See Also: "Agreement Signed on MARC21 Development and Maintenance"
Libraries Source: San Jose Mercury News "Anti-Terror Law Worries Librarians" From the article, In California, more than a dozen librarians say they are worried that the FBI's expanded surveillance powers will have a chilling effect on how people perceive and use the library, where anonymity is rigorously defended. `"We've discussed the Patriot Act in detail,'' said Karen Rollin Duffy, the city librarian in Santa Clara. "Our stance has always been that we want to protect patron privacy. But we are reviewing our practices. What records do we keep, and are we keeping them for too long?'' Thursday, October 17, 2002
Web Resources of the Week Web Accessible Databases The Invisible Web 1) The Virtual Chase's Database Section Many of you know about Genie Tyburski's site as a place to find material about information quality, legal research and many other topics of interest to the information professional. This week I want to point out another "section" of the site that features an impressive selection of high quality specialty databases. These databases contain material that is sometimes not directly accessible from major web search tools. This is a useful resource to have nearby or to use to develop your own collection. New material is added several times a week. Sections include: Company Information Government Information Health and Medicine Law Science Miscellaneous Databases News See Also: Direct to The Virtual Chase's Search Engine Guide Section of Databases -- News Search--Google News Cool Tools Finding Related Articles With Google News Shortly after Google News "officially launched" I noticed the term "cluster" appearing in the url of related results on the Google News "section" pages. I tried using the term in the search strategy but couldn't get it to work properly and bring back related material. Luckily, Michael Fagan of FaganFinder fame did. O.K., so here's what you can do. When you find a story via Google News take the url, remove the http:// from it, and type, cluster: Notes: First, this is not an officially sanctioned Google tool. Second, in some cases using the "Related News" button will return numerous versions of the identical story or no content at all.
Libraries Web-Based Technology v. The Library: What The Faculty Thinks According to an "independent survey sponsored by McGraw-Hill Ryerson", "web-based technology is considered by higher education faculty to be the most effective institutional resource in encouraging student success, outweighing traditional resources such as the library and tutoring." If this is accurate, perhaps part of the problem is that the faculty who were surveyed had little or no idea of what services/skills the library/librarians can provide.
Resources, Tools and Full-Text Documents (2 Items) Online Content--Newspapers New, The New York Times Makes All Travel Section Articles (1996-) Free via Web Site Archive The New York Times now offers free access (full-text) to all articles from the newspaper's Travel section starting in 1996. You can limit your search to only travel content by using the search box at the top of this page. Searching via the main archive page will also provide access to travel articles. Free material will not have the $ next to the headline. You can also find travel articles organized by location (over 250 now available) along with additional content from Fodor's on the Destinations page. Bon Voyage! -- Libraries Source: American Library Association, Office of Intellectual Freedom Just Updated, Libraries & the Internet Toolkit "Tips and Guidance for Managing and Communicating about the Internet" -- Halloween--Fast Facts Source: U.S. Census "Halloween 2002" All sorts of facts about the candy industry, costume industry, and more. Wednesday, October 16, 2002
National Federation of Abstracting and Information Services New Brochure from NFAIS Aimed at End Users Jill O'Neill from NFAIS has informed us of a two-page brochure aimed at library and database users. It promotes the fact that while Google, Yahoo etc. are very useful tools, electronic databases are, "engineered by subject experts to help you get maximum relevancy - not just thousands of hits." The brochure also includes a mention about how librarians can assist in maximizing your research time. The NFAIS membership is made up of many of the largest producers of online content. Kudos to NFAIS for helping libraries and librarians market our services. Let's hope more of this type of material is on the way. See Also: Direct to the End User Brochure
Weblogs Information Flow Major Enhancements Coming To Blogdex Blogdex is a tool from the MIT Media Lab that highlights and ranks popular postings from thousands of weblogs. Or, as the site points out, "blogdex focuses on the referential information provided by weblogs, or the links that people place on their sites. By amalgamating these pointers, we can get an instantaneous look at internet fashion from democratic means." An announcement on the site alerts us to several new features that will debut very soon. These new features include: *A New Page Design *Integrated link statistics, with more emphasis on diffusion (i.e. where a link started, where it went next, and so on) *A Social Weather Index *Historical Index of blogdex ("a year ago today...")
