Briefly
+ IBM Introduces Open Software Framework for Analysis of Unstructured Information (via Information Today)
+ Elsevier Develops Account Management Tool in Response to Market Need
+ New Database: Now available-Education Index Retrospective: 1929-1983

Professional Reading Shelf
Library Education
Source: LJ
ALA COA Announces Accreditation Actions
“The Committee on Accreditation (COA) of the American Library Association (ALA) has announced accreditation actions taken at the 2005 ALA Annual Conference in Chicago. Among its actions, COA announced that the Master of Library and Information Science program offered by the School of Library and Information Science, University of Southern Mississippi, has been granted continued accreditation until 2012–unless evidence persuades COA that the review should be conducted at an earlier or later date.”
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Markup Languages
Quickstudy: A Review of Markup Languages
“Markup languages use sets of embedded tags or labels to characterize text elements within a document so as to indicate their appearance, function, meaning or context. Originally used for production within the publishing industry, markup languages have proliferated since the widespread adoption of XML.” Learn more about specific languages here and here.
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USA PATRIOT Act
Source: Congressional Research Service
USA PATRIOT Act Reauthorization in Brief
6 pages; PDF.

Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents
Birds–Database
Source: BirdLife International
Avibase
“Avibase is an extensive database information system about all birds of the world, containing over 2 million records about 10,000 species and 22,000 subspecies of birds, including distribution information, taxonomy, synonyms in several languages and more. This site is managed by Denis Lepage and hosted by Bird Studies Canada, the Canadian copartner of Birdlife International. Avibase has been a work in progress for nearly 12 years and I am now pleased to offer it as a service to the bird-watching and scientific community.” Includes Bird Checklists of the World and a directory of global Bird Links. Nice!
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Development–Bibliography
Source: Bentz, Whaley, Flessner
Bibliography: An Online Guide to Development Research Resources
121 pages; PDF. Thanks to Mike Ravnitzky

Briefly
ALPSP adds weight of the Law to AJLC collection
+ Proquest Supports African Libraries With Access To African Writers Series’

Professional Reading Shelf
Libraries
Source: RLG
The August 2005 Issue of RLG Focus in Now Online
Articles Include:
+ Stanford Groks RLG Union Catalog
+ Libraries Australia: Metasearching the RLG Union Catalog from Down Under
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Presidential Libraries
Source: NARA
Reagan Library to Open Additional Records Relating to Judge John Roberts
Available tomorrow. “5,383 pages from the records of the Staff Member Office Files of John G. Roberts Files, 1982-1986, will be opened. The remaining Roberts’ documents will be opened as soon as possible.”

Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents
U.S. Military
Source: DoD
New, Deployment Health and Family Readiness Library
“This library provides servicemembers, families and healthcare providers a quick and easy way to find the deployment health and family readiness information they value. The contents of this library include fact sheets, guides and other products on a wide variety of topics that we have made available on a single website for your use.”
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Population–United States–Statistics
Source: US Census
Just Released, We the People: Pacific Islanders in the United States
A Census 2000 Special Report. 23 pages; PDF.

Search Briefs
More on the Total Database Size Battle and Googlewhacking With Yahoo

Briefly
Learn About the Encyclop�dia Britannica RSS Feed

Professional Reading Shelf
OCLC–Milestones
Worldcat
Source: OCLC
It’s Official: Worldcat Celebrates Its One Billionth Holding
“At 2:21:34 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time on Thursday, Aug. 11, Anne Slane, a cataloger at Worthington (Ohio) Libraries for 23 years, entered the 1 billionth holding in WorldCat for the book, The Monkees : The day-by-day story of the ’60s TV pop sensation. By entering this holding information to the WorldCat database…” Congrats to everyone (many of them regular users of ResourceShelf) at OCLC.

Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents
Sensing Technologies–Research Guide
Source: Library of Congress, Science Reference Services
Science Tracer Bullets Online: Remote Sensing
“This guide focuses on the technologies used for observation and data collection from a significant distance; satellite remote-sensing and imaging of the earth and other celestial objects. Major fields within which remotely sensed data are most frequently used include agriculture, archaeology, astronomy, climatology, engineering, environmental science, forestry, geology, hydrology, meteorology, oceanography, and soil science. Also inextricably linked with remote sensing are the disciplines of cartography, geographic information systems (GIS), surveying, and geodesy. Remote sensing is used in surveillance of human activities for everyday security purposes, as well as in biology and medicine. Some resources on these related topics are included.”
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Teachers–United States–Professional Development
Source: National Center for Education Statistics
Characteristics of Public School Teachers’ Professional Development Activities: 1999-2000
“A majority of teachers reported receiving eight or fewer hours of professional development in either subject matter content or teaching methods. In terms of the format of professional development activities, 95 percent of teachers attended a workshop, conference, or other training session in the previous year, compared with 42 percent who participated in mentoring, peer observation, or coaching. Seventy-four percent of teachers participated in regularly scheduled collaboration with other teachers on issues of instruction.”
Full Report (PDF; 65 KB)

