Site Search Tools
A New Opinion Paper from IDC about Site Search Tools
This study discusses search functionality and search habits dealing with site specific search engines.
Key Findings:
* Each search “session” is composed of 1.56 searches.
* The average duration of each search session is 1:50 minutes, ranging from 48 seconds to 4.4 minutes depending on the type of site. (Small sites have short search duration, and portals have longer search sessions.)
* Only 1 in 20 visitors will scroll to the second results page to find data.
* On average, 58.8% of searches are successful (with ranges from 30% to 90%).
* A total of 22% of searches produce no results.
* More than half the visitors, or 52%, perform a search using one word; 12% utilize three or more words.
* There is no significant difference in user behavior on North American and European Web sites.

Resources, Tools and Full-Text Documents (3 Items)
Philanthropy–Web Resources
Source: Philanthropy News Digest
PND Updates It’s Collection of Philanthropy-Related Web Resources
–
Internet Usage–Parents
Source: Pew Internet and American Life Project
Full-Text Report, Parents Online
You can also read a summary here.
See Also: Baby Boomers and the Internet
–
Online Exhibits–Canada
New Exhibit From the National Archives of Canada, Expo 67: A Virtual Experience

Professional Reading Shelf
Digital Libraries
The November Issue of D-Lib Magazine is Now Online
Titles of a Few Selected Articles:
“The NSF National Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education Digital Library (NSDL) Program: New Projects in Fiscal Year 2002″
“Software for Building a Full-Featured Discipline-Based Web Portal: The Scout Portal Toolkit”
“Report on the 2nd Workshop on the Open Archives Initiative, Gaining Independence with e-Print Archives and OAI”
“International Children’s Digital Library to Host 10,000 Books”

Data Management
Source: Federal Computer Week
“FBI Data Management a Tough Case”
From the article, “In response to the records fiasco, the FBI hired [William] Hooton, an electronic records expert with experience at the Internal Revenue Service, the National Archives and Records Administration, and private industry, and created a new 1,000-person Records Management Division. Today, the division runs “10 production lines of scanners” and aims to convert 750,000 paper documents a day into digital records, Hooton said in a Nov. 14 address to the Association for Information and Image Management. Once scanned, the electronic documents are stored in a database where they can be searched, mined and made available to FBI field offices. But converting such huge amounts of data to a more manageable electronic form is only a start toward solving the FBI’s records problems, Hooton said.” “Meanwhile, the FBI must tackle some other thorny records issues, such as “what constitutes an e-mail record?” Hooton said. “No one has the answer now.” Similarly elusive is the answer to what constitutes a Web page record. And the Records Management Division needs help deciding whether it can destroy paper records once electronic copies have been made, he said.”

Resources, Tools and Full-Text Documents (2 Items)
Business–Lists & Rankings–United States
Source: Forbes
New List, Largest Private Companies (United States), 2002
–
Health Information–MEDLINEplus
Two New MEDLINEplus Resource Compilations
1) Exercise for Children
2) Radiation Therapy

Professional Reading Shelf (2 Items)
Cataloging and Classification
Source: Library Journal
“MARC Exit Strategies”
Roy Tennant writes, “In last month’s column (LJ 10/15/02, p. 26ff), I outlined why it is time for us to rethink our most basic bibliographic standards: MARC elements, MARC syntax, and AACR2 (the rules for populating them). This month I’ll be looking at various ways in which we can build on our strengths without allowing the past to limit our future.”
–
Information Architecture
Source: Free Pint
“Free Pint talks to Jakob Nielsen”
From the article, “Getting access to Web-based information can be a time-consuming and frustrating experience even for the comparatively expert members of the Free Pint community. If you have impaired sight or other disabilities it can be a nightmare. Jakob Nielsen, a principal of Nielsen Norman Group, has made it his mission to enhance the usability of the Web. Lecturing, writing and teaching on the subject have made him probably the best known Web usability expert around.”
A Special Note: I Would Like to Congratulate Will Hann and the Rest of the Free Pint Team on their Fifth Anniversary. Thanks for Providing Such a Valuable Resource. Thank You Very Much for Hosting the VAS&ND.
More News: Free Pint and the VAS&ND Received a Positive Mention in the Yesterday’s Edition of The Guardian.

