News and Public Affairs–Streaming Audio
Politics–United States
Current Events
C-SPAN Radio, Replays of Sunday Morning Public Affairs Programming Available on the Web
This post could be of special interest to those of you who don’t have access to American television. Every Sunday morning the major television networks run public affairs talk shows. They feature political leaders from the U.S. and the rest of the World discussing current events and related issues. A local radio station here in Washington DC and available on the web, WCSP/C-SPAN Radio, replays the audio portion from all of these programs beginning at Noon EST/1600 GMT. Here is the current schedule, make sure to check this page for changes.
Noon EST/1600GMT–NBC–Meet the Press
1pm EST/1700GMT–ABC–This Week With Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts
2pm EST/1800GMT–Fox–Fox News Sunday
3pm EST/1800GMT–CNN–Late Edition
4pm EST/1900GMT–CBS–Face the Nation
Direct to the C-SPAN Radio Stream

Public Company Info–Databases
Invisible Web
What’s Up With SECInfo.Com
The site hasn’t been online for the past couple of weeks BUT good news, it will be back soon. I just had a brief chat with Fran Finnegan, the site owner and he informs me that the SECInfo.Com database is currently being rebuilt on a new, faster server. It will also return with a new ISP which should also improve performance. Fran told me that he hopes to have his very useful database back online in the next week or two. Stay tuned. If you would like to get an idea about how SECInfo is designed, check out a cached version of the homepage via Google.

New, Updated, & Newly Discovered Resources (4 Items)
Private Companies–Lists and Rankings
Source: Forbes
Forbes 500 Largest Private Companies, 2001 List
Lists back to 1995 are available along with several search, customization features.
Also Available: Global 50 (50 Largest Global Private Companies)
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Science and Engineering–Employment
Source: National Science Foundation
Employment Preferences and Outcomes of Recent Science and Engineering Doctorate Holders in the Labor Market
From the site, “This issue brief examines the differences between the preferences for employment sector and job activities of recent Science and Engineering doctorate holders at the beginning of their doctoral programs to their actual labor market experiences some years after graduation.”
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Distance Education–United States
Source: ERIC Clearinghouse for Higher Education
The U.S. Department of Education and Student Financial Aid for Distance Education: An Update
7 pages .pdf
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K-12 Education
New ERIC Digest-Successful K-12 Technology Planning: Ten Essential Elements

Web Search–AllTheWeb
Current Events–Search Engines
Source: InfoWorld
Coming Monday November 11th: New Services From AllTheWeb
This IDG article reports that Monday will bring the roll-out see of a few new services from. More comments on Monday afternoon. Here’s what to expect:
1) A database with real-time news crawling/updating. Material from 3000 online news sources. According to the article some limiting will be available. Google has been refreshing it’s database with content from various news sources every 24-48 hours. AltaVista provides a search interface to the Moreover news feed. Northern Light provides free full-text content, updated in real-time from 56 newswires.
2) New linguistic analysis of queries.
3) Fast Topics: A directory using Open Directory data
4) Expanded customization options

Current Events–Search Engines
Cool: Yahoo News Advanced Search Interface
As you know, Yahoo licenses news content from many sources. The advanced search interface for news content offers numerous limiting options that could make getting to the precise article or story you’re looking for easier. Limits include: title (title:), byline (byline: ), and dateline (dateline: ). More limits and examples at the bottom of this page.

Video Search–Bloomberg
Streaming Media
Bloomberg Television Content Now Keyword Searchable, View Video Content Online
Once on this site, look for the “Video Player” link on the right side of the page. This will open up a box where you can keyword search video, then watch that segment of video using your RealVideo player.
See Also: PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer Video Search

New, Updated, & Newly Discovered Resources (2 Items)
Information Technology–Lists & Rankings
Now Available: Interactive Week 500, 2001 List
From the site, “The Interactive 500 is more than a list of which companies generated the most hard dollars from their web operations in the past year. It’s also Interactive Week’s annual checkup on the state of e-commerce. And this year, surprisingly, the health of the online economy appears to be a lot better than most people think.”
See Also: Charts are also available as .pdf files.
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Criminal Justice–United States–Statisitcs
Source: BJS
Felony Defendants in Large Urban Counties, 1998
Summary ||| Direct to Full-Text
52 pages .pdf

