Libraries and Librarians
Starts 10/1/03: National Medical Librarians Month
This annual event, now in its seventh year is sponsored by the Medical Library Association. This year’s theme is “Surf Smart”.

Briefly
LexisNexis Makes Company Dossier Database Available to Academic Market
In other LN news, the company announced they plan to will build a new computing center in Springfield, Ohio
–
President Signs Bill Reauthorizing Museum and Library Services Act

Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents (5 Items)
Aviation–History
Source: Library Of Congress
Just Released, The Wilbur and Orville Wright Papers at the Library of Congress
From the site, The online presentation of The Wilbur and Orville Wright Papers at the Library of Congress, comprising about 10,121 library items or approximately 49,084 digital images, documents the lives of Wilbur and Orville Wright and highlights their pioneering work which led to the world’s first powered, controlled and sustained flight. Included in the collection are correspondence, diaries and notebooks, scrapbooks, drawings, printed matter, and other documents, as well as the Wrights’ collection of glass-plate photographic negatives. Material can be searched or browsed by series.
–
Arms Sales–United States
Source: Congressional Research Service
New, Full-Text Report, Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, 1995-2002
–
Poverty–United States–Statistics
Source: U.S. Census
Just Released (2 Reports), Poverty in the United States: 2002 & Income in the United States: 2002
Summary ||| Direct to Full-Text (Poverty) ||| Direct to Full-Text (Income)
See Also: Supplemental Measures of Material Well- Being: Expenditures, Consumption, and Poverty: 1998 and 2001
–
Transportation–United States–Statistics
Source: BTS
Just Released, Full-Text, Transportation Statistics Annual Report 2001
This report provides the most comprehensive overview of U.S. transportation.
–
Science and Engineering–United States–Statistics
Source: National Science Foundation
New, Full-Text, Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering: 2002

News Search–Google
An Interview With Krishna Bhahrat, Developer of Google News
Yes, Google News is useful and Krishna is one highly intelligent individual and a very nice guy but other news search tools and aggregators exist. I continue to be more than impressed with results from the Rocket News Desktop application. You can try it free for a month. Also, the Rocket News web site another favorite, continues to improve. On a very regular basis I find material using both of these tools that I don’t see via Google or other news engines. Also, another favorite news source, NewsNow just passed the 12,000 source mark. That’s more than triple the number of sources included in the Google News crawl.

Resources of the Week
This week 5 entries that under the broad heading of science.
–
Science–Ready Reference
Source: PSI Gate (Physical Sciences Information Gateway)
Science Timelines
Timelines for Astronomy, Chemistry, Earth Sciences, Materials, and Physics. It’s also possible to view all timelines combined onto a single web page. Timelines can also be searched by keyword and date.
–
Meteorology/Weather
Source: World Meteorological Organization
World Weather Information Service
From the site, This pilot web site presents OFFICIAL weather forecasts and climatological information for selected cities supplied by National Meteorological Services (NMSs) worldwide…By 19 September 2003, 997 cities from 153 WMO Members have their climatological data presented in this web site. 87 Members also supply weather forecasts for 824 cities. Direct links to all member websites are also available.
See Also: World Weather Forecasts (via Meteorological Service of Canada)
–
Astronomy
Heavens-Above
You specify your location in latitude/longitude (or select your town from the worldwide database), and you get a customized page that shows you what’s overhead — satellites, planets, constellations, comets, solar flares…even the position of the International Space Station. Link contribution and annotation by SDK.
–
Seismology
Source: National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC)
NEIC Earthquake Database Search
From the site, This data base provides information on earthquakes from 2100 B.C. to the present. The data base contains earthquakes with known magnitude values between 0.1 and 9.9.
See Also: List of Significant World-wide Earthquakes:”Magnitudes of Significant Earthquakes” (via USGS)
–
Conservation
Source: IUCN Species Survival Commission
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species
Basic and advanced search interfaces available. Keyword searchable. Searches can be focused by region, country and other criteria.
See Also: NatureServe Explorer
From the site, “…source for authoritative conservation information on more than 50,000 plants, animals, and ecological communities of the United States and Canada.”

Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents (4 Items)
Telemarketing–United States–Fact Facts
Telephones–United States–Fast Facts
Source: U.S. Census
New, Facts and Stats About Telemarketing and Telephones in the U.S.
–
Clinical Trials–United Kingdom
Source: NHS
New Database, NHS Trusts Clinical Trials Register
Current Controlled Trials Ltd is pleased to announce the launch of the NHS Trusts Clinical Trials Register. The NHS Trusts Clinical Trials Register can be accessed via the metaRegister of Controlled Trials. Users need to register in order to have access to the metaRegister, but registration and access is free.
–
Digitization Projects–Canada
Newspapers–Canada
New, Searchable Online Archive: Canadian Newspapers and the Second World War
From an announcement, In partnership with the Department of Canadian Heritage’s Canadian Culture Online Program, the Canadian War Museum today announced the launch of a fully searchable online archive containing articles from the Hamilton Spectator’s clippings morgue. Featuring more than 144,000 articles, Democracy at War: Canadian Newspapers and the Second World War offers Internet surfers an incomparable look at the Second World War through the eyes of newspaper reports published at the time…The Hamilton Spectator originally donated its Second World War archive to the Government of Canada for research purposes in 1952. In 1998, the Department of National Defence transferred the collection to the Canadian War Museum. Along with articles published by the Hamilton Spectator, the archive contains clippings from other Canadian newspapers such as the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Toronto Telegram, Vancouver Sun, Winnipeg Tribune and Ottawa Citizen. It also contains articles from such publications as the Financial Post, Canadian Business and international newspapers such as the New York Times. Digitized clippings are available as pdf files.
–
Labor–United States–Statistics
Source: BLS
New Online: Create Customized Maps (U.S. Unemployment Rates)

Web Search–Gigablast
Source: SearchDay
An Interview With Gigablast’s Developer and Sole Proprietor, Matt Wells
Chris Sherman has published an interview I did with Matt on his SearchDay site.
See Also: Gigablast Now Supporting the Use of Geo Sensitive Meta Tags
See Also: Even More New Document Formats Become Searchable at Gigablast

Internet Search
Source: The Wall Street Journal
Amazon Gets into the Shopping Search Biz (Full-Text of Article Available to Non-Subscribers)
From the article, Amazon.com Inc. has quietly established a beachhead in Silicon Valley to develop its own Web-search technology, a plan that could pit it more directly against Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. in an emerging battle over who controls the major paths to online merchants…A9 says its software will be aimed specifically at online shoppers, NOT users who want to perform general search requests for things such as sports statistics or news. A9 declined to provide many details on how its technology will work, but said it will present products found on Amazon in an “egalitarian” fashion with products found on other Web sites. It’s also worth noting (it’s not mentioned in the article) that like Google with Google Catalogs, Amazon has been experimenting with optical character recognition (ocr) search technology via its Amazon Restaurants database. This service utilizes ocr to allow the searcher full-text/keyword search access to hundreds of restaurant menus.

OCLC
Dewey Decimal Classification
Their Side of the Story: OCLC Posts Announcement Concerning Law Suit Against NY City Hotel
From the announcement, “OCLC is disappointed that legal action had to be taken against The Library Hotel. This is an unusual event for OCLC. However, trademark law imposes affirmative obligations on trademark owners to protect their trademarks, or risk losing all rights in those marks through legal abandonment. We felt that abandoning our rights in the Dewey trademarks was an unacceptable result for the OCLC membership. OCLC attempted to avoid litigation by repeatedly requesting attribution of our ownership of the Dewey marks from The Library Hotel. They have refused to do so. Unfortunately, that refusal left us with no other recourse than to file a legal complaint.”

Libraries–Grants
Institute of Museum and Library Services Announces $13.7 Million in Grants to Advance Leadership & Innovation
From the announcement, The Institute of Museum and Library Services, the primary source of federal funds for the nation’s museums and libraries, today announced grants in five categories that advance leadership and innovation. Over $13 million ($13,758,471) is awarded to 49 museum and libraries throughout the nation. The recipients will match the awards with an additional $14,384,885. You can find a complete list of grant recipients
organized by state or category (library or museum) on this page.
See Also: $1.7 Million to Support Library Service in Native American Communities

Public Libraries–Canada
Source: Montreal Gazette
“Libraries hit hard by budget cuts”
From the article…Municipal libraries across the island are feeling the pinch as Quebec retools its funding rules, and librarians don�t mind letting people know who is responsible…Montreal libraries have seen their purchasing power cut by one-third as a result of a new funding formula adopted in 2002 by the former Parti Qu�b�cois government.

Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents (6 Items)
Education–Statistics
Source: NCES
Just Launched, International Education Indicators Website
From the site, This site provides indicators compiled from NCES international publications and is organized by the following subject areas: Context of Education; Preprimary and Primary Education; Secondary Education; Higher Education; and, Education and the Labor Force. The indicators include comparisons between the United States and other industrialized nations with large economies – particularly those that are viewed as our major economic competitors, for example, the Group of Eight (G8) countries: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, and the United States. NCES will continually update the indicators as new data becomes available.
–
World Cultures–Bibliography
Source: U.S. Dept. Of State
Full-Text: “Cultural Bibliography”
Focusing on cross-cultural resources including books and videotapes. 19 pages.
See Also: Bibliography of Protocol Resources
–
Tourism–United Kingdom
Source: House of Commons Library, United Kingdom
New, Full-Text Report, Tourism
39 pages pdf. Numerous statistics.
–
Taxes–United Kingdom
Source: House of Commons Library
Full-Text, The Burden of Taxation
34 page (pdf) research report.
–
Real Estate–United Kingdom–Webliography
Source Free Pint
Full-Text: “Real Estate Sources on the Web”
–
Government Web Sites–United States
Source: Taubman Center for Public Policy/Brown University
New Report: State and Federal E-Government in the United States, 2003
Annual analysis of federal and state government web sites.
Summary ||| Full-Text ||| PDF

Professional Reading Shelf
Digital Libraries
The September Issue of CIDL (Canadian Initiative on Digital Libraries News) is Now Online
Includes several articles about metadata usage.

Web Search–Google
Google Launches Geographic Location Search Demo
Another entry onto the Google Labs page. This new demo allows you enter your search terms and then enter an address, zip code, or city and state to help focus your results. It was two weeks ago when Overture placed a demo online that looked very similar. Unfortunately, Overture has taken the demo offline. A silly thing to do. This is yet another example of how Google wins. Beta tests and demos offer users not only “things” to try but also something to talk about. Having people try, test, and talk is a very effective way of marketing web search. Other companies should be doing this.
–
In May Overture/AllTheWeb launched a calculator/converter option. A few weeks ago Google began offering this service. Yes, Google’s calculator is a bit more robust. It also doesn’t require a special syntax to use it. In other words you can utilize natural language and the answer is posted directly on the results page. Fine. However, this is not all that unique. Ask Jeeves has been offering “Smart Search” for several months. It places answers on results pages not just links. For example, when you search for the winner of the 1972 Academy Award for Best Actor, note the answer at the top of the results page. Heck, AltaVista has offered a similar service (Shortcuts) with direct links to specialized information services for more than 18 months.
–
Nevertheless, it’s Google that gets all of the press for being so innovative. Unfortunately many people have forgotten that other tools are still vital, useful, and also doing innovative things.
–
Finally, Google states in a news release that the location search feature is one of the first of its kind. One of the first maybe but not a new idea in web search. Northern Light offered a geographic search option over three years ago. Here’s what that interface looked like and how the company described it. Lasoo was another product that also offered geo searching. Here’s a 2001 article about this product from Search Engine Watch.
See Also: Learn About MetaCarta’s “Geographic Text Search” Technology

Privacy
Source: FindLaw
Report from U.S. DOD Contractor: Airline Passenger Data (Re: JetBlue)
A great deal of press has been given to JetBlue Airlines giving passenger record information to a DOD contractor. The contractor JetBlue gave the data to is named Torch Systems. Here is a link to a report by the contractor about the use of the airline passenger data. Note: The source for this link was the “Featured Documents” section of the well-known and respected FindLaw site.

