Info Industry–Hoover’s
Hoover’s Adds Dun & Bradstreet Lookup Service
From the press release, “The addition of this information makes it possible for Hoover’s Online users to easily look up information on more than 12 million U.S. companies supplied by D&B. Each of the D&B records on Hoover’s Online consists of a select set of information, including company name, address, phone number, line of business, employee and revenue estimates, and primary contact name and title. Hoover’s will also have news and mapping functions available for each company and will continue to provide its users with the option of buying more in-depth, value-added D&B business information and credit reports on a pay-per-view basis.”

Info Industry–CorporateAffiliations.Com
A Reference Classic, The Directory of Corporate Affiliations Now on the Web via CorporateAffiliations.Com
From the News Release, “DCA allows users to easily determine “who owns whom,” and to establish a hierarchy of corporate ownership all the way down to the eighth level of reporting relationships. The database covers public and private companies worldwide and provides subscribers the convenience and timeliness of online access to the data. DCA is also published in printed format on an annual basis and in CD-ROM format on a quarterly basis. The Web version of the database will be updated weekly.”

Canadian Content Roundup
Government–Online–Canada
Government On-Line: Serving Canadians in the Digital Age
A 25 slide presentation from the CIO of the Treasury Board of Canada

Full-Text Document Shelf–Canada
Air Travel–Canada
The Report of the Air Travel Complaints Commissioner
Heritage Canada
Canadian Heritage: 2001-2002 Estimates A Report on Plans and Priorities
Finance Canada
Finance Canada 2001-2002 Estimates: A Report on Plans and Priorities
Tourism–Canada
“National Tourism Indicators: Fourth quarter 2000 and year 2000″

Aboriginal–Canada
Aboriginal Canada Portal Launched
From the press release:”Indian and Northern Affairs Canada has launched Aboriginal Canada Portal, an Internet site that provides Aboriginal people with access to on-line resources, information, programs and services.”

Census 2000–Update
State Numbers Online
State redistricting numbers are now online for all 50 states (California was made available yesterday), D.C., and Puerto Rico.

Energy–Outlook
Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration
International Energy Outlook 2001
International energy projections through the year 2020.

Newspapers–Online
The New York Times
The New York Times Launches Site For College Students and Faculty
“College Times” offers several features including a “Yahoo like” directory of news content and an e-mail alerting service. You will need to be a registered NYT user to access the full content.

Business–United States–Rankings
The Business Week 50
Direct to Rankings ||| Ranking Criteria

Web Searching–The Invisible Web
A True Tale of the Invisible Web
Super Searcher and writer Marylaine Block with an article in her ExLibris e-zine about the IW. I am honored to be mentioned in the article. Thanks MB!

Full-Text Document Shelf
Census–United States
Population–United States
Population Profile of the United States: America at the Close of the 20th Century
Thanks P.S.

Libraries–United States
National Commission on Libraries and Information Science
Comprehensive Assessment of Public Information Dissemination
Volume 2 of the Final Report is now available online.
Also, Two Appendices from Vol. 2:
Appendix 11. The Public Information Resources Reform Act of 2001
Appendix 12. Suggested Revisions to the Paperwork Reduction Act and OMB, Circular A-130
Much more material is available (including Vol. 1)

Highway Safety–Statistics
Source: NHTSA
Early Assessment – Motor Vehicle Traffic Crash Fatality and Injury Estimates for 2000

Research & Design–United States
R&D Spending is Highly Concentrated in a Small Number of States
“This Data Brief presents statistics on the geographic distribution of research and development (R&D) expenditures in the United States.”

Campaign Finance–Databases–United States
FECInfo Changes Name, Redesigns Sites, and Adds Content
A big welcome to PoliticalMoneyLine.Com! From an e-mail message, “Entrepreneurship brings about all sorts of things. The next time you go to the FECINFO or TRAY web sites you will notice newly redesigned pages. We think you will find them interesting and exciting. All the data is there and we have added several new items, such as section 527 data. Also, we will be highlighting several current items on the home page. This week we show how indexing would change the individual contribution limit, and a new report from CRS that includes internal figures from the FEC not previously released. We are also using a new URL name that more accurately describes what we have. www.PoliticalMoneyLine.com is the best web page to bookmark. All our other URLs will point to the new site.”

Cool Tools
Need to Create a Simple Graph? Here is an Interactive Online Tool
Although this tool is aimed at the student crowd it may also be of use to others. This tool now allows you to create following graphs: site: line, area, bar, horizontal bar and pie chart.

Copyright–Tasini vs. The New York Times
Special Libraries Association
David Bender Appears on NPR’s Morning Edition (Real Audio)
Bender (Executive Director of SLA) was interviewed as part of a story on the Tasini copyright case.

Internet Statistics
Sad News, NUA Goes Into Receivership
However, NUA Internet Surveys will CONTINUE during the receivership period!

Information Architecture–Business
More Sad News
Information architecture firm Argus Associates is going out of business.