Web Search--Google Source: SiliconValley.Com A Brief Chat with Google's President, Eric Schmidt Dan Gillmor chats with Schmidt about Google and the tech industry. From the article, "Many have wondered how long it will take for Google to do what so many other valley companies have done in recent years -- sell shares to the public. Schmidt has bad news for those who want it to be soon: ``We have no plans to go public,'' he says. Is Google even talking with investment banks? ``No.''
The Internet Archive FYI: The Wayback Machine Has a Mirror Site If you ever have trouble accessing or get a slow response from The Wayback Machine, the Internet Archive has set up a mirror at the New Library of Alexandria in Egypt. See Also: Direct to The Wayback Machine (Mirror) See Also: Learn More About The Internet Archive
Professional Reading Shelf (4 Items) Source: CLIR Full-Text, Dimensions and Use of the Scholarly Information Environment: Introduction to a Data Set Assembled by the Digital Library Federation and Outsell, Inc. From the abstract, "Users' expectations of libraries are changing as they find and obtain more information directly from the Web. To better understand how usage patterns are changing, the Digital Library Federation (DLF) and Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) commissioned Outsell, Inc., to conduct a large-scale study of undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty members from a wide range of academic institutions." Direct to Abstract ||| Direct to Full-Text See Also: Related Materials Can Be Found on this 10/5 VAS&ND Post -- Reference Tools--Reviews The October Edition of Péter's Digital Reference Shelf is Now Online This month Péter Jacsó takes a look at Annual Reviews and Worldcat. -- Bibliographic Control Providing Bibliographic Access to Archived Online Resources: the National Library of Australia’s Approach "A paper presented by Pam Gatenby, Assistant Director-General, Collections Management Division, National Library of Australia, at the Bibliography and National Libraries Workshop Bibliographic control or chaos, at the 68th IFLA General Conference and Council, Glasgow August 2002." -- National Library of Australia--Strategic Plan Directions for 2003–2005 "The strategic goals, objectives and key priorities for the National Library 2003-2005"
Resources, Tools and Full-Text Documents (4 Items) Economic Indicators--Australia--Web Guide Source: Department of the Parliamentary Library, Parliament of Australia E-Brief, Economic Indicators on the Internet -- Higher Education--Financial Aid--United States--Statistics Source: U.S. Census New, Full-Text Report, Financing the Future? Postsecondary Students, Costs and Financial Aid: 1996-97 20 pages .pdf -- United States Department of Energy--Strategic Plans Source: DOE Full-Text, E-Government Strategic Action Plan: A Road Map for Delivering Services 58 pages .pdf -- Law Enforcement--United States--Statistics Source: Bureau of Justices Statistics New Census of State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies, 2000 Tuesday, October 15, 2002
eBooks Online Industry--netLibrary Read Material Offline: A New Option from netLibrary and Adobe This new option, you'll need to purchase a gateway license, is for netLibrary subscribers. It allows patrons to check-out, download titles in .pdf format, and then view them offline using Adobe's Acrobat eBook Reader. According to the announcement, the eBook Reader also has text-to-speech capabilities.
Public Libraries Source: Arizona Daily Star "Library Lends a Helping Hand" This article describes the many services that the Tucson-Pima Public Library offers to small business owners. If you don't live in Tucson, no problem, your public library most likely offers many of the same services. Key quote, "A person can start a business without doing their homework but it puts them at a disadvantage," [Business Librarian Tom] Farmer said. "What's not out there is the recognition that the library has all this information."
Libraries Source: OCLC Webcast: Register to View (Live or Archived) OCLC Member Council Meeting This two hour event is scheduled to take place at 11:30 AM EDST on Monday, October 21st. It will also be available on-demand after 10/21. The meeting will feature a discussion about the "development of libraries worldwide". On the speaker list is Aziz Abi the Director of UNESCO's Intergovernmental Informatics Programme. From his bio, "Abdelaziz Abid is in charge of the "Memory of the World" Programme, which is a successful preservation and access initiative, and he also directs projects relating to libraries and access to information. He co-ordinates joint IFLA/UNESCO library and information work."
