Quality Resources, Found for You
Welcome to ResourceShelf, where dedicated librarians and researchers share the results of their directed (and occasionally quirky) web searches for resources and information.
ResourceShelf is updated daily by an editorial team headed by Gary Price and Shirl Kennedy. Browse our postings, subscribe to our weekly newsletter, and capture RSS feeds to add ResourceShelf to your own reference collection.
Also check out DocuTicker, a compendium of 'grey literature' (reports published by government agencies, think tanks, research institutes and other public interest groups) available for free on the web.
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December 2nd, 2009
An impressive collection of events that took place on various days in history. Using drop-down menus you can select a day and month. The database focuses on the years, 1950-2005. You can also browse by years, by themes, and by witness accounts.
Another section available:
World War II – 1939 to 1945
Britain and France joined the war on 3 September 1939. A compilation of key stories as they broke throughout the war.
More History Resources from the BBC
Including the interactive British History Timeline.
Posted in Databases, Directories, and Guides, History, Resources | No Comments »
December 2nd, 2009
From the Article:
Books are having their iPod moment this holiday season. But buyer beware: It could also turn out to be an eight-track moment
[Snip]
“If you have the disposable income and love technology—not books—you should get a dedicated e-reader,” says Bob LiVolsi, the founder of BooksOnBoard, the largest independent e-book store. But other people might be better-off repurposing an old laptop or spending $300 on a cheap laptop known as a netbook to use for reading. “It will give you a lot more functionality, and better leverages the family income,” he says.
[Snip]
There’s also more selection of books for the devices, with most popular publishers now selling e-books. Also, library-scanning efforts by Google Inc. is producing more than a million out-of-copyright books like “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” that people can download free. There are only a few holdouts against e-books, including “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling.
Source: Wall Street Journal
See Also: We’re sad to say (but it’s not unexpected) that the author chose not to mention any of the other organizations digitizing and or supplying (primarily free) books like The Internet Archive, Project Gutenberg, and many of the suppliers at The World Public Library.
Posted in Databases, Directories, and Guides, E-books, Information Industry | No Comments »
December 2nd, 2009
From the Announcement:
…DailyLit is now 100% free. Starting now, any book, story or series featured on DailyLit is being made available for free.
DailyLit has always been about responding to our readers – any feature we’ve launched or change we’ve made has been in response to readers’ requests. We’re now listening to our readers once again, and it’s clear that they most appreciate the wonderful books, stories and installments available for free.
DailyLit depends on the support of sponsors to continue to offer high quality books and stories for free. We’re thankful for such sponsors as HarperStudio and Random House as well as Diane Von Furstenberg (who’s giving the gift of her favorite book, free through January).
Excerpts are delivered by mail or RSS. Some public domain titles are available in full text. You select the day(s) and time(s) you want to receive them. Read on a computer or mobile device (iPhone, Blackberry, etc.)
According to PW, the service started in 2005 and charged about $5.00.
DailyLit FAQ.
Posted in Information Industry, Print Publications | No Comments »
December 2nd, 2009
From the Interview:
The Toronto-based Shortcovers, owned by Indigo Books & Music, Inc., which launched in February and allows users to download e-books on to a variety of smartphones and mobile devices. Mark Medley sat down with Michael Serbinis, president of Shortcovers, to talk about Kindle, and the future of books. “This experience of e-reading is definitely catching on,” Serbinis says, “and it’s catching on faster than we thought.”
Here’s one exchange:
Q. There’s a mind set that if it’s online, it’s free. Do you worry that if you offer a book for free off the bat that consumers then won’t want to make the jump to $10, and that prices will have to come down?
A. At least what we’ve seen so far is that people who do have that first good free experience with Pride and Prejudice or some other public domain title, those that become purchasers purchase a lot … I think pricing is a whole topic of discussion that is not figured out. Publishers are spending a lot of time on it. We’re learning a lot. … What we’ve seen is that people who do have a good first-time experience have no problem buying, and buying again.
Source: Canwest News Service / Vancouver Sun
Posted in E-books, Information Industry | No Comments »
December 2nd, 2009
From the Announcement:
While Dan Brown’s “The Lost Symbol” topped the list again in both the adult fiction audiobook and eBook categories, Nora Roberts’ “Bed of Roses” and Kathryn Stockett’s “The Help” made their first appearances in the top ten on the same lists. New audiobooks by David Baldacci and Malcolm Gladwell, along with the “Superfreakonomics” audiobook and eBook, surged onto the lists.
