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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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Saturday, May 31, 2003
Special Libraries--Health Source: Rocky Mountain News Why Do We Need Librarians? Isn't It All Electronic? The article reports that the Denver Health Medical Center is likely to close its library and fire its librarians in about a month. I don't need to make the case about the value of a library professional. If you do need some, Lynne Fox, president-elect of the Colorado Council of Medical Librarians shares her thoughts about the situation. What I want to highlight from this article is the following, "Chief Executive Officer Patricia Gabow would not confirm the closure. But she said that because of the availability of electronic journals, closing the library, which has been under discussion for some time, is likely." Unfortunately, this is the belief that many people (the ones that pay the bills) have about the need for info professionals. Why pay someone? It's all electronic and just a click away. Oy!
Libraries Scholarly Publishing Six Library Organizations Want Justice Department to Block Cinven and Candover Purchase of BertelsmannSpringer From the announcement, The Information Access Alliance, a group of six library organizations, is urging the U.S. Department of Justice to block Cinven and Candover's proposed purchase of BertelsmannSpringer. The Alliance is concerned that this transaction will bring about a reduction in access to critical research information. Cinven and Candover, a partnership of UK-based private equity firms, has announced its intent to acquire BertelsmannSpringer, the academic publishing arm of Bertelsmann AG. The partnership also announced its intent to merge BertelsmannSpringer with Kluwer Academic Publishers, which Cinven and Candover acquired in January, to form the second largest publisher of scientific journals in the world, trailing only Elsevier Science. The Information Access Alliance, comprised of the American Association of Law Libraries, American Library Association, Association of College and Research Libraries, Association of Research Libraries, Medical Library Association, and SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), was created because of a shared concern about the effects of mergers among publishers of science journals and legal serial publications.
Resources, Reports, Tools, and Full-Text Documents (2 Items) U.S. History New, JFK Library Releases Newly Declassified Content from 1963 You're able to download excerpts of the material in RealAudio format. -- Refugees Source: U.S. Committee for Refugees New, Full-Text Report, 2003 World Refugee Survey Includes country reports and numerous statistical tables/graphs. Friday, May 30, 2003
Public Libraries--United States Source: The New York Times A City's Hard Choice: New Tax or No Library From the article, "Because of an unusual confluence of events, voters will be asked to approve a new tax to pay for a library system that the city budget had always financed. Voters twice rejected the new tax, and unless they vote to approve it Tuesday, the city's two libraries will have to close July 1." (UPDATE 6/4/03): Good News, Library Will Remain Open! From the article, In a strong show of support for an institution most people take for granted, voters in New Rochelle passed their library budget last night, thus averting a shutdown of the library system this summer.
Electronic Discussions IFLA Launches E-Discussion Group About Women's Issues in Librarianship From the site, The WOMENISS mailing list is for librarians and information professionals who are interested in sharing information about the status of women in librarianship.
Industry Briefs CQ..."Congress Collection" Added to Electronic Library Product CQ...Now Available: Perpetual Electronic Ownership Option for CQ Researcher
Resources, Reports, Tools, and Full-Text Documents (4 Items) Education--United States--Statistics Source: NCES Full-Text, The Condition of Education 2003 -- Real Estate--United States--Statistics 1) Full-Text Report: Home Values: 2000 Summary/Fast Facts ||| Full-Text -- 2) Housing Costs of Renters: 2000 Summary/Fast Facts ||| Full-Text Both reports contain charts and top 10 rankings. -- Selected Recently Updated Congressional Research Reports * Full-Text, Budget for Fiscal Year 2004 * Full-Text, Cuba: Issues for the 108th Congress * Full-Text, China's Economic Conditions * Full-Text, Africa: U.S. Foreign Assistance Issues * Full-Text, Campaign Financing
ERIC AP's ERIC Article, A Fundamental Error It's good see in the mainstream media (Associated Press) an article about ERIC's funding situation. Particularly one that focuses on the useful and important resources (including ERIC Digests) and services the ERIC Clearinghouses offer. Nevertheless, the writer, Steve Giegerich, confuses the ERIC Database with the Clearinghouses. He writes, "the databases — known as clearinghouses — are operated by independent government contractors, located at colleges and universities around the country." Huh? The database is the database and the Clearinghouses are the Clearinghouses. The ERIC Database is secure but as Barbara Quint's Info Today article points out, "Specifications for the new contract omit requirements to support most of the customer services conducted by the clearinghouses, including the production of the popular digests, toll-free phone assistance, and the 6-million-hits-a-week AskERIC service." The ERIC database will go on. Databases are wonderful, important, and essential tools, to help satisfy a user's info need but PEOPLE and INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION are also essential and need to be part of the ERIC service. Research is more than typing a few words into a database. Often asking an expert a question (eg. Clearinghouses) or reading an expert written ERIC Digest can allow you get an authoritative answer in a very timely and efficient manner. Thursday, May 29, 2003
Resource of the Week SEC Info Continues to Impress SEC Info has been around for a couple of years and has been mentioned many times on ResourceShelf but has never been included as a Resource of the Week. This searchable and browsable database of SEC EDGAR documents as well as Canadian SEDAR documents is more than deserving of a place on the ROW list. Here are a few of many reasons SEC Info.Com is a fave. 1) It's available at no charge! 2) SEC Info's Alert Service is Also FREE! Select the companies you want to monitor and as new docs are filed, an email with a direct link to the filing is sent to you. Yesterday, I got an email alerting me to a new Yahoo filing within 6 minutes of the time it hit the database. 3) The database is updated in real-time with both EDGAR and SEDAR filings 4) You can search material by Search by Name, Industry, Business, SIC Code, Area Code, Topic, CIK, Accession Number, File Number, Date, ZIP, and more. 5) The SEC Info homepage provides you access to numerous links that make browsing easy. You'll find links to browse all of today's filings, recent institutional filings, proxy statements and more. 6) Documents accessed via SEC Info contain internal links that allow you to move around the document quickly and efficiently. For example, note the links embedded in the recently filed Yahoo annual report (10-K). 7) Browse companies by SIC Code 8) If you register for a free account, the "My Interest" section allows you to see a list of your most recently accessed documents. 9) A brief FAQ is available -- Caveat: Like most free EDGAR tools, SEC Info does not allow you to keyword search the "full-text" of filings. If you're looking for a free service that offers full-text searching, take a look at EDGARIQ. --- --- You Might Have Missed A new feature on ResourceShelf that I plan on including links to multimedia collections, image archives, digital archive projects, and other content that you might have overlooked. Let's begin with two collections of streaming media content. Many universities and organizations are offering the chance to watch or listen to lectures and other special events. Here are two favorites. 1) MIT World An archive of special presentations and lectures available for you to watch from a broad range of speakers. Here are just a few examples: * Jeff Bezos, "Earth's Most Customer Centric Company: Differentiating with Technology" * Maurice Sendak, "Descent into Limbo" * Sloan 50th Anniversary: Phil Condit Make sure to visit the complete list of archived presentations. -- 2) Landon Lecture Series Archive Watch or listen to every lecture back to 1966. The Landon Lecture takes place at Kansas State University. Here are a few examples of what you'll find. * From 2002, David McCullough, "The Founders: The greatest generation" * From 2001, Steven Ambrose, "Ike and World War II" * From 1997, Sam Donaldson, "The State of Television Today" * From 1990, Ambassador Abba Eban, "Prospects for Peace in the Middle East" * From 1982, Charles Kuralt, "America: The Long View" * From 1975, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, "The World in the Year Ahead" * From 1968, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, "Conflict in Vietnam and at Home" * From 1967, Governor Ronald Reagan, "Higher Education: Its Role in Contemporary America"
Web Search--AllTheWeb Hooray! AllTheWeb Adds a Spell Check Feature Long overdue, ATW has added a spell check tool. You'll find possible spelling corrections/suggestions at the top of the results list labeled as "did you mean:". I've noticed one issue. The spell check feature does not seem to work for phrase searching. For example, ""chicagoo cubbs" does not offer a corrected spelling but chicagoo cubbs does. Additionally, ATW has added several features in the past month. They include utilizing ATW as a conversion tool and calculator. In April they added a dictionary feature.
