Scholarly Publishing
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
“Bay Area leads revolt against scientific journals..Scientists call for boycott, launch open-access project”
More press coverage for the Public Library of Science and a journal boycott at the University of California, San Francisco. From the article, In another move, two prominent UCSF scientists called last week for a global boycott of six molecular biology journals, accusing the publisher, Reed Elsevier, the Goliath of science publishing, of charging exorbitant new subscription fees for online access. The boycott, led by Keith Yamamoto, UCSF’s vice dean for research, and Peter Walter, a professor of biophysics and biochemistry, appears to have touched a nerve. It quickly won the support of librarians, scientists and administrators throughout the University of California system.

Briefly
LexisNexis Reaches Single-Day Record of More Than Three Million Searches
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ProQuest Releases eLibrary Curriculum Edition
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Factiva and Verity Partner

Web Search–Google
Source: Chilling Effects
More Google DMCA Requests Posted on Chilling Effects Site
1) Fuerteventura Tourism Site Complains to Google
2) Perfect Paws Asks Google to Remove Boxer Site
3) Video Production Product Key Posted on Google Groups (#6)
and in other Google legal news…Luis Vuitton Sues Google

Congressional Research Service
CRS Source Goes Offline
Over the past couple of years ResourceShelf has worked hard to keep you updated with recently published or recently updated Congressional Research Service material. A favorite source was via a gateway on Congressman Chris Shay’s or Congressman Mark Green’s web site to a server on the U.S. House web server. What follows is a reprint of an article from Secrecy News that discusses the fact that these two sites have been taken down. Thanks to Secrecy News editor, Steven Aftergood, for allowing ResourceShelf to reprint.
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ACCESS TO CRS REPORTS (TEMPORARILY?) CURTAILED
Secrecy News
Publicly accessible links from congressional web sites to an internal database of Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports suddenly went dead last week without explanation. But they may yet be restored. For about three years, the Congressional Research Service has provided online public access to hundreds of selected reports through a portal like this one:

http://www.fas.org/irp/crs/index.html
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In addition to the FAS site listed above, here are a few other sources for CRS reports. All of these sites not only do a good job of posting new reports but also update older reports. This is very important.
* Via the Foreign Press Center
* Via the U.S. Embassy in Rome
* Via the National Enviromental Library
* Via the Federation of American Scientists
—Military and National Security
—Intelligence
—Nuclear, Chemical and Missile Weapons and Proliferation
—Civil Space
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CRS Reports: Intellectual Property, Cyberlaw, Electronic Commerce

Web Search–Google
Google Studies Creation of Book Database
First Amazon. Now, a few days later, word of Google’s project leaks out. They’re sure good with marketing and keeping the Google brand in the news. From the article, “Google.com has begun talks with book publishers to compile a searchable database of the contents of thousands of volumes, a publishing executive briefed on the project said yesterday.”
See Also: “Google Looks to Add Book Content” (via PW)

BIOSIS Sold to Thompson Scientific
Source: Information Today NewsBreaks
BIOSIS Sold to Thomson Scientific
“Five months after announcing its search for a partner [see �BIOSIS Looks for a Partner,� [http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb030519-1.shtml], Biological Abstracts� board of trustees announced that it had entered final negotiations with Thomson Corp. The deal would involve the sale of publishing assets for both Biological Abstracts, Inc. and BIOSIS UK, including the Zoological Record.”

Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents (4 Items)
Veterans–United States–Statistics
Source: U.S. Census
Fast Facts About the U.S. Veteran Population
A new fact sheet from Census. It was prepared in honor of Veterans’ Day, November 11, 2003.
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Health–Senior Citizens
Source: National Institute on Aging and the National Library of Medicine
New Web Site, NIH SeniorHealth.Gov
From the announcement, To do this, the NIA and NLM brought together researchers who study cognition, web site designers, and communications experts at the two institutes to fashion a site that is easy for older adults to read, understand, remember, and navigate. For example, the site features large print and short, easy-to-read segments of information repeated in a variety of formats — such as open-captioned videos and short quizzes — to increase the likelihood it will be remembered. Consistent page layout and prompts help older adults move from one place to another on the site without feeling lost or overwhelmed. Each topic provides general background information, quizzes, frequently asked questions (FAQs), open-captioned video clips, transcripts for the videos, and photos and illustrations with captions. NIHSeniorHealth.gov will have a “talking” function, which will allow users the option of reading the text or listening to it as it is read to them. Finally, in addition to being senior-friendly, the new site also complies with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, making it accessible for persons with disabilities.
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Children–Media
Source: Kaiser Family Foundation
Full-Text Report, Zero to Six: Electronic Media in the Lives of Infants, Toddlers and Preschoolers
New study finds children age zero to six spend as much time with tv, computers, and video games as playing outside.
Summary ||| Direct to Full-Text ||| Additional Resources
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Cancer–United Kingdom-Statistics
Source: NHS
New, Full-Text, NHS Cancer Plan: Maintaining the Momentum
Summary ||| Direct to Full-Text

Patriot Act
Source: The Wall Street Journal
Full-Text, “Patriot Act Riles An Unlikely Group: Nation’s Librarians”
From the article, Library associations in most states have passed resolutions against the Patriot Act’s Section 215, which gives the FBI broader access to the “business records” of people who aren’t suspected of any crime. Speaking to Congress this past June, Attorney General John Ashcroft said that could include educational records and genetic data — and information gathered in libraries. Libraries that say they might once have kept information on their patrons have purged it in a show of defiance. In Skokie, Ill., library director Carolyn Anthony says the only patron records she now keeps are on Skokie’s small population of home-bound borrowers. In tiny Paulding County, Ohio, library director Susan Hill is one of many librarians nationwide who posted signs on public computers warnings users that “due to national security concerns,” their “Internet surfing habits, passwords and e-mail content” might be monitored by federal agents. After being dogged by librarians and other protesters during a cross-country tour to boost support for the Patriot Act, Mr. Ashcroft last month accused librarians of being “duped” by liberals, and for two days running accused them of “hysteria.” He also announced that the FBI hadn’t requested any business records under the Patriot Act. “Section 215 has not been used. Period. Zero times,” says Mr. Ashcroft’s spokesman, Mark Corallo, who adds that “the 20% of the people who oppose the Patriot Act get 95% of the publicity.” The full-text of this article will be available (free) for the next week.

Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents (3 Items)
Cable Television Rates
Source: GAO
Issues Related to Competition and Subscriber Rates in the Cable Television Industry
Some rocket science here: “Competition leads to lower cable rates and improved quality.” However, competition exists in only a few U.S. cable markets. Over the past three years, cable rates have risen 34%, “driven by the high cost of original programming, among other things.” Sports programming in particular is very expensive.
Report highlights
See also: GAO: Rising Sports Tab Ups Cable TV Rates (Reuters via FindLaw)
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Military Law
Source: Air War College
Military Law and Legal Links
Collection of links to both general and specific military legal sources, including Judge Advocate Generals offices, military courts, military commissions and tribunals, laws of war and war crimes, court martial procedures, DoD appropriations laws, international law, Islamic law, space law and treaties.
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Crime Statistics–United States
Source: FBI
Crime in These United States 2002
“Crime in the United States (CIUS) is an annual publication in which the FBI compiles volume and rate of crime offenses for the nation, the states, and individual agencies. This report also includes arrest, clearance, and law enforcement employee data.” Statistics are compiled from 17,000 law enforcement agencies across the country. Figures for 2002 show a slight overall rise in serious crime, but crime is well down (16%) over the levels of a decade ago, with far fewer murders in 2002 than there were in 1993. Report available in HTML or PDF.
FBI Press Release
Index of Crime (crime data by state)
See also: F.B.I. Figures for 2002 Show Slight Rise in Serious Crime (The New York Times)

