Briefly
+ Library of Congress Unveils 2006 Calendars Featuring Images from Vast Collections

Professional Reading Shelf
Librarians–Massachusetts
Source: BetaNews
Librarians Voice Support for OpenDoc
“Five library associations voiced their support for the use of OpenDocument (ODF) in Massachusetts this week, sending a letter to William Galvin, the Commonwealth’s Secretary of State. In it, the groups say the open source format is the best choice, as everyone has access to its specifications.”
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PATRIOT Act
Source: AP
Senate Defeat For Patriot Act
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Special Collections
Source: ARL
New, Uses of Special Collections in Teaching and Learning, Summary of an ARL Membership Meeting Briefing Session, by Monica McCormick, UNC-Chapel Hill

Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text
Educational Media
Source: Kaiser Family Foundation
New Report on Educational Media for Babies, Toddlers, and Preschoolers
“In recent years, there has been a big increase in new electronic media products for very young children, including those as young as one month old. A driving force behind this new market is the advertising and package labeling that makes claims about the educational benefits of specific products. A new report examines the educational claims about commercially available educational media products (videos and DVDs, computer software, and video games) for very young children and the research to substantiate the educational claims.”
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Education–United States–Statistics
Source: NCES
Just Released, Revenues and Expenditures by Public School Districts: School Year 2002-03
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Country Studies
Source: Federal Research Division/Library of Congress
Just Updated, Country Profile of Turkmenistan
PDF.
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Occupational Safety–United States–Statistics
Source: BLS
Just Released, Lost-worktime Injuries and Illnesses: Characteristics and Resulting Time Away From Work, 2004
Tables and text summary.

Search Briefs
+ CiteSeer Makes Mirrors of Database Available
@ MIT
@ U. of Z�rich
@ National U. of Singapore
This web research “classic” offers incredible access to scholarly materials in computer science, IT, telcom, and related areas. The service began at Penn St. University. Developed by Dr. Lee Giles and team at Penn St. University.
See Also: SmealSearch
Same IR technology. Database focuses on scholarly materials in business. Amazing!

Professional Reading Shelf
SPARC
Scholarly Communication
Source: Against the Grain
I Hear the Train A Comin’ — SPARC, An Interview With Executive Director Heather Joseph
Published in Against the Grain, November, 2005. PDF; 2 pages. “What has SPARC accomplished, what is its view of the current scholarly communication landscape, and where are we headed?”
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Unstructured Data
Source: ACM Queue
Information Extraction: Distilling Structured Data from Unstructured Text
“Much of the world’s information is locked within unstructured, natural language text. Information extraction techniques can help set it free.”
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Information Standards
Source: National Information Standards Organization (NISO)
Now Available: December 2005 Issue of NISO Newsline
Posts include:
+ “NISO to Sponsor Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative”
+ “NISO-Sponsored INFO URI Scheme Gets Thumbs Up from IETF Group”
+ “Scanning the Pros and Cons of RFID Tagging”
+ “2006 Heritage Health Index Report on the State of America’s Collections”

Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text
Topix.net
Source: SEW Blog
Topix.net Has One Impressive Year from Both Business and User Perspective; Ends Year with New Look and Design
A ResourceShelf favorite news search tool continues to expand and improve.
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Seat Belts–United States–Statistics
Source: NHTSA
New Data Show Rising Safety Belt Use Rates in Most States
“More Americans than ever are wearing their safety belts with usage rates climbing in 34 states this year, according to U.S. Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta. In 2005, safety belt use ranged from 60.8 percent in Mississippi to 95.3 percent in Hawaii. Others breaking the 90 percent belt use barrier included Washington, Nevada, Arizona, Oregon, Michigan, California, Puerto Rico and Maryland.” Direct to Full Text report. (PDF; 7 pages)
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Advertising–Online–Lists & Rankings
Source: Clickz
Top 50 Advertisers by Media Value in October, 2005
“The top Internet advertisers by media value. The data are provided by TNS Media Intelligence.”
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Information Technology–Management–Lists & Rankings
Source: Computerworld
Just Released, Premier 100, 2005
“…7th annual awards shine a spotlight on some of the brightest minds in the IT community.”
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Energy Conservation
Source: FTC
New Web Site, Saving Starts @ Home: The Insider Story on Conserving Energy
“The Federal Trade Commission is offering energy conversation tips to help consumers save money in every room of the house. The Web site, Saving Starts @ Home: The Insider Story on Conserving Energy…”
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Higher Education–Engineering–Salary Surveys
Source NSF
Recent Engineering and Computer Science Graduates Continue to Earn the Highest Salaries
“Recent bachelor’s and master’s engineering graduates and graduates with computer sciences bachelor’s are more likely to be employed full time and to earn higher salaries than are graduates in other fields. Industry continues to be the largest employer of recent graduates in science, engineering, or health. Data are from the 2003 National Survey of Recent College Graduates for graduates who received bachelor’s or master’s degrees in science, engineering, or health fields between July 2000 and June 2002.”