Enterprise Search--Ask Jeeves Ask Jeeves Unloads Enterprise Search Division It's enterprise technology (aka Jeeves Solutions) is sold for $4.25 million cash to Kanisa, a customer service software company. See Also: Learn More About Kanisa and the Jeeves Deal
Citation Analysis--Lists & Rankings Source: Institute for Scientific Information Science in Australia, 1998-2002 -- Science in Germany, 1998-2002 -- Microbiology: High-Impact U.S. Universities, 1998-2002 -- U.S. Universities with Highest Concentrations in Management, 1998-2002
Industry Briefs PatentCafe...Company Releases New Concept+Boolean Patent Search Database - ProQuest..Rights to Distribute 30 University of California Press Journals
Professional Reading Shelf Association of Research Libraries: Proceedings of the 142nd Annual Meeting The meeting took place about two weeks ago in Lexington, Kentucky. Here are titles of a few of the papers. * "Architecture as an Asset for Community Building" * "Place and Space: Collections and Access in Light of Changing Patterns of Research and Learning"
Resources, Reports, Tools, and Full-Text Documents Population--United States Source: U.S. Census New, Full-Text Report, The Asian and Pacific Islander Population in the United States: March 2002 Summary ||| Direct to Full-Text Wednesday, May 28, 2003
Web Searching Source: Search Engine Showdown Notess Releases New Web Freshness Survey When Greg Notess publishes a Showdown survey we read. So should you. This report looks at AllTheWeb, AltaVista, Gigablast, Google, Inktomi (via MSN and Hotbot), Teoma, and WiseNut. Here are a few findings: * Most have some results indexed in the last few days * But the bulk of most of the databases is about 1 month old * And some pages may not have been re-indexed for much longer
News Alert Services--The New York Times The NYT Will Soon End Free Access to NewsTracker Alert Tool So long to another useful web freebie. I just learned that as of June 13th, the paper will stop offering free access to their NewsTracker service. News Tracker offers the chance to get keyword alerts via e-mail on topics or terms of interest very soon after it's published. Beginning 6/13, the service will be available at $19.95 a year. You'll have the ability to track up to 10 topics simultaneously, a 90-day archive of articles matching your topic selection (new), and breaking news alerts. See Also: Marketwatch.Com and Yahoo News Continue to Offer Free News Alert Services
Information Visualization Source: Technology Review "Artful Displays Track Data" From the article, Many research projects are dedicated to making this information easy to monitor with a minimum of clicking. Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have written software that also aims to make the experience aesthetically pleasing. The InfoCanvas system displays an electronic scene—a desert, window view, aquarium, beach, or mountain camp—that uses movable elements to represent categories of information. The elements shift as information changes. See Also: Learn More About InfoCanvas See Also: Download an InfoCanvas Display Cool!
Listening Shelf e-Government Source: WAMU Listen Online (RealAudio): Radio Program Focuses on e-Government I know many ResourceShelf reader's have an interest in this topic. This hour long discussion aired on WAMU Radio in D.C. Natural language processing and FirstGov are discussed. Here's the guest list: Costis Toregas, President, Public Technology, Inc. David McClure, Vice President, e-Government, The Council for Excellence in Government Terri Ware, Director, Office of Information Technology & Communication, Prince George's County, Maryland Casey Coleman, Chief Technology Officer, Office of Citizen Services Communications, General Services Administration [The FirstGov.Gov folks] Lisa Mascolo, Managing Partner, Accenture
Professional Reading Shelf (3 Items) Coalition for Networked Information Project Briefings from the Coalition for Networked Information Spring Meeting The meeting took place about a month ago here in D.C. Here are a few presentations, many offer PowerPoint slides, that caught my eye: * New Initiatives for Resource Description and Preservation Metadata * Linking Courseware to Library Resources Using OpenURL: Experience, Possibilities, and Future Direction * SRW: The Search and Retrieve Web Service * Building a Virtual University of the Past: Archives and Electronic Media in the 21st Century * The Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative * Status Report of Ongoing National Library of Medicine End-to-End Pilot Study * The Role of Incentives in Digital Archiving * From PDF to PDF-Archival * ARTstor: Progress Report and Plans -- OCLC A Report From the OCLC Members Council Meeting -- Libraries The June Issue of Walt Crawford's Cites and Insights is Now Available
Resources, Reports, Tools, and Full-Text Documents (4 Items) League of Nations--Photo Archive New, League of Nations Photo Archive Browse hundred of images by category. -- Broadband Internet--United States--Statistics Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project Full-Text, Broadband Adoption at Home: A Pew Internet Project Data Memo -- Endangered Species--Digital Archive New, ARKive From the site, ...a digital safe haven for films, photographs and sound effects of British and globally endangered species. ...free click-and-view access to multi-media portraits of almost 1,000 species, created from the digital records and backed by fact-files and other information. Thanks to S.C. for the news tip. -- Human Rights Just Released, Full-Text: Amnesty International Report 2003 Tuesday, May 27, 2003
Search Engines Source: Wired "Big Changes for Search Engines" A report about a few search-related presentations at last week's WWW Conference in Budapest. If you would like to take a look at the full-text of many conference papers, I've compiled links to many of them on ResourceShelfPLUS.
Metadata--Canada The Library and Archives of Canada Announces Canadian Metadata Forum It's scheduled for September 19-20 in Ottawa. More details to come but some background about the focus of the forum is already available.
