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.
Subscribe to the ResourceShelf Newsletter »
November 20th, 2009
From an e-Mail Announcement:
The “Photochrom Travel View” set in Flickr now features more than 750 prints, including scenes in Canada, Wales, Belgium, and (most recently) The Netherlands photographed at the turn of the twentieth century. The Belgian scenes, in particular, feature people at work and recreation, in addition to the striking landscapes and landmark buildings characteristic of the photochroms in general.
Happy Tagging!
Btw, the complete Photocrom Prints collection, more than 6,500 images, is accessible here.
What’s a Photocrom?
Published primarily from the 1890s to 1910s, these prints were created by the Photoglob Company in Zürich, Switzerland, and the Detroit Publishing Company in Michigan. The richly colored images look like photographs but are actually ink-based photolithographs, usually 6.5 x 9 inches.
Source: Library of Congress
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
November 20th, 2009
Crossing the digital divide to Grandma’s house
How do you get to grandma’s house in the digital age?
It’s like asking five New Yorkers how to get to Brooklyn: Everyone’s got a different answer and no one’s necessarily wrong.
Say you live in St. Petersburg and grandma lives in Palm Beach. Mapquest would send you southeast from Tampa. The trip would be 200 miles and take three hours and 27 minutes.
Google, however, would send you northeast before sending you southeast. That trip would be 232 miles and take three hours and 50 minutes.
Mapquest sends you through Brandon on SR 60 — no fun if it’s rush hour — and then through Bartow and on to Yeehaw Junction to Florida’s Turnpike. Google sends you along Interstate 4 near Orlando — always a potential traffic nightmare — through Kissimmee and then to Florida’s Turnpike.
How can there be so many ways to get from Point A to Point B?
It’s all about the algorithms.
Source: St. Petersburg Times
Note: Shirl Kennedy, ResourceShelf senior editor, is a news researcher for the St. Petersburg Times.
Posted in Geographic, Search News | No Comments »
November 20th, 2009
A Never Ending “Virtual Stream” of Digitized Text
by Gary Price, Senior Editior
When Chris Sherman and I were writing and then giving book talks and presentations about The Invisible Web, we said John Mark Ockerbloom’s Online Books Page was an essential resource for anyone interested in digitized, full text books. Now referred by most as eBooks. More than eight years later I feel the same way about this awesome and well organized collection.
Where do you begin with a site so full of content? For me, that’s easy. Monitoring the latest additions to the catalog/page. I am always blown away by the amount of new listings (when does Ockerbloom sleep?) and the number of organizations digitizing books. If you think it’s only Google digitizing books (of course they are a major player) but not they’re far from the only one doing this type of work. Just look for yourself. The page even has an RSS feed.
So, the Online Books Page is not only a “must have” searchable directory of ebooks but it can also be a great collection development resource to find and add digitized content to your local collection/OPAC.
But wait, we’ve got more.
The Online Books Page new listings only includes some of the digitized text output from the Internet Archive (IA).
If you want to be able to review (at your leisure) all of the new digitized content text content that the IA produces, it’s possible by subscribing to this RSS feed. Even if you’re not going to review the titles, just let it run for a few days to see the AMOUNT of text material that’s digitized in variety of formats. It’s an understatement to say that the scanners at the IA are cranking it out on all cylinders. So, collection development types, subscribe to both RSS feeds and have a large virtual bookshelf to choose from each day. If you don’t do the collection development thing both feeds are useful to illustrate the amount of material being digitized each day, week, month.
UPDATE: Not an RSS user? No problem. Just visit this Internet Archive page and refresh it a few times a day. The most recent addition is at the top.
Posted in Databases, Directories, and Guides, Digitization Projects, E-books, Resources | No Comments »
November 20th, 2009
From the Announcement:
The Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) will advance technology that can recover and digitally re-master rare early sound recordings made on wax cylinders – including experimental recordings created in the 1880’s by Alexander Graham Bell — even when the original cylinder is cracked or broken. The research project, which includes development of a mobile 2D scanning device, builds on previous successes of the “3D/PRISM” or “IRENE-3D” project, which significantly impacted research and practice in the area of early audio recordings preservation.
