From the article:
More than one-third of workers would choose their mobile phone over their wallet, keys, laptop or digital music player if they had to leave the house for 24 hours and could take only one item, a new survey has found.
Source: Reuters

From iHealthBeat:

The online prescription drug comparison tool will include information on the efficacy, side effects and availability of generic versions of more than 4,000 prescription drugs. A HealthGrades official said the new data are aimed at educating consumers.

+ Google Names Winners In First Round Of Android Contest

+ Hitwise: Google Again Hits New High; Microsoft & Yahoo Again New Lows

+ Google Updates Earth Imagery & Begins To Blur Faces

Direct to announcement:

What our president said to the nation, what the nation said to the universe, and a cornucopia of musical milestones highlight the major themes of the 2007 National Recording Registry. Librarian of Congress James H. Billington today named 25 additions to the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress as part of its efforts to preserve the nation’s aural history.

Read the rest of this entry »

Publisher hit with $1.2M bill for illegal billing

How’s this for bad timing? Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum’s law librarian received a publication she did not order and was subsequently billed for it. She told McCollum, who launched an investigation. Tuesday, McCollum said he reached an agreement with Thompson Publishing Group Inc., a Tampa business that markets and sells books and other publications to government agencies, law firms and businesses. Under the agreement, Thompson must set aside $1.2-million for refunds to customers who were billed for materials they did not request. Thompson also has to reimburse the state $450,000 for the cost of its investigation.

Source: St. Petersburg Times

See also: Automatic updates cost Thompson Publishing more than a million (Tampa Bay Business Journal)

Direct to Abstract and Full Text Link
by: Quinn, A., Hu, C., Arisaka, T., Rose, A., Bederson, B. (May 2008)
Readability of scanned books in digital libraries. In Proceeding of the Twenty-Sixth Annual SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Florence, Italy, April 05 - 10, 2008). CHI ‘08. ACM, New York, NY, 705-714.

Source: Human Computer Interation Lab, University of Maryland

Visual resources online
by Anne Blecksmith, Getty Research Institute

Digital images of primary materials on public Web sites.

Source: C&RL News

+ Competition and Fraud in Online Advertising Markets (via Stanford Info Lab)

An economic model of the online advertising market is presented, focusing on the effect of ad fraud. In the model, the market is comprised of three classes of players: publishers, advertising networks, and advertisers. The central question is whether ad networks have an incentive to aggressively combat fraud. The main outcome of the model is to answer this question in the affirmative.

+ Fortune On Google’s Challenges: Employee Retention, Innovation, Maintaining Its Culture (via SEL)

+ Library of Congress Issues Joint RDA Statement (via LJ)

From the website and Podcast:

Jean Darbyshire
Director
Organization Development Programs, Kansas State Libraries, Manhattan, Kansas

Jean Darbyshire is Director of Organization Development Programs at Kansas State Libraries in Manhattan, KS. The Kansas State Libraries believe it is very important to have a quality faculty and staff and provide quality development opportunities for them. One of their most important Organization Development Programs is the LIS Recruitment Program.

Source: LiS Radio

New from the Library of Congress:
The Polish Poster : from Young Poland through the Second World War : Holdings in the Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress

The Library of Congress published The Polish Poster: from Young Poland through the Second World War in 1993 to commemorate the centennial of the Polish art poster movement. This book recently has been digitized and made available through the two links above, for viewing via “page-turner” display or searchable .pdf.

The Polish Poster describes over 130 posters drawn from the Library of Congress’ collection of approximately 3,000 Polish posters created between the years 1900-1945. The 130 posters are grouped into six time periods and then listed alphabetically, by artist, within each period. Each section begins with a historical description of Poland during that period, followed by the then-current groupings, styles and trends in Polish art. The book also contains biographical notes for each artist and a select bibliography

Source: LC

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Free Foreign Language Courses

Traveling to the French Riviera this summer, or headed to China for the Olympics in August? These free foreign language training courses, developed by the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Service Institute, can help you prepare.

Source: USA.gov

Posted 13 May 2008 on DocuTicker:
+ Banning Laptops in the Classroom: Is it Worth the Hassles? (Journal of Legal Education)
+ Proceedings of the 6th World Congress on Alternatives & Animal Use in the Life Sciences (The Johns Hopkins Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing)
+ Ahmadinejad versus the Technocrats (Middle Eastern Outlook/American Enterprise Institute)

LC Works to Make Collections Accessible and Compelling
by Paula Hane

The venerable Library of Congress (LC), said to be our nation’s oldest federal cultural institution, has certainly not been acting staid and traditional. Lately it’s been leading the way with some exciting digital preservation projects, working with leading multimedia partners on innovative projects, and reaching out to other international organizations to establish a World Digital Library (WDL).

Source: ITI News Link

+ China Earthquake
Situation Map (5/12/2008)

+ Eastern Sichuan, China: Estimated Population Esposed to Earthquake Shaking (as of 12 May 2008) (PDF, 1062 Kb)

+ Eastern Sichuan, China: Earthquake Locations (as of 12 May 2008) (PDF, 148 Kb)

+ Cyclone Nargis Floods Burma (Myanmar) (as of 05 May 2008)

+ Myanmar: Cyclone Nargis - Who/What/Where, Protection Sector (as of 12 May 2008) (PDF, 94 Kb)

+ Myanmar: Tropical Cyclone Nargis (as of 11 May 2008) - Situation Map (PDF, 1272 Kb)

+ More Myanmar Maps and News ||| More China Maps and News

Source: Reliefweb and Other Sources

The effects of mercury on human health are a common concern. The new NLM Enviro-Health Links page, “Mercury and Human Health ,” includes links to sites about mercury reduction, occupational exposure, compact fluorescent light bulbs, mercury in health care, regulations and state legislation, and preformed TOXLINE and MEDLINE/PubMed searches.

Direct to the site: http://sis.nlm.nih.gov/enviro/mercury.html

NLM also offers other Enviro-Health Links on topics such as:

+ Children’s Environmental Health
+ Indoor Air Pollution
+ Keeping the Artist Safe: Hazards of Arts and Crafts Materials
+ Outdoor Air Pollution
+ Lead
+ Arsenic

Source: National Library of Medicine