Web Search-Yahoo
Yahoo “Officially” Introduces Shopping Engine
This service has been in beta mode since April. The service was called “Product Search” but has been incorporated into Yahoo Shopping. From the article, The technology to search the Web and pull together product information was largely built on the software Yahoo picked up when it acquired Inktomi, [Rob] Solomon [the general manager of Yahoo Shopping] said. Yahoo will also test software for personalized product recommendation that will let users set attributes of a potential product category — say, digital cameras — that are most important to them, with Yahoo’s technology then deciding which product is the best fit.
From the news release, Yahoo! Product Search is a new search engine that utilizes algorithmic search technology to extract results from multiple sources, including:
* Yahoo!’s existing database of more than 17,000 merchants and millions of products currently part of the Yahoo! Shopping platform;
a new database of merchants and products that have established direct feeds into
* Yahoo! Product Search through Yahoo!’s new Product Submit program; and
merchants and products identified through advanced crawling capabilities.
See Also: Chris Sherman with a Detailed Look at Yahoo Shopping
See Also: Dealtime Relaunches as Shopping.com (via SearchDay, 9/22/03)
See Also: New Features Added To Froogle (9/8/03)
See Also: Kelkoo is a Shopping Search Tool (Similar Look to Yahoo and Froogle) Aimed at a European Audience

OCLC
Dewey Decimal Classification
Source: The New York Times
Where Did Dewey File Those Law Books?
More on OCLC suing The Library Hotel in New York City. Even if OCLC wins the case once again libraries and librarians suffer from negative publicity. A real shame when the exact opposite type of marketing and pub is needed and OCLC, being a large library organization, should be leading the charge. IMHO, OCLC should be working with the hotel to promote the role of libraries and librarians as opposed to suing them.
UPDATE (9/24) OCLC Posts Their Side of the Story in News Release
See Also: Trademark Registration for DDC in USPTO Database (Registation #0755548)
See Also: Full-Text of Complaint (Thanks to beSpacific for the link)
See Also: Forest Press/OCLC Sue NY City Hotel Over Use of Dewey Decimal Classification (9/21/03)

Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents (5 Items)
Government Documents–United States
Source: Documents and Law Libraries, University of Illinois
StateList: The Electronic Source for State Publication Lists
“This site provides links to state publication checklists and shipping lists that are currently available on the Internet from 32 states.” Link contributed by SDK.
See Also: State Bibliographies
From the Government Documents Special Interest Section, American Association of Law Libraries
–
Government–Canada
Source: Library of Parliament
Full-Text, How Canadians Govern Themselves, 5th Edition
–
Population–United States–Statistics
Source: U.S. Census
Full-Text, Moving, Moving, Moving, Geographical Mobility: 1995 to 2000
Summary ||| Full-Text
“About 120 million (46 percent) of the nation’s population that was 5 years old and over in 2000 lived in a different home than they did in 1995.”
–
Foundations–United States–Statistics
Source: Foundation Center
1) Highlights from the The PRI (program-related investments) Directory (2003 Edition )
Includes a list of the Top 56 largest PRI providers.
–
2) Highlights, Foundation Staffing
–
Business–United States–Lists & Rankings
Source: Working Mother
Released Today, The 100 Best Companies for Working Mothers List-2003
Background articles and additional lists available here (Top 10, Best in Class).

Professional Reading Shelf (2 Items)
Publishing
Source: Professional/Scholarly Publishing (PSP) Division of the Association of American Publishers
Upcoming Event: How Online Usage Statistics Impact your Organization: The Librarian and Publisher Perspective
Those of you in and around New York City might be interested in attending this three hour seminar on October 28, 2003.
–
Image Searching
Metadata
Source: Stanford Database Group
Research Report, From Where to What: Metadata Sharing for Digital Photographs with Geographic Coordinates
From the abstract, We describe LOCALE, a system that allows cooperating information systems to share labels for photographs. Participating photographs are enhanced with a geographic location stamp — the latitude and longitude where the photograph was taken.

Briefly (2 Items)
Major Donation [$1.7 Million] to Enable UC Santa Barbara Libraries to Produce Discography of Victor Records
–
Michigan’s TLN (The Library Network) Signs With SIRSI (via ManagingInformation.Com)
TLN is a consortium of 64 public libraries.