The current IRENE projects are funded in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) under the National Leadership Grant program. Other project partners include the Library of Congress, The Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology, The University of Chicago’s South Asia Library, The Berlin Phonogramm Archive, The Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, the Edison National Historic Site, and the University of Applied Science, Fribourg, Switzerland.
Source: Institute of Museum and Library Services
Posted in Technology and Internet | No Comments »
November 20th, 2009
The blog has a new look that’s very easy on the eyes. You’ll also find links to the District Dispatch RSS and Twitter feeds. If the intersection of the library world with the world of U.S. politics is of interest, District Dispatch (D) is essential reading. So, a ResourceShelf tip of the cap to Jacob Roberts and the rest of the staff at ALA’s office in Washington DC.
Btw, the new look is great but we do hope the “District Dispatch” powers that be bring back the mobile-friendly version of District Dispatch that we posted about last month. We just checked with a mobile browser and we are seeing the “regular” version of DD.
Source: DD
Posted in Information Industry, Libraries and Librarianship | No Comments »
November 20th, 2009
From the Announcement:
Working together with the National Archives and Allen County Library, Footnote.com has created a unique collection that will help people discover new details about Native American history.
The Footnote Interactive Native American Collection features original historical documents including:
+ Ratified Indian Treaties – dating back to 1722
+ Indian Census Rolls – featuring personal information including age, place of residence and degree of Indian blood
+ The Guion Miller Roll – perhaps the most important source of Cherokee genealogical research
+ Dawes Packets – containing original applications for tribal enrollments
+ And other documents relating to the Five Civilized Tribes
Footnote’s Native American microsite creates an interactive environment where members can search, annotate and add comments to the original documents. Additionally, visitors can view pages for many of the Native American tribes that include historical events on a timeline and map, a photo gallery, stories and comments added by the community.
Source: Footnote
See Also: National Archives and Footnote.com Announce New Digital Holocaust Collection
See Also: Footnote.com and the National Archives Launch an Interactive Vietnam War Memorial
See Also: More Digitized U.S. Government Documents via Footnote.com Now Online
Posted in Databases, Directories, and Guides, Genealogy, History, Information Industry, Resources | No Comments »
November 20th, 2009
From the Article:
Facebook has threatened legal action against a service that sells friends on the social networking site.
It said it would take the action against marketing firm USocial unless it stopped violating Facebook’s rights.
[Snip]
Customers of USocial use it to boost follower and friend numbers on social network sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
On micro-blogging site Twitter, followers can be bought in blocks starting at £53 for 1,000. The biggest block USocial is selling is 100,000 people.
Access the Complete Article
See Also: USocial Page to Purchase Twitter Followers
Source: BBC
Posted in Social Media, Web 2.0 | No Comments »
November 20th, 2009
From the Article:
The tunes may be a little avant-garde for most tastes. They’re unlikely to give Britney Spears and Beyoncé a run for their money, but are impressive achievements all the same. Musical twitterers have found a way to condense entire compositions to fit in single, 140-character tweets.
The trend started earlier this year when Dan Stowell, a composer and computer scientist at Queen Mary, University of London, encoded the sound of waves crashing on the shore using the programming language SuperCollider and then tweeted the results.
Other users of the micro-blogging site responded by devising and posting their own compositions. Now a free to download, best-of album of 22 Twitter tunes has been released, entitled sc140.
Much More in the Complete Article
Access the Album
Source: New Scientist
Posted in Arts and Humanities, Social Media | No Comments »
November 20th, 2009
From the Article:
Judge Denny Chin has given his preliminary approval to the Google Book Search settlement agreement and established a timeline to move the agreement toward a final resolution. A final settlement/fairness hearing has been set for February 18 at which Judge Chin will hear arguments to determine whether the agreement is “fair, reasonable, adequate;” consider whether to certify the class for purposes of the settlement; and to make a determination whether to approve the agreement.
