Search Engines–Google
Source: The Scotsman
Zero tolerance as Googol plans to take Google to court
From the article: “A dispute over a very large number of zeroes is threatening to distract attention from a $2.7 billion stock sale by the internet search engine Google. News of the deal has brought a threat of legal action from the family of Professor Edward Kasner, who invented the word “googol” in the 1930s to describe a very big number. He wrote about the concept in a 1940 book, describing a googol as the number one followed by a hundred zeroes. Kasner’s great-niece, Peri Fleisher, now insists that the US-based company has gained financially at the expense of the family. She said: “If we do have a legal right, we’re certainly going to exercise that. And now is the time.” However, experts in intellectual property said that bringing a successful legal action would be problematic. “It would be an uphill struggle to try to assert any legitimate claim,” said David Gourlay, a senior associate at the Dundas and Wilson Technology Group.”

Professional Reading Shelf
Archives
Source: Library and Archives Canada
Just Released, Full Text Report, Evaluation of the Canadian Archival Information Network (CAIN)

Search Engines - Ask Jeeves
Another Search Shortcut at Jeeves
It seems that there is yet another shortcut at Jeeves (part of their Smart Search program) among the many that have been mentioned in the past.
If you enter a stock symbol you get the latest prices.
See Also: A Complete List of Ask Jeeves Smart Search Options

Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents
Health Information
New/Updated Topic Pages/Compilations from MEDLINEplus
+ Muscular dystrophy, Duchenne and Becker types
+ Primary pulmonary hypertension
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Intellectual Property
Source: Parliamentary Library, Australia
New Report, Full Text, Intellectual property rights and the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement
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Government Regulation–United States
Source: AEI-Brookings Joint Center
Is Regulation Good For You?
“Will all federal regulations soon pass a benefit-cost test? If the OMB’s 2003 report is any indicator, the answer may be yes–at least for some categories of regulations…. We argue that OMB’s numbers are plausible, given the methodology that OMB uses. Whether they are reasonable is less clear.” Full Report (PDF; 444 KB)

Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents
Development
Source: UCTAD
Just Released, Full Text, Least Developed Countries Report 2004
The report includes a 49-page statistical annex.
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Data Mining–United States
Source: GAO
New Report, Full Text, Data Mining: Federal Efforts Cover a Wide Range of Uses
Summary ||| Direct to Full Text
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Hurricanes
Source: Colorado State University Tropical Meteorology Project
2004 Atlantic Seasonal Hurricane Forecast
“The recent upturn in Atlantic basin hurricane activity which began in 1995 is expected to continue in 2004. We anticipate an above-average number of Atlantic basin tropical cyclones and an above-average probability of U.S. hurricane landfall.” Annual forecast by Dr. William Gray.
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Beaches–United States
Source: Dr. Stephen P. Leatherman, Florida International University
America’s Best Beaches 2004
Annual list by “Dr. Beach.” Photos of the top ten are available for download.

Professional Reading Shelf
Libraries and Librarians
Source: Council on Library and Information Resources
The May/June Issue of CLIR Notes is Now Online
Articles includes:
+ Library Periodicals Expenses: Comparison of Nonsubscription Costs of Print and Electronic Formats on a Life-Cycle Basis
+ A New Blueprint for the Library?
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Libraries
Source: The Daily Star (Bangladesh)
Libraries in Search of a Future
“As the non-existence of a viable public library movement shows, Bangladesh faces formidable or — perhaps more accurately — overwhelming challenges to providing adequate library services. Consider that, there is no automation, no climate controls, no security procedures to protect against the theft of library materials, no adequate salaries to attract quality recruits to the library profession, no electronic databases and no adequate funding. In short, Bangladesh has one of the world’s most underdeveloped library systems.”