Professional Reading Shelf (3 Items)
Systems Librarians
Source: Library Hi-Tech (via author’s website)
The Self-Education of Systems Librarians
Mark Jordan, acting director of library systems at Simon Fraser University, “outlines the common duties and responsibilities of systems librarians, and describes how library school students and others interested in entering the field can take advantage of freely available tools to gain relevant experience.” Extensive notes and bibliography.
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Libraries Should Mind Their Own Business
Source: The Globe and Mail
“They should leave feng shui and grief counselling to others, and expand on what they do best — the collection and dissemination of information.” (via LISNews.com)
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Open Access Publishing
Full-Text, Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities

Web Search–Google
Will an IPO damage Google’s corporate culture?
Source: Guardian Unlimited
Google must keep searching for balance
From the article: If the culture of the company is irreparably damaged, then it will suffer. Brin and Page insist they can retain the company’s identity and please the moneymen. But for a cautionary tale of what not to do they need look no further than Alta Vista, the site Google toppled as the web’s search engine of choice, and is now nothing more than an online also-ran. I think the author has a point about how an IPO could/will change the Google culture. Can Google be all things to all people? Are we starting to see this? The company does a good job these days making it appear that Google is just a bunch of people hanging out in California, running a company, having a good time. However, it’s far from that. It’s a big company, period. Will it be a bigger company if it goes to an IPO? Yes. Also, while AltaVista is not what it once was, I think calling it an also-ran is a bit much. In many respect’s AV plays in the same league with Google. For the power searcher, AV technology often beats Google.
+ The AltaVista’s News and Image Search databases are first rate.
+ In terms of pure search power (what the database is capable of) AltaVista is still more powerful than Google. AV allows you to nest searches (Google doesn’t), AV allows truncation (Google doesn’t), AV allows more than ten search terms (Google doesn’t). What Google does and does better than anyone else is market their product. To overtake Google the war would be as much about the marketing of the product as it would be with the search technology.

Searchable Databases–Books
Breaking News: Amazon Debuts New Search Tool, Acccess the Full-Text from 120,000 Book Titles
The new service (online today) is called “Search Inside the Book” and allows you to search the full-text, over 33 million pages from over 120,000 titles. CBS Marketwatch reports that over 190 publishers are participating including Wiley, Time Warner Book Group, Simon & Schuster, Inc., Random House, Inc., Publishers Group West, Incorporated, McGraw-Hill Professional, Holtzbrinck Publishers and HarperCollins Publishers. Of course the full-text from 120,000 titles can have enormous research and reference value. However, Amazon’s primary motivation for offering this service is to sell books. netLibrary is an example of a service geared toward the researcher. The company is calling this new service, “a significant extension” to “Look Inside the Book” service which has been online since October, 2001.
How Does “Search Inside the Book” Work?
+ Access is via any Amazon search box.
+ Enter your search terms. Phrase searching with quotation marks.
+ No advanced search capabilities or search limits are available.
+ A list of all titles is returned. However, some titles contain extra information and links appearing directly below the pricing information. They begin with the word “exceprt.” Click here and you’ll see a scanned image of the page with your search term(s) highlighted. You can then browse (forward or backwards one page at a time) using links above the page image. You can also move forward by simply clicking on the page image.
+ You’ll need to be registered with Amazon.Com to access the full-text.
+ Amazon is using optical character recognition technology to find words embedded in the scanned images.
+ Searching for phrases can be imprecise. I ran a search for “sports broadcaster” and received many false drops.
+ Implied “AND” between terms.
+ It’s also possible to find a title and then search within it. For example, note the “search inside this book” label above the cover image.
+ Table of Contents and Index pages do not contain hyperlinks.
+ An illustrated example page is available here. An FAQ is also online.
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+ I’ve noticed that the full-text from many of IDG’s “…For Dummies” books are included. If you do a keyword search add “for dummies” to help focus your search.
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+ Some of you might be interested to learn that many libraries offer access to thousands of web accessible full-text titles via netLibrary. This service offers full-text searching and many other options. Ask your librarian if you have access to it. If you do, you’ll most likely be able to can access the database from ANY computer. Ebrary is another company in this space. The National Academy Press continues to offer free web accessible full-text access to over 2500 titles.
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See Also: Publishers Grudgingly Cooperate With Amazon Database Effort (via Publishers Weekly)
See Also: “Amazon Plan Would Allow Searching Texts of Many Books” (via the NY Times, 7/21/03)

