RSS
Factiva Begins Offering “Campaign Issue” RSS Feeds
The RSSification of content continues, this time from a major online info service. From the announcement, “Targeting the U.S. government sector, this free RSS feed will continuously update the campaign issues being reported, enabling users to view a three-paned window that allows them to quickly scan campaign issue headlines. If they see an update or issue that interests them, they can easily click on the link to read the entire story.” These feeds use web-based content so you don’t need a Factiva subscription to read the full text. Four feeds are available:
+ Jobs & Economy
+ Health Care
+ War In Iraq
+ Budget & Taxes
You can read the headlines via the Factiva site or place the “headline only” feeds directly into your aggregator.

and while we’re on the topic of RSS…

News
Weblogs
Say Hello to MetroFeed
Here’s a new service, it looks like an early beta, that aggregates RSS feeds from “locally” oriented blogs (and other news sources) onto a single page. Sort by source or by time. Pages also contain local weather and other news from the Blogosphere. Each feed needs more sources but it’s an interesting idea and a site to watch. Yes, you can also get an RSS feed for each city MetroFeed. (-: It sounds very similar to what Blake and Steven have offered up at LISFeeds (library and info science blogs) for a long time. You can also accomplish the same type of service (with more mainstream news content) via the 150,000+ “topic pages” at Topix.net and/or placing one of more of their “topic feeds” into your aggregator.
MetroFeeds’ are available at the moment for:
+ Los Angeles
+ New York
+ San Francisco
+ Seattle
+ Chicago
+ San Diego
+ Washington, DC
+ Toronto
+ London

Professional Reading Shelf
RFID
Source: ACM Queue
The Magic of RFID
This excellent article asks the question, “Just how do those little things work anyway?”
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Information Standards
Source: NISO
New Newsletter, NISO Newsline
“A monthly alert featuring news about NISO’s activities and crisp, timely reports on significant developments, events, and trends in the information standards world.” Subscription info (it’s free) is located at the bottom of the Newsline page.
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The Internet Archive
Source: Berkman Center
Internet Archive Founder Brewster Kahle Wins IP3 Award
The award was given to BK by Public Knowledge. Congrats to Brewster.
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Librarians–Awards
Source: The Columbian (Clark County, WA)
ACLU salutes library official’s career
“Long before the Internet, there was President Nixon. They were bookends for Candy Morgan’s library career, which was recognized this weekend with the highest honor from the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington. Morgan received the group’s William O. Douglas Award for outstanding and sustained support of civil liberties.”

Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents
Crime–United States–Statistics
Source: FBI
Just Released, Crime in the United States 2003 (Uniform Crime Reports)
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Customs Enforcement–United States–Statistics
Source: TRAC (Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse)/Syracuse University
Just Released, DHS-Customs Enforcement
“TRAC has just released the latest information on the enforcement of U.S. Customs laws. More re-shuffling of DHS personnel means that enforcement of customs laws is now divided between Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Differential growth rates in staffing indicate that priority has been given to covering the movement of goods (customs inspectors) over that of people (immigration inspectors and border patrol agents). The intense focus on drugs continues after 9/11, but growth has leveled off.” To see what is happening in your district, follow the District Enforcement link.
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Cyber Security–Surveys
Source: National Cyber Security Alliance
New Report, The AOL/NCSA Online Safety Study
Summary ||| Complete Report
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Population–United States
Source: U.S. Census
Slide Presentation: The Foreign-Born Population in the United States: 2003
HTML Version ||| PowerPoint Version
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Workplace–Canada–Statistics
Source: Statistics Canada
New, Workplace and Employee Survey Compendium
A summary is also available.

Search Briefs (via SEW Blog)
+ Yahoo and Adobe Announce a Partnership
+ New Shopping Engine: Cairo.com
+ Google: A Behind-the-Scenes Look (and other Lectures)

Briefly
+ Hoover’s Expands its U.K. and Canada Offerings
+ Visual Sciences Announces Strategic Investment and Licensing Agreement with In-Q-Tel
+ CrossRef Adds New Services and Expands to New Content Areas

Professional Reading Shelf
Science and Technology References–Reviews
Source: YPB Library Services (Baker & Taylor)
E-STREAMS
Monthly online journal offering “Electronic reviews of Science & Technology References covering Engineering, Agriculture, Medicine and Science.” HTML or PDF. Searchable archive available. “E-STREAMS is also available via listserv in two formats: text and PDF.”
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Presidential Libraries
Source: AP
After delay, false start, Lincoln Library opens
“Hundreds of history buffs joined state officials earlier this month to celebrate the opening of the mammoth three-story, state-of-the-art facility, home to the Illinois State Historical Library and its 12 million items, including 47,000 Lincoln artifacts. There are six miles of bookshelves inside and room for 258,400 reels of microfilm, along with reading rooms, research areas, classrooms and conference rooms. The goal is to preserve the artifacts and make them more accessible to scholars.”

Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents
Gardening–United States
Source: USDA/The United States National Arboretum
USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map
Click on any area of this interactive version of the USDA’s Plant Hardiness Zone Map to display a close-up view of that region.
See also: Cold Hardiness Ratings for Selected Woody Plants
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Think Tank Documents–Database
Source: The Heartland Institute
PolicyBot
“PolicyBot is the Internet’s most extensive clearing-house for the work of free-market think tanks, with more than 12,500 studies and commentaries from over 350 think tanks and advocacy groups. To search the PolicyBot database, navigate through the topic list on the left, or use the form below to specify keywords or the name of an author or publisher. You can also search for a specific document number if you know it, or for all documents added during a specified time period.”
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Air Power–Bibliography
Source: Air University Library
Air Power Doctrine (Updated)
“Basic air doctrine deals with the phenomenon of flight, with the new relationships that exist as a result of hitherto unrealized speeds, range, mobility, and flexibility, and their application to the principles of war, such as those of mass, dispersion, and surprise, as well as to their application to the principles of peace, such as those of friendly association, distribution of economic wealth, and rendering of service.” Extensive biliography of books, periodicals, Internet resources includes these sections:
- General Information: Basic Doctrine Manuals
- General Information: Bibliographies
- Airpower Theory
- History and Development
- World War I /Post-War Period
- World War II /Post-War Period
- Korean War/Post-War Period
- Vietnamese Conflict
- Airpower Doctrine in the Late 1970’s and 1980’s
- The Gulf War and Doctrine in the 1990’s
- Into The 21st Century
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Smokefree Ordinances–United States
Source: American Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation
Smokefree Ordinance Lists
“The ANR Foundation is pleased to announce the October 2004 quarterly update to the lists of U.S. municipalities and states with 100% smokefree laws. Please note that these smokefree lists reflect only those laws that are in effect and that result in entirely smokefree enclosed workplaces, restaurants, and/or bars without exemptions. Laws that allow for separate ventilation, size exemptions, or smoking rooms are not included on the ANR Foundation 100% smokefree lists. There are now 1,811 U.S. municipalities with some sort of local clean indoor air law, 336 of which provide 100% smokefree protection for private workplaces/government buildings, restaurants, and/or bars.” Lists in PDF format.

Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents
Instant Messaging–Baseball
Source: MLB.com
The fans’ new know-it-all buddy
“(M)illions of people who love AOL Instant Messenger as well as Major League Baseball now can simply send an IM to screen name ‘MLB’ — and be IM’d right back with continuously updated news, scores, stats, multimedia, games, polling and more from MLB.com.” Cool!
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Indutrial Robots
Source: United Nations Economic Commission for Europe
World Robotics 2004
From the report: “Worldwide investment in industrial robots up 19% in 2003. In first half of 2004, orders for robots were up another 18% to the highest level ever recorded. Worldwide growth in the period 2004-2007 is forecast at an average annual rate of about 7%. Over 600,000 household robots in use–several millions in the next few years.”
+ Read the report [PDF]
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Cigarettes–Advertising
Source: Federal Trade Commission
Federal Trade Commission Cigarette Report for 2002
From the press release: “The Federal Trade Commission’s annual report on cigarette sales and advertising shows the six largest cigarette manufacturers spent $12.47 billion on advertising and promotional expenditures in 2002, an 11 percent increase from the $11.22 billion spent in 2001. The industry’s total expenditures were the most ever reported to the Commission, even though combined spending on newspaper, magazine, outdoor, point-of-sale, and direct mail advertising declined from the previous year’s level. The major manufacturers also reported that they spent $74.2 million in 2002 on advertisements directed to youth or their parents that were intended to reduce youth smoking. The report also noted that the number of cigarettes sold or given away decreased by 3.7 percent from 2001 to 2002, while certain categories of advertising and promotional expenditures increased significantly.”
+ Read the report [PDF]

