Web Search–Northern Light
NL Public Search Shutdown: Letter from Northern Light CEO Placed on Web Site
From David Seuss’s letter, “While we have made an all-out effort at the advertising-supported Web search model, we find now that we need to refine our business to focus more exclusively on the needs of business researchers and enterprise customers.” You can read more on the NL shutdown here.

P2P (Peer-To-Peer) Search
Future Search
Source: Information Week
Learn About: Open Cola, A P2P Search Engine Preparing for Beta Test
From the article: “OpenCola Ltd. wants to cut through the information glut of peer-to-peer networking. As the company’s founder Cory Doctorow puts it, the key is “discovering the things we don’t know we don’t know.” He’s not stuttering but identifying a real problem with information searches–it’s tough to ask for something until you know it exists.” “OpenCola’s answer is Folders–P2P collaborative search software that’s slated to be on OpenCola.com in late April for public beta testing. It’s designed to adapt to users’ preferences and provide increasingly relevant content. Users put files of interest–say, an article about security holes in routers–into a folder on their desktop. OpenCola’s Folders crawls the network, migrating to the desktops of anyone likely to have the router information.”
See Also: “OpenCola�Have Some Code and a Smile” (Technology Review 4/9/01)
See Also: Direct to OpenCola Site

Resource Reviews
Jacs�’s Digital Reference Reviews For January Now Available
This month P�ter takes a look at the Bloomsbury Research Centre and 50states.Com.

Professional Reading Shelf
Reference Linking
Source: Learned Publishing 15.1
“Instant Linking – Delayed Use: Setting Provider Expectations”
From the abstract, “The web with its hyperlinking is a great environment in which to put electronic journals and to encourage linking of texts. But reference links will only be used substantially if readers incorporate them into new patterns of habitual use. In doing so, many users will be in search mode and only some types of user will habitually use reference linking. There needs to be a sufficient number of references that are linked, the right processes to achieve that efficiently, and something that is worthwhile at the end of the link.” Full-Text available online (no charge).
See Also: “What is SFX?” (from Learned Publishing 14.4)
–
Knowledge Organization
Source: Proceedings of XML 2000
“The Tao of Topic Maps”

Web Search–Ask Jeeves
Web Search–Teoma
Ask Jeeves Completes Integration of Teoma Results
Results using Teoma’s ranking and Subject-Specific Popularity(SM)* algorithms are found on Ask Jeeves under the “You may find my search results helpful” header. Teoma’s “Pages by Topic” and “Expert Links” sections are not currently available via the Ask interface. They will become available on the Ask.Com site redesign later in the year. According to an Ask.Com spokesperson, the database is currently at about 150 million pages. It’s refreshed monthly with more popular sites set for recrawl several times a week. A few sample searches found content from early December, 2001.
Good News: Teoma will continue to operate, in beta until Q2 2002, as a stand-alone engine. The beta should be complete when the Teoma database reaches the 250 million page mark. All three types of Teoma’s search results will be available. Teoma is also working on implementing cached page and spellcheck features. A few sample searches at Teoma.Com shows that the “beta” dbase is still several months old. We’ll be on the lookout for changes.

Reference Linking
PubMed
Source: Several Lists including Web4Lib
Learn About: LinkOut
From the LinkOut site, “LinkOut is a feature of Entrez that is designed to provide users with links from PubMed and other Entrez databases to a wide variety of relevant web-accessible online resources, including full-text publications, biological databases, consumer health information, research tools, and more.” From the e-mail posting, “LinkOut in PubMed allows a library to choose which full-text providers to link to. This includes publishers of electronic journals and all full-text providers that participate in LinkOut. In addition, a library can supply links to locally-loaded journal collections or any e-journal collection for which the library can provide reliable URLs. Consequently, a library can easily setup an environment for its users that features seamless and appropriate links to its electronic collection.” “Libraries provide links to their e-journal collections via the Library LinkOut Files Submission Utility, where holdings are simply checked off. Use of the Utility is free to all libraries. For registration, please send a request to linkout@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov and include the name of the library and a contactperson, telephone number, and address.”
See Also: Read the LinkOut Overview and FAQ

