Professional Reading Shelf
Libraries–Budget Issues
Source: Dallas Morning News
Libraries smarting from cutbacks
” In the last 18 months, the nation’s public libraries have seen their budgets cut by $111.2 million — as much as 50 percent in some states — the result of struggling economies and reductions in state financing, according to American Library Association figures. The cuts have forced layoffs, reduced operating hours and put many libraries at risk of closing.”

Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents
Factbooks
Source: CIA
2005 CIA World Factbook Released Online
From the news release, “Although this reference site provides information as of 1 January 2005, it will be updated biweekly throughout the year to provide wide-ranging and hard-to-locate information about the background, geography, people, government, economy, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues for countries from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe…The World Factbook 2005 contains six appendices with reference information ranging from abbreviations and descriptions of international organizations and groups to cross-referenced lists of country data codes. The 2005 edition includes 15 reference maps, which are available in both JPEG and PDF formats. Many country maps and flags have been updated to reflect changes and refinements over the past year. Six new entries have been added to The World Factbook 2005. In the people category, a major infectious diseases field has been added for countries deemed to pose a higher degree of risk for travelers. In the economy category, entries have been included for current account balance, investment (gross fixed), public debt, and reserves of foreign exchange and gold. The transnational issues category has a new refugees and internally displaced persons entry. Revision of some individual country maps, first introduced in the 2001 edition, is continued in this edition.” You can also download various parts of The World Factbook. Zip files here.

Professional Reading Shelf
Conferences–Canada
Metadata
Source: Library and Archives Canada
Library and Archives Canada Announces Canadian Metadata Forum 2005
The theme of this year’s Forum (September 27 and 28, 2005 in Ottawa) is: Metadata: A Reality Check.
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Archives–United Kingdom
Digitization Projects–United Kingdom–Audio
Source: JISC
Interview with Crispin Jewitt, Head of Sound Archive at the British Library
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Libraries–PATRIOT Act
Source: Reuters
Congress Pressed to Renew Library-Search Powers
See Also: Comments from ALA President
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Digital Archives
Source: Center for Research Libraries
Center for Research Libraries Awarded Mellon Founcation Grant for Certification of Digital Archives
“The Center has been awarded a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to develop the processes and activities required to audit and certify digital archives.”
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OAIster
Federated Searching
Open Archives Initiative
Metadata
Source: Research Information
Looking for pearls: An Interview with Kat Hagerdorn from OAIster
“It can be hard to find all the relevant material online when there is so much available. The OAIster project of the University of Michigan in the USA provides a solution by harvesting the information that is hidden in over 400 institutions around the world. Katerina Hagerdorn, metadata harvesting librarian for the project, describes what this means.”
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Library Organizations
Source: American Library Association
Recently Released, 2003-2004 ALA Annual Report

Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents
Terrorism–Chronology
Source: National Counterterrorism Center (via Federation of American Scientists)
A Chronology of Significant International Terrorism for 2004 (PDF; 2.8 MB)
“The accompanying chronology should not be viewed as a complete accounting of global terrorist activity. The categorization and selection criteria specified to NCTC for filtering incidences were drawn from statutory language, traditional ‘Patterns of Global Terrorism’ definitions, and past practices. The methodology used to generate this list of incidents, however, does not accurately capture the totality of terrorist incidents worldwide and could lead to anomalous and potentially inaccurate results. NCTC will therefore adjust and improve this methodology and follow this release with the distribution, in June 2005, of a more comprehensive dataset, with regular updates, to better inform the public.”
See also:
Just Released — Country Reports on Terrorism 2004 (via DocuTicker)
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Advertising–Statistics
Source: IAB/PricewaterhouseCoopers
IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report
Just released. 2004 revenue numbers.
Summary ||| Direct to Full Text
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IT Contractors–United States–Lists & Rankings
Source: INPUT
2005 INPUT Federal IT 150
“…a ranked listing of the top 150 federal IT contractors by fiscal year 2004 (FY04) information technology spending as defined by INPUT.”
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Wiretaps–United States–Statistics
Source: Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts
Just Released, 2004 Wiretap Report
“A total of 1,710 applications for wiretaps of wire, oral or electronic communications were authorized by federal and state judges in 2004, an increase of 19 percent over 2003.”
Summary (PDF) ||| Direct to Full Text and Tables

Briefly
Factiva Adds Online Content From Guardian Unlimited Web Site

Resource of the Week
by Shirl Kennedy, Deputy Editor
We know you like content-rich sites because we like content-rich sites. And for the American history researcher, we have something very cool this week.
U.S. History
Source: Houghton Mifflin
Reader’s Companion to American History
What’s here? The full text of several American history books. Containing full-text, signed articles. Available titles are:
+ Reader’s Companion to American History
+ Reader’s Companion to U.S. Women’s History
+ Reader’s Companion to Military History
+ Encyclopedia of North American Indians
+ Ships of the World: An Historical Encyclopedia
+ Civil War Battlefield Guide
+ Great American History Fact-Finder