Professional Reading Shelf
Audio Books
netLibrary Announces New Audio Book Program for Libraries
This is a great idea. The new service will allow patrons (who have access to netLibrary) to search for and listen to audio books via the web. Books will be provided by Recorded Books.
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Libraries–Iraq
Source: Internet Librarian International
The Story of the Cemetery of Books
A presentation (delivered earlier this month)
by Dr. Saad B. Eskander, Director General, Iraq National Library and Archive.
+ Damages
+ Cleaning & Reorganising
+ Contact Information
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Special Collections–Lending Practices
Source: Rare Books and Manuscripts Section, ACRL
Guidelines for Borrowing and Lending Special Collections Materials for Exhibition
“These guidelines are written to encompass the needs of as wide a range of institutions and materials as possible. Although this document can offer no specific guidance in the matter, it is assumed that individual institutions will use common sense in applying these guidelines, taking into consideration such factors as rarity, fragility, and monetary value of the material being requested for exhibition…. Although the policies and practices of a number of the largest libraries in the United States, including the Library of Congress and the New York Public Library, were used to formulate these guidelines, it is assumed that smaller institutions will find these guidelines flexible and useful for their needs.”

Professional Reading Shelf
Personal Archives
Memex
Source: Microsoft Research
We’ve tracked down a couple of the papers from The First ACM Workshop on Continuous Archival and Retrieval of Personal Experiences (CARPE ‘04) that took place last week in New York City.
+ “Total Recall: Are Privacy Changes Inevitable?”
More about the “Total Recall” project.
+ Passive Capture and Ensuing Issues for a Personal Lifetime Store
A new paper by members of the MyLifeBits team at Microsoft Research.
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Sound Archives
Source: BL
The British Library’s Sound Archive Wins Award
“The Sound Archive’s public on-line catalogue is the largest in the world, including information on over 3� million recordings. In 2003 it celebrated the 50th anniversary of the UK pop charts with a hugely popular audio exhibition providing playback access to all 918 no.1 hits since 1953. It enjoys excellent relations with the UK record industry which deposits all new products in the Archive.”
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Professional Reading Shelf
Librarianship
Source: CILIP
Selected Articles from the November Issue of CILIP’s Library + Information update are Now Online
+ The Three Stages of library search by OCLC’s Lorcan Dempsey
+ Phil Bradley’s Internet Q&A

Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents
Middle East–Internet Resources
Source: C&RL News
The Middle Eastern world: Starting points for research
An annotated webliography by Karen Evans, a librarian at Indiana State University and Brad Coon, a librarian at Montana State University.
–
Critical Infrastructure–United States
Source: CRS (via FAS)
New Report, Critical Infrastructure and Key Assets: Definition and Identification
–
Higher Education–United States–Lists & Rankings
Source: Forbes/Princeton Review
Two New Lists
+ America’s Most Connected Campuses
+ America’s Most Entrepreneurial Campuses

Briefly
+ LexisNexis Expands Services for Blackberry Users

Search Briefs (via SEW Blog)
+ Yahoo Increases Size of Image Database

Resources of the Week
Two content-rich sites for you to explore this week.
1) Election 2004–Video Repository
Source: Internet Archive
Election 2004 Video Archive
This is a fascinating and diverse collection of videos relating to the 2004 election. On Tuesday evening this week, some 423 movie files were available here — everything from debate footage from C-SPAN to politically themed rap videos…and lots and lots of campaign advertising from the candidates themselves as well as various flavors of interest groups.

There is a staggering amount of material here, and you could easily watch and watch and watch until your eyeballs drop out. Few of us have this kind of time, however, so you may want to start with some of the featured items on the top page, where you’ll find a “spotlight movie” chosen by the Internet Archive staff, a collection of movies with “high batting averages” (e.g., “the percentage of people who downloaded the item after visiting its details page”) and a list of the “most viewed films.” Number one on this list Tuesday evening was Constitution Class taught by Michael Badnarik, the Libertarian Party candidate for president.

