Special Libraries–Health
Source: Rocky Mountain News
Why Do We Need Librarians? Isn’t It All Electronic?
The article reports that the Denver Health Medical Center is likely to close its library and fire its librarians in about a month. I don’t need to make the case about the value of a library professional. If you do need some, Lynne Fox, president-elect of the Colorado Council of Medical Librarians shares her thoughts about the situation. What I want to highlight from this article is the following, “Chief Executive Officer Patricia Gabow would not confirm the closure. But she said that because of the availability of electronic journals, closing the library, which has been under discussion for some time, is likely.” Unfortunately, this is the belief that many people (the ones that pay the bills) have about the need for info professionals. Why pay someone? It’s all electronic and just a click away. Oy!

Libraries
Scholarly Publishing
Six Library Organizations Want Justice Department to Block Cinven and Candover Purchase of BertelsmannSpringer
From the announcement, The Information Access Alliance, a group of six library organizations, is urging the U.S. Department of Justice to block Cinven and Candover’s proposed purchase of BertelsmannSpringer. The Alliance is concerned that this transaction will bring about a reduction in access to critical research information. Cinven and Candover, a partnership of UK-based private equity firms, has announced its intent to acquire BertelsmannSpringer, the academic publishing arm of Bertelsmann AG. The partnership also announced its intent to merge BertelsmannSpringer with Kluwer Academic Publishers, which Cinven and Candover acquired in January, to form the second largest publisher of scientific journals in the world, trailing only Elsevier Science. The Information Access Alliance, comprised of the American Association of Law Libraries, American Library Association, Association of College and Research Libraries, Association of Research Libraries, Medical Library Association, and SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), was created because of a shared concern about the effects of mergers among publishers of science journals and legal serial publications.

Resources, Reports, Tools, and Full-Text Documents (2 Items)
U.S. History
New, JFK Library Releases Newly Declassified Content from 1963
You’re able to download excerpts of the material in RealAudio format.
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Refugees
Source: U.S. Committee for Refugees
New, Full-Text Report, 2003 World Refugee Survey
Includes country reports and numerous statistical tables/graphs.

Public Libraries–United States
Source: The New York Times
A City’s Hard Choice: New Tax or No Library
From the article, “Because of an unusual confluence of events, voters will be asked to approve a new tax to pay for a library system that the city budget had always financed. Voters twice rejected the new tax, and unless they vote to approve it Tuesday, the city’s two libraries will have to close July 1.”
(UPDATE 6/4/03): Good News, Library Will Remain Open!
From the article, In a strong show of support for an institution most people take for granted, voters in New Rochelle passed their library budget last night, thus averting a shutdown of the library system this summer.

Electronic Discussions
IFLA Launches E-Discussion Group About Women’s Issues in Librarianship
From the site, The WOMENISS mailing list is for librarians and information professionals who are interested in sharing information about the status of women in librarianship.

Industry Briefs
CQ…“Congress Collection” Added to Electronic Library Product
CQ…Now Available: Perpetual Electronic Ownership Option for CQ Researcher

Resources, Reports, Tools, and Full-Text Documents (4 Items)
Education–United States–Statistics
Source: NCES
Full-Text, The Condition of Education 2003
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Real Estate–United States–Statistics
1) Full-Text Report: Home Values: 2000
Summary/Fast Facts ||| Full-Text
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2) Housing Costs of Renters: 2000
Summary/Fast Facts ||| Full-Text
Both reports contain charts and top 10 rankings.
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Selected Recently Updated Congressional Research Reports
* Full-Text, Budget for Fiscal Year 2004
* Full-Text, Cuba: Issues for the 108th Congress
* Full-Text, China’s Economic Conditions
* Full-Text, Africa: U.S. Foreign Assistance Issues
* Full-Text, Campaign Financing

ERIC
AP’s ERIC Article, A Fundamental Error
It’s good see in the mainstream media (Associated Press) an article about ERIC’s funding situation. Particularly one that focuses on the useful and important resources (including ERIC Digests) and services the ERIC Clearinghouses offer. Nevertheless, the writer, Steve Giegerich, confuses the ERIC Database with the Clearinghouses. He writes, “the databases � known as clearinghouses � are operated by independent government contractors, located at colleges and universities around the country.” Huh? The database is the database and the Clearinghouses are the Clearinghouses. The ERIC Database is secure but as Barbara Quint’s Info Today article points out, “Specifications for the new contract omit requirements to support most of the customer services conducted by the clearinghouses, including the production of the popular digests, toll-free phone assistance, and the 6-million-hits-a-week AskERIC service.” The ERIC database will go on. Databases are wonderful, important, and essential tools, to help satisfy a user’s info need but PEOPLE and INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION are also essential and need to be part of the ERIC service. Research is more than typing a few words into a database. Often asking an expert a question (eg. Clearinghouses) or reading an expert written ERIC Digest can allow you get an authoritative answer in a very timely and efficient manner.