The ‘Most Downloaded Books from the Library’ lists are organized by subject and format, and compiled based on activity at more than 9,000 libraries in the OverDrive global network. Complete lists [The Top 10] for audiobooks and eBooks in adult fiction, adult nonfiction, juvenile fiction, and juvenile nonfiction.
Download Audiobooks – Adult Fiction
1. The Lost Symbol, by Dan Brown (Books on Tape)
Download Audiobooks – Adult Nonfiction
1. Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell (Hachette Audio)
Download Audiobooks – Juvenile Fiction
1. Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer (Listening Library)
Download Audiobooks – Juvenile Nonfiction
1. Night, by Elie Wiesel (Audio Bookshelf, LLC)
Download eBooks – Adult Fiction
1. The Lost Symbol, by Dan Brown (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group)
Download eBooks – Adult Nonfiction
1. Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell (Little, Brown and Company)
Download eBooks – Juvenile Fiction
1. New Moon, by Stephenie Meyer (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
Download eBooks – Juvenile Nonfiction
1. Three Cups of Tea, by Greg Mortenson (Penguin USA, Inc.)
Source: OverDrive
Hat Tip: TeleRead
Posted in E-books, Lists and Rankings | No Comments »
December 1st, 2009
From the Web Site:
This collection includes several thousand [approx. 5000] of articles and books on the information society, in various languages, freely available for download. More content will be added to the database in the coming months.
Search by words in title, author, and/or language.
From the Edelstein Center for Social Research.
Source: OANet/Peter Suber
Posted in Access to Information, Databases, Directories, and Guides, Information Industry, Information Policy | No Comments »
December 1st, 2009
From the Article:
Other companies, including technology giant Hewlett-Packard Co., are discussing ways to build their first Web sites specifically for wireless users. “We definitely have work to do to get our Web site mobile friendly,” said Lois Townsend, H-P’s director of community. “We know our customers want it.”
H-P has a financial incentive to expand its community strategy. The forums, which often address problems before a customer has to call the service line, have saved millions of dollars in deflected calls, Ms. Townsend said.
The move to mobile isn’t without challenges. Companies have to decide whether to create a barebones site accessible by even the most basic handset, or opt for a flashier application accessible by select smart phones. Different phones, screen sizes and platforms create headaches for site designers.
[Snap]
The cellphone affords the opportunity to be more interactive with customers. That’s where companies such as Lithium Technologies Inc. come in. The Emeryville, Calif., company’s software runs the social components of many traditional Web sites, including those of H-P, AT&T Inc., and Best Buy Co.
Lithium wants to take those forums, blogs and other social-networking elements to cellphones with a service it plans to roll out next year. Beyond its own social-networking tools, the platform will draw in related feeds from services such as Facebook and Twitter.
“A lot of these companies don’t have a mobile site, and right away, they’ll have a lot of content,” said Philip Soffer, Lithium’s vice president of product marketing. “Because the community is active and based on addictive behavior, it’s the kind of thing that works well on mobile phones.”
Source: Wall Street Journal
Posted in Wireless Web and Search | No Comments »
December 1st, 2009
We’re sad to report (but very happy for Roddy) that this is the final issue of the Internet Resources Newsletter that has served as a guide and inspiration to the ResourceShelf team. We wish Roddy all of the best on his early retirement.
Access Issue, 178 (December, 2009) of the Internet Resources Newsletter
If the newsletter were not enough, here’s a portion of Roddy’s “goodbye letter” where he mentions some of the other projects he has been a part of. Impressive!
Over the years, I’ve been involved in various, mostly externally-funded, projects and services, including EEVL, EMC, Pinakes, SAD1, SAD2, the Subject Portal Project, Engineering Portal, FAILTE, EEVL [pronounced Evil] Xtra, PerX, TechXtra, DPIE1, ticTOCs, and Gold Dust. I’m sure that being involved with the Internet Resources Newsletter helped my role in these projects. Looking back, although several of the projects produced services which have been well-used.
Btw, if you’ve never tried TicTocs (Tables-of-Contents via RSS) or TechXtra and TechJournalContents they’re worth a look and are also excellent illustrations of what the “infopreneurial” info pro is capable of.
