Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents
Education–Statistics
Source: Institute of International Education (via DocuTicker.com)
New International Education Statistics
+ International Students in the U.S. – [Data Tables]
+ American Students Studying Abroad – [Data Tables]
+ Country Fact Sheets
“Country Fact Sheets contain historical information on the number of students coming to the United States from the respective countries, and U.S. students going to these countries.”

Briefly
+ In-Q-Tel Partners with Convera to Expedite Development of Distributed Indexing Capability
Note: In-Q-Tel is a private, independent enterprise funded by the CIA.
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Community of Science launches new version of COS Funding Opportunities Database

Resources of the Week
Maps again this week, folks. Loyal ResourceShelf readers know how much we like geographic resources.
World Maps and Geographic Information
Source: United Nations
United Nations Cartographic Section
“The Cartographic Section is comprised of a small team of experienced mapping and GIS specialists. It is equipped to undertake a range of cartographic services related to the work of the Secretariat, including the preparation of small-scale illustrative, large-scale stand-alone maps and GIS products. To a lesser extent, the section provides advisory geographic/cartographic services on technical and research issues.” What’s in it for you? Plenty.

On the left side of the page, a dropdown menu allows you to selected from more the 100 country and regional maps in PDF format. Directly below this, you’ll find links to a handful of thematic maps. Interesting to compare:
+ The World in 1945
+ The World Today (as of October 2004)

On the right side of the page, another dropdown menu allows you to select from a variety of Peacekeeping Maps, showing current missions of the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations.

Items of interest on the lower part of the page include:
+ List of Territories (PDF; 128 KB): “Capital city, country code and country name of each member and non-member State is listed.”
+ The Map Library: Actually part of the UN’s Dag Hammarskj�ld Library, which “houses over 80,000 maps, some 3,000 atlases, gazetteers, travel guides, cartographic and geographic reference works as well as digital cartographic products.” Available online is a nice, growing collection of PDF maps of World Macro Regions and Components The map of Iraq, for example, is current as of January 2004 and provides enough detail that you can see the placenames you hear about in the news.

A brief FAQ about this site notes that none of the maps is for sale. “Our principle is to share maps and data as much as we can. You can download, print and use our maps for non-profit purposes, free of charge. We ask that the map numbers be retained for reference purposes and that you give attribution to the source.”
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Maps–Developing World
Source: Canadian Geographic Enterprises and Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA)
A Developing World
The bad news is, you have to download something called Adobe SVG Viewer to access it. The good news is…it’s worth it because it is very cool. Actually, there are two interactive world maps here:
+ The Developing World focuses on “international development produced in collaboration with the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).
+ Canada and the World, offers “interesting factoids on science and culture.”

The Developing World map allows you to click on a country, select a theme (human development, population, poverty and hunger, HIV/AIDS, education, environment from a dropdown menu) and compare that country with another that you choose from a second dropdown menu. Or you can choose geographic regions from other dropdown menus. A “More About This Country” link takes you to a page offering links to information about Canadian assistance activities in that country. Click on the map to zoom in, or use the controls provided.

The Canada and the World map focuses on “Canada’s global citizenship.” Click on a country or choose a region or country/territory from the dropdown menus and another window opens, allowing you to read about Canada’s scientific, technological and cultural contributions in that part of the world, as well as diplomacy and peacekeeping efforts.

As you might expect, the maps are available in French as well as English. Print versions have been distributed to schools across Canada. Read all about the project in this press release.

Web Search–Google
Big News: “Google Scholar” is Born
By Shirl Kennedy and Gary Price

The world of online “scholarly” research is changing today as Google introduces Google Scholar. This specialized new interface — which will NOT be linked from Google’s main search page — will allow users to search a treasure chest of “scholarly material.”

As you’ve read here many times, Google is brilliant (that is, ingenious at marketing and trying new things), and this is yet another example of their savvy. This is something that some other large web engine(s) could have done years ago to help separate themselves from other players and also provide a useful service. No one did it. Now, others will likely play catch-up with Google. Basically, users of Google Scholar can, via a single search location, access content from “scholarly” materials found on the OPEN WEB that they’ve found in the Google crawl of the web. Btw, it might also be time to take another look at what has traditionally thought of as “scholarly” since some of the material in Google Scholar is not “scholarly” using a traditional definition.