Periodicals–Tables of Contents
Alerts
Free Service, TOC Alerts from Infotrieve
Infotrieve is a leading document delivery service that provides full-text content, delivered online, via fax, or through the mail for a fee. Infotrieve also provides tables of content alerts (delieved via e-mail) for many of these publications. A free service. You will be e-mailed the table of contents when a new edition of the publication is entered into the Infotrieve database. To begin using this service:
*Sign-Up (free) for an Infotrieve Membership.
*Select the TOC Page and Either Browse or Search the List of Available Journals
*Select Desired Journal(s), Click the “Add to TOC Alert Profile”
*New TOC(s) Will Be E-Mailed To You
See Also: Search the Entire Infotrieve “Article Finder” Database (free). It Contains Over 20 Million Citations and 10 Million Abstracts

Portals–Science Information
Coming Soon: Science.Gov
Listserv postings alert us to a new U.S. Government portal for science info, Science.Gov. Participants will include the Department of Agriculture, DOE, DTIC, NLM, and the National Air Intelligence Center at Wright Patterson Air Force Base. The new portal is set for a February, 2002 debut.
Learn More: “Strengthening the Public Information Infrastructure for Science”

Web Search–Google
New Portion of Google Site Might Prove Useful For Web Searchers
Danny Sullivan, alerts us to a new section on the Google site. It’s aimed at Webmasters, might be of value to Google searchers. “Google Information for Webmasters” gives a solid overview about why pages may not be found using the search engine, a section on how Google ranks pages, and a bit on how the database is updated.

Web Search–Searching Direct From the Browser
Source: Wired News
“IE Bug Can Lead to Strange Search”
You’ve been advised. I’ve been a victim. From the article, “Internet Explorer is configured to load Microsoft’s own MSN search page whenever users click the browser’s search button or enter a wrong URL. But a small program embedded in a website or an e-mail can automatically change the system’s default settings to direct users to websites that they may prefer not to see. Not only are users being directed to odd search sites touting the benefits of work-at-home schemes and Internet gambling, some claim that every time they attempt to do a search or happen to enter an incorrect URL, they get pop-up windows with explicit advertising for hardcore pornography.”

Reading Shelf
Intranets
Source: Darwin
“Why Do Intranets Fail”
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Online Information
Source: Financial Times
“Discovering Hidden Riches in Business Data”
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Web Search
Source: Financial Times
“Quest to Mine the Far Corners of the Web”

New, Updated, & Newly Discovered Resources
Agriculture–Safety–United States
Bioterrorism
Source: National Library of Agriculture
New Web Site: Biosecurity, Bioterror & the Threat to Agriculture

Library of Congress
International Online Resources
LC Launches “Online International Project”
From the annoucement, “Portals to the World serves as a kind of one-stop shopping for reliable international information,” said Carolyn T. Brown, Assistant Librarian for Library Services and Acting Director, Area Studies Collections. “We expect that it will become one of the very first places that librarians, researchers, and the general public turn to for information about the nations of the world.” Portals to the World (www.loc.gov/rr/international/portals.html) offers links to selective and authoritative electronic resources, arranged by country or geographic regions, with links for each, sorted in a wide range of broad categories. Each country portal is designed to be comprehensive, yet selective, and to cover topics of interest to specialists and the general public alike. Typical categories are business, commerce, economy, culture, education, government, politics, law, history, libraries, and archives, with some categories tailored to subjects of particular importance for the study of individual nations. In some cases, search engines local to that nation or language have also been included as have links to worldwide organizations, such as the World Bank and UNESCO.
Direct to “Portals to the World”

Online Research
Source: Kentucky Kernel (University of Kentucky)
Scary Stuff: No Need To Use Books, Magazines, and Other Paper-Based Resources?
This article from the student newpaper at the University of Kentucky is about the underuse of LexisNexis at the school. However, this article is not being brought to your attention for this topic but, specifically for its lead. The article makes it seem that LN and other electronic tools are the only resources needed to write a paper. From the article, “Forget pulling books from the shelves and blowing dust off their covers. There’s no need to thumb through books, magazines, newspapers and business reports in an attempt to accumulate enough information to draft a substantial paper.Yet many students are unaware that much of the information needed is available on Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe.”