Information Industry--Octavo Source: East Bay Business Times Learn About: Octavo From the article, When Czeslaw Jan Grycz sent a team of employees to the British Library to photograph 400-year-old Quartos of Shakespeare, he tried to anticipate the problems they might face. "I've learned about the vagaries of doing business in far-flung locations," says Grycz, chief executive officer of Oakland-based Octavo, a unique publishing company that captures rare classic books and manuscripts, page by page, using the most modern of high-resolution digital media...Grycz worked for 20 years in libraries and in publishing before joining Octavo in 2000 at the invitation of founder John Warnock, a rare book enthusiast and engineer who also co-founded Adobe Systems Inc. See Also: Direct to the Octavo Home Page
Health Information--Drugs--United States Source: FDA Searchable Database, Postmarketing Study Commitments From the intro site, The Web site contains the basic information that FDA committed to make available to the public. The information currently available to search includes only postmarketing study commitments that have been reviewed for accuracy and made with the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) at any time and those made since January 1, 1991, with the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER). This site does not include commitments containing proprietary information. The Web site will be updated quarterly (in July, October, January, and April), at which time additional commitments will be added and the status of existing commitments updated. See Also: Additional Background and Materials See Also: "FDA Attempts To Track Drug Study Status"
Professional Reading Shelf Intelligence Software Source: Fuld and Company 2003 Intelligence Software Report (Executive Summary) One of the big names in competitive intelligence consulting, Fuld & Co., is out with their Intelligence Software Report. The full-text document is fee-based but a 25 page exec summary is available for free. You'll need to fill out a registration form to gain access. It takes about 2 minutes to complete.
Resources, Reports, Tools, and Full-Text Documents (3 Items) War in Iraq Source: House of Commons Library, United Kingdom Full-Text Report, The Conflict in Iraq A 90 page research report. -- Terrorism Source: GAO Full-Text Report, Combating Terrorism: Interagency Framework and Agency Programs to Address Overseas Threat This 274 page report is full of charts and tables. -- Emergency Preparedness--United States Source: U.S. Department of Justice Full-Text, DOJ Emergency Preparedness Manual Monday, May 26, 2003
Public Libraries--United States Source: AP For Libraries, Charity Begins Online From the article, Facing possible layoffs, shortened hours and cuts that would slash their $1.2 million book budget by a third, the staff at the Oakland Public Library in California tried a new twist on philanthropy. They posted a list of books they would buy if they could on Amazon.com, the online bookseller. The response was overwhelming. See Also: Take a Look at the OPL "Buy a Book" Page
Libraries--Asia Source: RFE Central Asia: Libraries In A Difficult Bind Following Soviet Collapse From the article, Some of the world's earliest and most splendid libraries arose between the 2nd century B.C. and the 16th century along the fabled Silk Road, which linked China with Europe via Central Asia. But many of the libraries that the now independent states of Central Asia inherited after the collapse of the Soviet Union have -- over the past 12 years -- fallen victim to neglect, theft, and inadequate funding. In a recent interview with RFE/RL in Tashkent, Uzbek political scientist Rustam Djumayev says there has been a decline in the professional qualifications of library staff over the past decade, especially in the provinces. He said this may be one of the reasons why rare books are being stolen and offered for sale. Sunday, May 25, 2003
Professional Reading Shelf Digital Preservation Source: Syllabus Full-Text, "Digital Preservation: An Individual Responsibility for Communal Scholarship"
Resources, Reports, Tools, and Full-Text Documents United States Source: Library of Congress New Online Collection, Courage, Patriotism, Community From the announcement, In honor of Memorial Day and in celebration of the American spirit, the Library of Congress is launching a new Web site highlighting its collections of veterans’ stories, patriotic music and community life. The new site, called Courage, Patriotism, Community. Saturday, May 24, 2003
Books--United States--Statistics "U.S. Book Production Tops 150,000 in 2002" From the report, R.R. Bowker today released a wide range of statistics on the U.S. book industry compiled from its Books In Print database. The most notable finding is that U.S. title output increased 5.86 % to 150,000 new titles and editions in 2002, while new titles from the largest trade publishers declined 5.02%. University presses increased their title output by 10.21% in 2002, reversing a decline of 4.04% in 2001.
Web Browsers Source: Technology Review Learn About: BrainBrowser From the article, Georgia State University researchers have come up with a Web browser that allows people to surf just by thinking. Previous research has shown that it is possible to move a cursor by controlling neural activity. The researchers' BrainBrowser Internet software is designed to work with the limited mouse movements neural control allows. The browser window is divided into an upper section that resembles a traditional browser and a lower control section. Common controls like "Home", "Refresh", "Print" and "Back" are grouped in the left-hand corner and provide feedback. When a user focuses his attention on a button, it becomes highlighted, and when the user successfully focuses on clicking the button, it emits a low tone. See Also: Friday, May 23, 2003
Motion Pictures Source: The New York Times New, NYT Updates Movie Site, All Reviews Back to 1983 Are Now Available Online (Free!) Fans of the cinema will love this! You can now do a simple search (year, actor, keyword) or browse (by title, genre, year) all film reviews back to 1983 and the read the full-text online at no charge. Want more? Selected reviews back to 1929 (full-text) are also online and available for free. See Also: The Movie Section Now Offers A Complete Chart of Weekend Box Office for the U.S./Canada, U.K., and New York Metro. All-Time Box Office Grosses for the U.S./Canada, U.K., and NY Metro Are Also Available.
Web Search--Northern Light The Return of Northern Light? Only Time Will Tell The Northern Light name and search technology was purchased at a divine bankruptcy auction earlier this week by NL's former CEO David Seuss. What this really means for a relaunch of NL in the enterprise search and the web search space is not clear, especially as to precisely when it will happen. According to the news release, "Immediately, after the acquisition, Seuss contacted the corporate customers for Northern Light’s SinglePoint Market Research Portal that had not fled during the Divine era and assured them that their customer support would soon return to the exceptionally high levels characteristic of Northern Light during its days as an independent company." The news release goes on to note that Seuss wants to put NL's "never before released Northern Light Enterprise Search Engine" on the market. As far as the return of the once publicly available Northern Light web engine, makes no promises about its return. Seuss says, "We have started discussions with interested parties about ideas for new approaches to the Web search problem, ideas that represent a collaboration between others who have done innovative work and Northern Light. These ideas may result in uniquely useful Web search services." Bottom line? Another case of "only time will tell". Good luck to David. Thanks to S.C. for the news tip. (Updated 6/2) See Also: Paula Hane Sheds More Light on the New Northern Light (via Info Today NewsBreaks)
Libraries Source: The Smoky Mountain News Area Debates the Building of Joint Public and Academic Library From the article, A proposal to move Jackson County's main library out of downtown Sylva has upset many residents, but supporters say it is the best way to get the kind of library that is needed. Some Jackson County leaders are backing a plan to build a joint library with Southwestern Community College on its Webster campus. By joining forces, residents could get a $6 million, 25,000-square-foot facility with every imaginable amenity...Joyce Moore, who owns City Lights Bookstore in downtown Sylva, is the spokesperson for KOLD (Keep Our Library Downtown). She has a degree in library science and says there are several reasons for opposing the joint proposal. “Opposition to the move centers around concerns about a conflict of missions and operations between a public and academic library, accessibility to senior citizens and young children and the negative economic impact on the revitalization efforts of downtown Sylva,” she wrote in a statement that came from the group.