Professional Reading Shelf (4 Items)
Librarians–United States
Source: IMLS News Release/LISNews.Com
$10 Million to Recruit New Librarians
From the news release, ” Last night Laura Bush announced a proposed $10 million initiative for 2003 to recruit a new generation of librarians. The initiative will be managed by the Institute of Museum and Library Services…Recruiting a new generation of librarians is vital. Research scheduled for publication in the March 2002 issue of American Libraries magazine will show that based on 1990 Census data almost 58 percent of professional librarians will reach the age of 65 between 2005 and 2019.” Thanks to M.B. for the news tip.
-
Public Libraries
Source: WSJ/MSNBC
“Libraries Focus on New Technology“
Thanks to G.T. for the news tip.
-
Information Quality–Health Information
Source: The Lancet
“Completeness of Web-Based Melanoma Information Questioned” (Registration Required, Free)
From the article, “Bichakjian and co-workers typed the word “melanoma” into six popular commercial search engines and two medical search engines and found 74 sites from various sources (commercial, government, non-profit, medical society, &c) among the first 30 “hits” on each engine that could be assessed against a “gold standard” checklist of 35 factors (eg, included basic definitions, incidence rates, risks, treatment options, &c).”
-
Web Search–Google
Source: USA Today
“Google’s HQ Provides Blast from Silicon Valley Past”

New, Updated, & Newly Discovered Resources & Tools (6 Items)
-
Patents–United States–Lists & Rankings
Source: USPTO
Annual List of Top 10 Organizations Receiving Most Patents, 2001
-
Digital Collections
Nuremberg Trials–Documents
Source: AP
“Papers From Nuremberg Trial on Web”
From the article, “New documents — taken from 148 volumes of personal papers and records kept by Gen. William J. Donovan during the Nuremberg trials — will be posted every six months, along with commentary from scholars.”
See Also: Direct to Nurember Project Site (via Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion)
-
Cuba–Trade Statistics
Source: CIA
Cuba Handbook of Trade Statistics, 2000 Now Online
Links to 1998 and 1999 editions are included on the site.
-
Franchises–Worldwide–Lists & Rankings
Source: Entrepreneur
Franchise 500�, 2002
See Also: Top 101 Homebased Franchises For 2002
-
Ready Reference–Biography
Source: College & Research Library News
“Biography Resources: Finding Information on the Famous, Infamous, and Obscure”
-
European Studies
Discovered in the Internet Resources Newsletter
New Section of the SOSIG Gateway: EuroStudies
From the newsletter, “The new EuroStudies gateway will provide access to Internet resources about Europe as a region, ranging from issues of international security to the introduction of the Euro. In addition, it will cover information provided by individual European countries, with a particular emphasis on those located in Central and Eastern Europe, which are generally under-represented on the Web.”

Online Information Industry–Lists & Rankings
Source: EContent
The Content 100
From the December 2001 issue. Now available online. An interesting and useful list. Short descriptions and urls for all companies. EContent editor Bill Mickey writes, “It’s not a buyer’s guide. It’s not a definitive list of all the content companies. It’s not complete, even for what we set out to do. What this list does accomplish, though, is illustrate the incredible variety and depth of the content industry.”

Web Search–FirstGov
Source: Government Computer News
“GSA Searches for a New FirstGov Engine”
From the article, “The General Services Administration yesterday released a request for proposals for a new search engine for the FirstGov database portal.Inktomi Corp. of San Francisco holds the current contract, which expires March 31. The new contract will be for one year with four one-year options. Proposals are due Jan. 17, and GSA wants to award a contract by Feb. 28. The winning vendor will provide installation and hosting services, maintenance and software support. The software infrastructure must be able to spider and index the volumes of uniform resource locators and data GSA expects will increase over the next five years.
See Also: “GSA Preps FirstGov Contract” (Federal Computer Week)
See Also: Access Full-Text of the FirstGov RFP

Professional Reading Shelf (2 Items)
Patents
Source: Free Pint
“Searching Patents on Government Databases on the Web”
-
Internet Filtering
Source: Newsbytes
“More Libraries Filtered In 2001 – Report”

New, Updated, & Newly Discovered Resources & Tools (2 Items)
-
U.S. Government Printing Office–E-Mail Alerts
New Titles By Topic E-Mail Alert Service
From the site, “This free service allows you to receive convenient and timely e-mail updates of selected new publications available for sale from the Superintendent of Documents. Sign up for any or all of the notification lists covering some of our most popular subject areas and receive updates on new titles as soon as they are available for purchase.”
-
Video/DVD Releases
Source: Rotten Tomatoes
Upcoming Video/DVD Releases Calendar
Browse upcoming titles 4 months prior to release.