Prior to the hearing, the judge has ordered that supplemental notices about the amended agreement be sent beginning December 14, and he set a January 28 deadline for objections to be filed with the court.
[Snip]
As part of the amended settlement, companies from outside of the U.S. were to be added as plaintiffs. The order notes that new plaintiffs include Harlequin, Melbourne University Publishing Ltd., and The Text Publishing Company.
Source: Publisher’s Weekly
Posted in Digitization Projects, Information Industry, Intellectual Property | No Comments »
November 19th, 2009
Citizen Media Law Project Launches Legal Assistance Network for Online Journalists
Source: Citizen Media Law Project
We are delighted to announce (PDF) the public launch of the Berkman Center’s Online Media Legal Network (OMLN), a new pro bono (i.e., free!) initiative that connects lawyers and law school clinics from across the country with online journalists and digital media creators who need legal help. Lawyers participating in OMLN will provide qualifying online publishers with pro bono and reduced fee legal assistance on a broad range of legal issues, including business formation and governance, copyright licensing and fair use, employment and freelancer agreements, access to government information, pre-publication review of content, and representation in litigation.
Source: Citizen Media Law Project (Berkman Center for Internet & Society)
Posted in Legal, New Websites and Resources, Search News, Social Media, Source File, Technology and Internet, Web 2.0 | No Comments »
November 19th, 2009
This has been “Word of the Year” week. First, The New Oxford American Dictionary 2009 “Word of the Year” was announced. The winning word? Unfriend. Example: Steve unfriended Julie on Facebook. Our post also includes other words that Oxford University Press was considering.
Today, Merriam-Webster released their 2009 Word of the Year list. And the winner is…admonish (verb): to express warning or disapproval to especially in a gentle, earnest, or solicitous manner.
Here’s the Rest of the Top 10:
2. emaciated
3. empathy
4. furlough
5. inaugurate
6. nugatory
7. pandemic
8. philanderer
9. repose
10. rogue
Source: Merriam-Webster
Hat Tip: L.S.
Posted in Lists and Rankings | No Comments »
November 19th, 2009
From the Announcement:
A year after its launch by 25 leading U.S. research libraries, HathiTrust Digital Library announces a service that will transform how researchers use the more than 1.6 billion pages (4.6 million volumes) in its collections.
The breakthrough allows for full-text searching capabilities across the entire library. Researchers can now search public domain and in-copyright works by keyword or phrase.
Based on open source Solr/Lucene technology, the service expands on an experimental search of public domain volumes introduced in November 2008. Full-text search will continue to be supported across the repository as it grows at a rate of hundreds of thousands of volumes every month.
“The HathiTrust partners are pleased to offer a search service that helps mine this growing body of authoritative library materials,” said John Wilkin, HathiTrust executive director and associate university librarian at the University of Michigan. “HathiTrust continues to distinguish itself with its reliability and with its efforts to broaden the availability of digitized library collections in the flow of scholarly discourse. We see this valuable discovery service as one in a series of major steps HathiTrust is taking to shed light on this vast body of material.”
In combination with the HathiTrust Digital Library’s carefully curated bibliographic data, the new functionality allows researchers to more efficiently locate items relevant to their research. It also lays the foundation for future services such as full-text search with faceted browsing, advanced search, “more like this” options, and tools that can be used in computational research.
The effort to provide full-text searching capabilities across the repository has yielded valuable benchmarking data, methods, and code to the broader large-scale search community, said Wilkin.
The HathiTrust partners are committed to developing the repository and its services to meet the long-term needs of their academic communities, and offer a unique resource on the Web for scholarship and research.
