Business–Rankings–United States
The 2001 ed. of the Fortune 500 is Now Online (Link to Complete Package)
Direct to the Fortune 500 List

Information Quality Evaluation–Resource Compilation
“Evaluating The Quality of Information on the Internet”
Genie Tyburski’s compiles this “must have” resource complete with checklists, webliographies, and evaluation tips.

Professional Organizations–Special Libraries Association
SLA Names New Executive Director: Roberta Shaffer
Ms. Shaffer comes to SLA from the University of Texas where she was Dean of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science.

Automotive Safety–Safety Rankings
Web Site Update
“New Rollover Ratings and New Crash Test Results Available on NHTSA’s World Wide Web Site” (Summary)
“The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) latest rollover resistance ratings and crash test results for 2001 model year vehicles are now available on the agency’s World Wide Web site: http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov.”
Direct to NHTSA Crash Test Page

Full-Text Document Shelf (4 Items)
Children–Statistics–United States
Source: U.S. Census
“The ‘Nuclear Family’ Rebounds” (Summary)
Direct to Full-Text Document:
Living Arrangements of Children
16 page .pdf file
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Energy Industry–United States
Electricity Deregulation–Fact Sheets–United States
Electricity Restructuring Fact Sheets
Source: EIA
See Also: Status of State Electric Utility Deregulation Activity
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Transportation–United States
Airports–Rural–United States
Rural Airports List: 2001 Update
Lists available in HTML, Excel, or CSV formats.
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Updated Data
Business–Transportation–United States
Motor Carrier Financial and Operating Statistics: Updated 1999 Data
Updated quarterly reports of the revenues, earnings, and ridership of Class I bus companies for 1999.

Investing–Database–Invisible Web
Brokerages–Performance–Database
Marketperform.Com
From a News.Com article, “Marketperform.com tracked the stock recommendations made by the top 48 brokerages back to February 1999. This period includes a boom year, during which the Nasdaq doubled, and a bear market when it collapsed, losing more than 60 percent of its value.Each time a brokerage issues a stock recommendation, Marketperform records the price of the stock on that date. The service then reports how much money you would have made after buying each stock. Marketperform computes the average profit if you would have sold each stock one month, three months, or six months later–or whenever the broker lowered the stock’s recommendation.” Free registration required.

Ellis Island Records–Database
Genealogy–United States
“Ellis Island Records Go Online”
Source: Newsbytes
From the article, “The immigration records of more than 17 million Americans who entered the country through Ellis Island, N.Y. will go online for the first time next Tuesday, Apr. 17.”

Information Technology–Layoffs
Invisible Web–Databases
The layoffs and closings continue in the IT world. A reminder of three databases from The Standard that will help you monitor and research the situation. Search via several criteria including company name, reason, and date.
Layoff Tracker ||| Ex-Exec Tracker ||| Flop Tracker

Pulitzer Prizes–Webcast
Journalism–Awards
Live, Only on the Web, the 2001 Pulitzer Prizes
Edited from a recently received e-mail.
A reminder that freedomforum.org, the Internet website of the Freedom Forum, presents, for the third straight year, exclusive live coverage of the 2001 Pulitzer Prizes. Our live webcast begins at 2:30 p.m. Eastern time, Monday April 16th.
The program, which will orginate from the Newseum in Arlington, Virginia, will feature live reports from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where the awards are administered, and where they will be announced on Monday. We will also feature live phone interviews with winners, in some cases, as they are celebrating the awards with their newsroom staffs.
This is the third year that the Freedom Forum has been given exclusive rights to broadcast over the web live from Columbia’s “World Room” immediately after the announcement of the awards. There is no other radio or television coverage of this event available.
To listen to the program, go to http://www.freedomforum.org and click on “View Today’s News”. In the upper right hand corner of the following page, look for the Pulitzer webcast graphic, which should take you to the webcast.
The Pulitzer program will be available for continuous “looped” repeat listening, for approximately 24 hours, beginning at 430 pm Eastern time on Monday the 16th.

Licensing Database–Arkansas
Counselor or Marriage and Family Therapist License Verification Database
Source: The Arkansas State Board of Examiners in Counseling

Full-Text Document Shelf (2 Items)
Transportation–Canada
History–Canada
Immigration-Canada
Source: Citizen and Immigration Canada
The Role of Transportation in Canadian Immigration 1900-2000
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Privacy–United States
Statistical Information–United States
Source: GAO
Record Linkage and Privacy: Issues in Creating New Federal Research and Statistical Information
A 172 page .pdf file.

Internet Domains
U.S. Government To Give Control of .EDU Domain To EDUCAUSE
From the story, “The US government today announced plans to cede control over the .edu Internet domain to the not-for-profit higher education organization Educause.”
Additional details via EDUCAUSE News Release

Full-Text Document Shelf
Copyright–United States–Tasini Case
U.S. Supreme Court Places
New York Times Co. v. Tasini Oral Argument Transcript Online
It’s a 43 page .pdf file.