Web Search–Northern Light
Northern Light News: Company Will Shutdown Publicly Available Web Search Engine on January 16th
Another search tool bites the dust. It’s sad to see this one go as NL is refocusing efforts on enterprise services. From the news release, “As of January 16, 2002, the company will no longer be providing free Web search capabilities to the general public. Northern Light’s Special Collection(TM), an online business library of over 70 million pages of full-text, authoritative content from more than 7,100 sources, will continue to be offered to enterprise customers and to the public from Northern Light’s Web site. Additionally, the company will offer Web searching to enterprise customers. Northern Light will continue to maintain and update its index of more than 350 million Web pages to provide enterprise customers with search of the Web using Northern Light’s patented classification technology, and will continue offering custom Web searching for enterprise customers.” Still Free: NL’s current news search (56 newswires), search alerts, and Special Editions will continue to be publicly available for free according to a NL spokesperson.
See Also: “Bon Voyage Northern Light” (via Search Day )
See Also: “Northern Light Ends Free Ride” (via Boston Herald)

Web Search–Ask Jeeves/Teoma
Web Search–IBM
Source: InfoWorld
Teoma Results Coming Soon to Jeeves, New Stuff From IBM
From the article, “Ask Jeeves plans to integrate Teoma search results in its Ask.com site within the next month, syndicate the technology to portals and Web sites in the second quarter, and later this year offer Teoma as a site-specific search tool for enterprises.” Ask Jeeves purchased Teoma in September.The article also includes mention of new web data mining technology from IBM, “Later this month, IBM plans to unveil new technology aimed at elevating the process of Web data mining. The technology will be broader than search, combing algorithms from the Clever project with other data-mining algorithms with an emphasis on massive scalability, said Anant Jhingran, director of computer science at IBM’s Almaden Research Center in San Jose, Calif.”
Update: See 1/10/02 Post for Ask Jeeves/Teoma Update

Census–United Kingdom–Databases
Source: KableNet
“U.K. 1901 Census Site Taken Offline”
From the article, “The Public Record Office has conceded temporary defeat in the struggle to keep its most popular online service running on the web. A spokesperson confirmed on 8 January 2001 that the 1901 census site www.census.pro.gov.uk had been taken offline because of huge demand from users.” “The Public Record Office hopes to have the site running again by 14 January 2002.”

New, Updated, & Newly Discovered Resources & Tools (3 Items)
-
Children–Statistics
Source: United Nations
Full-Text Report: We the Children: Meeting the Promises of the World Summit for Children
This report is available either by chapter or as a single 980k document. Make sure to make note of the Statistical Review. According to the UN site this section review, “presents the most recent data on children’s rights and well-being and is based on an exhaustive 150-country data collection effort, the largest such endeavour ever.”

Pilots–United States–Databases
Invisible Web
Source: FAA
FAA Aviation Registry Web Site Adds Airmen Data Search
See Also: Direct to the Aviation Registry
See Also: Additional Aviation Searches via Landings.Com
-
Digital Collections
Source: News Release
3 New Library of Congress/Ameritech Grant Collections Now Available
1) Chicago Anarchists on Trial: Evidence from the Haymarket Affair, 1886-1887
“…more than 3,800 images of original manuscripts, broadsides, photographs, prints and artifacts relating to the Haymarket Affair owned by the Chicago Historical Society (CHS).
-
2) The Church in the Southern Black Community 1780-1925
“…137 texts, 100 of which were supported by the LC/Ameritech award. These printed texts, selected specifically from the libraries at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, are primarily books with a few pamphlets and journal articles.”
-
3) Sunday School Books: Shaping the Values of Youth in the Nineteenth Century
“…163 Sunday school books published in America between 1815 and 1865, drawn from the collections of Michigan State University Libraries and the Clarke Historical Library at Central Michigan University Libraries.”
See Also: Additional LC/Ameritech Resources

Enterprise Search–Northern Light
Future Search
Northern Light and In-Q-Tel Team To Develop New Search System
From the press release, “Northern Light Technology, LLC and In-Q-Tel have teamed up to develop an advanced search system that will eliminate the need to manually sift through countless documents in a variety of languages. In-Q-Tel can now take advantage of a unique combination of search capabilities from Northern Light that will use double-byte technology to deliver comprehensive and relevant Web content in multiple languages.” In-Q-Tel is a “venture catalyst” organization that’s chartered by the CIA. A review of press releases In-Q-Tel funding of Intelliseek, the ProFusion folks, Mohomine, and Tacit Knowledge Systems.
See Also: Direct to the In-Q-Tel Site
See Also: “CIA Doesn’t Spook Northern Light” (via Internet.Com)

Academic Libraries
Association of College and Reference Libraries
ACRL President Mary Reichel to Hold Live Webcast on “The Changing Library”
It’s scheduled for 1/29/02 at 2pm EST. No charge to view the webcast but you will need to sign-up. More details on the linked page.
See Also: You can also access and view (free) an archive of webcasts including the 11/13/01 session, Librarians and Information Technology, with ACRL Executive Director Mary Ellen Davis.