Source: HathiTrust / University of Michigan
See Also: HathiTrust Home Page and List of Partners
See Also: Access HathiTrust Search Interfaces (Including Full Text Search)
Posted in Databases, Directories, and Guides, Digitization Projects, Resources, Search News | No Comments »
November 19th, 2009
Building an Online Bulwark to Fend Off Identity Fraud
Identity fraud has been on the rise, as criminal cunning may be mixing with desperation during the downturn. Schemes seem to multiply daily, as scammers often half a world away dream up new ways to steal data to enrich themselves. According to Javelin Strategy and Research, 9.9 million Americans were victims of identity theft in 2008, up from 8.1 million in 2007.
With all kinds of private information residing in all kinds of places, vigilance can be difficult. Using caution when surfing the Internet and keeping antivirus software up to date are vital steps, experts say, but they are not enough. And most tools for fighting identity fraud — credit-monitoring services, fraud alerts and credit freezes — are reactive, not proactive, and they primarily address abuse of financial accounts, not other types of identity fraud.
But a new breed of products is tackling the trickier matter of preventing identity theft. New approaches include scouring the Internet in search of signs that criminals have your information, so you can move to block them. Others focus on keeping your data away from criminals in the first place, locking it down while you bank, shop or do other personal tasks online. Here are some ways to keep your information yours.
Source: New York Times
Posted in Privacy, Search News, Technology and Internet | No Comments »
November 19th, 2009
From the Release:
Emily Sheketoff, executive director of the American Library Association’s (ALA) Washington Office, today filed testimony for the official record of the House Committee on Education and Labor’s Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education’s hearing, “Improving Literacy Skills of Children and Young Adults.”
The comments highlighted the contributions of librarians and library programs in both public and school libraries in improving the literacy skills of children and young adults.
“Public librarians have embraced their responsibility to be the first literacy coach for parents and caregivers of all children, especially children in low-income families,” Sheketoff states in her comments. “Some services provided to these families include bookmobile and storytelling mobiles, story-time kits and early literacy classes for child-care providers, Head Start staff and parents.”
Sheketoff’s testimony underscored the impact of school libraries in both traditional and technology literacy through the role of school librarians who are the central teachers who know the school’s curriculum and effective techniques necessary to cross disciplines.
Access the Complete Testimony (3 pages; PDF)
Source: American Library Association
Posted in Education, Libraries and Librarianship | No Comments »
November 19th, 2009
Some Courts Raise Bar on Reading Employee Email
Big Brother is watching. That is the message corporations routinely send their employees about using email.
But recent cases have shown that employees sometimes have more privacy rights than they might expect when it comes to the corporate email server. Legal experts say that courts in some instances are showing more consideration for employees who feel their employer has violated their privacy electronically.
Driving the change in how these cases are treated is a growing national concern about privacy issues in the age of the Internet, where acquiring someone else’s personal and financial information is easier than ever.
Source: Wall Street Journal
Posted in Legal, Privacy, Search News | No Comments »
November 19th, 2009
From a Summary:
Search engine use is not just part of our daily routines; it is also becoming part of our learning process, according to Penn State researchers.
The researchers sought to discover the cognitive processes underlying searching. They examined the search habits of 72 participants while conducting a total of 426 searching tasks. They found that search engines are primarily used for fact checking users’ own internal knowledge, meaning that they are part of the learning process rather than simply a source for information. They also found that people’s learning styles can affect how they use search engines.
“Our results suggest the view of Web searchers having simple information needs may be incorrect,” said Jim Jansen, associate professor of information sciences and technology. “Instead, we discovered that users applied simple searching expressions to support their higher-level information needs.”
Jansen said the results of this study provide useful information about how search engine use has evolved over the past decade and clues about how to design better search engines to address users’ learning needs in the future. He and Brian Smith, associate professor information sciences and technology and Danielle Booth, former Penn State student, published their findings in the November issue of Information Processing and Management.
“If we can incorporate cognitive, affective and situational aspects of a person, there is the potential to really move search performance forward,” Jansen said. “At its core, we are getting to the motivational elements of search.”
Source: Penn State Live
Hat Tip: P.W.