RSS
Rocket News Updates Its RSS Reader with New Features
Rocket launched their Java based RSS reader a couple of months ago. Here’s our post from 3/9/04. Yesterday, the Canadian company announced a couple of new features.
What’s New
+ Rocket RSS Channl Directory - The company has developed a Directory of RSS Channels and has been busy categorizing and organizing thousands of RSS & Atom newsfeeds. Using the Rocket RSS Channels Directory is simple - click on the Channels button on the top toolbar and navigate through the categories to find & add interesting feeds to your account.
+ Enhanced Channel Search Functionality - You can also Search for RSS feeds using the Rocket RSS Reader. Click on the Search button on the top toolbar and enter your search terms in the text box to find RSS channels (from the 70,000+ sources in the database) that include your search terms in the channel name, channel URL or channel description.
+ Create RocketNews RSS Channels - Click on the Create button on the top toolbar to build your own RSS Channel with search results from the award-winning RocketNews current news search engine.
Btw, the Rocket News database now aggregates (and makes searchable) content from more than 11,000 sources. Google News searches about 4500 sources. Yahoo News about 7000.

Professional Reading Shelf
Fugitive Documents?
Source: Houston Business Journal
Desert Paper Trail Leads to Shell Oil
File this one under how NOT to archive your documents…. “A buried ‘treasure’ could come back to haunt Houston-based Shell Oil. A total of 190 boxes full of documents have been dug up in the New Mexico desert near a pipeline formerly owned by a Shell subsidiary, the Texas-New Mexico Pipeline Co. The documents apparently pertain to operation of the pipeline and to environmental damage caused by an oil spill in the early 1990s.”
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Libraries
Wi-Fi–Open Access
Source: Wi-Fi Planet
An Open Source Wi-Fi Roundup
“(T)here are a number of freely available tools that will enable you to create and manage a public access hotspot. There are three projects in particular that are under community development and in use today that are deserving of mention: Sesame Wi-Fi, ZoneCD from Public IP and the Less Networks Hotspots Server (popularized by the Austin Wireless City Project in Texas).”

Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents
Military Intelligence–United States
Source: U.S. Army (via FAS/Secrecy News)
Full Text, Just Released (Unclassified), U.S. Army Field Manual on Intelligence
Secrecy News (compiled and edited by Steven Aftergood), has obtained a copy of this new document. From his newsletter, “The U.S. Army has issued a new Field Manual on intelligence that sets forth in detail the roles and functions of intelligence in Army and joint military operations. The new Field Manual (FM) 2-0 is ‘the Army’s keystone document for military intelligence doctrine.’ With conceptual rigor, the manual proceeds from “the fundamentals of intelligence operations” to ‘intelligence considerations in strategic readiness” and beyond.’” The document is a 3.2MB PDF; 211 pages.
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U.S. Army–Iraq
Source: Center for Army Lessons Learned
Full Text, Just Released, On Point: The United States Army in Operation Iraqi Freedom
“On Point tells the compelling story of America’s Army in OIF, and is of interest to a broad audience. However, it aims at a specific audience — soldiers and defense professionals. Within the Army, On Point has two specific goals: to educate soldiers on the conduct of combat operations in OIF and to suggest some preliminary implications for the Army’s continued transformation.”

Web Search–Yahoo
Even More Yahoo! Search Shortcuts
They keep coming! You can find a complete list here and a few comments in our 4/21/04 post.
+ Area Codes: “To find the area code for a city or see what cities are within an area code, search on the area code or city name and ‘area code.’” Example: area code seattle)
+ Calculator: “Use Yahoo! Search to do basic mathematical calculations. You can add (+), subtract (-), multiply (*) and divide (/).” Example: 4*(12-6/3)
+ Exchange Rates: “To find the exchange rate for a unit of currency or convert one currency to another, search on “convert” and the currency or currencies you would like to convert.” Example: convert yen dollar
+ Time Zones: “To get the current time or determine the time zone for a location search on ‘time’ or ‘time zone’ and the location.” Example: time in paris
+ Weights and Measures: “To convert any number of metric or Imperial/English units in whole or decimal form, search on ‘convert’ and the units you would like to convert. Use * to indicate degrees.” Example: convert miles to km
+ Zip Codes: “To find the area code for a city or see what cities are within a zip code, search on the city name and ‘zip code.’” Example: zip code austin
See: Yahoo! Search Shortcuts Cheat Sheet
See Also: Help Using the Yahoo Calculator

and while we’re on the Yahoo! Beat…
ResearchBuzz Has Info on Yahoo’s Linkdomain: Syntax