TechXtra is a free service which can help you find articles, books, the best websites, the latest industry news, job announcements, technical reports, technical data, full text eprints, the latest research, thesis & dissertations, teaching and learning resources and more, in engineering, mathematics and computing.
We wish Roddy all the best. You’ve been a good friend, role model and we look forward to hearing from you in the future.
Posted in Databases, Directories, and Guides, Resources, Technology and Internet | No Comments »
December 1st, 2009
From the Blog Post:
The university announced Tuesday that it will use an automated system to digitize rare Middle Eastern texts from its own library and from that of Georgetown University. Library staffers will digitize hundreds of works over the next two years, and when the project is completed, they will examine the associated costs. They hope to be able to tell other libraries which method of digitization is more affordable.
Digitizing a book can involve disbinding it or having a human turn its pages. But at George Washington, a machine in the institution’s Melvin Gelman Library uses a black plastic arm to turn a page, pause as two cameras take pictures of both open pages, and then turn the page again. Air circulates through the arm of the machine, creating a gentle vacuum that can attract a page and guide it from the right side of the book to the left.
The book digitization technology comes from Kirtas Technologies.
Source: Wired Campus (Chronicle of Higher Education)
Posted in Digitization Projects | No Comments »
December 1st, 2009
From the Article:
As the backbone of the UK’s information infrastructure, libraries have to work hard to keep pace with the rapid technology-driven changes in how users search for and use information. It is this tradition that has spawned the virtual libraries possessed by major institutions. But the virtual library can be more than just a wall-less, digital or even invisible entity.
Tracy Kent, digital assets librarian at the University of Birmingham, said: “It is a misnomer to call them invisible libraries, because libraries and their collections of data are more visible to info pros now than they have ever been. With the help of technology, hitherto hidden and dormant content has resurfaced. It raises the profile and rediscovers older material.”
[Snip]
“Remember, libraries are well-established institutions for rare collections and so contain huge amounts of physical content that needs to be scanned, tagged and saved in virtual form to help increase their visibility and accessibility,” Kent added. “We are trying to change working practices and produce content in forms that can be repurposed and converted into preferable formats.” She believes information providers must adopt open access publishing methods and make their works Google-indexable to give users the easy and complete access to data they now demand.
But this goal is not without challenges. Kent said two of the biggest challenges for virtual libraries are copyright and ensuring they have resources in place that are compatible with user technologies and tools. Cost is also a huge deterrent to all libraries moving towards a virtual service. Kent said that digitising all the physical works the library had acquired over the past five years would cost around £13m. The question naturally arises whether digitisation and IT projects should be a library’s sole responsibility or whether the state should fund them.
Source: IWR
Posted in Information Industry, Libraries and Librarianship | No Comments »
December 1st, 2009
From the Intute Blog:
Intute (from the UK), the incredibly useful directory of high-quality web sites and so much more is online with the final edition of their mobile Internet Detective.
What is the Internet Detective?
The Intute Internet Detective is already positioned as a popular, well respected online tutorial, helping users to assess the academic validity of websites. This project intends to build on the existing service by extending its reach to include mobile users, who, as the mobile Internet has developed, have come to expect higher standards when browsing on their handsets. The project will deliver a user friendly mobile site that is fast and inexpensive to load, providing the right content, presented in the right order and with an adapted layout.
You can access the “Mobile” Detective here.
+ Andrew Pries – University of Manchester
+ Diana Massam – University of Manchester
+ Kate Morrison – External
++ Mobilising the Internet Detective
++ Rapid Innovation in Development
++ Students and the Mobile Internet
Source: Intute Blog
See Also: The Virtual Training Suite
Another Intute Project That’s Home to Numerous Web-Based Tutorials to Assist Users with their Internet-based Research
Posted in Libraries and Librarianship, Reference Tools, Resources, Resources for Educators, Technology and Internet, Web Search | No Comments »
December 1st, 2009
OK, it’s here. The 2009 Google Zeitgeist containing a ton of lists and related info from the team in Mountain View, CA.
This Google Blog Post does a nice job of summarizing what you’ll find. Unlike other lists, the 2009 Google Zeitgeist is compiled on a global scale.
So what has captivated the minds of searchers around the world this year? As millions of fans said goodbye to the King of Pop, Michael Jackson led the list of our top 10 fastest rising queries across the globe. And a new star was born, too — quirky pop singer Lady Gaga became a search sensation the world over. In addition to appearing on many regional fastest-rising search term lists, from the Czech Republic to Switzerland and Kenya to the United Kingdom, Lady Gaga also landed in the #9 spot on the global fastest rising list.
