Web Search–Weblogs
What’s the Buzz? For Your Radar Screen: Blabble.com
A new start-up joining the ranks of weblog tools, Blabble is aimed at the corporate market. According to an Internet Retailer article, the service will be fee-based when it officially launches in October. A beta is currently available free online. The article reads like Blabble will be something similar to what IBM is developing with WebFountain. Blabble defines what they’re doing as “thought parsing.” From the article, “Existing software products aggregate listings from blogs, but require the user seeking a view of overall trends or opinions as represented in blogs to read through all the blog listings to make that determination manually. [Company founder Matt] Rice says Blabble goes a step farther by incorporating natural language processing that parses blog listings returned in a search into parts of speech so as to extract from them words, phrases and constructions that indicate opinion. ‘50,000 people may write about a topic, but you don’t have time to read 50,000 listings,’ says Rice. ‘And I probably don’t care about one individual opinion; it’s the aggregate that I care about.’ Blabble doesn’t crawl the web in response to a search, instead drawing from its own searchable database that aggregates content from what are currently more than 2 million blog authors. To fill and grow its database, it secures lists of blogs and also draws from companies that provide consumers with software and platforms for creating blogs. Blabble gets a direct feed from such companies so every change or addition to a posted blog is captured, which keeps its database current.”
See Also: Direct to Blabble.com Web Site
See Also: Blabble.com Weblog
See Also: Several weblog engines including Waypath, Technorati, and Daypop all have pages that rank popular blog topics and postings.

and while we’re on the subject of weblogs…
Something New from Waypath, Topic Streams
According to the web site, just out of the Waypath lab. “Topic Streams are topic-specific information feeds that aggregate weblog posts. Each Topic Stream is devoted to a specific topic. (The name kind of gives that away, no?) The Topic Streams are refreshed throughout the day, and pull fresh content from nearly 3 million weblogs.”

Desktop Search
Source: SearchDay
Copernic Launches an Impressive and Free Desktop Search Tool
Some person named Gary Price (-: has written an overview article about Copernic’s new desktop search tool. If you run Windows and have never used a desktop search app, Copernic’s new entry might be a good one to try.

Briefly
+ Vivisimo Technology Now Dynamically Clustering Results at BoardReader.com
BoardReader.com is a specialized search tool that allows you to search discussion/message board material. Last week, Lycos unveiled a tool that also focuses on discussion board content.

Professional Reading Shelf
OCLC
OCLC Research Launches Searchable Repository
“Built using OCLC services, the new repository contains descriptions of OCLC Research projects, activities and programs that were originally published by OCLC or in peer-reviewed scholarly journals. The metadata records may be harvested as an OAI file and are available for searching on the OCLC Research Web site. In addition, the records also are in WorldCat and are searchable in FirstSearch and search engines participating in OCLC’s Open WorldCat Program. Links to full text are available wherever permitted by the copyright holder.” An advanced search interface is also available.
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Information Retrieval
Source: Transform
Turn Search Into Find
A look at self-service search. A sidebar titled, “Behind the Jargon: Five Approaches to Classification” is also available. Sad to report no mention of info professionals in the article. It’s a shame since many of the skills we can provide are completely applicable to assisting an organization implementing this type of technology. Oh well, that’s the way it goes.
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Science Journals
Source: American Chemical Society
CAS Science Spotlight
From press release: “Recording how often a journal’s contents are cited in scientific literature has long been the conventional way of measuring the importance of specific publications and even of the authors themselves. However, the widespread availability of electronic journals on the Web has enabled CAS to provide a new measurement - a tally of researchers’ actual requests (Real-Time Document Requests) for full-text articles transmitted via CAS search services. The latest rankings are now available on the Web, free of charge, through CAS Science Spotlight….” Also available: Most Intriguing Documents (in the opinion of CAS scientists/analysts).
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National Archives–United Kingdom
Source: KableNET.com
Immigrant records go online
From the article, “The National Archives is to put records of some of the UK’s most famous immigrants online. Among the records of 55,000 naturalised British citizens is information on T. S. Eliot, Sir Henry Stanley and the founder of Marks and Spencer, Michael Marks.”
See Also: More in this Aug. 27th Post
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Public Libraries–United States
Source: ALA
All My CDs! Public Library Association President Clara N. Bohrer responds to national CD settlement, distribution to public libraries
From the statement, “While library staff nationwide will work to catalog and circulate the CDs received that meet the needs of their local residents, we call on the music industry to send the educational CDs and best-selling music - not remainders that cannot be displayed in libraries - that our millions of library users want to find in their libraries.”
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U.S. Census–Privacy
U.S. Census Bureau Announces Policy Regarding Sensitive Data