Search Briefs
+ Google Makes Change to Google Print/Library Scanning Program, One Group of Publishers Still Not Happy
Postscript: Barbara Quint has much more here.
+ Growing Vivisimo scouring region for workers (via Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

Professional Reading Shelf
ERIC
Source: ERIC
ERIC Releases New Content to Database Vendors
“New ERIC content (2004 and 2005 materials) was made available in early August to all database vendors with whom ERIC has an active agreement. Subsequent vendor updates will be released on the first Monday of each month.”
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Government Documents-United States
Source: GPO
GPO Posts New Internal Policy Document On Web Harvesting: ID 73
“Effective July 6, 2005, Information Dissemination (ID) staff will be operating under a new internal policy, ID 73: ‘Harvesting Federal Digital Publications for GPO’s Information Dissemination (ID) Programs.’ This policy governs both manual and automated harvesting of publications from Federal agency web sites for inclusion in the Federal Depository Library and National Bibliography Programs.”
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Digital Curation
Source: Digital Curation Center
First installment of Digital Curation Manual now available
“One of the key objectives of the DCC is the creation and maintenance of a world-class Digital Curation Manual. The DCC Digital Curation Manual is a community-driven resource — from the selection of instalment topics through to authorship and peer review. Individual instalments authored by leading experts in the field of digital curation will cover a range of issues relating to digital curation. The Digital Curation Manual is designed to assist data creators, curators and re-users to better understand the challenges they face and the roles they play in creating, managing and preserving their digital information over time.”
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Government Documents–United States
Source: Administrative Notes/GPO
FDLP [Federal Depository Library Program] Myths and Monsters
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PubMed–User Guides
Source: NLM
Full Text, PubMed Help
Searchable.

Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents
Data Mining
Source: Congressional Research Service (via Federation of American Scientists)
Data Mining: An Overview (PDF; 100 KB)
“Data mining is emerging as one of the key features of many homeland security initiatives. Often used as a means for detecting fraud, assessing risk, and product retailing, data mining involves the use of data analysis tools to discover previously unknown, valid patterns and relationships in large data sets. In the context of homeland security, data mining is often viewed as a potential means to identify terrorist activities, such as money transfers and communications, and to identify and track individual terrorists themselves, such as through travel and immigration records.”
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Higher Education–United States–Statistics
Source: National Science Foundation
New, Graduate Enrollment in Science and Engineering Programs Up in 2003, but Declines for First-Time Foreign Students (NSF 05-317)
“The 2003 Survey of Graduate Students and Postdoctorates in Science and Engineering (S&E) shows S&E graduate enrollment increasing 4 percent and academic postdoctoral appointments increasing 6 percent since 2002. Sixty percent of postdoctoral appointees had temporary visas. Enrollment grew in all demographic groups and in all major S&E fields and subfields except computer sciences. For the second consecutive year, first-time, full-time enrollment of temporary-visa holders decreased (8 percent), mostly among men. Tables show 1993-2003 trends.”
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Internet–United States–Statistics
Internet in the Workplace–United States
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics
Computer and Internet Use At Work Summary
“In October 2003, 77 million persons used a computer at work, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. These workers accounted for 55.5 percent of total employment. About 2 of every 5 employed individuals connected to the Internet or used e-mail while on the job. These proportions were slightly higher than those measured in the prior survey conducted in September 2001.”
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Population–United States–Statistics
Source: US Census
Texas Becomes Nation’s Newest ‘Majority-Minority’ State
“Texas has now joined Hawaii, New Mexico, and California as a majority-minority state, along with the District of Columbia, the U.S. Census Bureau reported today. Five states — Maryland, Mississippi, Georgia, New York and Arizona — are next in line with minority populations of about 40 percent. (The minority population includes all people except non-Hispanic single-race whites. According to July 1, 2004, population estimates, Texas had a minority population of 11.3 million, comprising 50.2 percent of its total population of 22.5 million. In comparison, 77 percent of Hawaii’s population was minority. In New Mexico and California, the proportions were 57 percent and 56 percent, respectively, while the District of Columbia was 70 percent minority.”

