Government Printing Office–United States
“GPO Announces Major Reorganization Plan”
From the announcement, The U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) has announced a major reorganization plan to streamline management and bring the agency into line with current business practices. “Our goal has been to create an organizational structure that makes sense for the work we’re doing today and that will prepare us to fulfill our customers’ requirements in the years to come,” said Public Printer of the United States Bruce R. James.
See Also: “Appropriations Request of the U.S. Government Printing Office for Fiscal Year 2004″

Information Industry–FAST Search and Transfer
FAST to Power Multimedia Search on Leading Japanese Site
“… NTT-X, Inc., one of Japan�s leading Internet service providers, has selected FAST to power the multimedia searching capabilities on its search engine portal site, goo (http://www.goo.ne.jp/)”.

War In Iraq
The Washington Post Offers a Searchable Database of All Iraq Related Articles Since 11/2002
The Washington Post is making available a searchable database of most of it’s coverage about Iraq since November, 2002. The database can be limited by date/date range and also allows searching of the three fields (headline, words in the article, and author). All material is available at no charge.

Resources, Reports, Tools, and Full-Text Documents (3 Items)
Human Rights
Source: U.S. State Department
Full-Text, 2002 Annual Report on Human Rights
Also known as, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.
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Scholarships–United States
New Web Site, e-Scholar
From a Chronicle of Higher Education article, “In an effort to increase the number of minority students who take advantage of federally funded scholarship and job opportunities, a government agency has created a Web site consolidating information on such programs.”
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Internet–Patents
Source: NSF
Full-Text, International Patenting of Internet-Related Business Methods

Industry Briefs
H.W. Wilson…Enhancements for Newly Redesigned WilsonWeb

Libraries–United States
Another Set of Library Funding Stories
1) PA “Library officials riled over budget cuts” (via Pittsburgh Post Gazette)

“Robert Lightcap, a past president of the federation, said the cuts would reduce state aid to libraries to pre-1999 levels when “Pennsylvania had one of the poorest-funded library systems in the country.”
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2) PA “Library faces 50 percent state funding cut” (via Hershey Chronicle)
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3) MN “Views split on independent St. Paul library” (Minneapolis Star-Tribune)
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4) MI “Library jobs cut; more to come as U-M trims staff” (via Ann Arbor News)
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5) CA “Draft library cuts presented” (via North County Times)
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6) IL “Naperville library board told to cut more” (via Daily Herald)
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7) NY “Libraries fight against budget cuts” (via The Observer-Dispatch)
– NY “NYC PLs Fear Effect of More Cuts” (via Library Journal)
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9) MA “Cuts affect library services” (via The Daily News Transcript)

Internet Domains
Source: GCN
All About .Gov Web Sites
From the article, “The General Services Administration today made it easier for state and local governments to use the .gov domain name. In a final rule published in the Federal Register, GSA outlined how government entities can identify themselves with the domain.”
See Also: Full-Text of Rule Published in Federal Register

Resources, Reports, Tools, and Full-Text Documents (3 Items)
Business–United States–Lists & Rankings
Source: Forbes
Just Released, Forbes 500 (2003)
America’s biggest companies
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Population–United States–Statistics
Source: U.S. Census
Full-Text Report, Women and Men in the United States
Summary ||| Full-Text
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Political Action Committees–United States–Statistics
Source: Federal Election Commission
Now Available, Political Action Committees 2002 Statistics
Includes numerous rankings.

Professional Reading Shelf
Archives–Canada
Just Released, National Archives of Canada, 2003-2004 Estimates – Report on Plans and Priorities

Web Resources of the Week
Web Directories
Resource Discovery Network
1) ATLIS, A New Subject Gateway Officially Launches Today
A new subject gateway, ATLIS, focusing on hospitality, leisure, sport and tourism officially launches on the web today. The gateway joins several other top-notch subject oriented tools from the U.K.’s Resource Discovery Network. You can find ATLIS at: http://www.altis.ac.uk. Make sure to check out RDN’s other subject gateways. The organization provides a great selection of web research training tools .
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Information Industry–Vivisimo
2) USEFUL and Interesting Demos from Vivisimo
Many of you probably already know about Vivisimo being one of the most useful meta search tool available. Its clustering algorithm, efficient advanced interface, and a strong list of general web databases make it my choice when I want to conduct a meta search. Also, it’s page “preview” option makes moving from result to result without having to leave the results page a breeze. What goes unnoticed by many searchers is that Vivisimo’s clustering technology is also when doing basic searcher of several other databases. Here’s a list of a few of them. In most cases the clustering is based on the first 200 results.
* PUBMED
* FirstGov
* Scirus
* EBay
Vivisimo also offers a BioMed Cluster search that brings together results from PubMed, Harrison’s Online, MerckManual, TRIPDatabase, and Google.
See Also: More Vivisimo Demos