Metadata
Source: Dublin Core Metadata Initiative
Public Broadcasting Metadata Directory, based on Dublin Core, to be launched
From the announcement, “The inaugural version of the Public Broadcasting Metadata Dictionary (PBcore), a standard way to describe all public broadcasting content based on Dublin Core metadata, is being finalized for the launch of version 1.0 in September 2004. The origins of the Dublin Core are firmly grounded in cross disciplinary discovery — providing a core metadata set that others would find useful as a basis for interoperabity, and yet be able to extend to meet more elaborate requirements. PBCore is a great example of such real-world deployment by one the most prestigious news community in the United States.”
See Also: Direct to the Public Broadcasting Metadata Dictionary (PBcore)

and while we’re talking metadata, some news from the UK…
UK Ratifies Commitment to Global Internet Standards
“…the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) and Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) of the further and higher education funding bodies have signed a joint agreement with the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) enabling the UK to become formally involved in the standard’s continued development. MLA and JISC are the UK’s official representatives, presenting the views of all UK public sector institutions at an international level.”

Web Search Briefs
New, Search Engines 2
We’re often asked if a directory of every general type search tool exists. The answer is no. However, Michael Wong has just released an impressive directory of over 12,500 search tools. If you enjoy browsing, exploring, and comparing this might just be the place to begin. Michael writes, “I’ve just launched Search Engines 2, a new directory that offers over 12,500 links to local, regional, national, and foreign internet search engines, web directories, pay per click search engines and meta search engines.” Although this directory is large it just contains a fraction of the total search universe especially when it comes to specialized (verticals), fee-based, and site search tools. In other words, Michael has done a great job but just because it’s not in the directory doesn’t mean it’s not out there.

Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents
Employment–United States–Lists and Rankings
Source: AARP
AARP Honors 35 Best Employers for Workers Over 50
From the article: “What do a dental benefits administrator, an office technologies and services firm, a financial services company and an auto manufacturer have in common? These diverse companies recruit and retain mature workers — they treat them right — and rank among the 35 employers from across the U.S. that have been named 2004 “AARP Best Employers for Workers Over 50.”
+ See also (Just Released) - Staying Ahead of the Curve 2004: Employer Best Practices for Mature Workers
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Health–United States–Statistics
Prescription Drugs–United States–Statistics
Source: Kaiser Family Foundation
Updated, State Health Facts Online
“The Kaiser Family Foundation’s State Health Facts Online now includes the latest available data on prescription drug use and spending for all 50 states and the U.S. The new 2003 data include the number of retail prescriptions filled, retail prescriptions filled per capita, the average price of prescriptions, and total spending on retail prescriptions for each state. The percent change from 2002 to 2003 for these indicators is also included. The 2003 data, based on information provided by Verispan L.L.C, a health information company, are available by age group (seniors, adults, and children) and gender. Updated state data are also now available on smoking, obesity, and death rates for cancer, stroke, diabetes, heart disease, and firearms, based on information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Data are broken down by gender and race/ethnicity for each topic. State Health Facts Online is a free resource that provides quick access to these topics and others, totaling nearly 400 indicators covering state-level and U.S. data on health, health care, and health policy.”
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Law Firms–Lists & Rankings
Source: American Lawyer
Just Released, The American Lawyer A-List Ranking 2004
Background Article ||| Direct to List (Free, Registration Required)