New, Updated, & Newly Discovered Resources (2 Items)
U.S./Canadian Border–Statistics
Source: BTS
Preview: “North American Trade and Travel Trends”
Full report available Friday
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Minority Business–United States
Full-Text
Source: U.S. Census
Survey of Minority-Owned Business Enterprises, Black-Owned Businesses: 1997
2 pages .pdf

Web Search–Google
Last week, we alerted you to Chris Sherman’s article about some changes at Google. Today, the “official word”. Google now provides access to material in the following formats:
-Adobe PostScript (ps)
-Lotus 1-2-3 (wk1, wk2, wk3, wk4, wk5, wki, wks, wku)
-Lotus WordPro (lwp)
-MacWrite (mw)
-Microsoft Excel (xls)
-Microsoft PowerPoint (ppt)
-Microsoft Word (doc)
-Microsoft Works (wks, wps, wdb)
-Microsoft Write (wri)
-Rich Text Format (rtf)
-Text (ans, txt)
You can limit your search to any of these filetypes by using this syntax, filetype: or by using the pull-down option on the advanced search interface page. You can click to view the document online or view a text only version of the content via the Google site. In other Google news, Image Search users now have an advanced search option. Users will be able to limit their search results by file type (gif or jpeg), color (black and white, grayscale or full color), or to a specific domain (just images on microsoft.com). Finally, Google now has translation support for the Arabic and Turkish.

Bureau of Accuracy!!!
Politics–United States–Almanacs
Almanac of American Politics Was Just A Demo
Oops, sorry. Last week we noted that the The Almanac of American Politics was available free on the web must have been only a demo. The site now requires a subscription. I have removed the link. Oh well! Thanks the the VAS&ND who emailed me with the update.

News Brief
Web Search–Lycos
Lycos.Com Home Page Gets Face Lift
Remember, Lycos gets it’s crawled database from AllTheWeb. Keywords results are the same in either database. The ATW results are labeled as “Web Results”.

New, Updated, & Newly Discovered Resources
Small Business–United States
SBA (Small Business Administration) Updates FAQ’s, FAQ Site
22 FAQ’s on various subjects. They can be full-text searched using this search engine.

Firearms–United States–Statistics
Source: BJS
Firearm Use by Offenders
Describes firearm use of State and Federal prison inmates.
Summary ||| Direct to Full-Text

New, Updated, & Newly Discovered Resources
Fine Arts–Digital Collections
Source: Associated Press
Los Angeles County Museum of Art Places Digital Collection Online
From the article, “The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has opened a gallery for the virtual visitor, making 10,000 of its works available on the Internet. Collections Online, part of the museum’s Web site, is a digital archive that offers tastes of everything from 13th century Islamic art to antique evening gowns. Also available are 175,000 records from the art research library, Andrea Rich, museum president and director, said Friday.”
Direct to LA County Museum of Art “Collections Online”

News Alerts
Business News
CBS Marketwatch.Com Improves News Alert Tool
You’ll first need to register (free) for the CBS Marketwatch site. Then, create news alerts that are be delivered via email either “as they move” on the news wires or at a specified time. Create keyword alerts (Boolean permitted) with content from AP, UPI, Reuters, PR Newswire, Business Wire and more. Other alerts will notify you of company news by entering a ticker symbol or selecting from a list of industries. Other alerts are also available.
See Also: Northern Light News Alerts (Material from 56 Newswires)
See Also: Net2One
See Also: New York Times News Alerts

New, Updated, & Newly Discovered Resources and Documents
Weather–Wind Chill–Chart
Ready Reference
National Weather Service Releases NEW Wind Chill Chart
From the news release, “NOAA’s National Weather Service today implemented a new method to compute wind chill temperature to provide better winter weather warnings throughout the nation. For the first time, the index will include specific wind chill threshold values showing frostbite danger at given periods of time.”
Direct to the New NOAA Wind Chill Chart & Wind Chill Caculator

Terrorism
Source: DOJ, Office for Victims of Crime
OVC Handbook for Coping After Terrorism

New, Updated, & Newly Discovered Resources and Documents
Small Business–United States–Lists and Rankings
Source: Inc
The 2001 Inc 500 List is Now Available Online
See Also: The Inc 500 Almanac
See Also: Search 1982-2001 Inc 500 Lists

U.S. Government–Office of Homeland Security
Official Web Site: Office of Homeland Security