Information Retrieval
Source: Ventura Country Star
Learn More About: Dolphin Search
From the article, “The patented technology uses artificial intelligence to search for context and meaning, much like a human, said CEO Andrew Kraftsow. “We have taught computers to read language with much greater understanding than they did before,” Kraftsow said. For example, if searching for the term “strike,” as in labor strike, DolphinSearch will find every document that includes information about a strike. And it will find related documents even though they don’t contain the word strike, such as a document that mentions “a walkout.” Just as important is what the technology doesn’t do. Because DolphinSearch understands the context of the above example, it would not return documents talking about an oil strike or a baseball game, said Joe Swimmer, market planner for LexisNexis, a well-known provider of legal, news, public records and business information that has partnered with DolphinSearch.”
See Also: Direct to the Dolphin Search Web Site

Resources, Tools and Full-Text Documents (2 Items)
Supercomputers–Lists & Rankings
New List Available, Top 500 Supercomputers
–
Business–United States
Source: Small Business Administration
Full-Text Report, A Profile of Owners and Investors of Privately Held Businesses in the United States, 1989-1998
–
Economics–United States–Statistics
Source: Bureau of Economic Affairs
New, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by Industry for 2001
Chart also available as .xls file.

Web Resource of the Week
Online Books–Full-Text
The Online Books Page
While browsing around the VAS&ND I realized that The Online Books Page has never been listed as a Resource of the Week. Although the site has been mentioned on this site several times, it’s more than deserving of this extra title. In fact, Resource of the Week does not do it justice. It’s a web compilation classic and one that every web researcher should know about and make use of. As of today, the OBP is home to a directory of over 17,000 free, full-text books and documents from a wide variety of sources. The compilation was created and is still developed by John Mark Ockerbloom, a digital library planner at the University of Pennsylvania. Here are a few (just a few) highlights of what the site offers. However, it’s only after spending some time and “learning” the OBP, you will realize what this resource offers in terms of access and content.
Highlights
1) Entries can be searched by author and title.
2) Entries can be browsed by author, title, or subject (Library of Congress Classification).
3) The OBP also offers a list of many archives of online serials.
4) The OBP grows daily with new entries. Here’s a list of the latest entries. A sort of a virtual new books shelf. Not only is this list exciting but it also makes a great collection development tool.
5) A large list of many archival projects both general and specialized. Foreign language sites are also listed.
6) Several “special collections” are also available including one with banned book material.

Information Industry
Source: Federal Computer Week
PubScience is Gone, Are More Government Funded Info Resources on the Chopping Block?
From the article, “Having persuaded the Energy Department to pull the plug on PubScience, a Web site that offered free access to scientific and technical articles, commercial publishers are taking aim at government-funded information services offering free legal and agricultural data. Two in particular rile SIIA members: “One is law-related, the other has to do with agriculture,” LeDuc said. He declined to identify them further. One site the SIIA is unlikely to challenge is PubMed, the National Library of Medicine site that provides free access to millions of medical articles and research papers. PubMed was established much earlier and has a strong foothold, LeDuc said. “We have no intention of going after PubMed.” Any guesses? Perhaps Agricola and the Global Law Information Network?

Web Search–Teoma
New From Teoma/Jeeves, Spell Check
A busy 10 days or so for the Teoma folks. First, many new limiting options along with a larger database and now a spell check feature. You’ll see a note at the top of the page if a potential spelling error exists plus a link to rerun the search with a corrected spelling. This new feature is also available on Ask Jeeves.
See Also: Incorrect spelling of San Francisco
See Also: Incorrect spelling of the terms indistinguishable handwriting

Enterprise Search
Source: News.Com
Study: “Shoddy Search Prevents Worker Success”
An article about a new study from the Neilsen/Norman Group. From the article, “As companies look to cut costs amid a prolonged economic downturn, many are turning to technology to automate services previously handled by employees. Automation isn’t always the solution, however; the time required to properly understand tools can become a drain on efficiency, too…According to the study, titled “Designing Usable Intranets,” the group estimates that a poorly designed intranet can cost an average company with 10,000 employees $15 million per year in lost productivity.” The point about “understanding tools” is true for all search resources. Knowing what a search tool is capable of and then being able to utilize its “power” is essential skill for an info pro. Then, being able to train staff on how to easily maximize a search tools power is a very important skill for many of us to have. Yes, Google, Teoma, and AlltheWeb are easy to use but with a little training these resources become even more impressive. Just reminding people to place phrases inside “quotation marks” can be a good place to start. It’s “power” is easily illustrated when a user begins seeing more precise result sets.
See Also: More About the Study. Full-Text is fee-based.