Resource of the Week
SEC Info Continues to Impress
SEC Info has been around for a couple of years and has been mentioned many times on ResourceShelf but has never been included as a Resource of the Week. This searchable and browsable database of SEC EDGAR documents as well as Canadian SEDAR documents is more than deserving of a place on the ROW list. Here are a few of many reasons SEC Info.Com is a fave.
1) It’s available at no charge!
2) SEC Info’s Alert Service is Also FREE! Select the companies you want to monitor and as new docs are filed, an email with a direct link to the filing is sent to you. Yesterday, I got an email alerting me to a new Yahoo filing within 6 minutes of the time it hit the database.
3) The database is updated in real-time with both EDGAR and SEDAR filings
4) You can search material by Search by Name, Industry, Business, SIC Code, Area Code, Topic, CIK, Accession Number, File Number, Date, ZIP, and more.
5) The SEC Info homepage provides you access to numerous links that make browsing easy. You’ll find links to browse all of today’s filings, recent institutional filings, proxy statements and more.
6) Documents accessed via SEC Info contain internal links that allow you to move around the document quickly and efficiently. For example, note the links embedded in the recently filed Yahoo annual report (10-K).
7) Browse companies by SIC Code If you register for a free account, the “My Interest” section allows you to see a list of your most recently accessed documents.
9) A brief FAQ is available
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Caveat:
Like most free EDGAR tools, SEC Info does not allow you to keyword search the “full-text” of filings. If you’re looking for a free service that offers full-text searching, take a look at EDGARIQ.
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You Might Have Missed
A new feature on ResourceShelf that I plan on including links to multimedia collections, image archives, digital archive projects, and other content that you might have overlooked. Let’s begin with two collections of streaming media content.
Many universities and organizations are offering the chance to watch or listen to lectures and other special events. Here are two favorites.
1) MIT World
An archive of special presentations and lectures available for you to watch from a broad range of speakers. Here are just a few examples:
* Jeff Bezos, “Earth’s Most Customer Centric Company: Differentiating with Technology”
* Maurice Sendak, “Descent into Limbo”
* Sloan 50th Anniversary: Phil Condit
Make sure to visit the complete list of archived presentations.
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2) Landon Lecture Series Archive
Watch or listen to every lecture back to 1966. The Landon Lecture takes place at Kansas State University. Here are a few examples of what you’ll find.
* From 2002, David McCullough, “The Founders: The greatest generation”
* From 2001, Steven Ambrose, “Ike and World War II”
* From 1997, Sam Donaldson, “The State of Television Today”
* From 1990, Ambassador Abba Eban, “Prospects for Peace in the Middle East”
* From 1982, Charles Kuralt, “America: The Long View”
* From 1975, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “The World in the Year Ahead”
* From 1968, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, “Conflict in Vietnam and at Home”
* From 1967, Governor Ronald Reagan, “Higher Education: Its Role in Contemporary America”

Web Search–AllTheWeb
Hooray! AllTheWeb Adds a Spell Check Feature
Long overdue, ATW has added a spell check tool. You’ll find possible spelling corrections/suggestions at the top of the results list labeled as “did you mean:”. I’ve noticed one issue. The spell check feature does not seem to work for phrase searching. For example, ““chicagoo cubbs” does not offer a corrected spelling but chicagoo cubbs does. Additionally, ATW has added several features in the past month. They include utilizing ATW as a conversion tool and calculator. In April they added a dictionary feature.

Enterprise Search–Ask Jeeves
Ask Jeeves Unloads Enterprise Search Division
It’s enterprise technology (aka Jeeves Solutions) is sold for $4.25 million cash to Kanisa, a customer service software company.
See Also: Learn More About Kanisa and the Jeeves Deal

Citation Analysis–Lists & Rankings
Source: Institute for Scientific Information
Science in Australia, 1998-2002
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Science in Germany, 1998-2002
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Microbiology: High-Impact U.S. Universities, 1998-2002
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U.S. Universities with Highest Concentrations in Management, 1998-2002

Industry Briefs
PatentCafe…Company Releases New Concept+Boolean Patent Search Database
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ProQuest..Rights to Distribute 30 University of California Press Journals

Professional Reading Shelf
Association of Research Libraries: Proceedings of the 142nd Annual Meeting
The meeting took place about two weeks ago in Lexington, Kentucky. Here are titles of a few of the papers.
* “Architecture as an Asset for Community Building”
* “Place and Space: Collections and Access in Light of Changing Patterns of Research and Learning”

Resources, Reports, Tools, and Full-Text Documents
Population–United States
Source: U.S. Census
New, Full-Text Report, The Asian and Pacific Islander Population in the United States: March 2002
Summary ||| Direct to Full-Text