Web Search –Usenet
Web Search–Google
Source: Salon
“The Geeks Who Saved Usenet”
From the article, Google gets the credit for making these relics of the early Net accessible to anyone on the Web, bringing the early history of Usenet to all. Michael Schmidt, 29, a Google software engineer, spent the last year and a half playing detective, trying to track down the Internet’s lost history: “It was a long and painful investigative process. I was searching on the Web, calling people. There were a lot of dead ends.” But it was the geeky pragmatism and historical foresight of Usenet old-timers themselves that actually saved the early history of the newsgroups so that we can all poke around in it today. These “archive donors,” whom Google thanks here, gave their copies of the millions of messages they’d saved back to the Net.” Thanks to S.C. for alerting us to this article.

New, Updated, & Newly Discovered Resources & Tools (2 Items)
-
Libraries–United Kingdom
Source: Library Association
New Library Association Report: Libraries and Lifelong Learning: a Strategy 2002-4
See Also: Direct to the Report (Full-Text, 18 pages)
–
Aviation–United States–Statistics
Source: NTSB
Full-Text Report: Public Aircraft Safety
Summary ||| Direct to Full-Text

Patent Information
Source: Library Journal
“U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Destroying Paper Files”
From the article, “Citing space concerns and maintenance issues, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has begun discarding paper copies from its collection of more than 6.3 million patents issued since the mid 19th-century, with a proposal on the table eventually to discard them all.” “Meanwhile, although a notice in the Federal Register has asked for public comment on a proposal to discard the public�s patent collection, LJ has learned that a decision seems to already have been made. According to numerous sources, plans approved for the USPTO�s new home contain no space for a public collection of documents.”
See Also: Read the RFC Published in the Federal Register
See Also: Read Comments Submitted To The PTO About the FR Notice

Web Search–Google
Source: Business 2.0
Google Hires a Grown-Up
From the article, “She’s a well-connected Harvard MBA and a former World Bank economist, and she most recently worked as chief of staff to former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers. So why has Sheryl Sandberg ditched D.C. for a new job in Silicon Valley — a business development job, no less — at … Google?”

Future Search–Television
Source: Business 2.0
TV That Works Like the Web
From the article, “Move over TiVo. A new startup wants to make all television content archived, indexed, and searchable.”

Online Information–Oxford University Press
Online Information–xrefer
Source: The Guardian
More on the New OUP and xrefer Fee-Based Services
We’ve mentioned both of these new products in posts on 11/22/01 and 12/6/01. This article provides a bit more insight into both services. Btw, Proofreading problems. The Guardian incorrectly identifies xrefer as xref.
See Also: Direct to xreferPlus (Free-Trial Available)
See Also: Direct to OUP Site
NOTE: xrefer Continues To Offer a Large Amount of Useful and Authoritative Reference Content For Free

Professional Reading Shelf (3 Items)
Source: Science
“The Stucture of the Web”
This brief overview article is by two of the foremost experts on web structure, Dr. Jon Kleinberg and Dr. Steve Lawrence. This article appeared in the November 30, 2001 issue of Science. Access is via Dr. Kleinberg’s web site.
See Also: Dr. Kleinberg’s Web Page
See Also: Dr. Lawerence’s Web Page
-
Humanities–Research
Source: Council on Library and Information Resources
Full-Text Research Report: Scholarly Work in the Humanities and the Evolving Information Environment
-
Libraries
Source: Council on Library and Information Resources
The Evidence in Hand: Report of the Task Force on the Artifact in Library Collections

New, Updated, & Newly Discovered Resources & Tools (2 Items)
-
Language
Source: BBC
Words of 2001
From the article, “Many of the defining moments of 2001 spawned their own words and phrases. At year’s end, we take stock of these additions to the news lexicon.” Thanks to C.S. for the alert.
-
Research Reports (Full-Text) from the Parliamentary Library, Parliament of Australia
“Mutual Misperceptions: The Historical Context of Muslim-Western Relations”
“Indonesia and Transnational Terrorism”
Avialable in HTML or PDF
“Digital Television and Datacasting” E-Brief
“Hospitals in Australia” E-Brief

Web Search–Google
Use the * (Asterisk) as a Wildcard With Google Phrase Searches
For your Google search tips and tricks file. Here are a few examples:
“Lord * * Flies”
“Nothing to * * * Itself”
“George * Bush”

Ready Reference
Source: The World Almanac
The January 2002 World Almanac Newsletter is Now Online
Perfect for the reference desk! Info on January 2002 events, birthdays, “This Day in History”, December 2001 chronology and much more.