Knowledge Management–Legal Industry
Source: Law.Com
Meet the Knowledge Manager: Chris Boyd
Boyd is employed at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati in Palo Alto, California. From the article, “To many, the job description of a knowledge manager is as amorphous as the title itself. Part librarian and part traffic cop, a knowledge manager’s main task is to corral the vast number of informational tidbits generated daily at a firm the size of Wilson Sonsini — everything from provisions tucked into hundreds of venture capital contracts to the myriad details found in obscure transactional agreements drafted by armies of associates — and place it all within easy and orderly reach of the firm’s lawyers and other staffers.”

Resources, Tools and Full-Text Documents (2 Items)
Social Security–Webliography
Source: Library Journal
“Social Security”
Compiled and written by our friend Richard Drezen of The Washington Post.
–
Holidays–Thanksgiving–United States
Source: U.S. Census
Fact File: Thanksgiving Day, 2002
Plenty o’ statistics culled from U.S. Census Bureau, Department of Agriculture and reports from other government organizations. They include:
*270 million turkeys raised in the United States in 2002
*13.6 pounds of turkey consumed by the typical American in 2000
1.4 billion pounds, the weight of sweet potatoes produces in the U.S. in 2001

Enterprise Search–Inktomi
Inktomi Sells Enterprise Business To Verity, Will Now Focus Only on Web Search
The enterprise portion of Inktomi goes to Verity for $25 million in cash. The company provides web search services for several sites including MSN Search and Hotbot. At one time Inktomi provided web search services for other sites including Yahoo and iWon. These sites now provide results from Google.
See Also: More from Stefanie Olson at News.Com

National Archives (United States)
“NARA Readies Software to Make Archives More Accessible”
More invisible material to be revealed. From the article, “The National Archives and Records Administration early next year plans on unveiling software that would allow researchers to find specific records in archival databases. NARA technology employees and contract workers from Science Applications International Corp. of San Diego, are testing the software, called Access to Archived Databases, said Kenneth Thibodeau, director of NARA�s electronic records archives program.

Internet Filtering
Source: IDG.Net
“US Supreme Court to decide library Net filtering case”
“The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to decide whether requiring public libraries to put Internet filtering software on computers in an effort to shield children from pornography violates free speech.”
See Also: “Libraries, court argue access to cyberporn” via Orlando Sentinel
Includes a look at a few types of filtering options in place at several libraries in Florida
See Also: Docket for No. 02-361

Web Browsers–Opera
Beta, A Completely Rewritten Version of Opera is Now Available (7.0b1)
A new rendering engine along with many new features.

Resources, Tools and Full-Text Documents (3 Items)
U.S. Government–Information Sources
Source: Congressional Research Service
Full-Text Report, Executive and Independent Agency Publications: Where to Get Official Documents
–
Stem Cell Research
Source: Department of Parliamentary Libraries, Parliament of Australia
Full-Text Issue Brief, Key Ethical Issues in Embryonic Stem Cell Research
See Also: Stem Cell Research (via Congressional Research Service, U.S.)
–
Chemical Facilities–United States
Source: National Institute of Justice
Full-Text, New Report, A Method to Assess the Vulnerability of U.S. Chemical Facilities

Image Searching
Demo: LTU Technologies Image Seeker
Demo the search technology on a database of 65,000 royalty-free images from Cobion. From the announcement, “…after an initial text-based search using a keyword, users can select the “Find Similar Images” function to find other, similar images, with the results sorted by visual similarity.” Similarity is “based on both the visual characteristics of an image and the associated keywords.”
See Also: Learn More About Image Seeker Technology
UPDATED 6/2003: More About LTU Technology in this Search Engine Meeting Presentation