Search Engines
Source: BBC News
Search Business Turns Serious
From the article: “Although the web has given the person in the street access to more information than ever before and Google has made it easy to search through that vast pile to find what you want, typically business users need even more. So argues Clare Hart, boss of search firm Factiva which was formed in 1999 from Dow Jones Interactive and Reuters Business Briefing. When you do a search you’re not interested in quantity,” said Ms Hart, “you want relevant research and quick access to relevant results. I think people get very frustrated by Google results,” she said. “The lack of quality results and the fact that they have to register with more and more websites.” A great story for the librarians to mention to their patrons who think that Research = Google.

Professional Reading Shelf
Books
Source: BBC News
Books Get Interactive Makeover
“New Zealand researchers have developed a way to overlay detailed animations and images on textbooks, children’s picture books and any other title that uses illustrations.”
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Information
Source: internetnews.com
Report: 25% of Critical Data is Flawed
“Many major companies are making crucial business decisions based on flawed data, according to a new study from Gartner Inc. More than 25 percent of critical data within Fortune 1,000 companies is incomplete and inaccurate, say analysts from Gartner, a major industry research firm based in Stamford, Conn. Although many executives aren’t even aware that they’re working with flawed data, the ones that do often reach for the wrong technology to fix the situation, reports Ted Friedman, principal analyst for Gartner.”
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Information Systems
Source: IMS Global Learning Consortium and the Coalition for Networked Information
New Report (White Paper), Just Released: Interoperability between Library Information Services and Learning Environments - Bridging the Gaps
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Digitization Projects–Canada
Source: Heritage Canada
Full Text, Virtual Museum of Canada: The Next Generation
A paper by Steve Dietz, Howard Besser, Ann Borda and Kati Gerber (with Pierre L�vy). “This Study Paper was produced in the context of the redevelopment of the Virtual Museum of Canada (VMC). The VMC has been a great success since its launch in March 2001. Since then, it has evolved in response to information technologies and the needs of the Network?s members. In order to help us make choices and prepare the ground for further innovation, a group of internal and external experts was mandated to produce a study paper that would stimulate exchanges and debates within the museum and heritage community.”

Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents
Computer Security
Source: CSO and CERT
Just Released, 2004 E-CRIME Watch Survey
Summary ||| Direct to Full Text
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Health Information–Australia
Source: Parliamentary Library, Australia
New Report, Healthy measures - key health statistics

Resources of the Week
Three selections this week.

