Climate–Database–Invisible Web–World
From the National Climate Data Center
Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) / GCOS Surface Network (GSN) Databases Now Online
Data is currently available for 225 stations is 25 countries and may be viewed in either textual or graphical form. Material can be download (via copy/paste) for additional use and analysis. Learn more about the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS).

More News From NCDC
Climate–Database–Fee Based–United States
U.S. Climate Database Adds Content, Display/Print Options
From the What’s New Page, “The NNDC Climate Data Online System now includes a new option for Daily Climate Data. Users can generate a printable web form as well as ASCII text files. In addition, the period of record has been extended back to 1948 (or earlier for some stations). The daily climate data includes maximum and minumum temperature, precipitation, snowfall, and snow depth. The web form presentation makes it much easier to read the data from NCDC’s daily climatological database. The cost is $3 per station-month, but discounted for larger orders.”

Full Text Document Shelf
Labor–United States
Poverty–United States
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics
A Profile of the Working Poor, 1999
BLS Report 947
A .pdf version is also available.

Libraries–Web Site–Canada
A redesigned version of the Canadian Agriculture Library site is now available online.

U.S. Government Resource–Updates
Research and Development (R&D)–United States
National Patterns of R&D Resources: 2000
The tables in this report cover the period 1953-2000. They were revised March 2001 to incorporate recent data.

Presidents of the U.S.–William J. Clinton
Last week, the GPO added Vol. 1 (Jan-Jun, 1999) to The Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States searchable database.

The Search Engine Business
Google: Eric Schmidt Named Chairman of the Google Board of Directors
Coverage from News.Com
Press release lead, “Google Inc. today announced that Dr. Eric E. Schmidt, 45, currently chairman and CEO of Novell, Inc., has joined Google’s board of directors as chairman. Schmidt succeeds Sergey Brin, 27, Google’s founding chairman and current president. Schmidt’s appointment is effective immediately. Google also announced that Schmidt has made a significant financial investment in the company.”

Good Morning From London. I am in the U.K. attending and presenting at Internet Librarian International.

Cool Resource Alert
Historic Events–World–Streaming Media
Newsplayer
This fee-based service from the U.K. allows users to view historic World events from the past 100 years on the web (keyword search and browse) using streaming video (Microsoft Media Player). A FREE preview is available. How the site describes itself, “Now you can re-live the events of the past hundred years, witness them at first hand as they happened. Newsplayer brings you video footage of music, fashion, art, lifestyle, sport, crime, royalty, weather, showbiz, wildlife, transport, science and war. All live and uncut. At the click of the mouse you can summon up Stalin to Stallone, Hitler to Hitchcock, Eden to Elvis, Churchill to Chaplin.”

Btw, if you’re interested in viewing and listening to current news and public affairs, please stop by the Current Awareness Resources via Streaming Audio & Video compilation.

Web Navigation
“Antarcti.ca aims to map the Web”
Web Mapping Gets Tech Press Notice
Source: InfoWorld
Key Paragraphs:
“PLAYING THE ROLE of Internet cartographer, a young company will bring to market next month software that enables visitors to navigate through Web sites with a process based on visual maps…It’s complementary to traditional search engines; we’re not going to replace them,” he said. “The goal is to give users both options through a button on a site’s home page.”
Companies Mentioned:
Antarcti.ca
|||Demo at Map.Net (Uses Open Directory Data)
|||Visual.Net for Libraries
ViOS
Urban Pixel
WebMap (Demo Available)
See Also: WebBrain (Open Directory Visualization Tool)

Full-Text Report Shelf
Students–Social Characteristics–United States
Students–Economic Characteristics–United States
Source: U.S. Census
School Enrollment-Social and Economic Characteristics of Students: October 1999 P20-533

Information Technology–Statistics
Source: National Science Foundation
The Application and Implications of Information Technologies in the Home: Where are the Data and What Do They Say?

Food–United States–Statistics
Source: USDA
FoodReview: The 1990’s: A Dynamic Decade for the U.S. Food System

Info Industry News
Next Week: Major Copyright Case To Be Heard @ USSC
“Showdown at the Lexis-Nexis Corral”
From the TheStandard.Com: “The case pits the venerable Gray Lady, along with publications such as Sports Illustrated and the Lexis-Nexis database firm, against six freelance writers, led by Jonathan Tasini, president of the National Writers Union. The central issue: Whether the Times and other publications are obligated to pay freelance authors for electronically redistributing, via a computerized database, such as Nexis.com, or on CD-ROM, work that was originally published in newspapers and magazines.”

Famous Reference Book For Sale
Enjoy compiling records? How about buying the Guinness Book of World Records? The entire company is for sale.