Search Briefs
+ Google Gmail Now Accessible via Mobile Phones
+ Technorati Begins Cooking Up Ideas in their New “Kitchen”
+ Search Execs Talk at MIT Forum
+ Yahoo Tweaks Pure Search Interface; Adds New Page Highlighting Popular Services

Briefly
Techstreet Announces New Web Tools for Engineers

Resource of the Week
by Steven M. Cohen, Assistant Editor

Editors Note: Shirl Kennedy, Deputy Editor, will return next week with her ROTW column. Btw, we mentioned this week’s ROTW and its developers last week when it was first released. Congrats to Derek and Adrian on the ROTW mention.

While awaiting anxiously for the new release of Thomas, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the Washington Post has entered the congressional data fray with their votes database, which “lets you browse every vote in the U.S. Congress since 1991.”

For both the House and Senate, one can view many details of Congressional votes. Many features are available:

+ In viewing the latest votes, one sees the results of the vote, a link to more extensive data about the vote, and a brief synopsis of the vote. Click on roll call for more indept data on the specific vote, such as a breakdown by party, state, region, “baby boomer status,” gender, and astrological sign (how interesting – I wonder what this analysis will reveal about our congressional members).

+ Users can also view voting data by Narrowest margins, Widest Margins, late night votes (very important), a full list of members which also provides voting data for each representative (in this case, Neil Abercrombie).

+ For those familiar with RSS, you’ll notice that they have incorporated RSS technology into the resource. You can now get voting information from any congressional member sent to you via RSS, as well as a feed from the most recent votes.

This is an impressive ready reference tool that should be bookmarked.
Editor’s Note: In case you’re wondering, this database should be searchable soon.

See Also: Those of You with a Strong Interest/Need in Congressional Voting Data
Might also want to take a look at VoteView, A Collection of Downloadable Data Compiled by Dr. Keith T. Poole at the University of California, San Diego.
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See Also: Newspapers–Washington Post–Mashups
Source: Information Today
washingtonpost.com Teams Up with Readers for Remix
A new article by Tara Calishain. “The Washington Post Co. has launched a new site called Post Remix, described as “the Post’s official mashup center.” Available at http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/post_remix, Post Remix spotlights reader creativity with both washingtonpost.com RSS feeds and other streams of content The Post is making available. The site launched around mid-November, and that’s been plenty of time for interesting content to appear on it.”

Professional Reading Shelf
National Archives and Records Administration
Source: AP
Archives Smooths Web Access to Records
If you ever used the Access to Archival Databases (AAD) from the National Archives of the U.S. it was a pain in the rear. You had to search one database at a time. Well, that’s changed. Yes, it’s another example of meta or federated searching coming to life. From the AP article: “The revamped Access to Archival Databases site — http://http://aad.archives.gov/aad/ — allows the public to search for free through 85 million documents in 475 files amassed by more than 30 federal agencies.” From the site itself, “…Feature global free-text searching across all series and files, in addition to our standard fielded search, and easier and faster ways to find the series and files you want!” Thanks to Randy H. for the news tip. I think the challenge now will be in reaching these databases. I’ve been having trouble for the past hour.
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RLG
Source: Educause
Audio: Interview with RLG President and CEO, James Michalko
A 20-minute interview with Michalko. History, preservation, services, and more. Includes talk about ResourceShelf favorite, RedLightGreen.
See Also: Get Ready for ArchiveGrid from RLG (Coming in 2006)
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Digital Books
On-Demand Printing
Source: Book Tech
New Study Predicts Double-Digit Growth in Digital Book Printing
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Spatial Data
Source: ARL
New, Spatial Data Collections and Services
“This SPEC Kit examines how library patrons’ use of spatial data has changed since 1999 and what effect this has had on library staffing, collections, budget, and services. The publication provides a snapshot of how ARL member libraries are handling the challenges associated with spatial data 15 years after geographic information systems (GIS) and digital mapping first appeared on campus.” Full-text fee-baed. Executive Summary Available (PDF; FREE)
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Libraries and Librarians
Source: LJ
New by Roy Tennant: What I Wish I Had Known
What will be a classic by our friend, Roy Tennant!

Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text
Health Industry–United States–Databases
Health Billing Codes and Dickens: Two New Databases from AskSam Available for Free
AskSam is a free-form database company that offers numerous databases (online and offline, they call them ebooks) for free. In some cases you’ll need the AskSam Reader (also free). New from AskSam this week:
+ Medical Billing Codes (Available online only)
CPT and HCPCS Medical Codes. “This database contains a complete listing of CPT codes (Current Procedural Terminology) and HCPCS codes (Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System). This database is fully searchable by code, description, type or category.”
+ A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Free Searchable Version. Browse and/or search online or offline.
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Trade–Canada–Interactive Maps
Source: exportsource.ca
Tutorial For Interactive TradeMap Canada
From the site, “The decision to begin exporting, or to expand into new export markets, is not one that can be taken without some serious research into issues such as:

1. Is there a market for my product?
2. What market should I go after?
3. Is this market growing?
4. Who is the competition?
5. Are there any tariff or non-tariff barriers?

The list goes on.

Trademap Canada will have some of these answers for you. This tutorial will help you get these answers, enabling you to analyze the export or import potential for your product.” Registration to use the database is required (Free).
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Historical Maps–Bibliography
Source: Air University Library
Historical Map Bibliographies
“The bibliographies in this series are produced by Air University Library staff to support the need for historical maps pertaining to wars, battles, and famous leaders’ actions. Maps cited in these bibliographies may be a combination of internet sites, books, periodicals, or documents, and may contain links to full-text material. Click on a specific topic to view a bibliography.” Includes: Desert Storm, Korean War, WW I, WW II.
See also: Air University Library Maproom
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Automobile Insurance Pricing–Factors
Source: Quality Planning Corporation
Why People Who Live Close to Restaurants Are More Likely To Have an Accident and Pay More for Auto Insurance
“If you live within a mile of a church, you’re far less likely to have a car accident than drivers who live more than a mile from a church. But if you live within one mile of a restaurant, you face a significantly greater risk of an accident than most other drivers. Those are among the key findings of a study released…by a leading predictive analytics company — Quality Planning Corporation — a firm that helps insurance companies price insurance more accurately and fairly.”
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Renewable Energy–United States–State Profiles
Source: EIA
New, Renewable State Profiles
California is the first state in a series of upcoming state renewable energy profiles. The state profiles will cover: electric power statistics from 1999-2003; renewable resource maps; state incentives for renewable energy; state market share rankings, as well as capacity and generation.”

Search Briefs
+ Ask Jeeves UK Releases Smart Search Tool for Football Fans
+ Google Adds Music Search Feature and Learn What Others Offer
+ The A9 Top 99 Search Terms of 2005; All Terms Contain Nine Letters
+ Mobile Search: 4Info.net Has Plans to Release Client Software
+ Wayfinding on the Web

Briefly
+ EBSCO Launches New Release of LinkSource

Wikipedia Roundup
Wikipedia
Source: BusinessWeek
Yes, Another Interview With Wikipedia Founder, Jimmy Wales
Comments by Gary. Last week Wales told NPR listeners to take Wikipedia and other web info with a grain of salt (actually, good advice). Today, in BusinessWeek he is quoted saying the following:
Q. Do you think students and researchers should cite Wikipedia?
A. (Jimmy Wales): No, I don’t think people should cite it, and I don’t think people should cite Britannica, either — the error rate there isn’t very good. People shouldn’t be citing encyclopedias in the first place. Wikipedia and other encyclopedias should be solid enough to give good, solid background information to inform your studies for a deeper level. And really, it’s more reliable to read Wikipedia for background than to read random Web pages on the Internet.

Without getting into a long discussion about what encyclopedias are (both general and even more so, subject specific works) and when and how they should be used, I find the response interesting. I think some would argue that both types of encyclopedias are very citeable by a student or anyone else.