Resources, Tools and Full-Text Documents United States--History Cuban Missile Crisis New Online Exhibit, The World On the Brink: John F. Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis The John F. Kennedy Library and Museum recently opened a new exhibit to mark the 40th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The online version of the exhibit contains numerous images, chronology, reading list, audio from White House meetings, and much more.
News Briefs (2 Items) "XML Goes to Washington" (via Computerworld) A review of several U.S. Federal Government projects. -- Instant Messaging: A Very Brief History (via Technology Review) Monday, October 14, 2002
The Semantic Web Source: Information Week "The Next Web" From the article, "The last seven years, the Web has been very focused on giving value to human eyeballs," says Prabhakar Raghavan, chief technology officer at knowledge-management software company Verity Inc. "Over the next seven years, the interesting eyeballs will belong to computers." An easy to understand overview for those of you with an interest in the topic.
Resources, Tools and Full-Text Documents (3 Items) Business--United States--Lists & Rankings Source: Forbes New List, 200 Best Small Companies, 2002 -- Journalism Source: Institute for Policy, Democracy & the Internet/Pew Charitable Trusts Full-Text Report, The Virtual Trail: Political Journalism on the Internet -- Business Ethics--Webliography "Business Ethics" Another excellent compilation put together by Sharon Stoerger at the University of Illinois. The VAS&ND had a link to her compilation of resources about Plagiarism about two weeks ago.
Professional Reading Shelf This Week Only: Free Full-Text Access to The Journal of Documentation Material from Vol. 53 No. 1 (1997) through Vol. 58. No. 5 (2002) is available.
Web Search--Google Source: San Francisco Chronicle "Google Grows Up" More on last week's announcement about Yahoo renewing its contract with Google. From the article, "Google's chummy relationship with Yahoo showed signs of fraying this week. After two years of using Google as its one and only search engine, Yahoo said it would consider adding others."
Web Search--Inktomi Source: TheDeal.Com On the Future of Inktomi TheDeal.Com discusses where Inktomi, the provider of results for MSN, Hotbot, and others is heading. From the article, "Inktomi's sinking revenues are partly attributable to the loss of one of its largest customers, AOL Time Warner Inc., which in July announced an alliance with rival search firm Google Inc...Analysts said Inktomi's future could hinge on whether it continues to provide search technology for Microsoft Corp.'s MSN.com portal." Sunday, October 13, 2002
Electronic Journals--JSTOR JSTOR Releases a New Collection From the announcement, "JSTOR has announced the release of its sixth journal collection, Language & Literature, a compendium of 47 titles spanning the literary cultures of many nations, including China, Germany, Africa, and the U.S. The Language & Literature Collection adds 1.4 million new pages to JSTOR's electronic archive of important scholarly journals bringing the total number of pages in the archive to over 11 million."
Professional Reading Shelf (2 Items) Collection Development Source: Library Link/Emerald "Developing Digital Collections, Do We Know What We Are Doing?" See Also: Free, Full-Text Access to "Web Information Monitoring: An Analysis of Web Page Updates’" is also provided. -- Library Users Source: Library Link/Emerald "Managing Our Users - Analysing and Evaluating the Needs of Library Clients"
Resources, Tools and Full-Text Documents E-Government--Canada Source: Crossing Boundaries Full-Text Report, E-Government: The Message to Politicians 31 pages .pdf Saturday, October 12, 2002
Resources, Tools and Full-Text Documents (4 Items) Ready Reference--Factbooks Source: CIA Now Available, Updated: The World Factbook 2002 -- Ready Reference Source: The World Almanac The October Issue of The World Almanac's E-Newsletter is Now Available -- Business Schools--Lists & Rankings Source: Business Week New, "The Best B Schools" 2002 Rankings -- The Library of Congress October Issue of The Loc.Gov Wise Guide is Now Online From the site, "The "Wise Guide" will be refreshed monthly, much like a magazine, offering links to the best of the Library's online materials." Friday, October 11, 2002
Professional Reading Shelf (2 Items) The October Issue of D-Lib Magazine is Now Available Article Titles: "Comparing Library and User Related Costs of Print and Electronic Journal Collections: A First Step Towards a Comprehensive Analysis" "Open Citation Linking: The Way Forward" "Toward a Global Digital Library: Generalizing US-Korea Collaboration on Digital Libraries" "Information Retrieval by Semantic Analysis and Visualization of the Concept Space of D-Lib® Magazine" Conference Report: "Report on the Sixth European Conference on Digital Libraries" -- The October Issue of Ariadne is Online Here are the titles of a few articles (much more on the site): "Utilizing E-books to Enhance Digital Library Offerings" by Shirley Hyatt and Lynn Silipigni Connaway "Climbing the Scholarly Publishing Mountain with SHERPA" by John MacColl and Stephen Pinfield "A Speaking Electronic Librarian" by Markos Dendrinos
Online Maps Source: USA Today "Online Mapmakers: Popular, Prolific, Not Perfect" From the article, "For most map sites, the bulk of the underlying information comes from a company called Navigation Technologies, or NavTech. The Chicago-based firm, which also provides data for in-car GPS devices and FedEx truck routes, says it supplements its satellite-based information with 400 staffers who drive across the USA checking data. Geographic Data Technology of New Hampshire is favored by most sites for its rural information."