The bad news is…the site is not searchable (although you could formulate a Yahoo or Google query to do it for you by using the site:college.hmco.com advanced search feature). The good news is…the site is eminently browseable. Click on each book title to display a page containing a alphabetical list of entries. Browse till you find what you’re looking for (or use your browser’s “find” feature) and click to read. There are some hidden gems here; for instance, in the Civil War Battlefield Guide, when you click on the name of a battle to read about it, you’ll see estimated Union and Confederate casualties for that battle at the bottom of the entry, as in this piece about the Appomattox Campaign. Ships of the World contains a section on Literary Ships — e.g., an alphabetical list of ships found in literature. The Encyclopedia of North American Indians offers a small collection of maps (although I had trouble getting some of the images to load). The Great American History Fact-Finder includes a bibliography of Suggested Additional Reading.

This website contains a variety of other materials, some of which are password-protected, for instructors and students who are registered to use them. But it’s worth clicking around to see what else you can find, such as:
+ Full-text Primary Sources in Western Civilization, from the Epic Of Gilgamesh to Simone De Beauvoir’s The Second Sex: Existential Feminism.
+ Full-text Primary Sources in American History, from Cotton Mather’s The Wonders of the Invisible World to Consumerism, which presents “census figures on annual earnings by industry and occupation from 1890 to 1926.”
+ Recommended web links for American History, Western Civilization (annotated), and World Civilizations (annotated).

Publication data for the Reader’s Companion to American History shows a copyright date of 1991, so this is obviously not the place to look for recent events, etc., in U.S. history.

Professional Reading Shelf
Electronic Records
Source: ICA
Just Released, Electronic Records: A Workbook for Archivists (ICA Study 16) now available!
“This eagerly awaited manual on records in electronic systems, including networked environments, is available free of charge for download from ICA’s Web site (Download Center).”
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Controlled Vocabularies
Source: NISO
Just Released, NISO Z39.19-200x Guidelines for the Construction, Format, and Management of Monolingual Controlled Vocabularies
“The just-released revision of NISO’s classic Thesaurus Standard is an essential and useful reference for anyone engaged in building and maintenance taxonomies and thesauri. You are invited to preview the draft of Guidelines for the Construction, Format, and Management of Monolingual Controlled Vocabularies NISO Z39.19-200x.”
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Classification
Source: NLM
NLM Classification 2005 Edition Now Available
“The NLM Classification, available online at http://wwwcf.nlm.nih.gov/class/, has a new look for 2005. The new design includes a customized banner for the NLM Classification and conforms more closely to the overall style of the National Library of Medicine site.

Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents
London–Web Portals
e-Government–United Kingdom
Source: Kablenet
New, London e-portal emerges
“London’s e-government agency has set up an “operational” version of its e-services portal ahead of a planned public launch of the system. The long awaited Your London portal is not being publicised, but is available as a “soft launch” version in order to carry out final testing. Presented as the “official online guide” to public and community services across the capital, the system has a range of sections.”
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Judges–United States–Federal Courts
Souce: US Courts
Newly Posted: History of Federal Judgeships
“A history of federal judgeships page, which includes the number of appointments made by each president dating back to Franklin D. Roosevelt, is now available.”
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U.S. History–Databases
Genealogy–Databases
Source: NARA
New File Added to Access to Archival Databases (AAD) System: List of Ships that Arrived at the Port of New York During the Irish Famine, 1846-1851
“These records contain ship names, ports of embarkation, arrival dates, and the number of passengers on the ship. This file is a companion to the Famine Irish Passenger Record Data File.”

Briefly
+ Get News About Dialog Via New RSS Feed
Here’s the link to add to your aggregator.
+ Berkshire Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction Now Available from Xrefer

Professional Reading Shelf
Librarianship
Source: MLA
The April 2005 Issue (Vol.93 No.2) of the Journal of the Medical Library Association is Now Online
Articles Include:
+ Information-seeking behaviors of practitioners in a primary care practice-based research network
+ Information-seeking behavior of nursing students and clinical nurses: implications for health sciences librarian
+ Personal digital assistant-based drug information sources: potential to improve medication safety
+ Book Review: Collaborative Collection Development: A Practical Guide for Your Library
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JSTOR
Source: JSTORNEWS
A New Search Engine for JSTOR
JSTOR is now using Lucene open-source search technology.
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Censorship
Source: CBS News
Alabama Bill Targets Gay Authors
Three words describe what’s discussed in this story, Awful, pathetic, and sad. From the article, “Republican Alabama lawmaker Gerald Allen says homosexuality is an unacceptable lifestyle. As CBS News Correspondent Mark Strassmann reports, under his bill, public school libraries could no longer buy new copies of plays or books by gay authors, or about gay characters.”
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National Libraries–Europe
Digitization Projects
Source: Turkish Press
European libraries join forces against Google global virtual library
“The 19 [Eurepean national] libraries are backing instead a multi-million euro counter-offensive by European nations to put European literature online…The statement was signed by national libraires in Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia, Spain and Sweden.” The more digitization (if done properly) the better. However, instead of disparate projects it would be better if Google, national libraries, and others could work together to avoid duplication, resources, and time. Oh well.

Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents
OECD
Source: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
OECD launches sites for each of its member countries on www.oecd.org
“From one country site, you can widen your research and compare the results of a specific country with other OECD economies, thus, fully benefiting from the OECD’s comparative approach. To satisfy increasing demands, the Country Web sites also feature a statistical profile for each OECD country. Some 100 key statistical indicators are provided and users can compare the figures with those of the other member countries.”
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Management–Lectures
Source: MIT Sloan School of Management
Just Released, Video Lecture, A Conversation with Jack Welch
The lecture tool place on Apri l2, 2005. From the blurb, “Jack Welch’s appearance before an audience of Sloan students provides the context for a lively and candid discussion about management, compensation, mistakes, and work-life balance.
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eGovernment–United Kingdom–News
Source: eGov Monitor
eGov monitor Now Available at No Charge
This daily update of UK e-government news and info was formerly available via a fee-based subscription. In the past few weeks the subscription fee has been removed. RSS feeds are also available.
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Internet Access–UK–Fast Facts
Source: National Statistics Office
Internet Access From Home in the UK
Graph available. “In the fourth quarter of 2004, 52 per cent of households in the UK (12.6 million) could access the Internet from home, compared with just 9 per cent (2.2 million) in the same quarter of 1998.”

Scholarly Publishing–Citation Reports
Source: ISI
+ Science in France, 2000-2004
+ Performing Arts: Most Prolific U.S. Universities, 1999-2003
+ Microbiology: High-Impact U.S. Universities, 1999-2003

Search Briefs
Yahoo Adds New Services to My Yahoo Web Search
Chris Sherman has the details in SearchDay. We’re very happy to see that Yahoo is now allowing users the option to cache a full text copies of web pages and then allow you to search your personal cache. Another service named Filangy offers something similar. Google launched their personal search history tool last week. Ask Jeeves (MyJeeves) and a9 began providing search history tools last summer.

Briefly
Reed Elsevier Reports Q1 2005 Earnings
Note: RE also released their 4th Corporate Responsibility Report today.

Professional Reading Shelf
Public Libraries–Patriot Act
Source: National Review Online (NRO)
Murdock: We need to keep an eye on libraries
“These dangerously naive or clandestinely seditious librarians are beyond foolish. They potentially jeopardize the lives of American citizens.” Opinion column by NRO contributing editor Deroy Murdock.
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Public Libraries–Budget Cuts
Two Items
+ Source: Indianapolis Star
‘New and improved’ library throws the book at tradition
“‘Citizens don’t know the library service is changing behind the scenes. It is going to affect what is offered. Here we have an award-winning library, and nobody is really making a case to maintain this level of service.’”
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+ Source: Berkeley Daily Planet
Library Staff Proposes Service Principles
“The staff at the Berkeley Public Library recognizes that the library faces budgetary constraints and must make difficult decisions on staffing and services. Unfortunately, library management has made unilateral decisions on what services are important and what should be cutback without consulting either library staff or the users of library services. These arbitrary decisions have eroded staff morale and aggravated relations with the library user community. As long-time library staff, we want to propose a set of principles that could guide decisions about maintenance of library services and the staffing to ensure them….”
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Electronic Journals
Scholarly Publishing
Source: Learned Publishing
HighWire Press: ten years of publisher-driven innovation
A new article (12 pages; PDF) by John Sack. Available free via HighWire site. “An account is given of the beginnings and development of HighWire Press at Stanford University and the philosophy that sustains it.”
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Preservation
Source: RLG DigiNews
Automating Preservation: New Developments in the PRONOM
A new article by Adrian Brown from The National Archives, UK. “Electronic records pose many challenges for archivists, but these arise from a single underlying issue: access to a digital object is entirely dependent on technology. A file in a given format requires software to decode and display it; that software in turn requires a specific combination of hardware, operating systems, and other software to run.”
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U.S. Federal Courts–Databases
Source: Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts
Growing Number of Courts on New Management System
“Implementation of the federal judiciary’s Case Management and Electronic Case Files (CM/ECF) system continues in appellate, district and bankruptcy courts across the country.” Charts included.