This year’s Zeitgeist also confirms that the social web is alive and well. In a sweeping confirmation of the web’s ability to connect us, both Facebook and the Spanish social-networking site Tuenti appeared on the fastest rising searches at #2 and #3 respectively. Twitter also made our global list for the first time at #5 — undoubtedly propelled by celebrity tweeters from Ashton Kutcher to Miley Cyrus.
Here’s the Actual Zeitgeist Package
Here’s some of what you’ll find:
+ Fastest Rising Search (Michael Jackson)
+ Fastest Falling Search (Beijing 2008)
+ U.S. Fastest Rising Searches by Quarter (Swine Flu #1)
+ Fastest Rising/Falling Searches on Google.com; Google News; Google Images; Google Maps; Google Mobile
+ “In the News Categories” like the All Eyes on the Senate, Keeping it Green, Bailout Nation, and More
+ That’s Entertaining (Entertainment-Related Searches)
+ Around the Home
+ Sports
+ City by City (Top Searches by U.S. City)
+ Click “More Regions” to Access Lists for Many Countries
Source: Google
Posted in Lists and Rankings, Web Search, Year End Wrap-Ups | No Comments »
December 1st, 2009
We just posted about ACRL and Stanford’s HighWire Press (HP) announcing a partnership where HP will host several ACRL publications.
SInce we’re talking HighWire Press (see the post below this one) it’s also worth mentioning that their web site as a new look and feel. Very nicely done, in our view.
HighWire press now hosts nearly 1300 scholarly publications.
From the Announcement (2 pages; PDF):
+ For researchers, all the great search, browse and refinement tools are still available, only now with a condensed `onebox’ search option and summary of
tools.
+ For librarians, the portal continues to offer cross publisher account administration tools, onestop COUNTER3compliant usage reports, downloadable A to Z lists of all HighWirehosted publications and useful information about the publications HighWire hosts. Only now, the site is more cleanly organized into relevant sections.
·
+ For publishers, the new portal offers more indepth information on who HighWire is, highlighting its cutting edge technology, unique community, and outstanding service. A password protected area offers publishers currently hosted by HighWire an insider’s section, including the HighWire Publishers’ Forum, where trends and topics of the day are discussed, access to HighWire Academy training classes, archived publishers’ meeting presentations, as well as benchmarking and other crosspublisher studies and tools.
See Also: Lists of Publications and Other Useful Lists:
+ Free full-text content
+ FREE access to developing economies
+ Pay-per-view access
+ List of publications with RSS feeds
+ Publication-specific questions:
(Look up URL, ISSN, frequency, frequency of publications, DOI prefix numbers, subscription links, and much more)
+ Outside the US and Canada
(List of publications with international mirror sites for faster response time.)
Posted in Scholarly Publishing | No Comments »
December 1st, 2009
From the Announcement:
ACRL is pleased to announce a new partnership with HighWire Press, a division of the Stanford University Libraries, to provide online hosting of College & Research Libraries (C&RL), College & Research Libraries News (C&RL News), and RBM: A Journal of Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Cultural Heritage. Choice Reviews Online, the online product of ACRL’s Middletown, CT based publishing unit, Choice, will also migrate to HighWire.
The move of ACRL’s publications from the association Website to the HighWire platform will provide a number of benefits including improved search capabilities both within and across publications, increased Web 2.0 functionality, and online access for individual and institutional non-member subscribers. The HighWire platform will also provide a richer user experience for Choice Reviews Online subscribers.
C&RL, C&RL News and RBM will launch on HighWire by the end of 2009 and Choice Reviews Online in 2010. Additional information, including access instructions, will be forthcoming.
Source: ACRL Insider
Posted in Libraries and Librarianship, Scholarly Publishing | No Comments »
December 1st, 2009
We thought there would be a few lists everyday for a couple of weeks. Not, all of them in the span of 24 hours. (-:
This time it’s AOL’s turn with lists for many categories. Elisabeth Osmeloski has a rundown of the Top 10 list members in each category.
What follows here is a list of the categories along with who/what made number one. This Search Engine Land page has a complete set of lists and winners.