Cataloging–MARC–U.K.
U.K. Libraries to Use MARC21
From the release, “For the first time since 1969 the UK library community is set to change the format for all its cataloguing and bibliographic data exchange. The clear message that UK libraries wish to adopt MARC21 as the standard for encoding new library catalogue records was given in response to a consultation exercise carried out by the British Library. MARC21 is the standard format for the exchange of catalogue information used in the US, Canada and several other parts of the world, and its adoption in the UK will make possible the downloading of bibliographic records from a wider range of Internet sources than ever before.”

Online Museums–Virtual Collections–Canada
The Virtual Museum of Canada is Now Online
From the news release:
TORONTO, March 22, 2001 � Minister of Canadian Heritage Sheila Copps today inaugurated the Virtual Museum of Canada (VMC), a unique gateway featuring innumerable stories and treasures entrusted to Canadian museums.

Search Engines–AltaVista
Problems with AltaVista Phrase Searching
Super Searcher, writer, and proprietor of Search Engine Showdown, Greg Notess lets us know that AltaVista phrase searching using the simple search form is not working properly. Greg writes, “According to an AltaVista rep., this is a short term problem which is to be fixed in the next release that is due out shortly. In the meantime, if you use the quotes to designate a phrase on AltaVista’s simple search form, it will not just search for exact phrase matches. It may also OR some of the individual terms. Fortunately, phrase searching does still work accurately on AltaVista’s advanced search.”

Btw, if you have never seen Greg’s Search Engine Chart, take a look at it. A must have tool!

Electronic Commerce–Fast Facts–Canada
If you are looking for stats and info about e-commerce in .ca take a look at this recently updated page from Industry Canada.

Info Industry Briefs
Dialog
Nothing beats having a Dialog trainer to teach you the finer points of Dialog searching. You can find this help at a Dialog Training Seminar. However, if you cannot or do not want to attend scheduled sessions or just want a quick review you can download the training manuals for free (.pdf). Recently, Dialog placed Developing Dialog Searching Expertise, Part 3: Advanced (Classic Dialog) and Developing Dialog Searching Expertise, Part 4: Power Searching Techniques (Classic Dialog) on the web.

Factiva
Factiva Inks Deal With IBM
Release Lead, “Factiva, a Dow Jones & Reuters Company, announced today an agreement through the Factiva Partner Network to connect Factiva Search Module and Factiva Track Module to IBM’s WebSphere Portal Server, which enables companies to build next generation Web sites that offer a secure, easy, single point of access to information, applications and people.”

Hoover’s
Hoover’s Does Deal with IBM and Lotus
From Release, “…announced agreements with both International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) [NYSE: IBM] and its subsidiary Lotus Development Corp. to develop a series of Hoover’s Portal Windows, also known as portlets, for inclusion within the IBM WebSphere Portal Server and Lotus K-Station software.”

Full-Text Report Shelf
New From the U.S. Census
African American Owned Businesses in the U.S.-1997
Highlights ||| Full-Text of Report

Hispanic Owned Businesses in the U.S.-1997
Highlights ||| Full-Text of Report

Searching for Sounds–Sound Effects–Fee-Based
Sound-effects-library.com
Not only useful but also a lot of fun!
This service offers a fee-based searchable database of thousands of sound effects. FREE to keyword search and preview. Purchase and download only the sounds you need. Recently, over four million sounds were added to the collection from the Elstree Film Studios in the U.K. These sounds were used in numerous films including Midnight Express, Platoon, and most of the James Bond movies.
Thanks to AF for the news.

Future Watch–Streaming Media Database from the USGS
U.S. Geological Survey To Make Video Archives Web Accessible
They will use the Convera Screening Room software.

Documents in the News
Public Health–Environment–Chemicals
From the CDC:
National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals
From the site, “The National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals is a new publication that will provide an ongoing assessment of the U.S. population�s exposure to environmental chemicals using biomonitoring.”

New Resource Briefs
Current Events–Streaming Media
The Economist now offers news analysis via E-Vision, a streaming media service (free).

Travel–Major Cities
More from The Economist
New “Cities Guide” for Ten Destinations
Berlin, Brussels, Hong Kong, London, Moscow, New York, Paris, San Francisco, Tokyo and Washington, DC.

Engineering–Journals–Databases
A Great Engineering Resource Gets Even Greater
The Edinburgh Engineering Virtual Library (EEVL) is an important and highly useful UK based collection of engineering resources on the web. This site provides numerous services including the Engineering E-journal Search Engine (EESE). Earlier this month 38 new titles were added to the database. More info about the EESE, “…searches the web pages of approximately 200 e-journal sites which are available freely, do not require registration, and offer all or most of the journal content as full text. Titles indexed include scholarly journals, trade, and house journals. Searches may retrieve product information, reviews, and news items as well as in-depth articles.”