Resources, Reports, Tools, and Full-Text Documents (5 Items) Media Ownership--United States Source: Center for Public Integrity New Database, The "Well Connected" Database From the site, This searchable database contains basic information on every radio and television station in America as well as every cable television system and telephone company. You may search by company, by call sign or by area. Searchers will find basic information on some of the most important telecommunication companies, including a brief corporate profile and basic financial information. See Also: Rankings, Top 10 Media Holding Companies -- Veterans--United States Source: U.S. Census New, Full-Text Report: U.S. Veterans Summary ||| Direct to Full-Text A 12 page brief about the veteran population using Census 2000 data. -- Business--United States--Lists & Rankings Source: Forbes 2003 Lists, Best Places For Business And Careers Web site includes "Best Places for Small Business and Careers". This list isn't available in print edition. Other lists are searchable. -- People--Canada--Lists & Rankings Source: ROB "top forty/under forty" This is the 8th annual list. -- Presidents of the United States Source: GPO Volume I of the 2001 Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, George W. Bush Now Available on GPO Access Volumes covering the administrations of Presidents Hoover, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush are included in the Public Papers series. Currently, GPO Access contains the Public Papers for Presidents George H.W. Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush. Additional volumes covering the administrations of Presidents Hoover, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan will be made available from GPO Access in the future. Thursday, May 22, 2003
Web Resources of the Week Two entries for you this week! -- Canada--Web Directories Source: Micromedia/ProQuest 1) HOTLinks from Several Well-Known Canadian Directories (Free) Four Directories of urls and e-mail addresses. The full-text of each directory is a fee-based product. However, access to each HOTLink directory is free. Directory of Libraries in Canada HOTLinks Browse by subject area. -- Associations Canada HOTLinks Browse trade/professional associations. -- Financial Services Canada HOTLinks Browse by company/organization type. -- Canadian Environmental Database HOTLinks --- --- ERIC (Educational Resources Information Clearinghouse) 2) Now Online: New Search Technology/Interface to ERIC Database The engine offers four search options: (Direct to Search Options) A) Basic Search "Conduct a simple keyword search of the ERIC Database. Searches may be further limited by publication type, target audience, record type (RIE/CIJE), EDRS electronic availability, and year added." B) Advanced Search "Conduct a more complex search using Boolean operators "AND" and "OR." Searches may be further limited by author, title, electronic availability, target audience, journal name, publication type, etc." C) Topics Organized Hierarchically "Browse more than 2000 ERIC TOPICS in 50 general subjects areas arranged hierarchically. ERIC TOPICS are based on the content of the Thesaurus of ERIC Descriptors." D) Topics Organized Alphabetically "Browse more than 2000 ERIC TOPICS arranged alphabetically. ERIC TOPICS are based on the content of the Thesaurus of ERIC Descriptors." -- Other Notes: * Utilizes Search/Content Management Technology from Artesia * The Basic/Advanced search interfaces contain spell-check tool. * The % is the truncation symbol. * Basic Interface offers numerous limiting options via pull-down menus. * Results can be sorted by using one of 12 criteria (Basic and Advanced) * Boolean Connectors AND/OR Must Be Upper Case * Records are clearly labeled. "ED" records contain a direct link to the ERIC Document Reproduction Service where these items can be purchased. -- A very useful chart comparing four ERIC search interfaces/engines is also available. In other news, the entire ERIC site has received a makeover. See Also: Directory of ERIC Resource Collections
Professional Reading Shelf Web Credibility Source: Consumers Union Full-Text Transcript, "Building Trust on the Web Consumer WebWatch's First National Summit on Web Credibility" Participants include, Eugenie Prime, Librarian, Hewlett-Packard Doug Leeds, Overture Matt Cutts, Google Sandy Schlosser, ConsumerReports.org Leslie Marable, Consumer WebWatch -- Public Libraries--United Kingdom Source: Demos Full-Text Report, Overdue: How to create a modern public library service Direct to Full-Text ||| Commentary from ManagingInformation.Com
Resources, Reports, Tools, and Full-Text Documents Veterans--United States Source: Library of Congress Material Available Monday, Veterans History Project Goes Online on Library of Congress Web Site From the announcement, This Memorial Day, May 26, 21 fully digitized collections of materials submitted by veterans and civilians will be available for the first time on the Library of Congress Web. Direct to Web Site
News Search--Yahoo Yahoo News Adds Business Content Yahoo News continues to add feeds from various news oriented sites. Unlike other news engines, Yahoo licenses and obtains a feed of the material from each publisher. Other news engines like AltaVista and Google send their crawlers (several times an hour) to each news site looking for new material. Here's a list of the new material accessible via Yahoo News: * Technology News from SiliconValley.com * Business News from Motley Fool * Business News from The Daily Deal See Also: Yahoo News Advanced Interface Four Things You Can Do With Yahoo News Search * Limit By Dateline * Use an * as a Truncation Symbol * Limit with Author's Name * Limit Your Search To Words in the Story Title (Also Available via pull-down) Wednesday, May 21, 2003
Resources, Reports, Tools, and Full-Text Documents (3 Items) Digital Copyright Source: USPTO New, Full-Text Report, Technological Protection Systems for Digitized Copyrighted Works Summary ||| Direct to Full-Text -- Journalism The New York Times Full-Text Access to Jayson Blair Archive From the page, A team of Times editors, reporters and researchers have reviewed 73 articles by Jayson Blair since late October and are continuing to examine his work. This archive also includes articles by Jayson Blair dating back to June 9, 1998. Readers with information about these or other articles by Mr. Blair that may be false wholly or in part are asked to e-mail The Times: retrace@nytimes.com. The page contains full-text access to 73 articles by Blair beginning in 1998. A page where, "falsification, plagiarism and similar problems were discovered in a review of articles written by Jayson Blair" is also provided. Thanks to P.J. for the news tip. See Also: "Poisoning the archival wells" (via Fort Worth Star Telegram) From the article, As journalists dissect the epic scandal at The New York Times, their findings have troubled a key group of specialists: news researchers and newspaper librarians. They tend archives, the treasure trove of information from which they pull all manner of data to help journalists examine trends and developments. They groom databases to yield impeccable details for current and future generations. They have no tolerance for inaccuracy because, like the news staff they support, their credibility is forever at stake. Count them among those who were angered to learn that former Times reporter Jayson Blair had committed extensive plagiarism and falsification of facts. -- Health--United States Source: National Library of Medicine New Web Site, Asian American Health "An Information portal to issues affecting the health and well-being of Asian Americans in the United States."
