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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March 17th, 2010
From the Article:
Back in 2000, the Queens County Clerk’s office began a project to make digital images of selected records. When the enormous advantages over microfiche or microfilm became apparent, the office began imaging all of its records, not just judicial Orders and Judgments.
“At first I resisted the idea,” [Queens County Clerk Gloria] D’Amico admitted at the meeting, “but I’m glad you talked me into it,” she added, nodding in the direction of her staff.
It turns out that Queens is within striking distance of “digitizing” the last of its archived paper records before the existing contract expires, which will leave the other four counties to get help with their archives.
Currently, the county staffs are handling the new paperwork as it comes in – a mind boggling 20 million images a year in Queens alone.
Source: Queens Courier
Posted in Databases, Directories, and Guides, Digitization Projects, Legal | No Comments »
March 17th, 2010
From the NLM Technical Bulletin:
Searchers will soon be able can now tailor the display of PubMed search results using My NCBI. This will be a welcome change for those who prefer to see search results in the Abstract format, to view more than 20 citations per page, or to sort the order of results. In addition, the number of PubMed filters you can select has been expanded from 5 to 15.
The remainder of the page includes examples of how to customize results along with screenshots.
Source: National Library of Medicine
Posted in Databases, Directories, and Guides | No Comments »
March 17th, 2010
Happy 15th Birthday to the IPL Today!!! Congratulations!!!
Although the focus is on Flickr (as it’s “the best known” photo service) this new Internet Public Library Guide (#15) contains info about:
+ About Image Sharing (Including Several Flickr Alternatives)
+ How Flickr Works & Best Practices
+ Best Practices from ALA, Stony Brook University Health Services Library, Smithsonian Libraries, and the National Library of Scotland
+ Internet Public Library Fickr Examples
+ Hands On Activities
+ Webliography of Materials re: Flickr
+ Option to Participate in a Conference
Overall, another informative, easy to use guide from the IPL.
Source: Internet Public Library
Posted in Databases, Directories, and Guides, Libraries and Librarianship | No Comments »
March 17th, 2010
Highlights From an Electronic Frontier Foundation Post:
EFF has posted documents shedding light on how law enforcement agencies use social networking sites to gather information in investigations. The records, obtained from the Internal Revenue Service and Department of Justice Criminal Division, are the first in a series of documents that will be released through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) case that EFF filed with the help of the UC Berkeley Samuelson Clinic.
One of the most interesting files is a 2009 training course (PDF) that describes how IRS employees may use various Internet tools — including social networking sites and Google Street View — to investigate taxpayers.
The IRS should be commended for its detailed training that clearly prohibits employees from using deception or fake social networking accounts to obtain information…
Also included in this EFF post are slides about a U.S. Dept. of Justice presentation re: social media.
The Justice Department released a presentation entitled “Obtaining and Using Evidence from Social Networking Sites.” (PDF) The slides, which were prepared by two lawyers from the agency’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section, detail several social media companies’ data retention practices and responses to law enforcement requests. The presentation notes that Facebook was “often cooperative with emergency requests” while complaining about Twitter’s short data retention policies and refusal to preserve data without legal process. The presentation also touches on use of social media for undercover operations.
The EFF plans to gain access to more materials and will post them on this page.
Access the Complete Post
Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
Posted in Legal, Privacy, Social Media | No Comments »
March 17th, 2010
Yesterday, ALA President Camila Alire shared a few comments about the ALA’s position on the National Brodband Plan via the District Dispatch. Earlier in the day, ResourceShelf put together direct links to several key documents.
Today, the District Dispatch (ALA’s Washington blog) published an extended post with ALA positions on various Broadband Plan issues.
These are just a few passages we thought were noteworthy. So, make sure to read the entire post.
After conducting its initial analysis of the Federal Communications Commission’s(FCC) National Broadband Plan, the American Library Association (ALA) supports several initiatives suggested in the plan, such as the National Digital Literacy Program and the modernization of the E-rate Program.
“Other proposals, including the Connect America Fund, Civic Engagement, and Training Teachers in Digital Literacy, are good concepts but call for additional measures to ensure the needs of all Americans – including vulnerable populations – are met,” said Dr. Alan S. Inouye, director of ALA’s Office for Information Technology Policy (OITP).
National Digital Literacy Program
ALA enthusiastically supports the launch of this Program. Providing individuals with the guidance and training necessary to search, locate, obtain, and use all forms of information resources is central to the mission of libraries.