Must Read!
Web–The Future
Tim Berners-Lee & Others Explain the Semantic Web
Source: Scientific American
Key Passage, “The Semantic Web will bring structure to the meaningful content of Web pages, creating an environment where software agents roaming from page to page can readily carry out sophisticated tasks for users. Such an agent coming to the clinic’s Web page will know not just that the page has keywords such as “treatment, medicine, physical, therapy” (as might be encoded today) but also that Dr. Hartman works at this clinic on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and that the script takes a date range in yyyy-mm-dd format and returns appointment times…The Semantic Web is not a separate Web but an extension of the current one, in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation. The first steps in weaving the Semantic Web into the structure of the existing Web are already under way. In the near future, these developments will usher in significant new functionality as machines become much better able to process and “understand” the data that they merely display at present.”

Environment–Toxic Releases–United States
Environment–Databases–Invisible Web
1999 Toxic Release Data Now Online
“Today the Environmental Protection Agency is releasing the 1999 Toxics Release Inventory data, providing the public with the latest data on releases of chemicals in their communities. Access to the data is available via several sources including the TRS Explorer.

Art-American
Online Teaching Tool–National Gallery of Art (Washington D.C.)
Exploring Themes in American Art
From the site, “Learn about themes in American Art through these illustrated essays on abstraction, the figure, historical subjects, landscape painting, marine painting, portraiture, narrative art, scenes from everyday life, still life, and topographical views. Adapted from the interactive videodisc American Art from the National Gallery of Art, one of the Gallery’s free-loan educational programs, this feature also includes artist biographies, a glossary, and bibliographic references.”

News Briefs
National Archives Administration–United States
NARA Wants To Spend $20 Million on Electronic Record Archive in 2002
Story Lead, “The National Archives and Records Administration wants to spend $20 million on its electronic records archive in 2002, more than 20 times the amount budgeted for this year. The money is included in the Archives� budget request sent to Congress April 9.”
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Web Search–Search Engine Showdown
Greg Notess Updates His Inktomi Review, Selects A New Fave Inktomi Engine
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State Web Sites–Delaware
Deleware Revamps Main State Portal
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National Library of Canada
“National Library of Canada�s Database Enhanced by 450 000 Records from the Biblioth�que nationale du Qu�bec”
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Online Books
Source: News.Com
“Borders hands online operations to Amazon”

Search Engine Frustration
Net Rage/Web Rage Continues According To New Study
Last summer, Chris Sherman reported on a study commissioned by WebTop (a U.K. based search engine) that alerted us to “Web Rage”.
Today, Newsfactor reports on what appears to be a updated version of the WebTop survey. We learn from the article that the problem continues and is now called “Net Rage”.
Summary:
*Survey Conducted in the U.K.
*Volume of Info on the Net Causes Stress
*Users Do Appreciate the Amount of Info Available On the Web
*Search Engines Quantity and Quality are Confusing To Users
Key Quote #1, “They [search engines] may produce thousands of results, but often these are full of links to useless information, advertising banners and promotional garbage, and not to the information the person is looking for,” said the study’s writer, Edward Kerr. “As a result, people are often forced to give up the search and look elsewhere.”
Key Quote #2, “The study found that 36 percent of UK Net users spend more than two hours online searching for accurate information, and that it takes an average of 12 minutes before a user becomes frustrated with an unproductive search.”

Executive Compensation–Rankings–United States
Business Week’s Executive Pay Special Report Now Online
Several lists and charts are also available, see “related items”.
Direct to: Executive Compensation Scoreboard (.pdf)

Web Browsers–Opera
Let’s Go to the Opera, New Version for Windows (5.10) is Now Available
I love Opera. The new version, available today, has several new features and claims to be faster than ever. Never tried Opera? It’s worth the download and some testing.

Current Events–United States
Weather–Flooding–United States
Flooding in Dakotas and Minnesota
NOAA/National Weather Service with a background article and webliography of key resources to monitor the situation.

Web Search-Google
More Kind Words For Google
From the ZDNET article, “Behind you! Is Google sneaking up on Yahoo?”: “Mountain View, Calif.-based Google has become the search destination of choice for the technology-savvy and many others. The site also has earned the plaudits of search mavens, partly for its single-minded focus on search technology and its abstinence from the kind of information, communication and commercial extras that characterize Yahoo and other portals.”
Related News: Google To Power Yahoo! Everywhere