Patriot Act Source: New York Times "Justice Dept. Lists Use of New Power to Fight Terror" From the article, And agents have contacted about 50 libraries nationwide in the course of terrorism investigations, often at the invitation of librarians who saw something suspicious, said Viet Dinh, an assistant attorney general who briefed members of the House Judiciary Committee on the findings at a hearing today. Librarians, concerned about the government's ability to pry into the public's reading habits, have said they believe libraries have been contacted much more frequently. See Also: Full-Text of DOJ Report Discussed in the Article (Press Release ||| Full-Text of Report, 60 pages)
Briefly Dialog...More Content Added to InSite Service ||| New Content for DialogPRO GPO...Printing Office Completes Budget Request Before Congress
Web Search--Google Source: Library Journal Google Guy: Reference Librarians Can Keep Jobs A very brief report about Craig Silverstein, Google's CTO, presentation at the Info Today 2003 Conference. From the article, The Holy Grail, for Google--to act like a reference librarian in responding to these queries--is "hundreds of years away. Silverstein realizes this, we know it, but does the public? If the public doesn't understand that Google isn't THE solution, let's not blame Google, web search engines in general, or super bookstores. Another question to ask is will "all" information be available for Google to crawl and add to their index? What do info vendors think? Will a one-stop interface provide the usability that users and professionals want? See Also: Google Will Not Separate Weblog Content (via SiliconValley.Com)
Reading List (3 Items) Source: Computerworld The Cost of an E-Mail Hoax Douglas Schweitzer attempts to monetize in the cost of an e-mail hoax in a corporate setting. -- Plagiarism Source: Syllabus "Probing for Plagiarism in the Virtual Classroom" Note: This article is not available in the print version of Syllabus. -- Information Overload Source: Sydney Morning Herald "Spinning Around" A look at info overload. Tuesday, May 20, 2003
Information Industry--ProQuest ProQuest Completes Digitizing 110 Years of The Washington Post Exactly two years after it was first announced, the digitization of the Washington Post from 1871-1987 is complete. It joins the other newspapers in the ProQuest Historical Newspapers program. Every word on every page is now searchable. Material is viewed/printed in pdf. Additionally, each article has been indexed using ProQuest's controlled vocabulary. The archive contains over 2.6 million pages of articles. The Post joins the completed digital archives of The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Christian Science Monitor. Content from The Los Angeles Times (1881-1984) and Chicago Tribune (1849-1984) is coming soon. Cold North Wind is in the process of digitizing the Washington Star beginning in 1852. See Also: Canadian Projects, ProQuest/Micromedia's Digital Archive of The Globe & Mail and Toronto Star See Also: Cold North Wind's "Paper of Record" Digitization Project See Also: Gale Provides A Digital Archive of The Times (London) Beginning in 1785.
Privacy--United States Source: AP DoD Renames Total Info Awareness Project to Terrorism Info Awareness Program From the article, The Pentagon assured Congress that its planned anti-terror surveillance system will only analyze legally acquired information and changed the name of the project to help allay privacy concerns that prompted congressional restrictions. The Total Information Awareness program now under development by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, will henceforth be named the Terrorism Information Awareness program. -- The Full-Text of the Report Submitted to Congress Today (and noted in the article) is Available Online. (FAQ ||| News Release ||| Summary ||| Full-Text). -- See Also: Full-Text, Center for Democracy and Technology Report, Privacy's Gap: The Largely Non-Existent Legal Framework for Government Mining of Commercial Data -- See Also: More Info in this Wired News Story
eBooks--Library Usage New, Special Interest Group About Library Use of eBooks From the announcement, "The Open eBook Forum (www.openebook.org), the trade and standards association for the eBook industry, today announced the creation of a Library Special Interest Group (SIG). The group was formed to enable publishers, eBook resellers, DRM, software and hardware companies to communicate directly with librarians to better appreciate the opportunities and challenges of service for libraries and their patrons. The group meets on a weekly basis via conference calls and maintains communication through an email list. Participation in the group is currently open to the public and further information can be found on the Open eBook Forum (OeBF) website at: http://www.openebook.org/oebf_groups/library.htm
Public Libraries--United States Source: Puget Sound Business Journal "Gates program to wire libraries continues to evolve" From the article, The five-year, $250 million effort by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to bring computers and Internet access to libraries in poor communities is drawing to a close, with the last equipment to be installed by October.
Professional Reading Shelf Web Search--Research Source: IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering Full-Text Article, Topic-Sensitive PageRank: A Context-Sensitive Ranking Algorithm for Web Search
Resources, Reports, Tools, and Full-Text Documents (4 Items) Older Americans--Statistics Source: U.S. Census Full-Text Report, The Older Population in the United States: March 2002 Summary ||| Direct to Full-Text -- Population--United States--Statistics Source: U.S. Census New Report, New Residents of Metropolitan Areas Referred to as "in-migrants". A detailed table of stats is also available in Excel format. -- Philanthropy--United States--Statistics Source: Foundation Center 2001 Tables Now Available, Detailed Breakdowns of 2001 Foundation Giving Patterns These free statistical tables are based on individual records of grants of $10,000 or more awarded by approximately 1,000 of the largest U.S. private and community foundations. Information is provided on funding by subject area, recipient organization, type of support, population group served, domestic geographic focus, top funders and recipients, and domestic vs. international focus. You'll also find Top 50 U.S. Foundations by Giving (Info for 50 States). Tables for 1998, 1999, and 2000 are also available. -- Business--Massachusetts--Lists & Rankings Source: Boston Globe The Boston Globe 100, 2003 Public companies in Massachusetts. Numerous rankings and breakdowns are available.