Resources, Tools and Full-Text Documents (2 Items) Iraq Four Recently Updated CRS (Congressional Research Service) Reports 1) Iraq: Divergent Views on Military Action 2) Iraq: U.S. Efforts to Change the Regime 3) CRS Issue Brief: Iraq: Compliance, Sanctions, and U.S. Policy 4) Iraq: Oil-For-Food Program, International Sanctions, and Illicit Trade -- CIPA--Children's Internet Protection Act--Webliography Source: ALA, Office of Intellectual Freedom New, Schools and the Children's Internet Protection Act Thursday, October 10, 2002
Web Resource of the Week News Search Personalized Search and Recommendation Tools In Development and Ready to Explore: NewsSeer NewsSeer, is both a straightforward news search engine and an adaptive tool that's constantly learning your interests so it can provide you with more relevant material. About a week ago, I had the chance to chat with Dr. Steve Lawrence, NewsSeer's creator. Lawrence works at NEC Research and is highly regarded (with very good reason), in information retrieval circles for his research, writing, and the creation of some very useful and important tools like Inquirus and ResearchIndex. Very little documentation is currently available for NewsSeer. Here's a brief overview to get you started. -- The Facts * NewsSeer has been around for several months. Recently, Lawrence made some major cosmetic changes to the page layout including adding logos to help identify sources. * Currently crawling about 30 well-known news sources. You can expect this number to increase in the near future. * Sources are recrawled for new content every 5 minutes. New material is added to the database immediately. * The crawl is not deep. This means that if an article is not linked directly from one of the pages NewsSeer is crawling, it will not be discovered and added to the database. * According to Lawrence, urls are archived for about 30 days. However, I did find some older material. * Every entry includes a time stamp as to when the story was first discovered and placed in the database. Examples: 15M is 15 minutes, 3h is 3 hours, 5d means the article was crawled for the first time 5 days ago. _ NewsSeer Search * Searching the database is very straightforward. The interface is located at the top of the page and will automatically return results organized by relevance and date. * NewsSeer employs automatic phrase detection so using quotation marks is not required. * Boolean searching is not available at this time. - NewsSeer: Learning From You, Recommending to You In addition to it’s search capabilities, NewsSeer, will attempt to learn your interests by using several criteria from the material you select to view. These criteria include article selection, the text of the article, how long you looked at a story, the source of the material, the age of the story, etc. This can be accomplished without any user intervention. HOWEVER, you can also choose to assist NewSeer by rating your interest in the story. - NewsSeer.Com: The Home Page Let’s look at the layout of the NewsSeer home page. * The left side of the page is where you’ll find current news organized by relevancy and by time. You’ll also find options to rank news sources (you can always change them), change the font and point size of the page, view stories in a separate browser window, change your source rankings. To eliminate a story from the list, simply select the x to the left of the story title. After viewing a story (you may need to reload the NewsSeer page), you’ll see four boxes to rate your interest in the story you just read from no interest to high interest. After making your selection, your preferences are sent to the NewsSeer computer. The only personal information stored on your local computer is a cookie enabling your personal page to automatically load. All material appearing in the left column is generated from your NewsSeer profile. * The right side of the page organizes content via many different criteria. You’ll see recent stories from sources that you’ve given a high interest rating, the most popular stories on NewsSeer, stories related the most recently viewed article, and direct links to the four most recent stories that the crawler has added to the database. * Headlines that are highlighted in "light blue" are new since your last NewsSeer session ended. "Dark Blue" highlights alert you to articles that are new since your last access. - Final Comments and Coming Soon *A box at the bottom of the left column will allow you to have "relevant" news stories emailed directly to you. Like most of NewsSeer's, this additional service is completely optional and available free. * If you use several computers and want to use the your profile on different, simply go to the bottom of the left column and select, “Access profile on another computer or browser” link. You’ll be provided with a specific url to access your page on other computers. You can also send this link to yourself or others via e-mail. * Give NewsSeer time to learn and develop a profile. * Along with more content further enhancements including the ability to view keyword search terms in context are coming soon. * Because of the Steve Lawrence/NEC Research reputation for turning out interesting and useful tools, this is a project worth keeping an eye on even if you don't use it on a daily basis. * Finally, be prepared for changes. I’ll do my best to report them on the ResourceShelf.