+ Top searched celebrities for 2009
1. Michael Jackson
+ AOL’s top searched news stories for 2009
1. Barack Obama
+ AOL’s top searched movies for 2009
1. Twilight
+ AOL’s top searched for sporting events in 2009
1. March Madness
+ AOL’s top searched mobile devices for 2009
1. iPhone
+ AOL’s top searched for coupons in 2009
1. dtv coupons
+ AOL’s top “What Is… “ questions of 2009
1. What is Twitter
+ AOL’s top searched television shows for 2009
1. American Idol
+ AOL’s most searched for vacation destinations for 2009
1. Disney Vacations
+ AOL’s 10 searched for health conditions in 2009
1. Swine Flu
+ AOL’s top searched car brands for 2009
1. Toyota
Source: AOL (via Search Engine Land)
Posted in Lists and Rankings, Year End Wrap-Ups | No Comments »
December 1st, 2009
During the past few weeks, we’ve mentioned on several occasions the ability to view and read full text Wall Street Journal content by finding the article on the WSJ site and then searching for it using Google News. In less than a second, the full text of the article would appear. This is all because of Google’s “First Click Free (FCF)” policy.
Today, it was announced and Greg Sterling reports that some changes have to the FCF.
Google is modifying the FCF approach, as the Webmaster Central Blog explains:
As most users are generally happy to be able to access just a few pages from these premium content providers, we’ve decided to allow publishers to limit the number of accesses under the First Click Free policy to [our emphasis] five free accesses per user each day. This change applies to both Google News publishers as well as websites indexed in Google’s Web Search. We hope that this encourages even more publishers to open up more content to users around the world!
See Also: Google and Paid Content
Source: Search Engine Land
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
December 1st, 2009
From the Summary:
This report provides a record of the collaboration discussions between seven institutions and includes the resulting interactions, methodology, content and recommendations. The discussions were facilitated by OCLC Research Program Officers Günter Waibel and Dennis Massie. Participants in this effort agreed that the record of these interactions might be useful to other libraries that are striving to collaborate. Participating libraries, all RLG Partnership institutions, included Brooklyn Museum Library, Columbia University Libraries, Frick Art Reference Library, Metropolitan Museum of Art Thomas J. Watson Library, Museum of Modern Art Library, New York Public Library and New York University Libraries.
Access the Complete Report (49 pages; PDF)
Source: OCLC Research
Posted in Information Industry, Libraries and Librarianship | No Comments »
December 1st, 2009
Two free tools are mentioned in this overview article: Both are more than worthy of your time and attention.
1) Zotero (a ResourceShelf favorite)
…an open-source program first launched in 2006, automatically creates in-paper citations, footnotes, and a bibliography at the end of a research paper–a mistake-prone process that usually adds hours to a college project.
[Snip]
Reference management software has been available for more than 20 years, but those programs often were pricey and required IT know-how, whereas tools such as Zotero and iCyte–a program that lets users save and share online research material in the virtual “cloud”–are free and made for a broader web-using audience.
2) iCyte
iCyte, a reference tool that requires customers to use Internet Explorer or Firefox 3, allows users to save web pages as they appear, even if the web site or specific page of origin is altered or deleted. iCyte saves the web link and the image of the page itself.
Source: eSchool News
See Also: Mendeley
Another research management tool. It’s also free.
+ Share Papers
+ Cite and Create Bibliographies
+ Search and Annotate PDF’s
+ Sync across PC’s (Access from any Computer with a Free Account)
+ Available for Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux.
Posted in Software and Web-Based Applications | No Comments »
December 1st, 2009
From the Announcement:
119 years of global business and financial news from the Financial Times will be available through a unique digital archive. Gale, part of Cengage Learning, is launching the Financial Times Historical Archive 1888-2006, offering researchers and historians online access to the complete run of the world’s most authoritative daily business newspaper, from its first issue in 1888 to the end of 2006, with additional annual updates…Approximately 790,000 fully searchable pages, including every article, advertisement and market listing, are now viewable individually and in the context of the full page and issue on the day they were published. Available as a subscription or one-off purchase to all academic, public and government libraries, the archive has been created from existing microfilm master copies and each item has been categorised by subject or topic to allow fast retrieval and review of relevant articles.
Source; Gale
See Also: Financial Times puts archive online (via The Guardian)
Posted in Databases, Directories, and Guides, History, Information Industry, Preservation/Conservation | No Comments »