A Couple of Items from the GooglePlex -- Web Search--Google 1) Google Catalogs Reaches 6,000 Catalog Mark This interesting, useful, and dare I say, fun, demo from Google allows you to keyword search (and/or browse) of over 6,000 catalogs from U.S. businesses. What makes this so interesting? It's one of the best demonstrations of optical character recognition (ocr) searching. In other words, Google is taking the catalogs, scanning them in page by page, and saving each page as an image file. Ocr allows you to search words "inside" each of these images. You can enlarge each page, view multiple pages, and more. Google Catalogs is NOT the same as Froogle. See Also: Amazon Restaurants A similar beta resource using ocr to search restaurant menus. -- 2) News Search--Google Google Starts Adding Non-English Language News to Country Web Sites From the announcement, Users who search the web using Google.com.mx, Google.com.ar, Google.cl and Google.co.cr, Google.it and Google.ch as well as other Google sites that offer Spanish and Italian interfaces, will often see links at the top of their search results marked "News." These news story headlines connect users to articles from a number of Spanish and Italian language news. News links appear only if the search term entered includes a word(s) currently in the news. For instance, a search for "Vicente Fox" on Google.com.mx will return not only pages related to "Vicente Fox," but a list of news headlines related to the Mexican President. The primary Google News interface still only returns English language content. See Also: AllTheWeb News and AltaVista News Germany, and Net2One Contain News in Languages Other Than English
Quote of the Week In an article about dorm rooms and the "housing crunch" at several universities in New Jersey the following quote: "The library is really in their room, on their computer." ----Nancy Mackin, Dean of Students, Ramapo College Electronic resources are crucial and a major focus of what we talk about on ResourceShelf. Nevertheless, I would hope that the Dean of Students at a highly rated liberal arts college understands that all of the material in the Ramapo College Library is not accessible electronically. Unfotunately, these types of comments in the mainstream press reinforce the idea that it's ALL online. Monday, May 19, 2003
National Libraries Digital Archives National Library of the Netherlands and Kluwer Academic Publishers Agree on Long-Term Digital Archiving From the announcement, Peter Hendriks, CEO of Kluwer Academic Publishers, and Wim van Drimmelen, Director General of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB), the National Library of the Netherlands, today signed an agreement on long-term digital archiving of the electronic publications of Kluwer Online. Under the terms of this agreement, Koninklijke Bibliotheek will receive digital copies of all Kluwer journals and books made available on its web platform, Kluwer Online. The web platform now contains 235.000 articles from 670 journals and more than 600 e-Books covering the areas of science, technology and medicine. In 2003 alone more than 70.000 articles and 400 e-Books will be added." See Also: Last August (8/02), the National Library of the Netherlands Announced an Agreement with Elsevier To Create a Digital Archive for Elsevier Science Content
Reminder Starts Today: Symposium on Electronic Scientific, Technical, and Medical Journal Publishing and Its Implications This Natational Academy of Science Symposium is scheduled to take place in D.C. on Monday and Tuesday. If you can't attend in person, you can watch the symposium online and submit questions via e-mail. You'll find more info here and the final program on this web page Listen Here. NOTE: An Archived Copy of the Webcast Will Be Available Soon. Stay Tuned
Image Archives Source: Washington Post "Buried Treasure" The article asks the question, "Why has Bill Gates stashed millions of the greatest images of the 20th century under a mountain in Pennsylvania?" From the article, Welcome to Iron Mountain, the largest commercially owned underground storage facility in the world. This is where Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, has deposited his huge and growing collection of historical photographs -- approximately 11 million negatives, prints, slides -- a cache that represents a culturally significant chunk of the visual history of the 20th century. Down here, underneath the far reaches of western Pennsylvania, in a cold and gleaming vault big enough to stage a Busby Berkeley dance number, a Gates-owned company called Corbis has constructed a home that includes the storied Bettmann Archive, with its sprawling collection of photos and illustrations (film director Martin Scorsese drew on it heavily for "Gangs of New York"); the archive of United Press International, including its vast array of photographs from the Vietnam War; and more than a dozen smaller photo collections.
Professional Reading Shelf (3 Items) PubMed Updated Training Manual Available: PubMed Training materials for the NLM Gateway and ClinicalTrials.Gov are also available. -- Library Technology Selected Full-Text Articles from the March, 2003 Issue of Information Technology in Libraries is Now Online Articles Include: "The Impact of Information Technology on Job Requirements and Qualifications for Catalogers" "Subject Web Page Management without HTML Coding: Two Approaches" "HERMES: The Hopkins Electronic Resource Management System" "Remote Observation Strategies for Usability Testing" -- Free Full-Text Access This Week Only: Campus Wide Information Services Vol. 11-20 available in full-text.
Resources, Reports, Tools, and Full-Text Documents (2 Items) Nursing Homes--United States Source: Gannett News Service Rating America's Nursing Homes This "special report" includes a searchable database of "patient care" quality ratings of 16,000 nursing homes in the U.S. -- Digitization Projects Online Today: Einstein Papers to Be Published on Web From the article, A collaborative effort of the Einstein Papers Project at Caltech and the Albert Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Web site will allow users access to 3,000 digitized images of the Nobel prize winner's writings, Einstein Papers editor Diana Buchwald said. Among them are papers on the special theory of relativity, his never-published travel diaries, various humanitarian statements, and his frequent pleas for peace. Einstein Archives Online will be launched on Monday during a daylong symposium on Einstein's life and work at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The Site is Set to Go Live at 3 PM EDST Today.
Library Funding--United States Source: IMLS Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) Launches Online Project Planning Tutorial From the announcement, The federal Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) has launched an online tutorial to help libraries and museums develop project plans for its National Leadership Grant applications. This tool is designed to make it easier to develop good, competitive applications for federal IMLS grants. Others will also find the tutorial useful for planning projects and IMLS welcomes all users. The full-text of the announcement is available here. Sunday, May 18, 2003
Web Search--Google Source: The New York Times "As Google Goes, So Goes the Nation" What would a week be like without an article about Google in The New York Times? Well, we won't find out this week. Geoffrey Nunberg, a Stanford linguist, writes, Its [Google's] algorithms rank results both by looking at how prominently the search terms figure in the pages that include them and by taking advantage of what Google calls "the uniquely democratic nature of the Web" to estimate the popularity of a site. It gives a higher rank to pages that are linked to by a number of other pages, particularly if the referring pages themselves are frequently linked to. (The other major search engines have adopted similar techniques. Kudos to Dr. Nunberg for mentioning that other engines do the same thing. However, it's important to mention that Google (and other engines) look at many other factors besides PageRank. These factors include terms in the title, keyword density, heading size (H1, H2), bolding, is the site in the Open Directory? It's also worth mentioning that these algorithms are constantly tweaked and closely held secrets. I agree with most of Dr. Nunberg's conclusion, The outcomes of Google's popularity contests can be useful to know, but it's a mistake to believe they reflect the consensus of the "Internet community," whatever that might be, or to think of the Web as a single vast colloquy — the picture that's implicit in all the talk of the Internet as a "digital commons" or "collective mind."... The search engines cruise the alleyways to listen in on all of these conversations, locate the people who are talking about the subject we're interested in, and tell us which of them has earned the most nods from the other confabulators in the room. But just because someone is regarded as a savant in the barbershop doesn't mean he'll pass for wise with the people in the other stalls. NOTE: Dr. Nunberg's mentions at the beginning of the article that the word "ford" returns over sixteen million hits with Google. Although using Google as a popularity counter by using page count totals might not be a useful or valid measurement we're seeing many people doing just this and in many cases not even doing it well. Josh Dube from Poynter Online mentions some of the problems in a recent column. By the way, for those of you who are counting, "ford" returns over 21 million hits with AllTheWeb. In fact, searching for the song title "stairway to heaven" with Google returns about 116,000 while at ATW it returns over 362,000. In fact, most people don't search with quotation marks when phrase searching (a good idea) but ATW will, in many situations, convert your search into a phrase search automatically. Here's an example, note the statement at the top of the list about the query being rewritten. Bottom Line: As we've said many times, page counts are just estimates.