Enterprise Search
+ The FBI Awards Large Contract to Convera for Enterprise Search Technology
“Convera Corporation today announced the company has won a multi-million dollar contract to provide the FBI with an agency-wide search and discovery platform.”
See Also: Read More about Convera’s RetrievalWare

Web Search
Source: NY Times
Letter to the Editor in The Times: A Non-Profit Web Engine?
Timothy E. Cook of Baton Rouge, LA, suggests a nonprofit general web engine in response to this opinion piece. Aside from the technical and collection development policy (targeting the crawler, keeping the database clean) issues that need to be addressed, an interesting idea. Actually, it’s not a new idea. I know of many people (namely librarians) who have had similar ideas for a couple of years. Of course, many wonderful librarian- (and non-profit-) built general web directories exist like the LII, Infomine, AcademicInfo.net, and RDN. In fact, one of RDN’s underlying sites, EEVL (Enhanced and Evaluated Virtual Library, engineering, computing and mathematics resources), offers a focused crawler that, “harvests information from web sites within the EEVL Internet Resource catalogue and allows the actual content of these sites to be searched (as a conventional search engine would do, but with greater subject focus).” A great idea and one that could help seed a non-profit general web engine with excellent resources.

Answer Engines
Source: The Economist
Answer Engine Research at Microsoft
We’ve mentioned and linked to articles about “answer engines” numerous times on ResourceShelf. Some new stuff today. Here’s an article about the “Ask MSR” research at Microsoft from the current issue of The Economist. From the article, “What is the next stage in the evolution of internet search engines? AltaVista demonstrated that indexing the entire world wide web was feasible. Google’s success stems from its uncanny ability to sort useful web pages from dross. But the real prize will surely go to whomever can use the web to deliver a straight answer to a straight question. And Eric Brill, a researcher at Microsoft, intends that his firm will be the first to do that…Ask MSR is still a prototype, although Microsoft is trying to improve it and it may be launched commercially under the name AnswerBot.” If you would like to read more, take a look at these papers from MS that have been linked on RS during the past year:
+ Automatic Question Answering: Beyond the Factoid
A 2004 paper by Eric Brill and Radu Soricut. This paper is mentioned in the article.
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+ “Web Question Answering: Is More Always Better?”
A 2002 paper by Microsoft researchers.
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+ “An Analysis of the AskMSR Question-Answering System”
Another 2002 paper by Microsoft researchers.

We should also mention that Ask Jeeves is doing some interesting and USEFUL work in this area with their Smart Search program. For example, a search for academy awards best actress 1962 provides an ANSWER (mined from the IMDB) not only provides links to answers BUT an actual answer (with a link to the source) at the top of the results list. Here’s another example.
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See Also: A Recent RS post about Kozoru
A Kansas City startup also doing work in this area.
See Also: A May 2004 RS Post about LearnitAll
Answer engine/knowledge extraction research at the University of Washington.
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See Also: ResourceShelfPLUS has a compilation of selected MS Search Technical Reports and Patents

Semantic Web
Ontologies
Source: JISC
New, Full Text article, The role of ontologies in teaching and learning
“Most information on the Web is written in natural language, designed for people to read and not for computers to understand. The Semantic Web proposes to maintain the decentralised and heterogeneous nature of the Web, but to enable the meaning of its resources to be expressed in a machine understandable way. Making the Semantic Web a reality involves adding machine processable meta-information to documents and creating ‘ontologies’ - structures around which knowledge bases can be built. Ontologies, and the increased functionality they imply, will bring new opportunities to e-learning and e-teaching. They will enable complex and dynamic learning requirements to be met automatically, and will assist learners in comprehending the domain and building their own concept map. In short, they promise to greatly improve understanding between teachers/learners and the Web.”