Full-Text Document Shelf
Demographics–United States
Education–Statistics–United States
Source: U.S Census
What’s It Worth? Field of Training and Economic Status (P70-72)
Tables Only and Documentation
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U.S./China Relations
International Relations
Congressional Research Service Materials
The Federation Of American Scientists have made several Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports available dealing with U.S./China relations. Here are links to a few of them.
IB98018: China-U.S. Relations (updated March 1, 2001)
19 page .pdf
IB91121: China-U.S. Trade Issues (updated March 5, 2001)
17 page .pdf
IB98034: Taiwan: Recent Developments and US Policy Choices
(updated March 15, 2001)
18 page .pdf
China’s Economic Conditions (updated March 12, 2001)
18 page .pdf
Additional CRS Material via FAS
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E-Government
New Study on E-Government From Accenture
From the article:
The U.S. government took third place behind the governments of Canada and Singapore in a broad-ranging Accenture study of electronic-government services around the world. Consultants at Accenture, formerly Andersen Consulting of Chicago, carried out the study in January by pretending to be local citizens and businesses conducting Internet transactions with 22 governments. They tested 165 types of transactions such as defense, education, human services, postal, public safety and transportation.”
Direct to Full-Text of Report
19 page .pdf File
Direct To Accenture News Release

Preprints
The PrePrint Network from the U.S. Department of Energy Continues to Expand
An e-mail announcing an expanded and improved PrePrint network appeared on several lists yesterday.
The expanded PPN site has:
* Over 4,000 sites (over 16-fold increase from the 250 sites when PPN was launched
* Links to more than 700 professional societies
* Personalized Alert Service
* Some foreign language sites (with sufficient English content)
From the email, “The PrePRINT Network facilitates searching of preprints by linking to preprint servers wherever they exist on the Web. Searches can be aimed at a single source or a selected set of preprint sites. It pulses the search engines of the selected preprint sites, compiles the results, and returns them to the users. For those sites which do not operate their own search engines, an indexed search of the HTML pages may be performed.”

Canada–Environment–Database
Canada–Pollution–Database
From a Globe and Mail article, “In an attempt to turn up the heat on polluters, environmentalists have set up an Internet service that allows Canadians to type in their postal codes and receive a listing of the toxic compounds released near their homes and the companies responsible for the pollutants…Although Environment Canada makes this information available, its Web site is more difficult to use than the new one, and lacks some of its interactive features…Users of the new service, after they type in their postal code, can receive a listing titled “Who is polluting your community?” followed by a ranking of companies. The service also lists the type of pollutants being released.”
Direct to Pollutionwatch database.

Reference–Reviews
New Reviews from Peter Jacso
Peter’s Digital Reference Shelf is updated with reviews of The Canadian Encyclopedia Online and adflip.

Budget–United States– FY 2002
Budget of the United States, Fiscal Year 2002
“The FY 2002 Budget was transmitted to Congress on April 9, 2001 and covers the fiscal year beginning October 1, 2001.”

Training Tools–Databases–ERIC
New ERIC “Quick Instructions” Resource
The ERIC Clearinghouse on Higher Education releases a new guide to advanced searching with the web version of ERIC.

Information Visualization Tools
Stock Exchange Data–NASDAQ
NASDAQ 100 Heatmap
From the site, “Adopted from professional trading floors, Heatmaps allow you to spot significant price changes as they occur. Each colored rectangle represents an individual company in the Nasdaq-100. The cell color changes as prices change, so you can easily see market trends and opportunities.”
Learn more about Heatmaps from NeoVision.

Archives–Canada
Canada Post and National Archives Announce “Virtual” Postal Archive
From the release, “Over the next three years, the National Archives will work closely with Canada Post to create the Virtual Canadian Postal Archives. Designed for national and international users, the site will provide access to the philatelic library, documents and other archival material, as well as 15,000 images displaying the entire National Archives stamp collection and related documents.”

Web Search & Portal News Briefs
NBC Abandons NBCi
We will have to wait and see what this means for those of you who use NBCi.
From the article, “NBC followed in Walt Disney’s footsteps on Monday as it abandoned its expensive efforts to maintain a full-fledged online portal and ended its experiment with a separate class of internet tracking stock.”
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Google Lands Another Site Search Account: IDG.net
IDG.net is an excellent one-stop shop to material from numerous publications including Computerworld, PC World, and The Industry Standard.
Full-Text of News Release

Internal Revenue Service–Statistics
New IRS Statistics Released from TRAC
From an e-mail update: “The latest edition of TRAC’s IRS site has just gone up with an important new finding — analysis of IRS data indicates that many of the agency’s techniques for persuading individuals and business to pay their taxes are faltering. Key computer matching programs are down, audits have dropped, collection activities are down, criminal and civil enforcement is way down.”
TRAC (Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse) is located at Syracuse University.

Information Technology–Asia–List
Information Technology–People
Asia’s 25 Movers and Shakers 2001
Source: ZDNet Asia
A new list from Ziff-Davis Asia.

Full-Text Document Shelf
Elections–United Kingdom
Reference–United Kingdom
Source: House of Commons Library
UK Election Statistics 1945-2000
Related Docs:
By Elections Since the 1997 General Election
23 pages
General Election Results: 1 May 1997
92 pages