Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents
Philanthropy–Lists & Rankings
Source: Business Week
Philanthropy 2003
“At No. 1 on our list, William H. Gates III and his wife, Melinda, are the reigning royalty of a new class of self-made superphilanthropists. Along with Michael and Susan Dell, PeopleSoft co-founder David Duffield and his wife, Cheryl, and eBay’s first president, Jeffrey S. Skoll, they’re schooling society in the ways of conspicuous donation.” Bill and Melinda Gates gave away $23 billion — half of their net worth. Thanks to ResourceShelf Contributing Editor Shirl Kennedy for the link.
See Also: The 50 Most Generous Philanthropists (chart)
See Also: Methodology
See Also Gates tops generosity list (Reuters, via CNN/Money)

Digital Divide–Lists & Rankings
Source: International Telecommunications Union
Recently Released, Full Text, ITU Digital Access Index: World�s First Global ICT Ranking
The first global index to rank Information and Communication Technology (ICT) access has turned up some surprises. Slovenia ties France; and the Republic of Korea, usually not among the top ten in international ICT rankings, comes in fourth. Apart from Canada, ranked 10th, the top ten economies are exclusively Asian and European. The Digital Access Index (DAI) distinguishes itself from other indices by including a number of new variables, such as education and affordability. It also covers a total of 178 economies, which makes it the first truly global ICT ranking.
See Also: The rankings have received coverage on News.Com

Scholarly Publishing
Serial Costs
Source: Yale Daily News
“Technology poses problems for journals”
From the article, Technology has revolutionized the way many researchers access the latest information in their fields. But the transition has not alleviated all the problems that plague print journals, and has even presented some new ones, Yale faculty members said…Associate University Librarian Ann Okerson said the University’s journal subscription costs, particularly in the areas of science and technology, rise about nine percent annually — a pace that library budget increases cannot match. “Ten years ago — everyone believed that electronic [journals] would be really cheap,” Okerson said. “I think there’s a fair amount of disillusionment or disappointment that moving to electronic has not brought down costs or prices.” Okerson estimated that Yale spent $6.5 million on serials, or publications for which the University must pay every year, in the 2001-2002 academic year, the last year for which the information is available. She said approximately $3.6 million of that sum went toward journals related to science, technology and medicine.
See Also: “Cornell, Harvard Plan to Cancel Elsevier Titles” (via Information Today)

Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents (2 Items)
Entrepreneurship
Source: Harvard University
New, Harvard Business School Launches Video Archive, Interviews with Entrepreneurs
View interviews with leading entrepreneurs who are also HBS alums. Printed transcripts of the interviews are included on the web site.
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Legal Research
Source: Legal Information Institute (Cornell Univ.)
Legal Information Institute Adds New “Law About” Guide: Energy Law
See Also: Other Legal Information Institute “Law About” Compilations

News Searching–Rocketnews
Great News! Rocketnews Will Soon Offer New Search Features
I not only mention Rocketnews regularly on ResourceShelf and in training sessions but I also use it and the Rocket News Desktop on a “many times a day” basis. Rocketnews currently provides searchable access to about 10,000 sources. I find Rocket especially strong in business and trade publications. Now, to the good news. ResourceShelf has learned that the Rocketnews web site (available at no charge) will soon be enhanced (in the next two weeks) with several new features. Enhancements include:
+ Users will be able to specify that they want results with keywords in the article title only, the article title and excerpt only, or the full article.
+ Using new parametric controls, users will be able to specify the location of the publisher (continent), and a type of news source (newspaper, trade journal, newswire etc.). This means, for example, that you will be able to search for news on Cisco from North American trade journals or from European newspapers.
+ Truncation/Stemming will be available.
+ Rocket News will increase the age of articles that can be searched on Rocketnews, moving from a 5-day archive to a 3 to 6 month archive.
+ Users will be able to rate and refine their search results. This will be similar to what’s already available with the fee-based Rocket Desktop. Rocket’s neural net technology makes it possible to enhance the accuracy of your search results by rating articles that are (or are not) relevant to your research interests.
+ Improved relevancy ranking
Look for these enhancements to “go live” in the next two weeks.