Access the Remainder of this Post After a Click
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Libraries and Librarianship, Technology and Internet | No Comments »
March 17th, 2010
Here’s some material (including interviews) that will likely be of interest to many people including patrons,students, faculty (teacher/professors), “fans” of the writer, and others. Access to all of the material is free.
The content begins here with a text introduction.
What is the secret to great writing? How do writers, both creative and non-creative, organize and convey their thoughts? How do they actually work? Hilton Obenzinger, Associate Director of Stanford’s Hume Writing Center for Honors and Advanced Writing is in a better position than most to answer these questions.
For the past eight years, Obenzinger has been coordinating the “How I Write” speaker series. Each quarter Obenzinger invites someone who writes, including all types of experienced writers in all sorts of genres and forms, to share their writing style, habits, pleasures and pains with an audience. Over the years, Obenzinger has heard it all, from a scientist who quotes Shakespeare in research articles to a novelist who only writes while wearing her favorite cowboy hat. As peculiar as some of these quirks may sound, Obenzinger has discovered that there are all kinds of ways to write, and he shares this mantra with the undergraduates who turn to him for assistance when tackling, what for many is their first long-form writing project, their honors theses.
In addition to fiction writers, writers from a wide range of fields, including political science, engineering, poetry and human biology have taken part in “How I Write” events. Past guests have included Stanford President John Hennessey, English professor and director of American Studies Shelley Fisher Fishkin and political science professor Terry Karl. Other speakers have included scientists such as Richard Zare and computer scientist Eric Roberts
Audio or video of about 20 presentations are available (free) via the Stanford Tunes site that is accessible here.
Source: Stanford Knowledgebase / Inside the Humanities
Posted in Education, Wireless Web and Search | No Comments »
March 17th, 2010
1) Nature Middle East Launches
The new website from Nature Publishing Group (NPG) showcases scientific and medical research from the Arabic-speaking Middle East region and is continuously updated with articles in English and Arabic. The King Abdullah International Medical Research Center (KAIMRC), at King Saud Bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences (KSAU-HS), Saudi Arabia, is sponsoring Nature Middle East.
Nature Middle East features news, features, and short ‘Research Highlights’. Written by the Nature Middle East editorial team, ‘Research Highlights’ are summaries of interesting, recently-published papers, authored by researchers based in the Middle East region, from across the scientific and medical literature. Local job listings are provided by NatureJobs, and event listings by Nature Events. A blog, House of Wisdom, and a forum on Nature Network enable the community to connect, network and exchange information and ideas.
2) Introducing Nature.com Regions
Regional pages are now available on nature.com. Nature Publishing Group (NPG) today introduces nature.com regions (www.nature.com/regions). Nature.com regions pages provide a regularly updated portal for researchers, students, entrepreneurs, and investors who are interested in a specific country or region.
Nature.com regions launches with pages for: Europe, France, Germany, Iran, Israel and Italy. Additional nature.com regions pages are planned, and may range from a single city to a multinational area.
Each page brings together relevant high-quality research, news, opinion, and business content from the Nature family of journals, Scientific American, and other NPG resources. Local job listings from NatureJobs, event listings by Nature Events, and local service provider information are all available. Site visitors may also find content in French, German, and Italian provided by local Scientific American partners in respective countries.
3) Nature Publishing Group Details 2011 Open Access Pricing Policy
Source: NPG
Plenty of the details and numbers.
Posted in Information Industry, Scholarly Publishing | No Comments »
March 17th, 2010
The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) invites you to help invent the future of museums and libraries through your participation in UpNext: The Future of Museums and Libraries Wiki http://imlsupnext.wikispaces.com/.
…individuals inside and outside of museums, libraries, and related fields can discuss, dissect, expand, and inform the issues outlined in the Future of Museums and Libraries: A Discussion Guide http://www.imls.gov/pdf/DiscussionGuide.pdf. IMLS will use the knowledge shared in the wiki to help shape the agency’s strategic plan, research directions, publications, convenings, and grant making.
Two new themes launch today on the wiki and will be featured for wiki discussion from March 17th- March 30th.
Theme #3, Museums and Libraries as the “Third Place” will be led by Discussion Leader Susan Hildreth, City Librarian, Seattle Public Library. This theme discusses museums and libraries as gathering spaces for social interaction and engagement and invites wiki members to imagine what the “third place” will look like in the future and how museums and libraries can enhance their positions as forces for civic engagement and social cohesion.