Posted in Search News, Technology and Internet, Web Search | No Comments »
November 19th, 2009
Research pays before you lay money down
Most people put a lot of faith in their broker, and that often works out well. But in the age of Bernie Madoff, wary investors may be looking for some reassurance.
The truth is they are largely left to fend for themselves. With a bit of time and widely available tools, many legal experts say investors can improve their chances of choosing wisely when selecting a financial adviser or broker.
+ Resources for background on your broker
Source: Washington Post
Posted in Business and Economics, Reference Tools, Source File | No Comments »
November 19th, 2009
From an e-Mail Announcement
Broken links will soon be a thing of the past for UK Government websites, as The National Archives launches its Web Continuity project.
The first of its kind anywhere in the world, the project has already enabled millions of people using government websites to find information which would previously have been lost through broken web links.
Officially launching at the House of Lords next month, the initiative links seamlessly with The National Archives’ UK Government Web Archive, which regularly captures and preserves 1500 government websites for posterity.
If someone clicks on a link which is no longer live, redirection software being installed by government departments will automatically take them to where the information they need is held in the web archive. Currently, the service is leading to more than six million redirected hits a month.
Dr Amanda Spencer, Head of Web Continuity at The National Archives, said: “When it was first created, the internet was often regarded as ephemeral. Websites weren’t viewed as records which needed to be preserved.
“However, as the internet has developed to be the predominate source of government information for most people, this has changed. Today, some information only ever exists online and as the experts in preserving the future of history, we have had to adapt.
“Our web archive holds more than 340 million documents from government websites dating back to 1997, and we now archive all central government websites three times a year. The Web Continuity project is a natural progression of this.”
Much More After Clicking
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Government Documents and Political Information | No Comments »
November 19th, 2009
From the Announcement:
Art & Architecture Index and Art & Architecture Complete, EBSCO provides definitive research databases for the study of art and architecture. Designed for use by a diverse audience, Art & Architecture Index and Art & Architecture Complete will appeal to art scholars, artists, designers, college students and general researchers.
These new art & architecture resources include cover-to-cover indexing and abstracts for more than 620 academic journals, magazines and trade publications as well as over 140 books. Selective coverage is also provided for more than 135 additional publications.
Art & Architecture Complete also contains full-text coverage of more than 230 art & architecture-specific periodicals and more than 100 books. These databases are available via the EBSCOhost platform.
Source: EBSCO
Posted in Arts and Humanities, Databases, Directories, and Guides, Information Industry, Resources, Scholarly Publishing | No Comments »
November 19th, 2009
E-Science Survey Preliminary Results and Resources Released
The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) E-Science Working Group surveyed ARL member libraries in the fall of 2009 to gather data on the state of engagement with e-science issues. An overview of initial survey findings was presented by E-Science Working Group Chair Wendy Lougee, University Librarian, McKnight Presidential Professor, University of Minnesota Libraries, at the October ARL Membership Meeting. Lougee’s briefing explored contrasting approaches among research institutions, particularly in regard to data management. The briefing also summarized survey findings on topics such as library services, organizational structures, staffing patterns and staff development, and involvement in research grants, along with perspectives on pressure points for service development. To better explicate the findings, Lougee reviewed specific cases of activities at six research institutions.
Audio of the briefing along with slides and a handout are available as part of the Proceedings of the 155th ARL Membership Meeting (see http://www.arl.org/resources/pubs/mmproceedings/155mm-proceedings/index.shtml#esci).
ARL has also compiled a set of resources provided by survey respondents. Examples of a range of campus and library documents, tools advancing e-science support, needs assessments, and position descriptions, among other items, are listed on ARL’s Web site at http://www.arl.org/rtl/eresearch/escien/esciensurvey/index.shtml.
Source: Association of Research Libraries
Posted in Info Management and Retrieval, Libraries and Librarianship, Online Education, Papers and Presentations, Science, Search News, Source File | No Comments »