Some basic facts:
+ In a nutshell, Google has built an algorithm that makes a calculated guess at *what it thinks* is a scholarly content mined from the OPEN WEB, and then makes it accessible via the Google Scholar interface.
+ Precisely what makes something “scholarly” enough to be included in Google Scholar, Google will not say. And this is not an insignificant omission. Librarians, especially academic librarians, are *always* being asked to provide “scholarly” material, even if customers aren’t quite sure what this means. Their instructor told them they needed articles from “scholarly journals,” so this is precisely what they ask for at the library. As librarians, we may try to educate them about how “refereed publications” work, but let’s face it. What most of these folks really want is to quickly download an appropriate article and beat feet out of the library. And if they think they can get what they need from Google, the odds are slim that they will bother with library resources at all. College students AND professors might not know that library databases exist, but they sure know Google.

The database vendors don’t always make it easy for us, either. For example, when searching Gale databases such as InfoTrac OneFile or Expanded Academic ASAP, you see a check box that you can fill in if you want to restrict your search to “refereed publications.” How many of our customers know what a “refereed publication” is? Does any instructor ever ask his or her students to find articles from “refereed publications”? What’s up with this?

More facts:
+ Material accessible via Google Scholar can also found in the main Google index.
+ Google Scholar results pages *will not contain advertising* — at least for now.
+ Some examples of material from major publishers who you’ll find (we know Google has been working with many) — Google will not provide us with a complete list, but look for content from ACM, IEEE, and yes, Open Worldcat material from OCLC. We also don’t know precisely what is and is not available, date ranges, etc.
* In many cases Google will be crawling and searching the full text of an article but users will either need to have a subscription to the database or pay for access to an individual article.

A bit more from a Google spokesperson:
“…where we have permission to crawl a doc we will do so but will only show an abstract.”

+ VERY COOL! For many citations, you’ll find a direct link to other articles in the Google Scholar database that cite the article you’ve selected. Yes, Google Scholar is a citation database too! This reminds me of two specialized databases that focus on specific types of scholarly content accessible on the open web that have been online for many years and remain EXCELLENT tools.
1) CiteSeer (focuses on computer science material, info tech content)
2) SmealSearch (focuses on business material)
+ Some material, let’s say from Open Worldcat, isn’t always scholarly in the way many people think of it.
For example:
++ Here are many John Grisham books.
++ Although we’re honored, we don’t consider this blog to be a “scholarly” resource.
++ Academic librarians will be sad to learn that it’s impossible to limit to only “peer-reviewed” material.
+ How big is the Google Scholar database? Google isn’t saying.

As Google makes this announcement and word spreads about a “scholarly search tool” — ESPECIALLY in the academic community — we think the use of specialty databases (the ones university libraries offer and spend $$$ for) will drop. It’s worth watching to see if people begin paying for material located via Google Scholar that they can get *free* from a specialty database they may not know is available via their public or academic library.
Might this be a golden opportunity for the library community to tell people — look, we have access to this stuff and MUCH MUCH MORE? We have better ways to search it, and you might not even have to pay for it? Well, yeah…but if what we’ve seen in the past is any indication, this is not going to happen. Maybe this time it will be different. Bottom line: It’s very difficult to compete with the Google marketing machine. In the meantime, we’ll be extremely interested in the response to Google Scholar from fee-based database publishers. Some might ask, are specialized database tools still necessary? Info pros know they are but we sure haven’t done a good job of explaining why.

It will also be interesting to see if *any* of the press/chatter about Google Scholar makes even a small mention of specialized subscription databases, free access to these via libraries, and the fact that what Google is offering is merely the tip of the “scholarly” info iceberg.

Is all of this yet another nail in the coffin for library resources and maybe librarians? Too early to tell, of course. Kudos to Google for doing so but the library community could (should?) have done something similar years ago. Why didn’t we?