News Searching
Yahoo News Adds English Language Content From AFP (Agence France-Presse)
You can now find content from this well known wire service. Feeds in most Yahoo News categories including Top Story, Business, World, Politics, and Technology. You can find additional AFP content on Yahoo Asia and Yahoo Singapore.
See Also: Yahoo News Also Provides Some Limited Content From Dow Jones Business News.
See Also: Don’t Forget: Yahoo Asia Provides Some Full-Text (free) from the Wall Street Journal

Professional Reading Shelf
Digital Reference
Updated, Digital Reference Services Bibliography
Bernie Sloan from the University has announced an update to this excellent resource. According to Sloan, “It now has more than 500 entries related to the provision of reference services involving collaboration between library user and librarian in a computer-based medium. These services can utilize various media, including e-mail, Web forms, chat, video, Web customer call center software, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), etc.”

Resources, Reports, Tools, and Full-Text Documents (2 Items)
Health Information
New Compilation of Resources from MEDLINEplus: Evaluating Health Information
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Women in Business–United States–Statistics
Source: Small Business Administration
Full-Text, Dynamics of Women-Operated Sole Proprietorships, 1990-1998
Summary ||| Full-Text

News Briefs (New Fee-Based Services)
The Economist Intelligence Unit Unveils New “Industry Forecast” Product
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Thomson Launches Litigation Stock Report
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Canadian Company Monitors and Offers Searchable Database of TV Commercials (via Globe and Mail)

Professional Reading Shelf
Information Visualization
Source: Information Highways
“A map is worth a thousand search results”
Includes mentions of Antarctica, Grokker, and Databeacon.
See Also: A January, 2003 ResourceShelf post About Antarctica With Links to Several Demos

Digital Libraries
Source: Library Journal
“Digital Libraries Degree Launched at Johns Hopkins”
From the article, “Digital Libraries is a new concentration within Johns Hopkins University’s (JHU) Masters of Arts in Communications in Contemporary Society. Classes will begin in the fall of 2003 at the university’s Washington Center in the District of Columbia. The communication in contemporary society program was begun in 2001 to address the transformation of the information professions in the digital ages, “and no profession has seen greater change than librarianship,” said Peter Decherney, the program’s associate chair. Jim Neal, then dean and director of JHU’s Sheridan Libraries, taught a course on libraries in the digital age in 2001. It is now the core course in the program, and is being developed and taught by his successor, Winston Tabb. Other courses include communication law and policy, digital objects, digital rights management, and electronic publishing.”
See Also: Direct to Digital Libraries Concentration Info Page @ JHU

Digital Archives–United Kingdom
Source: The Register
“Public Records Office to preserve digital documents”
From the article, “The Public Records Office (PRO) is to reveal at a conference next month how it intends to preserve electronic documents for the future. As the PRO makes clear, it is necessary to maintain the software and hardware needed to read those documents. This is easier said than done when software viewing applications can become obsolete very quickly, and storage media, such as disks and tapes, are, all too often, unstable.”
See Also: Learn More About Digital Preservation at the PRO

Legal Research
LexisNexis/Matthew Bender Signs Publishing Agreement With IndexMaster
From the announcement, “IndexMaster, a 6-year-old Ohio firm, (www.indexmaster.com) is a compilation of the indices and/or tables of content of more than 8,000 legal titles from at least 65 legal publishers at one location. Users can search and view the index and table of contents of the titles to retrieve the content necessary to determine if the book meets their needs.”

Government Printing Office–United States
GPO Introduces a New Logo
From the introduction, “The U.S. Government Printing Office has adopted a new logo to symbolize its transformation from an ink-on-paper provider to a digital data delivery organization. The new logo reflects GPO�s determination to meet the evolving information needs of its client agencies and to serve an increasingly digital-aware American public.”

Librarians
Source: Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Minneapolis librarians sue over Internet porn”
From the article, “A dozen Minneapolis librarians who say they were exposed to a barrage of sexually explicit Internet material in the downtown library are seeking their day in court. The 12 sued the library system Monday in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis, alleging they endured an intimidating, hostile and offensive workplace that violated state and federal law. The suit seeks damages of at least $400,000 each, plus workplace changes.”
See Also: Internet Filtering Bill Passes Washington State Senate (via The Sun)