Professional Reading Shelf
Librarians
LibrariansForBush
In the past few weeks the group LibrariansAgainstBush.org has gotten some attention. We’ve just noticed that earlier this month LibrariansForBush.org was registered to a person in Massachusetts. The site is not live at this time.
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Digital Libraries
Source: E-LIS
From open access to open libraries: claims and visions for Open Academic Libraries (PDF; 148 KB)
“This paper discusses the concept of the “Open Academic Library”. The idea refers to a freely available metadata set about academic publications. The paper discusses emergence and sustainability of such libraries.”
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Government Printing Office
Source: FCW
Collection of last resort
From the article, “Government Printing Office officials have held preliminary discussions with librarians about creating a backup library to supplement federal depository library collections. GPO officials describe the new concept as a ‘collection of last resort.’ But officials at libraries that are part of GPO’s Federal Depository Library Program have mixed views about the proposed collection.
A period of public comment on the proposal began in the spring, and GPO officials have extended it to Sept. 7. GPO officials said they are only exploring the idea of a backup library and are looking for feedback. But they said new policies may be needed to guarantee free, permanent public access to the government’s nearly 2.2 million titles. A collection of last resort would preserve those titles, both in tangible and electronic forms, in the event of an accident or a catastrophe.”
See Also: More in this 4/2004 RS Post
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Open Access
Source: Library Journal
NIH Open Access Recommendation Spurs Heated Debate
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Libraries and Librarians
Source: Council on Library and Information Resources
The September/October Edition of CLIR Issues is Now Online
Articles includes:
+ Enabling New Scholarship
Scholarly Communication Institute Highlights Collaboration and Technology
+ Charting a Course
Comments from the New President of CLIR, Nancy Davenport
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Wikis
Source: EDUCAUSE Review
Wide Open Spaces: Wikis, Ready or Not
“The needs met by ‘wikis’–documents posted online for open editing by all–are simply not being satisfied by present IT strategies and tools.”

Librarians
New Publication, Your Help Requested! Patronized: a semi-annual publication about the lives and labor of librarians
This new a semi-annual publication will focus on, “the lives and labor of librarians.” According to a note on their Ibiblio-based web site, they’re looking for columnists, editors, and friends. No other details are provided.

Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents
Aviation Security–United States
Source: Office of the Inspector General, DHS
Just Released, Evaluation of the Federal Air Marshal Service, August 2004
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Bankruptcies–United States–Statistics
Just Released, Bankruptcy Statistics
“Bankruptcies filed in federal courts declined slightly in the 12-month period ending June 30, 2004, the first time since 2000 that bankruptcies have declined during that period.”
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Medical Research–History
Source: National Library of Medicine
New, Annotated Bibliography, Resources on the History of Psychiatry from the History of Medicine of NLM
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Republican National Convention
Coverage from the blogosphere via two excellent weblog/news search tools.
+ Politics.Feedster.com
From the RSS search tool Feedster.
+ Election Watch
From Technorati. Includes several charts and graphs.
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on a related note, something NEW from Yahoo News…
Election Blog Roundup
From the site, “Our goal is to aggregate a diverse selection of political blogs and let you sample a variety of opinions as election season heats up.”

Business Research
Current Awareness
Source: Information Today NewsBreaks
A New Scoop for Business Information Makes Its Debut
Paula Hane offers up an overview of Scoop.com a new fee-based resource ($29.95/month) from NetContent. Content from open web and proprietary sources. Paula concludes, “In my admittedly limited testing of the service, the Scoop service seemed more like a beta release. Although it let me choose publication type and publications, it then didn’t show me what I had chosen on the search page or in the results. And, the searches were not iterative — I couldn’t search within the results; instead, “refine search” dropped me back to the initial search box. The service could benefit from some user interface work and search refinements. It does offer both basic and advanced search options, including a handy “Search Builder” function that helps users create structured Boolean queries. Tabs offer easy access to specific functions, including company searches, alerts, and publishing. Another tab presents users with a Topic Library with subject categories so they can drill down to more specific topics to create a search or alert.”