When big announcements come from Google and web engines, we often get nervous and…sometimes upset with our profession. Not this time, however. It’s just not worth it. This is BIG news and something that should have been around for years. It’s going to be interesting what transpires moving forward.

Finally, specialized databases are still valuable for many types of seaching, including searching for “scholarly material.”
Why? A few examples:
+ Limit to material published by date
+ Ability to view more than 1000 results. The Google cutoff of 1000 results is still in place with Google Scholar. Ten term query limit also applies.
+ Google is constantly crawling the web but we don’t know how often the Google Scholar database is being refreshed with new content
+ Searching using a controlled vocabulary/subject searching
+ Ability to limit by publisher affiliation
+ You can limit by author with author: but you can only use a last name
First names and initials are searchable when using author: but results are often erratic.
+ Proximity operators
+ Gobs and gobs of content, Google Scholar still doesn’t have it all.
Example: While you’llfind John Grisham books, you will NOT find material (both current and archived) from MANY newspapers, trade publications, and general interest periodicals.
+ I’m sure you can add many more examples of what’s NOT there

Again, it’s one thing for the info pro to understand all of this, it’s something else for the typical searcher. Stay tuned, this is going to be interesting.
See Also: Google Plans New Service for Scientists and Scholars
From the article, “While the great majority of recent scholarly papers and periodicals are indexed on the Web, many have not been easily accessible to the public.” This is again an example of not understanding that libraries — public, private, and, academic – - have offered access to databases with this content for many years and that they can be accessed without having to visit the library building.

Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents
Scientists–Lists & Rankings
Source: Scientific American
Scientific American 50
November 10, 2004
“Scientific American’s list of outstanding technology leaders in the realms of business, research and policymaking.”
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Threatened Species
Source: International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources
2004 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species
From press release: “The world’s biodiversity is declining at an unprecedented rate, according to the 2004 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species and a companion study of the data, the Global Species Assessment (GSA).” List is searchable. Includes bibliography, photo gallery, excellent collection of links to information about various species.
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Older Americans–United States–Statistics
Source: Federal Interagency Forum on Aging-Related Statistics
New Report, Older Americans 2004: Key Indicators of Well-Being
A pdf version is also available. Report highlights here. Thanks to S.B. for the news tip.

Search Briefs
+ Let’s Talk Mooter (Interview With Mooter’s CEO)
+ Searching for Real-Time Information

Professional Reading Shelf
Public Libraries
NYPL gets record $25 million grant
“The New York Public Library has received its largest single gift ever–a grant of $25 million–which it will use for the acquisition and preservation of research materials, among other initiatives. In addition, the library announced expanded hours and named a new chairman.”
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Biomed Central–Firefox
Installing and using the BioMed Central Firefox search plugin
“The BioMed Central search plugin for Firefox adds BioMed Central to the list of search engines that are available in the quick search box at the top right of every Firefox browser window. Installing the plugin takes only seconds….” Available for every platform supported by Firefox.
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Out-of-Print Books
Source: BookFinder.com
Top 10 out of print books of 2004

Newspapers–United States
Source: AP
Major U.S. Newspaper Digitizing Project Announced
“The government promises anyone with a computer will have access within a few years to millions of pages from old newspapers, a slice of American history to be viewed now only by visiting local libraries, newspaper offices or the nation’s capital. The first of what’s expected to be 30 million digitized pages from papers published from 1836 through 1922 will be available in 2006. “Anyone who’s interested — teachers, students, historians, lawyers, politicians, even newspaper reporters — will be able to go to their computer at home or at work and at a click of a mouse get immediate, unfiltered access to the greatest source of our history,” said Bruce Cole, chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities.” Learn more about the National Digital Newspaper Program.
Note: It’s worth mentioning that ProQuest has already digitized the complete archives of several major newspapers. Cold North Wind, Gale, and NewspaperARCHIVE.com.