Theme #4, Technology & Policy Development, will be led by Discussion Leader, John Wilkin, Associate University Librarian for Library Information Technology (LIT), University of Michigan, Executive Director of HathiTrust. This theme discusses how rapid advances in technology have a profound effect on the ways in which people access and use information. It invites wiki members to identify the role of museums and libraries in policy developments for intellectual property, digitization, preservation, and content access.
The Complete Schedule of Wiki Themes and Eiscussion Leaders Is Below:
The First Two Discussions (March 3-16)
1. Changing Definitions & Roles of Museums and Libraries
Martín Gómez, City Librarian, Los Angeles Public Library
2. Shifts in Power & Authority
Cassie Chinn, Deputy Executive Director, Wing Luke Asian Museum
March 31-April 13
5. 21st Century Learning & Information Use
Tom Scheinfeldt, Managing Director for Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, OMEKA Project Director
6. New Models & Structures for Collaboration
Mark Wright, Director of Partnerships, National Children’s Museum
The Remainder of the Listings After a Click Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Info Management and Retrieval, Libraries and Librarianship, Museums & Online Exhibits, Technology and Internet | No Comments »
March 17th, 2010
From the Announcement:
Overdrive has created a program named LEAP (Library eBook Accessibility Program) and it’s now up and running at the Cleveland Public Library. OverDrive is fully funding this program and offering LEAP to your qualifying patrons at no cost to the library and at no cost to your patrons
If a patron of your library has a print or visual disability, they will be eligible for a LEAP account at Bookshare.org. Bookshare has established this program solely for qualified patrons of U.S. public libraries that offer eBooks from OverDrive. LEAP account patrons will be able to download and read up to 20 accessible eBooks each month. The Bookshare national catalog of titles is growing each month with thousands of popular titles available, though it should be noted that it is not the identical collection of eBooks that OverDrive provides to your library.
Source: OverDrive.
Posted in E-books, Information Industry | No Comments »
March 17th, 2010
he Colleen Here are a few couple of digitized historic documents from the LC collection you might want to visit. Happt St Pat’s dday@@@
1. Rinnce na h-Éireann: a Simplified work on the performance of the dances of Ireland
CLICK the BOOK COVER to ACCESS THE FULL TEXT
New York: The Gaelic League of the State of New York, c1907.
First published in 1902, the work was suggested by a member of the New York Philo-Celtic Society. The discusion includes music, steps, and instructions for reels, “High Caul Cap,” four-hand jig, and “Rinnce Fada.
2. The Girl I Left in Killarney [sheet music]
by Willian Walters and JA Tupper
Date Issued 1896
To View the Sheet Music, the “Sheet Music Views Box” On the Left Side of the Page Offers Several Options
The Irish Americans [sheet music]
by George M. Cohan
Date Issued: 1905
To View the Sheet Music, the “Sheet Music Views Box” On the Left Side of the Page Offers Several Options
See Also: The LC Photstream on Flickr is collecting and posting images of Ireland today and yesterday. You can review the entire collection or take a look at some of the images organized into five categories. This project comes from the Prints and Photographs Division and blogged by Matt Raymond.
Source: In the Music: Performing Arts Blog (Library of Congress)
Posted in Arts and Humanities, History, Preservation/Conservation | No Comments »
March 16th, 2010
The ten Notable State Documents for South Carolina were announced today at the South Carolina State Library. The list includes paper and electronic resources.
A complete list of winners can be found on this web page.
Winning docs were selected by a group of depository librarians from around the state as well as the staff of the South Carolina State Library. About 30 documents and other resources were nominated.
From WJBF:
“If they say something that’s important about the state (or) if they provide really good information about an important topic,” then they make the list, said [State Library Director David] Goble.
[Snip]
“Libraries have started out with stone tablets and now we’re talking about digital books, so we’ve always had to deal with changing formats and this is nothing new,” said Goble.
Source: South Carolina State Library and WJBF
Posted in Government Documents and Political Information | No Comments »
March 16th, 2010
Facts for Features Special Edition: Census Historical Highlights: 1790-2010
Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution specifies that the number of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives is to be distributed proportionally among the states on the basis of the census to be conducted every 10 years.
