Medical & Health Databases–Medline
Happy Birthday to Medline!
Medline turns 30 years old in this month. From the NLM News in October 1971: “Each user of the service will pay for his own terminal and telephone costs. The system will be accessible by teletype, TWX, IBM 2741, and other terminals operating at 100, 148, or 300 words per minute�The institution will be required to send at least one person for training in the use of the system, and further, to provide bibliographic services to health professionals beyond their normal service responsibilities.”…By 1972, the system was already expanding. Its database included 400,000 citations from 1,100 of the leading journals. The communications network began to provide toll-free telephone access in about 35 cities which all connected to NLM’s new IBM 370/155 computer. Make sure to read the entire news release, fascinating and informative.

Web Search
Pay-For-Placement Search Engines
Source: Wall Street Journal
“Some Search Services Rethink Web Results for Cipro Seekers”
From the article, “The zooming public interest in the drug, coupled with a lack of clear-cut industry-wide standards on providing paid or free links to Web sites, has left each site scrambling to formulate a policy on Cipro searches. Some are blocking ads for stores selling Cipro without prescriptions, while others are adopting a wait-and-see policy.” “Most sites allow advertisers to place ads on results pages for specific keyword searches, and it is these ads that often link to Cipro stores. Now that the FDA is crackingdown on Cipro sellers, sites are rethinking the pay-for-placement links, in some cases. Thanks to G.T. for the news tip.

Web Search–Spiders, Crawlers, and Robots
Sherman and Spiders
In his SearchDay newsletter, our friend and co-author Chris Sherman, writes a great article with an impressive list of resources about web spiders, crawlers, and robots. In a nutshell, spiders are the tools that most web search engines use to gather material for their databases. A must read for those of you who want to learn about how and why search engines work.

New, Updated, & Newly Discovered Resources (4 Items)
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Afghanistan
Area Studies
Now Online from the Library of Congress: Afghanistan – A Country Study
Copyright 1997. Searchable
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United States Postal Service–Searchable Databases
Invisible Web
Not Just Zip Codes
Along with to the frequently used Zip Code Look-up the USPS provides access to several searchable tools.
* United States Postal Inspection Service Office Finder
* Postmaster Finder
Links to the following databases, several contain historical data:
Postmasters by City
Postmasters and Where They Served
Post Offices by County
Post Offices by State
Post Offices by Established Date
Post Offices by Discontinued Date
Post Offices by ZIP Code
* Post Office Locator
* Domestic Mail Calculator
* International Mail Calculator
* Consumer Affairs Office Locator
* Business Service Network Locator
* Business Mail Entry Locator
* Zip Code City/State Associations
Finally, .pdf glossary: Glossary of Postal Terms
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Scholarly Publishing–Bibliography
Version 39 of Bailey’s Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography is Now Available
The bib currently contains, “over 1,450 articles, books, and other printed and electronic sources that are useful in understanding scholarly electronic publishing efforts on the Internet.”
Available in HTML, .pdf, or .doc formats.
Note: The HTML version contains 3 sections not available in .pdf or .doc formats and can be keyword searched.
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Securities Industry–United States
Full-Text Document
Source: GAO
Anti-Money Laundering: Efforts in the Securities Industry
92 pages .pdf, Appendix IV contains a chart of major cases.

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