Web Search-UJIKO
Kartoo Launches a New Search Product: UJIKO
I haven’t been a big fan of Kartoo’s metasearch product, but that’s just me. I know many people who do like it. Today, the company launched a crawled database product claiming four billion pages that offers many unique customization features. After some quick searches, I found UJIKO interesting and worthy of a look. Here’s an overview to help with your testing of UJIKO.

+ You’ll need to have FLASH installed.
+ “And” is implied between terms.
+ Company claims it is using patented technology to customize results
+ Underlying database comes from Yahoo (Thanks to JB for the info)
+ Search interface:
++ Single search box, uncluttered page
+ Result pages:
++ Sponsored links are at the top of serps (provided by Overture).
++ Right side of page includes terms to refine your query.
++ When you click on one of the results, the page is stored by UJIKO and will instantly appear in the first results next time you search.
++ There is an option to “File” results (either email results or print them).
++ There is an option to organize results into folders (Memory).
++ To do this, select the heart icon next to the result, then place in folder. You can also modify the link description by adding your own comments, removing others.
++ You can also tweak the order of results by “grading” sites you’ve seen. Explanation here.
++ You can remove results from the result set by clicking the garbage can icon.
++ You can build personalized filters.
+ Domain Filter
It enables you to mark or prohibit sites from a specific domain.
+ Word Description Filter
It allows you to mark or prohibit sites where the title or description includes specific words. Enter, for instance, ?free gratis? to filter all results containing those words.
+ Page Filter
It allows you to mark or prohibit some specific URLs. Enter, for example, “www.kartoo.com www.kartoo.net/flash.php3″ to filter those two pages.
+ Site Filter
It makes possible marking or prohibiting all pages from a site. For example, enter “www.kartoo www.ujiko” to filter all pages beginning with those letters, especially www.kartoo.com, www.kartoo.net, www.kartoo.org/info, www.ujiko.com, etc.
+ Word URL Filter
It allows you to mark or prohibit all pages where the address includes specific sign chains — i.e., enter ?kartoo ujiko? to filter pages such as www.kartoo.com, kartoo.com, www.ujiko.com, www.ujiko.com/kartoo.html, etc.

+ Privacy? This from the news release, “As opposed to other customization systems, all data are therefore stored on users’ computer.”
+ The company has plans to offer this technology to the enterprise market.
+ French and UK versions are available.

Professional Reading Shelf (2 Items)
Scholarly Publishing
Source: The Wellcome Trust
New report reveals open access could reduce cost of scientific publishing by up to 30 per cent
From the announcement, “A report out today shows that making scientific research available free on the Internet could wipe as much as 30 per cent off publishing costs. The Wellcome Trust report shows for the first time that the open access model of scientific publishing - where the author of a research paper pays for peer reviewed research to be made available on the web free to all who wish to use it - is economically viable, guarantees high quality research and is a sustainable option which could revolutionise the world of traditional scientific publishing.”
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Federal Librarians
Source: Federal Library and Information Center Committee (FLICC)
Handbook of Federal Librarianship (PDF; 724 KB)
“The Federal Librarians Handbook is written for professional librarians and is therefore not intended as a manual to instruct you on how to be a librarian. Instead it focuses on the federal angle of otherwise standard practices and procedures of good librarianship. A topic was omitted if it was determined not to have anything uniquely federal about it. An exception was made for the chapter on copyright because it remains a challenging and continuously developing topic for all librarians…. We have made a concerted effort not to reinvent the wheel by duplicating what is already available elsewhere…. Therefore, this handbook provides only brief treatment of the main points of a topic with many hypertext links to Web sites for detail coverage and references to print publications…. An additional comprehensive listing with even more hypertext links and complete bibliographic citations to print publications is provided in the Resources chapter at the end of the handbook.”