Professional Reading Shelf
Open Source Software–Libraries–Bibliography
Source: Brenda Chawner, School of Information Management, University of Wellington, New Zealand
Recently Updated, Open Source Software and Libraries Bibliography
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National Archives–United States
Source: FCW
National Archives opens high-tech vaults
“A new permanent exhibit that turns old documents into interactive computer stations opened today at the National Archives and Records Administration’s building in Washington, D.C…The 9,500-square-foot Public Vaults exhibit has more than 1,000 items, including about 25 computer workstations and 47 interactive screens. Visitors can navigate their own paths through behind-the-scenes historical stories using plasma screens, sound recordings, and video stations.”
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Open Access Journals–Citation Analysis
Source: Thomson Scientific
Open Access Journals in the ISI Citation Databases: Analysis of Impact Factors and Citation Patterns (PDF; 1.17 MB)
From press release: “The findings indicate that journals published under the Open Access (OSA) model continue to gain impact in the world of scholarly research. Despite ranking lower as a group than those published under traditional models, the growth in the number of OA journals is impressive, and some OA journals rank near the top of their respective fields. Rankings are based on the Journal Impact Factor, as published in the Journal Citation Reports� (JCR�). The Journal Impact Factor is the key performance metric for the ranking and comparison of journals.”

Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents
Business–Pathfinders
Source; British Library
Now Available, Two New Researching Business Information Industry Guides
+ Renewable Energy Industry
+ Travel & Tourism Industry
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Professional Sports–Economics
Source: Rodney Fort, PhD; Economics Department, Washington State University
Rodney Fort’s Sports Business Data and Bibliography Pages
A wealth of statistical information on the business of professional baseball, basketball, football, and ice hockey, including attendance, income and expenses, player salaries, team valuations and sales prices, TV revenue, and much more. “Please note that collecting sports data is an inexact science. It is common for these files to be corrected and/or updated when new information is found.”
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Economics–United States–Statistics
Source: BEA
New Report, Gross Domestic Product By Industry Data Show Information Technology Drove Economic Growth in the Late 1990’s
Tables are available as XLS files.
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Election 2004–United States
Source: House of Commons Library, UK
Just Released, 2004 US Presidential and Congressional election results
An 82-page report.
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United States Government
Source: LexisNexis
Fast Facts, Cabinet Resignations Not as Prolific as Past Presidents

Search Briefs
+ Popularity Doesn’t Always Equal Usefulness (or Importance) of a Search Tool

Professional Reading Shelf
Reference
Now Available: Free (One Week Only) Full Text Access to Three Recent Issues of Reference Services Review
Articles include:
+ A university-wide, library-based chat service (Volume 32 Number 3)
+ Enabling the roving reference librarian: wireless access with tablet PCs (Volume 32 Number 3)
+ Assessing library instruction in the freshman seminar: a citation analysis study (Volume 32 Number 3)
+ Researching specific non-profit organizations: a selective bibliography (Volume 32 Number 3)
+ E-mail and chat reference: assessing patron satisfaction (Volume 32 Number 2)
+ Making tacit knowledge explicit: the Ready Reference Database as codified knowledge (Volume 32 Number 2)
+ PDA librarian (Volume 32 Number 1)
+ Bioterrorism alert: reference and literature support for the CDC Director’s Emergency Operations Center (DEOC) and investigative field teams (Volume 32 Number 1)
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Digital Libraries
The November, 2004 Issue of Digital Libraries Magazine is Now Online
Articles include:
+ Archiving and Accessing Web Pages: The Goddard Library Web Capture Process
+ A Web Service Interface for Creating Concept Browsing Interfaces
+ Assessing the Durability of Formats in a Digital Preservation Environment
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RFID
Source: The Guardian
Shelf life
“Using RFID tags to track library books could increase security and ease laborious stocktakes.”

Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents
Business–United States–Lists & Rankings
Source: Forbes
New, America’s Largest Private Companies (2004)
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Capital Punishment–United States–Statistics
Source: BJS
Just Released: Capital Punishment, 2003
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Automobile Theft–United States–Lists & Rankings
Source: National Insurance Crime Bureau
New, Top Ten Metropolitan Statistical Areas with the Highest Vehicle Theft Rates
Summary Metro Area Rankings
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Higher Education–United States–Database–Statistics
Source: NCES
Recently Updated, IPEDS (Postsecondary Data) Executive Peer Tool
Compare schools. “The IPEDS Executive Peer Tool allows access to 2003-04 data presented in the National Postsecondary Education Cooperative (NPEC) IPEDS Data Feedback Report for all postsecondary institutions and a comparison group of institutions. In addition to presenting the data, a graphing component permits the creation of graphs for this data.”

Search Briefs (via SEW Blog)
+ Cached Pages at Ask Jeeves

Briefly
Adobe to update PDF tools (CNET News.com)
Comment function coming to free reader.

Professional Reading Shelf
OCLC
Source: OCLC
Updated Site and List, Top 1000 Titles in Worldcat
“The new OCLC Top 1000 web site lists the works most widely held by libraries, with sublists, a readers’ poll, sample cover art, “Find in a Library” links, comparisons to other lists, and a download file.”
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Serials
Source: Serials Review
Serial conversations : an interview with four consultants

Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents
Legal Industry–United States–Lists & Rankings
Source: National Law Journal
Just Released, National Law Journal 250 (2004)
Free registration required to view complete list.
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Air Travel
Source: Consumers Union
New Report, A Cross-Border Examination of 20 Travel Web Sites
Selling International Airline Tickets in the United States and Six Western European Countries
“When booking airfare from the U.S. to London, would Expedia and Travelocity’s U.S.-based sites offer similar rates as their UK-based sister sites? This was just one of many issues — including “fare-jumping” — Consumer Reports WebWatch examined when collaborating with six other nations to test international travel Web sites.”
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College Students–Degree Completion
Source: National Center for Educational Statistics
College Persistence on the Rise? Changes in 5-Year Degree Completion and Postsecondary Persistence Rates Between 1994 and 2000
“The study compares the degree completion and persistence rates between two cohorts?students who first enrolled in postsecondary education in academic year 1989-90 and their counterparts who first enrolled in 1995-96. The analysis focuses on the rates at which students in each cohort completed a degree within 5 years or were still enrolled at the end of 5 years. The study also examines changes in the students’ demographic profile and other population characteristics.”
Full report (PDF; 438 KB)

Open Worldcat
OCLC
OCLC Launches Co-Branded Toolbar with Yahoo
A new toolbar (an OCLC version of the Yahoo toolbar) is online that allows you to search Open Worldcat records via Yahoo. It needs work. A couple of quick comments.
+ Basically, the co-branded toolbar simply adds a pulldown menu option to run a site:worldcatlibraries.org {foo} search to Yahoo’s toolbar.
+ If OCLC is trying to reach the masses with Open Worldcat, why isn’t the library option available on the main toolbar, the one that’s distributed via the Yahoo site? The library community would be very appreciative of the marketing assistance.

+ According to Barbara Quint’s Info Today NewsBreak, the toolbar only works with IE. I know many members of the library community who are passionate users of Firefox, they’ll be out of luck. It’s also an MS XP/2000/98 ONLY product. A Mac version is NOT available.

+ If a library is going to take the time to market the Yahoo Toolbar, why not promote the use of the library’s own OPAC and databases (many that contain content not available in Yahoo, Google, or any other web engine). Toolbars from ILS vendors and federated search companies are available and can search a library OPAC, fee-based databases, and open web engines. If you’re interested in finding direct link(s) to the library catalogs (aka OPACS) you have access to from your local public or university library, Libdex maintains an excellent directory with direct links. Lib-Web-Cats is another excellent directory of library catalogs.

Update:
ResourceShelf reader Corey M. lets us know via email that you can use either the NeedleSearch, Copernic Toolbar, or the Google Deskbar (both using Google, but it could be modified to work w/Yahoo) to build a query that limits a keyword search to only Open Worldcat records. Only a small amount of url tweaking is needed. I’ve posted the tweak for NeedleSearch on ResourceShelfPLUS. NeedleSearch works with Firefox and Mozilla, Copernic Toolbar works with IE, and the Google Deskbar is browser independent (98/ME/2000/XP).