1) Employment–United States
Source: Wall Street Journal
CareerJournal.com: Salary and Hiring Information
As far as juicy information goes, salary data is among the juiciest. Who makes what? How do you stack up against your peers? If you relocate to a city in a different part of the country, can you expect to earn what you earn now? What’s a good ballpark figure to hold in your head when you’ve been called back for that second interview? Or maybe you need hard data to prove to your boss that you are, in fact, underpaid. There’s a real good chance you’ll find just the numbers you need on this page, specifically, from the scroll menu in the blue box at the top of the right column. Let’s choose…uh, Librarians. Highlight it and click “GO” at the bottom of the box. In the center column, up pops an article about hiring trends for corporate librarians. Beneath the blue box on the right, you’ll see another blue box labeled “Salary Tables.” Here’s the good stuff, folks. For Librarians, you’ll find links to five different salary tables — Library Department Heads, Librarians by Experience, Top Research Librarians, Librarians at Nonprofits in the Washington, D.C., Metro Area, and the decidedly generic…Librarians. For each table, the source/data is indicated in italics at the bottom. Go ahead…satisfy your curiosity now. Other fishing holes for salary data:
+ Bureau of Labor Statistics: Weekly Earnings Data (See especially the table Median weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers by detailed occupation and sex.)
+ GovExec.com: Salary and Benefits (federal employee pay schedules, etc.)
+ JobStar: Salary Info Index
+ Occupational Outlook Handbook
+ Portico’s collection of salary guides (resources for “advancement professionals”)
+ Salary Guides and Guidance (The Riley Guide)
+ Salary.com
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2) Economics
Source: Economic History Association
EH.Net
“EH.Net operates the Economic History Services fileserver and several electronic discussion lists to provide resources and promote communication among scholars in economic history and related fields.” What’s here:
+ Abstracts in Economic History: “AEH is a service designed to assist economic historians in sharing information about their work. Abstracts are welcome for all types of work in the field, including dissertations, working papers, conference presentations, journal articles, and contributions to anthologies.”
+ Ask the Professor: “Professors who have done research in Economic History are volunteering to assist others interested in learning more about the field.” Searchable archive of previous questions and answers.
+ Book Reviews
+ Course Syllabi
+ Database Directory: “EH.Net provides an on-line location for researchers in economic history to make their data series available to other professionals and interested scholars. Several data series have been given to EH.Net and are available as downloadable files, while many other titles may be accessed through our Database Registry.”
+ Economic History in the Popular Press: Selected recent articles of interest.
+ Encyclopedia: “EH.Net Encyclopedia of Economic and Business History is designed to provide students and laymen with high quality reference articles in the field. Articles for the Online Encyclopedia are written by experts, screened by a group of authorities, and carefully edited.”
+ How Much Is That?: “Have you ever wondered what the value of a dollar was in 1895? Or what the GDP was in 1929? Here is a place where you can ask questions of comparative value covering purchasing power, exchange rates, and other variables between the past and today.” Includes data for the UK, gold prices, “the relative cost of unskilled labor,” some exchange rates.
+ Membership Directory: “(C)ontains a complete list of the members of the Business History Conference, The Cliometric Society, and the Economic History Association.”
+ Related Websites: “The materials listed here are primarily WWW sites with information of use to economic historians. Because there is presently a great deal more on the Internet in economics than in history, that discipline is more heavily represented, but over time the distribution will even out.”
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3) Naval Studies
NOSI: Naval Open Source Intelligence
“NOSI is a digital library of world naval operational news curated from open source intelligence. Links to naval operational news stories are posted daily after scanning over 100 international news sources…NOSI is curated by Michael P. D’Alessandro, M.D. Dr. D’Alessandro has been a member of the U.S. Naval Institute since 1981…. Dr. D’Alessandro’s research is in the field of digital libraries; he established the Virtual Hospital digital health sciences library as the 250th Web site on the Internet in 1993.”
See Also: GlobalSecurity.org
Another excellent source of open source security, intelligence, and related material.

Multimedia Search
New Resource: CampaignSearch.com
We’ve mentioned many multimedia search tools on ResourceShelf. Today, in a News.com article, word of a new one. Say hello to CampaignSearch.com. This site uses voice recognition technology from StreamSage. From the site, “CampaignSearch.com has gathered campaign-related video and audio files from a number of Web sites: George Bush’s and John Kerry’s campaign Web sites, C-SPAN, PBS, NPR and more. CampaignSearch.com uses complex spoken-language-analysis software created by StreamSage to automatically identify the sections of audio/video news and speeches that are relevant to a voter’s interests.” More info about the technology here. Here are some other multimedia search tools that we’ve featured on ResourceShelf.
+ Virage demos from PBS, keyword search segments from several PBS programs
+ Speechbot, keyword search (voice recognition technology) over 17,000 hours of radio programming
+ NPR Audio Archives Search, keyword search abstracts of program segments back to 1996
+ ShadowTV.Com, fee-based, keyword search (real-time) major news networks
+ The Feedroom
Browse or search (abstracts), and view news segments from various television stations.