The 2010 Census is the 23rd headcount of the population in our nation’s history. To highlight the grand tradition of the decennial census, we present a profile of each census starting with the first one in 1790. More information on the 2010 Census can be found at http://2010.census.gov/2010census/with more details on census history available at http://www.census.gov/history/ or in Measuring America: The Decennial Censuses from 1790 to 2000 http://www.census.gov/prod/2002pubs/pol02-ma.pdf.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau
Posted in 2010 Census, Chronologies and Timelines, Fast Facts, Government Documents and Political Information, History, Source File | No Comments »
March 16th, 2010
From the Announcement:
American Library Association (ALA) President Camila Alire today released the following statement regarding the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) National Broadband Plan (NBP):
“There are great opportunities proposed in the National Broadband Plan and still much important public debate facing the American public on these critical broadband issues. As the plan moves forward, it must lead to digital inclusion – not exclusion. Since libraries serve a critical role in today’s information society, ALA will be active in this important policy-making.
The plan captures the need for universal affordable broadband access to individuals at home through libraries and other anchor institutions as well as for local governments and all levels of education institutions. We thank the FCC for taking on the tremendous challenge of developing a national broadband plan and outlining how the discussion should move forward.
Libraries may be affected by many areas of the plan including the following:
+ The plan’s proposals to sustain and improve the E-rate funding and to simplify the application process for libraries and schools
+ The critical need for digital literacy recognizing that public libraries in all communities as well as the libraries in schools, higher education and health care institutions, are primary providers of digital literacy education
+ The need for broadband to make government at all levels more effective and efficient and to provide interactive e-government services and more online government information
+ The plan’s recognition of how broadband technologies can be used to foster civic engagement – another arena supported by our libraries
Source: District Dispatch, American Library Association
Posted in Information Policy, Libraries and Librarianship | No Comments »
March 16th, 2010
Note: The full text of each paper is free to download via SSRN (Social Studies Research Network)
1. Crowdsourcing and Open Access: Collaborative Techniques for Disseminating Legal Materials and Scholarship
by Timothy K. Armstrong
University of Cincinnati College of Law
Santa Clara Computer and High Technology Law Journal, Forthcoming
University of Cincinnati Public Law Research Paper No. 10-07
Partial Abstract:
This short essay surveys the state of open access to primary legal source materials (statutes, judicial opinions and the like) and legal scholarship. The ongoing digitization phenomenon (illustrated, although by no means typified, by massive scanning endeavors such as the Google Books project and the Library of Congress’s efforts to digitize United States historical documents) has made a wealth of information, including legal information, freely available online, and a number of open-access collections of legal source materials have been created. Many of these collections, however, suffer from similar flaws: they devote too much effort to collecting case law rather than other authorities, they overemphasize recent works (especially those originally created in digital form), they do not adequately hyperlink between related documents in the collection, their citator functions are haphazard and rudimentary, and they do not enable easy user authentication against official reference sources.
The essay explores whether some of these problems might be alleviated by enlarging the pool of contributors who are working to bring paper records into the digital era. The same “peer production” process that has allowed far-flung communities of volunteers to build large-scale informational goods like the Wikipedia encyclopedia or the Linux operating system might be harnessed to build a digital library.
2. Rich Texts: Wikisource as an Open Access Repository for Law and the Humanities
by Timothy K. Armstrong
University of Cincinnati College of Law
U of Cincinnati Public Law Research Paper No. 10-09
Abstract
Open access to research and scholarship, although well established in the sciences, remains an emerging phenomenon in the legal academy. In recent years, a number of open access repositories have been created to permit self-archiving of legal scholarship (either within or across institutional boundaries), and faculties at some leading research institutions have adopted policies supporting open access to their work. Although existing repositories for legal scholarship represent a clear improvement over proprietary, subscription-based repositories in some ways, their architecture, and the narrowly defined missions they have elected to pursue, limit their ability to illuminate the ongoing dialogue among texts that is a defining characteristic of scholarly discourse in law and the humanities. One of the wiki-based projects operated by the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation–the Wikisource digital library – improves upon the shortcomings of existing open access repositories by bringing source texts and commentary together in a single place, with additional contextual materials hosted on other Wikimedia Foundation sites just a click away. These features of Wikisource, if more widely adopted, may improve academic discourse by highlighting conceptual interconnections among works, fostering interdisciplinary collaboration, and reducing the competitive advantages of proprietary, closed-access legal information services.
Source: SSRN
Hat Tip: Peter Suber & Open Access Tagging Project
Posted in Arts and Humanities, Legal, Scholarly Publishing, Social Media | No Comments »
March 16th, 2010
Department of State Launches New Tool to Foster Online Open Dialogue
The Department of State today launches “Opinion Space”, an interactive site hosted on State.gov that seeks to foster global conversations on foreign affairs.