Btw, earlier this year I wrote about NeedleSearch in SearchDay. It allows you to EASILY and QUICKLY map the search functionality of most web accessible databases to the toolbar. Very cool! Free, too!!! Libraries might want to create a collection of specialized databases with the NeedleSearch and/or Copernic toolbars and then distribute it to patrons.

+ People can’t spell things wrong when searching Open Worldcat? (-: I noticed when running a site:worldcatlibraries.org search, Yahoo’s spellcheck is not available. For example, you’ll see a spelling suggestion given for this incorrect spelling of Seattle. However, the search: worldcatlibraies.org seatttle doesn’t activate the spellcheck.

+ Like we mentioned about a week ago, limiting your search to only Worldcatlibraries.org still has problems. Run the search:
site:worldcatlibraries.org history california trains

++ Results #5 is titled:
Law, society, and the state : essays in modern legal history

++ Results #7 is titled:
Mind games : American culture and the birth of psychotherapy
I don’t see what these book have to do with trains and California.
+ A search for Central Intelligence Agency returns approximently 4 times as many results as the search CIA. Shouldn’t a keyword search return approximently the same number of results? This is what you’ll see with RLG’s RedLightGreen database of library books records from many libraries. RLG is another excellent and free database with library records. Several other “value added” features (like bibliography formatting) are also available from RedLightGreen. Another project worthy of your attention.
+ The dedupe function at Yahoo continues to cause problems UNLESS you use the new toolbar (hooray). Example: run the search, site:worldcatlibraries.org homeland security
+Only one result is visible. The searcher needs to click again to turn off the dedupe option.
+ We reported a few weeks ago that OCLC plans to make all 52 million records available to Yahoo and Google. Two million items are now available. As the database grows in size, the typical searcher will find hundreds, if not thousands of records, when conducting any Open Worldcat search. What can Yahoo and Google do to help improve relevancy for Worldcatlibraries.org when the typical searcher only users two or three search terms?

Professional Reading Shelf
Grateful Dead–Archivist
Source: Marin Independent Journal
The life of the Dead’s official tape archivist
“David Lemieux HAS every Deadhead’s dream job. The 34-year-old San Anselmo resident listens to Grateful Dead music all day, and gets paid for it. Lemieux is the archivist and curator of the Grateful Dead’s priceless ‘vault,’ a trove that contains the long, strange musical legacy of one of the most important bands in American rock.”
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Public Libraries — Technology Training and Information Literacy
Source: Pacific Bell/UCLA Initiative for 21st Century Literacies
21st Century Literacies: Training of Public Library Trainers (PDF; 518 KB)
“Public libraries, more than any other setting, assist a vast and varied constituency. Although historically public librarians have not viewed themselves as educators, the current environment is demanding of them a role-shift from information mediators to true educators who must provide training and instruction if they are to meet user needs in the 21st century. As such, in March 2002 the Pacific Bell/UCLA Initiative developed a training manual and delivered workshops emphasizing 21st century literacies content as well as training principles for adult and young learners, including parents and children, teens, staff, Spanish speakers, and older adults, in a variety of contexts.” (via DrWeb)

Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents
Canada–Wars–Archives
Source: University of Manitoba: Archives and Special Collections
The Canadian Wartime Experience: The Documentary Legacy of Canada at War
“The differing roles played by Canadians during times of conflict, at home and abroad, are featured in this website. The website provides access to a portion of wartime-related textual records and photographs that have been selected from larger collections within the holdings of the University of Manitoba Archives & Special Collections and digitized for research purposes.”
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Military–Ethics–Bibliography
Source: Air University Library
Ethics and the Military
New bibliography includes Internet resources, books, documents and periodicals.
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Commodities Trading–Glossary
Source: Futures Magazine
Trading Glossary
“Here are some common terms you’ll encounter in the trading business.”