Internet Source: Sydney Morning Herald "Internet feud as health service pushes to delete past" An interesting story about removing of content from a web archive. Saturday, May 17, 2003
Web Search--RocketNews RocketNews Updates Its Look, Releases Desktop Tool I'll spend some time with this one over the weekend and report back. RocketNews has been a favorite news search tool for quite some time. I often find things via Rocket I don't find elsewhere. Here's where you can learn about and download a trial version (free) of the RocketInfo Desktop tool. More later.
Librarians RSS Cohen Providing RSS Feeds for Library Related Sites That Don't Have Them Steven Cohen, editor of Library Stuff and author of "the introduction" to RSS for librarians is offering this new service. You can get complete details here.
Communication and Dissemination--Instant Messaging Source: Fortune "The IM Invasion" More about the rise of instant messaging in the workplace. See Also: Wall Street Journal to Begin Offering Limited Content via AIM See Also: Read about and Demo, SmarterChild, a Chatbot with Ready Reference Material (Free) or Simply Send an Instant Message to smarterchild
Resources, Reports, Tools, and Full-Text Documents Bankruptcy--United States--Statistics Source: Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts Just Released, Bankruptcy Filings, 2002-2003 See Also Several Charts are also available in Excel format: Table F (12 Month Period) (xls) | Table F-2 (12 Months Period) (xls) | Table F-2 (3 Months Period) Friday, May 16, 2003
Web Search--AllTheWeb New Syntax from AllTheWeb, Convert:, ATW as A Simple Conversion Calculator Another neat feature from ATW direct from the search box. Conversion categories include length, time, speed, temperature, weight, area, and cooking. Make sure to visit the reference page to see what you can convert. A Few Examples: convert: 30 sec convert: 3 liters convert: 25 pounds ----- And Some More New Items from ATW ------ 1) Clustered Results: Run an ATW Search and You'll Now See Results Organized Into "Clusters" at the Bottom of the Results List. A couple of years ago ATW offered a similar service called "Fast Topics". Stay tuned for more details. -- 2) ATW now allows you to search any of their "specialty catalogs" from any search box by using the following syntax: pics:, or, images: or image: news: (news database) web: video:, videos: ftp: mp3:, audio: -- 3) A New URL Investigator "Button" for IE, Netscape, and Opera URL Investigator via ATW allows you enter any url into the search box and learn what ATW "knows" about the page along with direct links to an Internet Archive and WHOIS lookup. - See Also: Use ATW as a Simple Calculator
Resources, Reports, Tools, and Full-Text Documents (3 Items) Labor--United States--Statistics Source: Minnesota Work Force Center Chart, Comparing sources of data on employment... Glossary of Labor Market Information Terms -- Transportation--United States--Statistics Source: BTS Full-Text, Issue Brief: Highway Congestion New, 2002 National Survey of Pedestrian and Bicyclist Attitudes and Behaviors -- Recently Updated Congressional Research Service Reports (via FPC) Full-Text, Syria: U.S. Relations and Bilateral Issues Full-Text, Trade and the Americas Full-Text, Campaign Financing Full-Text, India-U.S. Relations Full-Text, Iraq: U.S. Regime Change Efforts and Post-War Governance Full-Text, United Nations Peacekeeping: Issues for Congress
Professional Reading Shelf The May Issue of D-Lib is Now Online Articles Include: "Usage Analysis for the Identification of Research Trends in Digital Libraries" "Keepers of the Crumbling Culture: What Digital Preservation Can Learn from Library History" "Patterns of Journal Use by Scientists through Three Evolutionary Phases" "Developing a Content Management System-based Web Site" "Exploring Charging Models for Digital Cultural Heritage in Europe" "Visions: The Academic Library in 2012" Book Review: XML for Libraries by Roy Tennant Thursday, May 15, 2003
Web Resources of the Week Two items this week. 1) Information Technology--Public Access New, WebJunction From the site, WebJunction is an online community of libraries and other agencies sharing knowledge and experience to provide the broadest public access to information technology. The project is led by OCLC with funding via a three-year grant from the Gates Foundation. The grant is to "build a portal for public libraries and other organizations that provide open access to information". Other organizations involved in the project include the Colorado State Library, Benton Foundation, Isoph, and TechSoup. See Also: You can learn a bit more via this LJ article. See Also: A February, 2002 Op/Ed Column by Bill Gates, "Investing in libraries connects us to the future" See Also: The 5/02 Grant Announcement From the Gates Foundation -- 2) Ready Reference--Thesaurus Information Visualization Visual Thesaurus-Online Edition Plumb Design, an information visualization software company, provides free access to the thesaurus. It utilizes Plumb's Thinkmap (R) visualization software. The content comes from the WordNet project from the Cognitive Science Laboratory at Princeton University. The database contains over 50,000 words and 40,000 phrases collected into more than 70,000 sense meanings. Learning how to use the thesaurus to it's fullest is as easy as taking the tour. Of course, learning as you go, using Ran Hock's "clicking everywhere" method is also an option. You'll need to be using Netscape 7.0 or Internet Explorer 4.0 or higher. I was also able to access using Mozilla. Java will also be need to available. Interesting, useful, and fun! Btw, a fee-based version (with extra features) can be downloaded. Thanks to Mary Ellen Bates, info pro legend and author of the just published, Building and Running a Successful Research Business, for alerting me to this tool. Congrats Mary Ellen!
Professional Reading Shelf WHOIS Source: Online "WHO WAS, WHOIS, AND WHO WILL BE: Domain Name Ownership Research Tools" Mark Goldstein takes a comprehensive look at fee and free services to search WHOIS databases. One tool that Mark doesn't mention in his article is a free software app called Sam Spade. It provides several services and will automatically redirect your WHOIS lookup to the correct registry database. A web version of Sam Spade is also available.