Online Archives Canada--History The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Archives An impressive and interesting project where you can search and listen/view clips of CBC Radio and CBC Television programming beginning in 1936. Material can also be browsed via eight categories and/or via a timeline. New content is added to the site on a regular basis. From the site, "CBC is currently negotiating Internet rights with many different organizations, including trade unions, artists and writers, so that we may include on this site excerpts from Canada's best radio dramas, television serials and specials. For the moment, the CBC Archives Web site focuses primarily on interviews, news and current affairs programs to which we hold or have obtained copyright." A link on the left side of the page provides materials for educators.
Professional Reading Shelf Academic Libraries--Statistics Source: ARL Research Library Trends: An Introduction to the ARL Statistics 2000-01
The Library of Congress LC Set To Launch Web-Based Guide to Online Resources From the announcement, "A "Wise Guide" to the Library of Congress' Web site will launch Oct. 12, in conjunction with the second National Book Festival, to introduce new users to the many fascinating, educational and useful resources available from one of the most extensive and popular Web sites of the federal government. The "Wise Guide" Web magazine can be accessed by clicking on a special icon on the top half of the Library's main home page." See Also: Direct to Loc.Gov Wise Guide
U.S. Department of Education--Web Site Source: Education Week "Ed. Department to Save Files Shorn From Web Site" From the article, "The Department of Education says it will archive any material removed from its Web site during an ongoing redesign, possibly through an interactive database accessible through the Internet. John P. Bailey, the department's director of educational technology, said last week the department was weighing several options for archiving data from the ed.gov site—including the interactive database as well as a CD-ROM that contains all the information currently on the Web site—and making it available to the public." Thanks to G.T. for the news tip. See Also: VAS&ND Story from 9/19/2002 Wednesday, October 09, 2002
Web Search--Yahoo Yahoo Renews with Google as Fall-Through Search Provider After months of waiting for an answer, we now know that Yahoo is staying with Google as the provider of fall-through results. However, as this AP story notes, "the new contract doesn't prevent Yahoo from using search results from other providers." Also, Yahoo result pages look different. Gone are web page matches, category matches etc. Complete details about the new appearance can be found here. You'll also find new functionality and look to Yahoo's Advanced Search page. See Also: Search Engine Showdown with More Info and Analysis I totally agree with Greg's comments about the new result pages. Here's an example of how they might not be what some have come to expect from Yahoo. * Search in Yahoo for London Underground * The results page lists 20 "web matches" and contains two links to "directory category matches". This means you need to click twice (or use the advanced interface) to access the hierarchical organization of web pages that Yahoo has always provided. This might be the fuel you need to start showing and using many of the librarian built directories we regularly mention on the site. I compiled a list of several favorites about 3 months ago. NOTE: I look at the Yahoo sites from Canada, Australia, and the U.K. and it appears that the changes are not available these sites.
Libraries Source: Duluth News Tribune The Hibbing Public Library and Bob Dylan From the article, "Quietly growing in the basement of the library in the town where he grew up is possibly the only public collection of Bob Dylan artifacts in the nation...The Dylan collection is mostly out of public view, although portions are placed in rotating displays. However, virtually everything Dylan that the library owns is available to the public." See Also: Learn More About the Bob Dylan Collection via Hibbing Public Library Web Site See Also: Similar Story from the AP |