Web Search–Google
Source: Financial Times
“Google considers online IPO auction”
From the article, Google is considering holding a massive online auction of shares early next year in an initial public offering that investment bankers predict could value the internet search-engine company at more than $15bn. An electronic auction would be designed to prevent a recurrence of the sort of financial scandals that have engulfed Wall Street since the collapse of the dotcom bubble, according to a person close to the company…Google executives, led by George Reyes, chief financial officer, met a number of leading investment bankers last week to sound them out about an IPO. The meetings marked the start of a process that is likely to lead to a stock market listing by about March next year, a person familiar with the IPO said. The early discussions have not touched on how much Google is worth. You’ve got to once again hand it to the marketing geniuses at Google for coming up with an interesting way to go public. Even if they don’t use the auction method this is yet another way of keeping the “Google Buzz” at a fever pitch.
See Also: “Google reportedly exploring IPO tactics” (via News.Com)

Web Resources of the Week
Upcoming Event Lists, News Planning Guides, and Calendars
This compilation contains 15 items (more entries coming) that can help inform you about various upcoming events.
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News Planning
+ BBC Monitoring: The Week Ahead
“Lists key political and economic events expected to take place over a period of 10 days and is a valuable tool for planning.”
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+ APTN (AP Television) Editorial Calendar
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+ NewsAhead
A free preview provides a list of upcoming events (1-2 weeks). A fee-based database containing events up to one year out is also available. The Profile Group is another U.K. based company offering numerous resources (fee-based).
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+ Key Dates: Future Coverage Opportunities (via Ascribe)
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Government, Politics, and Elections
+ World Events Calendar
From the Council on Foreign Relations.
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+ U.S. State Department: Public Diplomacy Calendar
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+ Campaign Calendar for the 2004 Election Cycle–United States
Compiled by AScribe. Available as a pdf file. You’ll need to register (free) to download a copy.
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+ Direct Links to Calendars and Schedules: 2004 Presidential Candidates
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+ Upcoming Elections Around the World
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+ Major Futures Compilation (via ABC’s The Note)
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Academic Events
+ MInd: The Meetings Index
“Most listings are for conferences, congresses, meetings and symposia that eventually will result in published proceedings.”
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+ Conference Alerts
“…constantly updated database of conferences…”
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Science
+ Space Calendar
From NASA.
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Business
+ TSNN.Com
Searchable database of trade shows. Global coverage.
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Various Categories
+ Whatsonwhen.Com
Searchable database for events, festivals, etc. Global in scope. Here’s a review of WhatsonWhen that I wrote for SearchDay.
+ Festivals.Com
From the site…“largest resource on the Internet for information about community festivals, fairs and special events. With more than 40,000 community events worldwide.”