Information Industry--Wiley Wiley Interscience Launches Pay-Per-View Service Wiley Interscience offers full text access to over 300 leading scientific, technical, medical, and professional journals, plus major reference works. Articles can now be purchased using a credit card. See Also: Direct to Wiley Interscience See Also: Journal Finder ||| Book Finder See Also: Search Wiley Interscience Database
Virtual Reference--Wondir Wondir Plans Another Beta Test Hour Matt Koll, co-founder and Chairman of the Wondir Foundation alerts us to a another test of the system scheduled for next Tuesday evening U.S. time. Matt writes, Please join us for a concentrated beta test hour on www.wondir.org, on Tuesday, May 20, 9-10pm, EDT. Please come to www.wondir.org during that hour and help us test the system. Feel free to ask questions. And even more important, please jump in and answer a question or two if you see anything on the ticker that you think you can be helpful with. If you register, and answer a question, you will be eligible to win prizes in the weekly drawing. Wondir is a free site run by a nonprofit organization. Our goal is to have a big open place where people can ask and answer questions easily. You don't even have to register to use it.. See Also: Wondir Receives NSF Grant (9/10/2002) See Also: What's Wondir All About? See Also: Learn More About Wondir via this SearchDay Article See Also:
Resources, Reports, Tools, and Full-Text Documents (4 Items) Public Health Source: Department of the Parliamentary Library, Parliament of Australia Full-Text Report, The Economic Costs of Infectious Diseases Also available, pdf. -- Disabilities--United States--Statistics Source: U.S. Census New, Full-Text Report, Disability Status 2000 -- Legal Industry--Patents--United States--Lists & Rankings Source: IP Law & Business New, Top Patent Practices -- Baby Names--United States--Lists & Rankings Source: Social Security Administration Most Popular Baby Names in the U.S., 2002 See Also, Older Lists and Various Data Sorts are Also Available Wednesday, May 14, 2003
Search Engines Source: VNU Net "Search engines make us dumb" Quite a strong headline. Here's the lead of this tech magazine column, They [search engines] may add huge value in facilitating rapid and effective retrieval of known information, but to put our faith in search engines ultimately disempowers us. A few quick comments. Putting faith in any one resource is probably not a good idea. However, because of the popularity of web engines (one in particular) do this for many people becuase they always deliver something. That said, just which search engine or type of online information is the author talking about? I think he is referring to what we often call "open web" engines like Google, AllTheWeb, Teoma. In my mind the problem is not with the actual web searching technology. Yes, free-text searching will always have have some issues as compared to a formatted database but web searching is getting better all of the time. The problem might be due to the data itself and a lack of knowledge about alternatives. It's hard to make generalizations about open web data. Some of it is useful, timely, authoritative, and just what's needed to effectively answer a query. But, a great deal of content is out of date, inaccurate, incorrect. Since open web engines are so popular (does anything else exist?) they might cause a searcher to spend time looking for an answer that they could get it elsewhere (yes, sometimes from a book) in a matter of minutes. How much time are people wasting because they're searching in the wrong place? What does it boil down to? 1) Lack of knowledge about alternatives, both electronic, print, and human (ask a librarian? give me a break). If people don't know that a resource is available how can they even consider using it? 2) Laziness. So what else is new? When it comes to finding an answer a web engine will deliver something. It might be the right "something" but it might also be a waste of time. Of course, NO resource is perfect. Incorrect data can appear in anywhere. No wonder why info quality skills are so crucial these days. This is why knowledge about variety of resources and strategies is crucial. Here's a favorite quote: From the NY Times (9/2/01): ''People think with the Internet, you push a button and get an answer,'' says Marcia Osofsky, a librarian at the New York Public Library telephone reference desk. Do some people think that library resources (electronic and print) and the librarian are obsolete because of web engines? Unfortunately, I'm beginning to think so. 3) Search intimidation. Afraid and not willing to try a resource because they think it's difficult to access and to use. Searching in many databases is improving. For example, ProQuest offers four interface options. 4) Forgetting that information can cost money. Of course, this also goes back to point number two, since in many cases, a library can assist in providing access to some fee-based material for little or no cost out of the searcher's pocket. 5) The incorrect belief that just about all material has been digitized. So, while Thomas Mann's expression, the "principle of least effort" might be more evident today than ever before, this is not the only problem. We are building better search tools but just building them doesn't make people use them. 6) Information resources (hi and low tech) are not like a field of dreams. Building "it" does not guarantee that they will come. Like I've said many times, it's about marketing and education. If we don't promote the services, tools (why to use them), and most importantly the skills we offer (how to search, formulating a query, which resources to use, judging quality), it's not the researcher's fault/problem/concern for not using them. Yes, it would be wonderful if people sought this stuff out, but most don't. Vendors of database and print products also must also assist in the effort. Thanks to Jill O. at NFAIS for the new tip.
Information Industry--xrefer xrefer to Close Showcase Site, Fee-Based Services Remain One of the most useful web "freebies", the xrefer Showcase will go offline on June 17th. xrefer will continue to maket and develop the xreferplus subscription product for libraries. xrefer Managing Director, Adam Hodgkins, provides a list of reasons why the company is shutting down the showcase. They include: * The existing xrefer showcase service is becoming an increasingly inaccurate demonstration of xrefer's content and technology. * Another major reason for discontinuing the free showcase site is that the licence to include reference works published by Oxford University Press (OUP) expires in June, and has not been renewed. * Finally, the showcase site was originally supported by advertising revenue and we all know what a difficult (almost non-existent) business that has become. xreferplus offers searchable full-text access to over 130 reference books from a variety of well-known publishers. Although the product is not available for a single person to subscribe to, xrefer is offering a 30 day trial (free) to both individuals and institutions. It will be interesting to see if the company will make individual subscriptions available. ebrary announced this type of service a couple of days ago.
Professional Reading Shelf Open Archives Initiative Source: The Technology Source All About the Open Archives Initiative Web Site Stephen Downes provides an overview of the OAI web site. From the article, Readers will not be dazzled by glitzy graphics as they enter the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) Web site, but its potential impact on learning is greater than that of most glossy online brochures. As stated on the site, the Initiative "develops and promotes interoperability standards that aim to facilitate the efficient dissemination of content." In other words, it details a mechanism that can be used by colleges or individual professors to share their work freely over the Internet.
Public Records Office--United Kingdom PRO-Online Service Relaunched as DocumentsOnline From the site, DocumentsOnline (formerly PRO-Online) allows you online access to the Public Record Office's collection of digitised public records, including both academic and genealogical sources. Searching the index is free, and it costs £3 to download a digital image of a document. We have completed the first phase of enhancements and we will continue to improve the website over the next few months. A new advanced search interface is also available. DocumentsOnline uses Verity search technology.
Library URLS Source: Seattle Times "Web site too close to library's for comfort" Another story about how guessing/assuming a url is not always a good idea. The article discusses how KCLS(dot)Com is not the King County Library System. A similar story from about 2 weeks ago discussed how the Monroe County Library System in Indiana is having a similar problem. O.K. now a minor point. The article makes it seem that the library web site and catalog is just about telling you if a book is available. Yes it does this but it also provides a gateway to so much more. Thanks to S.C. for the news tip.
Web Search Source: NSF "Researchers Develop Techniques for Computing Google-Style Web Rankings Up to Five Times Faster" This news release discusses a paper that will be delivered at the WWW2003 Conference next week in Budapest. Btw, if you're interested in taking a look at a selection of other conference papers, check this post on ResourceShelfPLUS. Many of the papers are available in full-text format.
Information Industry The Codies: SIIA Announces Winners of Industry Awards The awards (called Codies) are given by the Software & Information Industry Association, a major trade association. Here are the winners in a few categories. Entopia Knowledge Locator, Entopia Best Search Engine Factiva Best Online Business News or Information Service Best Online Professional Financial Information Service. Lexis Nexis and Westlaw Best Online Legal or Tax Information Service |