War in Afghanistan
Full-Text
Source: House of Commons Library, United Kingdom
“Operation Enduring Freedom and the Conflict in Afghanistan”
A comprehensive review of activities since October 14th.
104 pages .pdf

Business Information Research–United Kingdom
User Surveys
“Britons Waste a Lot of Time When Trying to Find Relevant Online Information”
I’m sure these numbers are not unique to the UK. More ammo for your “why we need info professionals” file. From the news release, “Over 25m British Internet users – 80% of the total users – waste time searching through irrelevant information on the web, according to a new survey commissioned by the UK search engine Mirago. The survey, which was carried out by NOP among UK-based Internet users, showed that over a third (37%) of those online waste a quarter of their time searching the web in vain, 29% waste half of their time and 9% waste three quarters of their time. Amazingly, 5% or approximately 1.5m people waste all of their time ploughing through useless information.”
Caveat: As noted in the news release the survey was commissioned by Mirago, a UK based search company. Btw, the Mirago advanced search screen offers several sorting options not seen elsewhere. The company also operates its own web crawler.

U.S. Government Information–Post 9/11
Source: Newsbytes
“Nuclear Regulatory Agency Plans Terrorist-Proof Site”
As many of you know the NRC site has been down since just after the 9/11 attacks. This article reports on the plan for a new site. From the article, The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) soon plans to debut a new Web site, one that contains far less information that could be useful to terrorists planning to attack U.S. nuclear sites.
According to a notice on the site this morning, the NRC “will begin deploying its newly redesigned public Web site in a phased approach.” The commission pulled information offline after a question arose over whether portions of the site could provide useful maps for terrorists planning further U.S. strikes.

Web Search–Google
Source: News.Com
“Google Tests Snapshots of Web Pages”
From the article, “Google has been quietly testing a new feature that offers snapshots of Web pages alongside ordinary search results. Google spokeswoman Cindy McCaffrey on Wednesday told CNET News.com that the experimental pages have so far been shown to a random test group made up of less than 1 percent of its audience. She added that the company routinely tests new ideas in this way and has not yet decided whether it will adopt the graphical cues as a standard feature. “It depends on the feedback we get,” she said. “We’re really most interested in getting someone exactly to the destination that they are looking for. We’re open to providing any information to accomplish that, including graphics.”

Library Marketing
Source: Free Pint
“Marketing Library and Information Services”
Sheila Webber, a UK based lecturer in info science has constructed a wonderful annotated webliography of resources about this IMPORTANT topic. Impressive and useful!

Information Quality
Source: PC World
“WTO Parody Site Accused of Harvesting E-Mails”
Another article for your “beware” file. Plenty of “spoofed” sites exist but this one ranks high on many engines when searching for the legitimate WTO site. From the article, “Search engines are directing visitors to a subtle parody (Gatt.Org) of the Web site of the World Trade Organization (WTO) instead of the real thing–and the WTO is powerless to stop it, the Geneva-based body warned Wednesday in an e-mail to members of its mailing list…The parody site contains so many references to the WTO that search engines are directing people to it instead of the real thing. A search of Altavista using the keyword “WTO” returns the parody site in fifth place.
I checked several other engines and here’s how the “WTO” search ranked.
Excite: Gatt.Org was the number 2 entry
AllTheWeb: Gatt.Org was the number 6 entry
Teoma: Gatt.Org was the number 7 entry in the “web pages” section
Google: Gatt.Org did not rank in the top 100 results
Wisenut: Gatt.Org was the number 36 entry

Online Newspapers–New York Times
Source: Wired News
“News That’s Fit to Download”
“Earlier this week, the venerable print icon The New York Times launched The New York Times Electronic Edition, an exact digital replica of its New York edition that is normally not available in print outside the metropolitan New York area. Now, instead of waiting for the paper to arrive on the doorstep, you can download an electronic version overnight, open it on the laptop on your way to work and delve through articles at the office.”
See Also: Direct to New York Times Electronic Edition

New, Updated, & Newly Discovered Resources and Documents (3 Items)
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Biological Incidents–Handbooks
Source:CIA
Chemical/Biological/Radiological Incident Handbook
Recently released unclassified document.
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Chemical Weapons
Source: National Library of Medicine
Chemical Warfare Agents
Includes a bibliography and webliography
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Crime–Schools–United States–Statistics
Source: National Center for Education Statistics
Indicators of School Crime and Safety: 2001