Librarians
Source: Wall Street Journal/CareerJournal.Com
Full-Text article, “The Hiring Tide Turns For Corporate Librarians”
In a several hundred word article on The Wall Street Journal’s CareerJournal.Com site, a positive look at the world of corporate librarianship. Included in the article are quotes from former SLA President and Wayne St. Professor, Judy Field, Rachel Singer Gordon of LISJobs.Com, and Carol Berger of C Berger Group.
Key Passages:
* Recruiters say the hiring spurt also is due to the increased need for professionals who can help locate and organize competitive information. “Smart organizations realize that a librarian or information specialist is critical to the business-development process, which is where most senior executives are spending their time right now,” says Samantha Whitney-Ulane, director of research and a managing director of Whitney Group, a New York-based search firm.
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* After six years of supporting the global health-care practice at Heidrick & Struggles International Inc., a Chicago search firm, Jeanine Amilowski, 34, saw her job as an information specialist eliminated in a round of layoffs in August 2002. Unable to find a full-time position she wanted, Ms. Amilowski started working as a research contractor to search firms, eventually gaining six clients. “A lot of companies were letting go of information professionals, but they really needed the help,” says Ms. Amilowski. “That’s why it was a good opportunity to do contract work.”
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* “Companies will call the same job or skill set different things, so you might look for jobs [on the Internet] under librarian and find very few postings,” says Rachel Singer Gordon, Webmaster of LISjobs.com, a career site for library professionals. “But if you look under knowledge manager, information specialist or taxonomist, you would find more.”
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* Regardless of the name issue, Ms. Field notes that the profession is changing and librarians who want to remain employed must align themselves with their employer’s mission and find ways to improve the bottom line. She predicts that even as corporate libraries start disappearing, more specialists with library skills but with varying job titles will be hired.

Professional Reading Shelf
Institutional Repository Software
Source: Open Society Institute
New, Full-Text, Guide to Institutional Repository Software
Available as an 18 page pdf or in html. From the announcement, OSI is pleased to announce the release of the Guide to Institutional Repository Software. The guide describes the five open source, OAI-compliant systems currently available. As many institutions are developing repositories, OSI thought it would be helpful to produce such a guide so that each institution could select the software best suited to meet its needs. Included in the guide is a brief narrative overview of each system followed by a summary of the systems technical features. The guide will be updated as additional systems are developed.
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National Libraries–Canada
The September/October Issue of the National Library of Canada Bulletin is Online

Depository Libraries
Source: GPO
GPO Announces Winner of First-Ever Federal Depository Library of the Year Award
It goes to the Tulsa City-County Library.
and speaking of the GPO…The Virtual Chase mentions a Roll Call story about the GPO is “considering charging fees” for some web accessible documents.
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UPDATED…Superintendent of Documents, Judith Russell, has sent a Letter to the Editor about the story. She has been kind enough to allow ResourceShelf to reprint it along with a few additional comments

Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents (4 Items)
Legal Industry–United States
Source: U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
Full-Text Report: Diversity In Law Firms, 2003
A new study by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) entitled “Diversity in Law Firms” reveals that women now comprise 40% of legal professionals (resembling associates) in the private sector, a significant gain from 14% nearly three decades ago. Thanks to S.B. for the news tip.
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Technology Companies–United States–Lists & Rankings
Source: Deloitte & Touche
Fastest-Growing Technology Companies
1) 2003 Long Island Technology Fast 50
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School Crime
Source: National Center for Education Statistics
Two New Reports:
1) Indicators of School Crime and Safety: 2003
2) Violence in U.S. Public Schools: 2000 School Survey on Crime and Safety
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Health Information
Two New Topic Pages/Resource Compilations From MEDLINEplus
* Emphysema
* Cosmetic Dentistry

Web Search
Source: The Herald
Mooter, A New Web Engine From Australia, Launches Beta Today
From the article, “What Mooter does is that we look at the long lists of results from other search engines and then we group them using artificial intelligence algorithms…”But also we look at what you’re doing and while you’re working we actually move with you and push up things that you seem to be interested in….”Search is something that a lot of us spend a lot of time doing (but) it is just built by tech people instead of people who understand humans.”
See Also: Direct to Mooter
See Also: ZDNet UK Story

Info Retrieval–Patents
Another Selection of Recent Search-Related Patents
Source: USPTO
I’ve compiled another select list of search-related patents and patent applications. All entries have been either awarded or published in the last 4-6 weeks. In this update you’ll find patents awarded to Yahoo, NEC, and IBM.