Text Mining
Source: JISC
First Publicly Funded Text Mining Center in the World Will Be Established in the UK
From the announcement, The JISC, BBSRC AND EPSRC announced today funding of some �1m to establish a National Centre for Text Mining. The remit of the Centre, the first publicly funded centre in the world, is to contribute to the associated national and international research agenda, to establish a service for the wider academic community, and to make connections with industry. Text mining attempts to discover new, previously unknown information by applying techniques from natural language processing, data mining, and information retrieval:
+ To identify and gather relevant textual sources
+ To analyse these to extract facts involving key entities and their properties
+ To combine the extracted facts to form new facts or to gain valuable insights

Industry Briefs (2 Items)
+ U.S. Air Force Licenses MetaCarta Software (via GCN)
See Also: More About MetaCarta Here and Here
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+ Infotrieve Launches Redesigned Web Site

Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents (6 Items)
Terrorism
Source: U.S. Department of State
Just Released, Patterns of Global Terrorism 2003
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Military–Bibliographies
Three New Bibliographies from Air University Library
+ Conflict Termination in the Iraqi War 2003
+ Military Transformation
+ Posse Comitatus
These bibliographies include Internet resources, books, documents and periodicals. Air University Library offers more than 200 bibliographies on defense-related topics.
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Computer Fonts
Fonts in Cyberspace
Source: SIL International
“A guide to finding language fonts on the Internet. Containing more than 400 sources for 123 languages.”
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Prescription Drugs–United States
New Database, Prescription Drug and Other Assistance Programs
Source: Medicare.gov
“The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the federal agency responsible for administering the Medicare program, gathered the data contained in the Prescription Drug and Other Assistance Programs database from various sources. The respective drug card program sponsors submit data for the Medicare-approved drug discount drug card programs directly to CMS. Other data contained in this database is collected from public sources and supplemented with telephone calls to states, disease-specific organizations, and pharmaceutical companies. Drug pricing data is updated on a weekly basis. All other information is updated monthly.”
Quick Search
Download the data in MS Access format.
See Also: Previously on ResourceShelf: Medicare Web Site to Shine Light on Drug Prices
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Health Care Funding–United States–Statistics
Source: Kaiser Family Foundation
Just Released, Trends and Indicators in the Changing Health Care Marketplace, 2004 Update
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Caregiving–United States–Statistics
Source: AARP
Recently Released Report, Caregiving in the U.S.
“We estimate there are 44.4 million American caregivers (21% of the adult population) age 18 and older who provide unpaid care to an adult age 18 or older. These caregivers are present in an estimated 22.9 million households (21% of U.S. households).”
Full Report (PDF; 476 KB)
“Spotlight” reports are available for: California, Delaware, Illinois, Kansas, Ohio, Virginia, Washington.

Web Search–Cool Tools
Source: SearchDay
Exploring Search Engine Overlap
Chris Sherman introduces us to Thumbshots, a very cool tool. He writes, “Search engine guru Greg Notess has long studied search engine overlap — the number of pages found by more than one search engine. Greg’s findings have consistently shown that there is very little overlap in the web page databases of the major search engines, meaning you’ll likely get very different results depending on the engine….The results for most queries confirm Greg Notess’ research: there is very little overlap in search engine results for most of the tests I ran. And in most cases, even the top ten results vary significantly from engine to engine.” A perfect resource to use in demos when you need to show that results vary amongst major web engines.

Resources of the Week
2 items.
1) Business Rankings–Lists & Rankings
Trip’s Lists Vol. I
Note: Trip Wyckoff is the sole proprietor of SpecialIssues.com, a database containing information about salary surveys, industry outlooks, overviews, buyers guides, who’s who registers, etc. that can be found in over 3200 publications. He is also the current compiler of Price’s Lists of Lists, a resource I started about six years ago. It offers direct links to company rankings freely available on the open web. The LOL is available for free. Trip has accepted an invitation to share recent additions to the LOL along with lists that you might have missed with ResourceShelf on a regular basis. In his first compilation, Trip shares some of his favorite lists.

Favorites
Forbes
The most useful site for “business rankings”
+ Layoff Tracker
+ Lists & Rankings

Intelligent Enterprise
+ The Dozen
12 entities which are most influential in the creation of intelligent enterprises
+ Intelligent Enterprise Imperatives
Editors have devised a list of “imperatives” that would typify an IT department that intends to truly enable business strategy

Money
+ M&A (mergers & acquisitions) Databank

QSR
+ QSR 50
Top restaurant chains ranked by various means

Start Magazine
+ START 1,000
Top admired large, medium, and small manufacturers, with revenues less than 10 million to over a billion are listed