Web Search–Vivisimo
Source: New Scientist
Vivisimo’s CEO Quoted in New Scientist
Raul Valdes-Perez, Vivisimo’s CEO, is quoted extensively in a just published article. In one section of the article he says, “Taking a step towards further customisation, beyond what Google has done, is a good thing,” says Raul Valdes-Perez, president of Vivisimo, a software company in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, that specialises in clustering technologies. He says that the engineering of search and rank algorithms “has gone about as far as it can go”. Now the way to improve the user experience is to work on the next layer of algorithms that determine the presentation of the “search and rank” results.

Professional Reading Shelf
Archivists
Source: Historical Manuscripts Commission, UK
“What do Historians want from Archivists? (and vice-versa)”
A report from a The Gerald Aylmer Seminar 2003 held in October.

United States Government–Declassified Documents–CIA
Source: CIA
CIA Releases Five Million Pages of Historical Records
From the news release, “In fiscal year 2003, the Central Intelligence Agency released more than five million pages of declassified records to the public at the National Archives (NARA) facility in College Park, MD. Included are 1.5 million pages released on 30 September 2003 in the form of digital images in a full-text searchable database called CREST (CIA REcords Search Tool).”
See Also: Learn a bit more about CREST (CIA REcords Search Tool).

Legal Research
Zimmerman’s Research Guide Now Available (Free) Via LexisNexis
Hats off to LN for offering free access to this important and useful tool. If you’ve never visited, it’s well worth your time. Congrats to Andrew Zimmerman for the new sponsorship and kudos for creating and maintaining such a great resource.
See Also: Direct to Zimmerman’s Research Guide

Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents (4 Items)
Geographic Information–Canada
Source: Natural Resources Canada
New, Geobase
A new one-stop portal providing, “access to quality and unique geospatial data at no cost and with unrestricted use.”
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Privacy–European Union
Source: European Union
EU Data Protection Guides
Individual country guides are available. They answer the question, “What are your rights as a citizen?” Thanks to P.W. for resource tip.
See Also: EU Data Protection Web Site
See Also: “Data Protection for Websites and Intranets”
A new article by Paul Pedley.
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Documents in the News
Wages–United States–Statistics
Source: GAO
Just Released, Full Text, Women’s Earnings: Work Patterns Partially Explain Differences Between Men’s and Women’s Earnings
This report has received press attention from numerous media organizations.
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Entrepreneurship–Australia
Source: Ernst and Young
Just Released, Full Text, Entrepreneurs’ Barometer 2003-2004

Web Search–Google
Source: Knowledge@Wharton
1) “What Is Google Worth?”
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2) “Google as a Public Utility? No Results in This Search for Monopoly”
CATO is correct on this one and it’s something we’ve said on ResourceShelf many times, regulating Google as a public utility is a very silly idea.
See Also: Brief Comments from ResourceShelf (April, 2003) about regulating Google

Web Resources of the Week (3 Items)
A couple of databases and an updated list for you this week.
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1) Population
Source: United Nations Population Division
World Population Prospects: The 2002 Revision
From the site, Official UN estimates (1950-2000) and projections (2000-2050) for every country in the world, including estimates and projections of 28 demographic indicators, including birth rates, deaths rates, infant mortality rates and life expectancy. Make sure to note that along with basic data interface, the online database also contains detailed data and country profiles. The links are located on the left side of the page. Report highlights and tables are also available as pdf files.
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2) Environment–United States
Source: Environmental Protection Agency
New, EPA Science Inventory Database Launched for Public Use
From the site, The EPA Science Inventory is a searchable Agency-wide catalog of science activities and scientific and technical work products (risk assessments, technical studies and guidance, and research). At the present time the database contains over 4,000 entries. Along with bibliographic and contact information, some records have direct links to the full text of the material. An announcement mentions that this database has been used internally for many years at EPA but it wasn’t until earlier this week that it was made available to the public.
See Also: EPA’s Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO) Database Has Been Available for One Year
Over 1 million searches in the first year. Direct to the database.
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3) Business–United States–Lists & Rankings
Source: Inc.
The 2003 Inc. 500 is Now Available Online
The list ranks “America’s fastest-growing private companies.” Resources on the site include the 2003 list in rank order, a searchable database of all lists back to 1982, a six-page report with numerous statistics from the 2003 rankings, and a geographic breakdown of the 2003 list.