Resource of the Week
By Shirl Kennedy, Deputy Editor

If you had to buy a house right now, in the community where you live, could you afford it on your salary? If so, you’re more fortunate than a lot of people. Many of us work for government entities with modest pay scales — and we can identify with the teachers, firefighters, police officers and other public employees who are being priced out of the housing market. And we’re probably doing better than most of those who work in…say, retail or the hospitality industry. For an up-close look at the ugly reality, explore this week’s informative resource.

Housing Affordability–Database
Source: Center for Housing Policy
Paycheck to Paycheck: 2005 Findings
“In this revised and updated version of its online, interactive database Paycheck to Paycheck, the Center for Housing Policy presents wage information for more than 60 occupations and home prices and rents for nearly 200 metropolitan areas. Paycheck to Paycheck utilizes consistent measures of wages and housing costs so you can:
* See how workers in your metropolitan area are faring in the housing market;
* View the big picture for housing affordability for working families in various occupations across the country; and
* Use these analyses as a template to examine wages and housing costs in neighborhoods in your community.”

You can browse the data here in several ways. For example, choose one of 183 metropolitan areas from a dropdown menu, and then click “View 5 Pre-Selected Occupations,” and you’ll generate a bar graph showing the income needed to purchase a median price home in that metro area, along with the average salaries of the five occupations. The 2005 median price for a home is shown above the graph.

Alternately, you can specify which occupation or occupations you wish to appear on the bar graph (maximum of five) by using checkboxes on a form that also provides a dropdown menu where you can choose to look at figures for the homeownership market, the rental market, or both.

Or, if you wish, you can start with a dropdown menu that lets you choose one of occupations and then select metropolitan areas using check boxes, comparable to the options described in the last paragraph. For example, choose “librarian” from the dropdown menu, select five metropolitan areas and see if you can afford a house in any of them. Good luck. Clicking on a “Print this chart” link in the upper right portion of the screen will display a printable version for you.

According to a press release, “The median price of a home in the U.S. rose 20 percent in just a year and a half, while at the same time wages for key community workers remained weak, even stagnant….” This probably is not a shock to you. If you’re interested, you can also browse the data for 2003.

About the information in this database:
+ “Wage information is as of February 2005 and was provided by salary.com, a private provider of salary information, which maintains a database of salaries by geographic location.”
+ “A rental unit is considered affordable if rent does not exceed 30 percent of income.”
+ “Conventional mortgage underwriting guidelines require that not more than 28 percent of household income should be used to pay the mortgage, property taxes and insurance. A downpayment of 10 percent is assumed.”
+ “Data on the median-priced home are from the National Association of Home Builders’ Housing Opportunity Index for the first quarter of 2005.”

The Center for Housing Policy is the research arm of the National Housing Conference, “the nation’s premier public policy and affordable housing advocacy organization.”

Professional Reading Shelf
Metasearch–Surveys
Source: RLG
Metasearch Survey Among RLG Members
“In May and June 2005, RLG surveyed a cross-section of RLG member institutions to learn more about their expectations and experiences of metasearch. Most of our respondents were very enthusiastic about metasearch, although their definitions varied. Most of their definitions shared a focus on undergraduate students, use of a simple search box, and full-text resources in the results.”
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Demonstrations
Source: Human Computer Interaction Lab/University of Maryland
Show Me! Guidelines for Producing Recorded Demonstrations
From the abstract, “Although recorded demonstrations (screen capture animations with narration) have become a popular form of instruction for user interfaces, little work has been done to describe guidelines for their design. Based on our experience in several projects, we offer a starting set of guidelines for the design of recorded demonstrations. Technical guidelines encourage users to keep file sizes small, strive for universal usability, and ensure user control etc. and provide tips to achieve those goals. Content guidelines include: create short demonstrations that focus on tasks, highlight each step with auditory and visual cues, synchronize narration and animation carefully, and create demonstrations with a clear beginning, middle, and end.”
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U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science (NCLIS)
Library Research
Source: NCLIS
Dr. Neal K. Kaske named NCLIS Director of Statistics and Surveys (PDF)
“Dr. Kaske brings to NCLIS over 30 years of broad experience in the field of library and information science, including working as a reference and systems librarian, researcher, professor, federal grants officer, and library administrator. He has conducted many library surveys over the years and participated in numerous research projects that have been published in the form of technical reports and journal articles.”
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Librarians–Professional Publication
Source: Library Link
Publish, Don’t Perish!
“In the library field…few publications provide monetary compensation to authors – and, in the case of peer-reviewed journals, entire review boards (and often editors) also donate their time to reviewing and editing authors’ manuscripts…. So, what makes writing for the library literature different? Our common bond as members of the profession in itself gives us reason to participate. We all give back to the profession in different ways – some of us get passionately involved in associations, others lobby for libraries and librarians, and some of us write for the library literature. Librarianship as a field is built on the contributions and conversations of its members.” Shirl adds, “Take it from one who knows — this column by Rachel Singer Gordon nails it. If you’ve ever had even the slightest interest in professional writing for publication, it’s a must-read.”
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Public Libraries–Collection Development
Source: The Denver Post
Keep tabs on those new books
“Vulgar illustrated Spanish-language fotonovelas depicting the rape, brutalization, and murder of women don’t seem appropriate for stocking on the shelves of public libraries. Yet an unknown number of the books, which feature lots of nudity, have shown up on Denver Public Library shelves.”
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Professional Conferences–Canada
Source: EContent Institute
Call for Presentation and Speakers: The Information Highways Conference 2006
This year’s theme is: People + Content + Technology = Chaos? : How Intelligent Enterprises Introduce Order and Enhance Profitability.
http://www.econtentinstitute.org/article.asp?id=45491

Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents
Computer Security–Databases
Source: NIST
New, Comprehensive Database of Computer Vulnerabilities Now Available
” The new National Vulnerability Database (NVD) from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) will make it easier for system administrators and other security professionals to learn about vulnerabilities and how to remediate them. The NVD is a comprehensive database that integrates all publicly available U.S. government resources on vulnerabilities and provides links to many industry resources. NVD is built upon a dictionary of standardized vulnerability names and descriptions called Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures.”
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Clinical Trials–Databases
Source: NLM
ClinicalTrials.gov Scope Expanded
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Bus Travel and Tours–Fare Search
Source: IvyMedia
GotoBus.com
“Search thousands of bus, tour, vacation services over 50 cities, including daily bus schedules for Boston, New York and Washington DC. Reviews available at Bus Forum.”
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Immigration–United States
Source: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)
New Guidebook, “Welcome to the United States”
“Welcome to the United States also gives new immigrants tips on how to get involved in their new communities, and how to meet their responsibilities and exercise their rights as permanent residents.”
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Business–Regulations–Australia
Source: Parliamentary Library, Australia
Research Brief: Australia’s corporate regulators–the ACCC, ASIC and APRA
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Hurricanes
Source: NOAA
August 2005 Update to Atlantic Hurricane Season Outlook
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Energy Industry
Source: Congressional Research Service (via FPC)
Oil Industry Profits: Analysis of Recent Performance

Search Briefs
+ Google Improves Wildcard Matching
+ Yahoo Announces Total Size Count
+ Google Asked to Remove Imagery from Google Earth
+ Forget Static Satellite Images, How About Real-Time Satellite Imagery?

Briefly
Updated International Patent Information Retrieval System Online

Professional Reading Shelf
Libraries–Iraq
Source: OCLC
International program brings state-of-the-art library technologies and skills to Iraq
” A collaborative project between OCLC Online Computer Library Center and the International Human Rights Law Institute of DePaul University College of Law recently brought together 12 Iraqi librarians for a training workshop on cataloging standards and technology in Amman, Jordan.”

Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents
Financial Institutions
Source: Bank Information Center (BIC) and freedominfo.org
New, IFI (International Financial Institutions) Transparency Resource
“The IFI Transparency Resource-an extensive information tool on transparency at the International Financial Institutions (IFIs). This Resource has been developed to support the Global Transparency Initiative which is an informal network of civil society organizations focused on opening the IFIs and promoting higher standards in global governance.”
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Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgender–Encyclopedia
Source: glbtq, Inc.
glbtq: The Online Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture
“The glbtq encyclopedia was founded with a single objective in mind: to serve as the most comprehensive, accessible, and authoritative encyclopedia of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer (glbtq) culture…. The encyclopedia’s Literature, Arts, and Social Sciences Departments feature more than 1.2 million words in more than 1200 entries. Hundreds of complementary illustrations help showcase the lives and contributions of thousands of glbtq people who have influenced society through literature, the arts, law, politics and more…. More than 300 artists, academics, independent scholars, and practicing professionals have contributed signed entries to the glbtq encyclopedia.” Searchable.
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Cigarettes–United States–Statistics
Source: FTC
New, Federal Trade Commission Issues Cigarette Report for 2003
“The FTC’s annual report on cigarette sales and advertising shows that the major cigarette manufacturers spent $15.15 billion on advertising and promotional expenditures in 2003, an increase of $2.68 billion (21.5 percent) from 2002 and the most ever reported to the Commission. The total number of cigarettes sold or given away by those manufacturers decreased by 19.8 billion cigarettes (5.1 percent) from 2002 to 2003. The manufacturers also reported spending $72.9 million on advertisements directed to youth or their parents intended to reduce youth smoking, a 1.8 percent decrease from the $74.2 million reported in 2002.”
Summary Direct to Full Text (PDF)