Information Science
Free Full-Text Access to the Current Issue of Information Processing & Management
Elsevier is currently providing FREE (you’ll need to register, fast/simple) to the current issue of Information Processing & Management.
Here are the titles of a few of the articles in issue (vol. 38 no.1) of this scholarly pub:
“Improving The Retrieval Effectiveness of Very Short Queries”
“Visualizing a High Recall Search Strategy Output for Undergraduates in an Exploration Stage of Researching a Term Paper”
“Discovering Authorities and Hubs in Different Topological Web Graph Structures”
“Assessing Bias in Search Engines”

Organizing the Web
RDF
“W3C Debates Technology Patent Suit”
Source: ZDNet
From the article, “A Canadian company is claiming that a popular Web technology [RDF] infringes on a patent it owns.”

New, Updated, & Newly Discovered Resources & Tools (3 Items)
-
Agriculture–Canada
New Web Site: Canadian Agriculture Library, Departmental Electronic Publications
-
IPO’s–Lists & Rankings
Source: Global Securities
IPO Underwriters, Highest Value of IPOs by Total Net Proceeds, 2001
-
E-Government–United States–Lists & Rankings
Center for Digital Government Digital State Survey Results, 2001
See Also: Direct to the Survey Site\
-
Perinatal Statistics–United States
Invisible Web
(Discovered via the LII)
PeriStats: An Interactive Perinatal Data Resource
From the site, “An interactive perinatal data resource”. Provided by the March of Dimes. Graph or chart the data. Also set up comparisons between states. Also from the site, “The PeriStats database uses data compiled from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), including the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, and the National Center for HIV, STD, and TB Prevention, the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA), the Health Resources Services Administration (HRSA), the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMSHA), the U.S. Census Bureau, the National Governors Association (NGA), the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the March of Dimes.”

Web Search–Paid Placement
Source: PC World
Understanding Paid Placement
Nothing new here. However, this article might be a good resource to share in training sessions when explaining this subject.

Job Search
Source: Wall Street Journal via MSNBC
“Job Sites Produce Few Actual Hires”
From the article, “Jeff Taylor, founder of Monster.com and a global director at the job board�s parent, TMP Worldwide Inc., acknowledges imperfections in database search tools. �I�ve said that I�ll go to my grave trying to improve database searching and tools,� he says, adding, �I feel pretty good about the way the system matches up skills with openings and will continue to improve it.�

News Briefs
Online Information–Micromedia
Changes to Micromedia’s Canadian Business and Current Affairs Databases
****
Internet Size
Source: Newsbytes
“Total Number Of Internet Addresses Shrinks – Study”
****
Web Search–Yahoo
Source: News.Com
“Yahoo Tacks Annual Fee Onto Listing Service”

New, Updated, & Newly Discovered Resources & Tools (4 Items)
-
Census–United Kingdom
Genealogy –United Kingdom
1901 Census Debuts Online
Source: The Guardian
From the article, “Britain’s first online census today virtually ground to a halt as more than 1m users tried to log on and trace their family history during its first four hours.”
Direct to 1901 Census Online
–
Government Databases–United States
Source: GPO
Full-Text Report: Biennial Report to Congress on the Status of GPO Access, 2001
–
U.S. History–Virtual Exhibit
Source: National Archives (USA)
Designs For Democracy: 200 Years of Drawings from the National Archives
-
E-Commerce–United States
Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project
Full-Text Report: Women Surpass Men as E-Shoppers During the Holidays

Online Industry–ABI/Inform
Source: Online
“History Lesson: ABI/Inform”
We learn the history of an essential business database, ABI/Inform, from Online editor Marydee Ojala. This “History Lesson” is the first in a series of articles that will share background on many of the most famous online resources. Great idea!

Web Search–Language Issues
Artificial Intelligence
Source: Scientific American
Learn More About: The Cyc Project
Interesting is an uderstatement. From the article, “…after spending $50 million and with the 21st century upon us, Lenat has begun to roll out the first and still the only software that purports to be a database that can understand language by employing common sense.” “Cyc’s most prominent role thus far is as a software utility that improves the quality of retrievals for the Lycos Web search engine. If you search for “dime,” it will suggest “Franklin Roosevelt” as an alternative topic, because Cyc knows that F.D.R.’s picture is on the dime.”
See Also: Direct to the Cyc Web Site

Web Search–AltaVista
AV Index: Update
It looks as if AltaVista has finally refreshed a good portion of the AV index. I’ve been finding a great deal of content from mid-November 2001. Previously, most material in the AV index was from August, 2001. We’ll have to wait for the “official word” from search engine guru Greg Notess.