Business Research–Specialized Search Tools
New Search Engine Debuts Focusing on Investor-Related Information From Public Companies Around the World
This new engine is called The Scannery and comes from a South African company. The Scannery allows the searcher to limit his or her search to the full text of investor-related web pages from 11,000 public companies. The database is global in scope. Numerous search options are available including the ability to limit by index (SP 500, Global 1000, Euro 400, etc.) country, and/or industry. Boolean connectors along with a proximity operator (w/# of terms) are also available. Wildcards, stemming, natural language, fuzzy match, and synonym searching also add to the database’s potential usefulness. The Scannery indexes html, pdf, ppt, doc, and other format types. Complete documentation is available here. According to this article, TimbukOne founder and developer Jos Pols says the difference between The Scannery and other search engines is that where other search engines reference every Web site that has a match, The Scannery focuses solely on investor-specific targets broken down by country and industry sector….The most powerful feature is that the user can consolidate all search results by company Web site, and even find all hits within all documents on any specific Web site, he says. Pols says all public companies have been included. In bigger countries like the US, the top 1, 500 companies have been included, while in a smaller market like Japan, the top 500 companies are searched. Again, this is a new product and I noticed several issues with odd and inconsistent results being returned but this is not uncommon with new and even some old search tools. Bottom Line? With its many features and by focusing on one type of web content, The Scannery has the potential to be a very useful resource. Let’s watch it closely.
See Also: “Investor search engine launched” (via ITWeb)

Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents (4 Items)
Health Information
Four New Topic Pages/Compilations from MEDLINEplus
* MEDLINEplus: Teen Mental Health
* MEDLINEplus: Blood and Blood Disorders
* MEDLINEplus: Pulmonary Hypertension
* MEDLINEplus: Heel Injuries and Disorders
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Education–Webliography
Source: ISTL
Full-Text, “Mathematics Education Resources on the Internet”
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Employment–United States–Statistics
Source: BLS
Just Released, Occupational Employment and Wages, 2002
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Business–United Kingdom
Updated Site, Business Link
This new gateway contains ” objective information and support” for business owners or those considering starting a business. The site also contains a link to the 100-page, No-Nonsense Guide to Rules and Regulations.

Web Search–Google
A Few Google Search Tips
A couple of weeks ago I put together a list of a few Google search tips for a email list I post on. Our friend and colleague, Genie Tyburski, of The Virtual Chase was kind enough to reprint the list on her site. “njoy!

Public Libraries
Source: Philadelphia Weekly
“Shhh! People are trying to compute”
Another very sad article about how some people view the future of libraries and librarians. More of the “why do we need them” type of article. Thanks to LISNews.Com for the item.

Library Statistics
Factsheets and Reports from the US and UK
Two items.
1) United States…ALA Releases “Internet Use in Libraries” Factsheet
2) United Kingdom…Now Online: 2003 Annual Statistics Sampler: Library and Information Statistics Tables

Briefly
OCLC…New Board of Trustees Chairperson Elected

Information Retrieval
Web Search
Compilation: Recently Awarded Search Related Patents and Patent Applications, November, 2003
I’ve compiled the November list of just awarded or published search patents from the USPTO. This list is not comprehensive. Companies awarded patents include AOL, IBM, and Verizon. Companies with just published patent apps include Overture, Intelliseek, and Mitsubishi.

Information Industry–Institute for Scientific Information
ISI Announces a Major Web of Science Initiative, Bibliographic Data Back to 1900
Research geeks should love this newst. It will be interesting to see how material from 1944-1900 influenced later writing. From the announcement, Thomson ISI announced the Century of Science, an initiative to provide the research community with access to the world�s most influential scientific research throughout the 20th century. Currently, Web of Science coverage extends to 1945. The Century of Science initiative will expand the Web of Science to include bibliographic data from the highest impact scientific literature published between 1944-1900, adding nearly 850,000 articles from approximately 200 journals. The journals have been carefully selected by the Thomson ISI editorial team based on such criteria as citation patterns, geographic origin, and meaningful balance across scientific disciplines.