Clicking on a film title does not immediately launch that film, which is a good thing, since we all know how large these video files can be. Instead, you are taken to a “details” page, which includes not only information about the director, producer, contacts, etc., but also clues you in as to file formats and sizes. If you’re not sure you want to see the whole thing — or simply don’t have time — you can look at thumbnail images and/or animated gifs. Reviews from other viewers are posted here as well, and metadata is available.

You also have the option to browse for recent additions to the collection (an RSS feed is available) or browse the whole works alphabetically. You can also browse or search by keyword. An advanced search interface provides many more options, such as title, creator, date, date range, description, etc.

If you have something you’d like to contribute to this “non-partisan public resource,” uploads are welcome “from official candidates and their campaigns, journalists, students, and anyone with video materials related to the upcoming Presidential Election.” All contributions “are provided under a non-commercial Creative Commons license.”
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2) Health Data–United States
Source: Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF)
statehealthfacts.org
We love one-stop-shopping sites here at ResourceShelf, and this is a gem. You’ll find data on more than 400 different health topics for all 50 states here, accessible via an interactive map, by category or by keyword search. “Data presented on statehealthfacts.org are a selection of key health and health policy issues collected from a variety of public and private sources, including: original Kaiser Family Foundation reports, data from public websites, and information purchased from private organizations.” New material is added as it becomes available, and a scrolling ticker on the top page displays live links to the most recent stuff.

This resource has been around for awhile, but enhancements have increased its usability. “Updates have been made to more than 78 topics, including health insurance premiums and coverage, providing trend information for the 44 states that had declines in employer-based health insurance coverage between 2000 and 2003.” You can easily access comparative data for the 50 states for a broad range of issues, including managed care, budgets, providers and service use, minority and women’s health, HIV/AIDs, etc. Alternately, you can view individual profiles for each state.

A “Tools” menu provides one-click access to such resources as raw data downloads, fact sheets, related KFF reports, and a glossary.

Professional Reading Shelf
Cataloging
Source: The Library of Congress
Annual Report, Bibliographic Enrichment Advisory Team (BEAT)
“[The] Bibliographic Enrichment Advisory Team (BEAT) which is responsible for initiating research and development projects to increase the value to users and end-users of cataloging products. The hallmarks of the BEAT efforts are to investigate and test new approaches to bibliographic access which transcend the normal and to do so by bringing together teams involving public, technical, and automation staff.”
–
ISBN
Get ready for the new ISBN
“The new 13-digit ISBN has been approved and plans are underway to transition to the new number industry-wide, world-wide by January 1, 2007. Find out how the expansion of the ISBN from 10-digits to 13-digits will impact your business and operations”
A Librarian’s ISBN FAQ

Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents
High Tech Industry–United States–Lists & Rankings
Source: Deloitte and Touche
Just Released, The North American Technology Fast 500
“The fastest growing technology companies in North America (based on percentage revenue growth over five years, fiscal year revenues 1999-2003).”
News Release/Top 10 ||| Full List and Company Info
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United Nations
New, Finding UN Press Releases And Documents On The Web
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Election 2004
Source: Office of the Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives
109th Congress Nominees
“The Official List of Nominees for the Office of U.S. Senator and for the Office of U.S. Representative in the 109th Congress.”
HTML ||| PDF
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Prescription Drugs–United States–Importation
Source: Congressional Research Service (via Pierce Law’s IP Mall)
Prescription Drug Importation and Internet Sales: A Legal Overview
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Work–United States–Statistics
Source: U.S. Census
Census Bureau Releases Information on Home Workers
“Nearly 4.2 million people worked at home in 2000, according to Census 2000 tabulations, up from 3.4 million in 1990…”
+ Direct to Detailed Tables

Congrats and Kudos
Web Directories
BIOME Gateway Now Contains to More than 25,000 Entries
BIOME: The Hub for Internet Resources in the Health and Life Science and a member of the Resource Discovery Network now contains more than 25,000 “hand-selected and evaluated, quality Internet resources.” Congratulations to the BIOME team. ResourceShelf is a big fan of your site and all of the other RDN subject gateways. If you’ve never visited the RDN, you should!

Search Briefs (via SEW Blog)
+ Early Web Search Announcements
Let’s reminisce!