Info Industry News–Hoover’s
The Wireless Librarian
The Birth of Hoover’s Wireless
A few weeks ago Westlaw added limited wireless access. Today, a similar story from Hoover’s. From the news release, “…Hoover’s Wireless service, which allows people to tap into key content and service offerings away from their desks…As part of an agreement between Hoover’s and 2Roam, Inc. (www.2roam.com), an innovative wireless Web infrastructure provider, wireless device users can now search for and retrieve information on approximately 17,000 public and private enterprises worldwide via Hoover’s Wireless. Users can search by company name or ticker symbol to find company descriptions, locations, financials, top officers, competitors, stock quotes and news from Hoover’s Online.”

More Hoover’s News
Hoover’s To Add Content from Mergenet
From the news release, “…Hoover’s is integrating into its Web sites Mergent’s company information on nearly 9,000 non-U.S. publicly traded companies. Hoover’s users can now access Mergent content, including company descriptions, contact information and officer and subsidiary lists, as well as three years of financials. Mergent [formerly part of Moody's Investors Service] information is being added to both the free and subscription areas of Hoover’s Web sites.”

Info Industry–Infonautics
Infonautics (Electric Library, Company Sleuth) and Tucows Announce Merger
From the story, “Web publisher Infonautics Inc. [NASDAQ:INFO] announced today that it would be merging with privately held Tucows Inc., a Canada-based company best known for its massive distributed library of shareware software. Infonautics, the Pennsylvania company behind such research-oriented Web sites as Encyclopedia.com, Company Sleuth and the online news clipping service Electric Library, said it will issue some 50 million shares of common stock to Tucows’ owners, who would then hold approximately 80 percent of the combined company.The merged outfit would adopt the Tucows name.”

Canada–Parliament–Lists
Two historical lists from the Canadian Library of Parliament in Ottawa.
Senators–1867 to Date–Prime Ministerial and Premiership Experience
Members of the House of Commons–1867 to Present–Prime Ministerial and Premiership Experience

Another Day, Another Tool: Something to Look At
Searching–Semantics
The Botspot newsletter, with a mention of Jarg
Key sentence from newsletter, “What Jarg is doing is creating industry-specific search engines that use that industry’s jargon and lexicon to form the basis of contextual relationships in the words it finds in stored documents.” In February of 2000 Jarg did some prototype work for the National Institute of Health.

Libraries–Technology
A Library and a Robotic Arm
From the article, “Browsing through the shelves is one of the great joys of visiting the library. But when the shelves get too tall and threaten to take away precious study space, books are relegated to warehouses, sold, given away, or worse — retired to the circular file…When Sonoma State University opened its new library — the Jean & Charles Schulz Information Center — last fall, it solved that problem with a system of metal storage boxes and a fast-moving computerized crane that make up the Automated Retrieval System.”
Thanks GT

Dissertations–Electronic Dissemination
UNESCO Symposium on Electronic Dissemination of Dissertations Concludes
Lead, “ETD 2001: The Fourth International Symposium on Electronic Theses and Dissertations” ended last week at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena (USA). The UNESCO sponsored event brought together ca 160 experts, mainly librarians and other information specialists, to look at the development of projects for the electronic creation and dissemination of theses and doctoral dissertations. This genre is being considered as an important element of scientific and scholarly information.”

Full-Text Document Shelf
Health–Women–United States
Smoking–Women–United States
Women and Smoking: A Report of the Surgeon General-2001

Education–Statistics–United States
The 2000 ed. of the Digest of Education Statistics is now online.
From the Dept. of Ed. Site, “Topics in the Digest include: the number of schools and colleges; teachers; enrollments; graduates; educational attainment; finances; federal funds for education; employment and income of graduates; libraries; technology; and international comparisons. The approximately 430 tables are available on the web, or as Excel or pdf files.”

Higher Education–Financial Aid–United States
Funding Your Education 2001-2002
Source: U.S. Department of Education
From the Dept. of Ed. site, …an introductory publication for students not yet enrolled in a postsecondary school, is now available online. The publication provides general information about the U.S. Department of Education’s federal student financial aid programs and how to apply for them.
A version in Spanish is also available.

Info Industry–OCLC
Report Available: Future Directions and Roles for OCLC
From the site, “In January 2000, the OCLC Board of Trustees retained the consulting firm of Arthur D. Little to conduct a study of OCLC�s strategic directions and governance structure…Throughout the course of the study, the Arthur D. Little consultants are tasked with: Holding meetings and interviews with the OCLC Board of Trustees, OCLC Users Council, Strategic Directions and Governance Advisory Council, OCLC-affiliated U.S. regional networks, international distributors, OCLC participating libraries, and libraries that do not currently use OCLC services. Examining environmental factors likely to have an impact on OCLC in the future, including the economic environment for libraries; the rapid development of the World Wide Web, telecommunications and computers; and initiatives by commercial entities to provide information services directly to end users. Identifying possible roles for OCLC in the evolving global library and information infrastructure and recommend a governance structure appropriate to OCLC�s public purpose.” Direct to Final Report.

Search Engines–Natural Language
“Making Search Engines Speak Naturally”
Story Lead, “Making Internet search engines respond to the way people actually talk is key to improving the usefulness of results.”
Key Quote: “Many searchers can get by on keywords, said David Harris, vice president of marketing at EasyAsk, but business users want to submit long queries and get back relevant results.”
Companies Mentioned:
EasyAsk
LingoMotors

Information Technology
“Making Sense of the Deluge of Data: CIA Technologies Refine Mass of Information Into Analysis”
An interesting read from the Washington Post.