Interesting Resources
Pit & Quarry
+ Quarry Atlas
Easy-to-use, maplike views of America’s natural and sociocultural landscapes, includes natural resources and companies utilizing these resources

RealScreen
+ Factual Price Guide
Industry survey on cost of producing documentary programming by genre and platform
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2) Online Maps
National Geographic MapMachine
We very much like maps and geographic resources at ResourceShelf. And here is yet another case of an already stellar site getting an overhaul that both adds new features and enhances usability. The National Geographic Society has partnered with ESRI, a preeminent GIS software developer. ESRI’s ArcWeb Services — which essentially deliver GIS and spatial data over the Internet — are now powering the MapMachine. This is dynamic data, updated continually, so users of the relaunched site are getting the latest and the greatest. Special features include:
+ The addition of “aerial imagery provided by GlobeXplorer” essentially allows you to zoom right in and get a bird’s eye view of your house. (One gripe — National Geographic watermarks over the images are fairly obtrusive.)
+ “Informational layers on each map, showing roads, political boundaries, and place names, can be turned on and off” by using check boxes. A variety of “theme maps” incorporate such things as census and employment data, FEMA flood designations and weather events — e.g., hurricanes paths, windstorms, tornado touch-downs. Definitions for the different types of maps are available. All types of maps are not available for all locales.
+ “A suite of tools allows users to measure distances, pan over the map, zoom in and out, and label key map features.” These appear on the right side of the screen when you are looking at a map. Click on their icons to activate them. BTW, clicking anywhere on the map itself zooms in on that particular spot. Or use the standard “zoom in/zoom out” progression bar located on the right side of the map.
+ An improved “Quick Map Search” on the top right side of the page allows you to find maps for a place quickly by typing in a city, country, region, continent or U.S. zip code.
+ You can save maps that you’ve generated (the site uses cookies to do this), or e-mail a map to someone. Maps and aerial imagery may be printed out, or you can order a large-format version online. (Prices depend on such things as image, size desired, etc.) The MapMachine incorporates maps from an array of providers, including (naturally) the National Geographic Society and such agencies as the Army Corps of Engineers, NOAA, NASA, the World Wildlife Fund, and the Library of Congress. Annotation prepared by Shirl K.

Web Search–Google
Google Files for Initial Public Offering
Here you go, search fans. What does this mean for the searcher? Not much. Here are some bullet points from a News.com story. It will not be difficult to find more than enough coverage elsewhere.
+ Shares will be auctioned off.
+ The company wants to raise 2.7 billion with the offering.
+ “The registration filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission offers an estimate of what the company believes it may be able to raise with its initial public offering, although the filing does not disclose the number of shares that will be offered, nor the range in price for those shares.”
+ “Google will create two classes of shares with different voting rights, a move that aims to guarantee founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin will maintain decision-making authority. Such structures have proven beneficial in media companies, such as The New York Times, the filing states.”
+ When will Google go public? No time frame was provided in the filing.
+ Want to buy Google stock at the IPO price? According to News.com, “investors should be prepared to jump through a number of hoops to get there.” These hoops include having an account with Morgan Stanley or Credit Suisse.
See Also: A Great Review of the Filing (what else would you expect) from Danny S.
See Also: More from John Markoff and the New York Times

Industry Briefs
+ Access Some LexisNexis Services via Your Blackberry
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+ Wilson Expands Biography Reference Bank

Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents (3 Items)
Teachers–United States–Fast Facts
Source: U.S. Census
Facts About Teachers in the United States
All sorts of interesting stats and facts to celebrate Teacher Appreciation Week (May 2-8).
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Digitization Projects
Source: Florida State Archives
Florida Postcard Collection
“This collection of picture postcards provides images of Florida statewide, including historic sites; tourist attractions and resorts; industries; schools, churches, and government buildings; roads, bridges, and railroads; urban and rural scenes; Seminole Indians; and Florida’s wildlife and natural environments. The collection includes both color and black-and-white images.” Contains 5,445 images spanning the period 1900-1999. (Note: This is part of the Florida Photographic Collection, which contains roughly 850,000 photographs, and approximately 2,500 movies and video tapes. About 100,000 of the photographs have been scanned and placed on the Internet.)
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Patents–Lists & Rankings
Source: Technology Review
2004 Technology Review Patent Scorecard
“Technology Review’s annual Patent Scorecard ranks the U.S. patent portfolios of 150 top technology companies in eight sectors.”
See Also: The Complete Scorecard (.xls file)
See Also: The Global Invention Map
“A topography of nation-by-nation inventive prowess.”