“Opinion Space will harness the power of connection technologies to provide a unique forum for international dialogue. This is an example of what we call 21st century statecraft and an opportunity to extend our engagement beyond the halls of government directly to the people of the world. I can’t wait to be a part of this exciting new conversation,” said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Opinion Space, developed jointly by the Department of State and the University of California at Berkeley’s Center for New Media (BCNM), is accessible to anyone around the world.
Opinion Space invites users to share their perspectives and ideas on U.S. foreign policy in an innovative visual “opinion map” that will illustrate which ideas result in the most discussion and which ideas are judged most insightful by the community of participants
Source: U.S. Department of State
Posted in Government Documents and Political Information, New Websites and Resources, Search News, Social Media, Source File, Technology and Internet, Web 2.0 | No Comments »
March 16th, 2010
From President Obama’s Statement:
“As Sunshine Week begins, I want to applaud everyone who has worked to increase transparency in government and recommit my administration to be the most open and transparent ever, an effort that will strengthen our democracy and ensure the public’s trust in their government,” said President Obama today, in a statement that also trumpeted his administration’s achievements on the open government front. Special Counsel Norm Eisen also issued a Sunshine Week statement that included details about the “many areas where (the Obama administration has) opened government up and let the sunshine in.
Norm Eisen’s comments follow those from President Obama. Mr. Eisen is Special Counsel to the President for Ethics and Government Reform.
Source: SunshineWeek.org
Source: Sunlight Foundation Blog
Posted in Access to Information | No Comments »
March 16th, 2010
NOTE To Keep Current With POIA News and Resources Visit www.thepoia.org.
From the Blog Post:
The Sunlight Foundation, and its Policy Counsel Daniel Schuman, today announced the introduction of POIA — the Public Online Information Act. The Act is proposed Federal legislation that would require government to provide meaningful access to its information online. In the words of its organizational sign-on letter:
The Public Online Information Act requires government information that is public to be made available in the broadest, most accessible manner — online. Our vital public information can enhance accountability, spur commerce, and empower citizenship, but only if we create and require meaningful digital access to it. POIA creates this meaningful access through two mechanisms.
[Snip]
We think this is important legislation and that everyone who is concerned with public legal information should support it. It will go a long way toward untangling difficult issues and dealing with the uneven and often behind-the-times implementation of government information policy, in a way that is both measured and responsible.
Source: LII Announce
See Also: To Keep Current With POIA News and Resources Visit www.thepoia.org.
See Also: Introducing POIA (via Sunlight Labs Blog)
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
March 16th, 2010
From the Article:
…the Society of Architectural Historians has developed a new platform for its online journal that it hopes will close the gap between reading about important architectural examples and experiencing them.
The society — along with its publishing partners, the University of California Press and JSTOR — today unveiled a new platform for the online version of the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, which it built through a series of grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The online version, dubbed JSAH Online, will support presentation methods — such as video, virtual modeling and digital mapping — that academics have employed for some time, but could show off only in venues with the capacity to handle to multimedia exhibitions, such as live demonstrations and museum installations.
[Snip]
SAH Online took its cues from a 2006 article by Ballon and her colleague Mariet Westermann, provost of NYU’s Abu Dhabi campus, in which the authors noted that “E-publishing programs have not emerged and taken advantage of the field’s rapidly growing sophistication in the use of digital images and electronic research techniques” — a sluggishness that threatened to harm the discipline as publishers began shifting away from monographs and investing in digital. Ballon was put in charge of supervising the development of the new platform in conjunction with ARTStor, the sister organization to JSTOR, the digital journal repository.
JSAH Online, which the society is making available only to its members this year (it will sell independent subscriptions beginning in 2011), is intended to encourage scholars to explore the use of digital storytelling tools while nudging publishers to renovate their digital journals and e-textbooks to support those tools, says Pauline Saliga, executive director of the society. And she believes the JSAH Online’s influence won’t be limited to architectural history.
Access the Complete Article
Source: Inside Higher Ed
See Also: JSAH News Release
See Also: See Also: View a Sample Article Online
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
March 16th, 2010
From the Article:
Paris is the most expensive city to live in according to the latest survey from Economist Intelligence Unit, a sister company to The Economist. The survey assesses the cost of living by comparing housing, food, clothing, transport and utility bills and the like in 132 cities around the world. Tokyo comes second, up from sixth place a year ago. The fall in Russia’s currency against the dollar has made Moscow cheaper than it once was.
A chart with 2008 and 2009 rankings for 17 cities is included in the article.
Access the Complete Article
Source: The Economist
Posted in Business and Economics, Lists and Rankings, Reference Tools | No Comments »