Professional Reading Shelf
Medical Librarianship
Source: MLA
The October 2004 Issue of the Journal of the Medical Library Association is Now Online
Papers include:
+ Academic health sciences library Website navigation: an analysis of forty-one Websites and their navigation tools
+ Evidence-based databases versus primary medical literature: an in-house investigation on their optimal use
+ Findings from the most recent Medical Library Association salary survey
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Research Libraries
Source: ARL
ARL Announces the 2004-2005 Board of Directors
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Library Organizations
JISC Joins Digital Library Federation
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Access to Information
Source: The Memory Hole/Michael Ravnitzky
Restricted Collections at the Library of Congress
“The Manuscript Collection at the Library of Congress houses many rare, often unique collections of documents. For various reasons – including privacy, copyright, and classification — around 200 of these collections (or portions thereof) are restricted.”
–
Wikipedia
Source: Red Herring
Wiki wars
“Wikipedia’s [Founder] Mr. [Jimmy] Wales has said that next year he will begin using editors to review the web site’s content for accuracy and allow users to rate contributions to the encyclopedia for their quality. ‘It’s complex because it’s a social community, and feelings can be hurt,’ said Mr. Wales, but he added that the change will be critical when Wikipedia content is put on more permanent media, such as CD-ROM disks.” The article also includes a chart of Wikipedia’s most “contentious entries.”

Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents
Elections–United States
Fast Facts: Presidential Election 2004
Plenty of interesting facts and stats with direct links to the reports where you can learn more. Stats include:
+ 217.8 million Number of voting-age U.S. residents.
+ 60%, Percentage of eligible voters who cast their ballots in the November 2000 election.
+ 72%, The percentage of citizens ages 65 to 74 who voted in the 2000 presidential election.
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Higher Education–United States–Tuition
Source: College Board
From the press release: “The College Board today announced that tuition increases are smaller than last year’s increases, but they are still high by historical standards; all forms of student aid are growing rapidly, but loans outpaced grant aid for the second year in a row. Evidence of this, along with this year’s average college prices and 2003-04 student aid data, are documented in reports released today, Trends in College Pricing 2004 and Trends in Student Aid 2004. The findings from a new companion report, Education Pays: The Benefits of Higher Education for Individuals and Society, were also released.”
+ Trends in College Pricing 2004 [PDF]
+ Trends in Student Aid 2004 [PDF]
+ Education Pays 2004 [PDF]
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Internet
Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project
Just Released, Data memo on the use of online reputation and rating systems
“Twenty-six percent of adult internet users in the U.S. have rated a product, service, or person using an online rating system. That amounts to more than 33 million people. These systems, also referred to as ‘reputation systems,’ are interactive word-of-mouth networks that assist people in making decisions about which users to trust, or to compare their opinions with the opinions expressed by others. Many Web sites utilize some form of this application, including eBay, Amazon, Moviefone, and Amihot.”
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High Tech–Canada–Lists & Rankings
Source: Deloitte & Touche
Recently Released, Canada Techology Fast 50 2004
“The 50 fastest growing Canadian technology companies, based on percentage revenue growth over a five-year period. This is the only award specifically for technology companies in Canada.”
Background Direct to 2004 Rankings
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Health Industry–United States–Lists and Rankings
Source: Medical Imaging
Top 15 Connected Healthcare Facilities 2004
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Auto Theft
Source: Highway Loss Data Institute/Insurance Institute for Highway Safety
Cadillac Escalade and Nissan Maxima Are Top Theft Targets
“The 2002-03 model Cadillac Escalade EXT, a luxury pickup, and the 2002-03 model Nissan Maxima, a midsize sedan, have the highest theft claim rates among newer passenger vehicles. The Escalade and Maxima have theft claim rates 7 to 8 times the average for all cars. These are the latest insurance theft loss results for passenger vehicles 1 to 3 years old published by the Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI), an affiliate of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.”
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Birds–United States–Ecology
Source: National Audubon Society
State of the Birds USA 2004
“This report sums up the status of 654 bird species native to the continental United States according to the country’s four major types of natural habitat–grass, shrubs, trees, and water. Urban habitat, which is increasing more rapidly than any other type, is also included; the ability of birds to adapt to it has become a major factor for their survival…. ‘The State of the Birds’ paints a disturbing picture. Almost 30 percent of North America’s bird species are in ’significant decline.”
See press release: Audubon “State of the Birds” Report Reveals America’s Birds Are in Trouble
High-resolution bird images