Web Search Engines–Legal Issues
Source: Virginia Journal of Law and Technology
Application of the DMCA Safe Harbor Provisions to Search Engines (PDF; 308 KB)
“(A)pplying the DMCA safe harbor provisions to search engines is problematic. Key portions of the statute refer to �subscribers� and �account holders,� making their application to search engines unclear because search engines typically do not have subscribers or account holders. The lack of a subscription relationship also seems to make search engines more likely than other types of service providers to remove content overzealously after notification. Finally, the combination of the unique importance of search engines for most Internet users and the availability of other means for copyright owners to protect their interests suggests that the burden of complying with the safe harbor procedures should not be placed on search engines. A better alternative would be for Congress to grant search engines complete immunity from contributory liability for infringing activities by third parties.” Battelle comments that, “in the near future, most search engines *will* have subscribers and account holders. A9 already does, as does Yahoo, indirectly. Hate to say it, but this paper is already out of date, even if I agree with its conclusion.” Thanks to SDK and J.D. or the link and annotation.

Web Search–Google
A Bit of Google Search News
We’re IPO free today! (-:
+ Google Adds News Images to Google Images
Here’s an example. Images are culled from Google News database. Yahoo Images also offers this feature. The company announced it last week when they quietly relaunched the image database.
+ CrossRef Launches Pilot Program of CrossRef Search, Powered By Google
Another specialized Google interface allows you to search abstracts from nine STM publishers via a single search box. Google has indexed the full text but with most of the searches I ran the full text is only accessible if you either have a subsciption to the database or purchase the individual article. I would imagine that many of the people who have access to the full text already use an interface designed for the specific content. This interface does not allow you to limit your search to a specific data field. You can limit to a specific publisher with site: search. In other words, you’re simply doing a free-text search. From the news release, “CrossRef itself doesn’t host any content or perform searches-CrossRef works behind the scenes with Google to facilitate the crawling of content on publishers’ sites and sets the policies and guidelines governing publisher participation in the initiative.” This means that the content has the potential to be found via the Google.com interface. However, as I’ve said many times (and Danny Sullivan said this week), if it’s not in the first few results it’s all but invisible to the average searcher. The news release also mentions that CrossRef is also working with other search engines. Yahoo announced their content aggregation program about two months ago. Some organizations are licensing technology from one of many companies and/or ILS vendors that allows the user to search multiple databases (web, fee-based, local) simultaneously with a single interface.

Professional Reading Shelf (3 Items)
Children’s Libraries
Source: International Federation of Library Associations
New, Guidelines for Children’s Library Services
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Research Libraries
Source: Association of Research Libraries
Updated, ARL Statistics (Interactive Edition)
2002-03 ARL Statistics are now available from the interactive statistics site at the University of Virginia.
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Taxonomies
Source: Transform Magazine
Overcoming Information Overload
From the article, “Taxonomies organize your information for more efficient retrieval and better topic insight. Here’s how to choose the best approach to building a better taxonomy.” Glad to see that the authors mention the skills of corporate librarians in the article. This pdf chart compares major players in the space.

National Archives–United Kingdom
Library catalogue complete
From the announcement, “The National Archives has a reference collection of 55,000 books, periodicals and directories on aspects of history (including local, family and military history), law, biography, genealogy and a wide range of reference material. Many publications relate to the documents held within the national archive itself. A growing number of electronic reference sources are also available…A project to recatalogue these works from paper catalogues to an online computer catalogue has been continuing for several years. The Library is pleased to announce that this project was completed at the end of March and for the first time all Library holdings can be found in a single, online catalogue.

Library Briefs
UK…A minute’s silence, please, for the late public library (via The Independent)
“According to a new report on the future of the public lending library, it is a battle the librarians of south Manchester and the rest of Britain may not win. Libri, a new campaign group formed to save that most revered of national institutions, has warned there could be as little as 20 years left for Britain’s public lending libraries.”
See Also: Full Text of the Report Mentioned in this Article