1) Worth noting that these comments, including about not citing EB, came before a new study (just released) that shows EB and Wikipedia compare well in terms of quality of entries in the sciences. More about knowing about and using specialty tools (electronic and print) is also becoming even more important than it has been in the past. Both of these are major areas where info pros need to be involved.
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More Reading and Listening
A recent article about the quality of Wikipedia entries was published in The Guardian. Entries on specific topics were reviewed by subject experts. In most cases, the entries were rated from fair to poor.

Finally, if you’re interested in an audio interview with Jimmy Wales, he was heard on NPR last week. Wales said that material in Wikipedia and other data found on the web should be taken with a “grain of salt.” That’s another way of saying that critical info skills are important, choice of resource is important, etc. Again, we know this, but does the public and do they care to know or just take the first result they find and move on (aka satisficing)? The more I listen or read what Mr. Wales has to say, I admit I’m becoming more impressed. However, is he trying to tell people what we as info pros have been trying to impress upon them for years? Again, this is about why info literacy, we could even call it searching literacy and critical info skills must be taught and developed at an early age and continued throughout one’s formal and informal education. At the same time it’s crucial–I would think info providers would find it essential–that the public is taught about a variety of tools.

My bottom line on Wikipedia? All the best to Mr. Wales. I might disagree with some of his comments but I respect where he’s coming from. That’s a bit of a change on my part. He also comes off being a likable guy. Btw, all of this doesn’t mean I still don’t have MAJOR concerns with Wikipedia. The true test of Wikipedia will be not today, tomorrow, or even next year, but in five or ten years. Will the volunteer efforts sustain? Remember the Open Directory Project? Now look at what it has become.
Note to Mr. Wales: One change that I think would help Wikipedia is requiring those who license the database (free) to refresh the content on their server at a specific interval. However, from browsing the Wikipedia site, I noticed that some people take the data and don’t even give Wikipedia credit, another issue for you to make sure your data is used correctly and updated on a regular basis. This would help answer the question, which version of Wikipedia am I looking at? I would think that as WikiP grows, more and more people will want to license and use the massive amount of content you offer for free. Can your system and, I guess, the public handle that?

Professional Reading Shelf
Web Search–Google
Google Library Project
Source: SEW Blog
Anniversary #1 is Today: Google’s Library Project Now One Year Old
It has been quite a year. Talk about one project getting gobs of attention. Gary has compiled a list that looks back at key stories from the first year of a program including a look (via a post from Danny) at the important differences between Google Print (now Google Book Search).
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PubMed
Source: NLM
PubMed Online Training Page Now Available
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Science–Online Information
Information Industry–Elsevier
Source: Scirus
Scirus Adds New Content to Database
Word from Scirus (Elsevier) that a new content repository has been added and now searchable via Scirus.
+ “A partnership with DiVA – Academic Archive On-line – to index its repositories, and to power the search on the portal site. DiVA is a joint program of Scandinavian universities to publish, preserve and collect all of their academic content in the DiVA repository solution.” Direct to DiVA.
See Also: New, Elsevier Collaborates with MIT Researchers to Increase Access to Scientific Web across the Developing World
See Also: Science search in developing nations (via News.com)
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Microsoft–Maps and Imagery–Live Local
Source: AllPointsBlog
Live Local to Get Data from EarthData
“A press release from EarthData of Frederick, MD, announces it will provide data to Microsoft’s Live Local (powered by Virtual Earth). It’s a five-year deal for new imagery, lidar, and radar data acquisition and map production and gives Microsoft access to the company’s archives.”
See Also: What is Live Local From Microsoft? (Very Cool!)
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International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions
Source: International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions
Just Released, IFLA Annual Report 2004
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Dictionaries–Words of the Year
Source: New Oxford American Dictionary
New Oxford American Dictionary: ‘Podcast’ Is the Word of the Year
New Oxford American Dictionary has selected “podcast” as the Word of the Year for 2005.
Podcast, defined as “a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program, made available on the Internet for downloading to a personal audio player,” will be added to the next online update of the New Oxford American Dictionary, due in early 2006.”
Runners-up for the 2005 Word of the Year include:
+ ICE (an entry stored in one’s cellular phone that provides emergency contact information)
+ IED
+ lifehack
+ reggaeton
+ rootkit
+ squick (cause immediate and thorough revulsion: “was anyone else squicked by our waiter’s piercings?”)

Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text Documents
Digitization Projects–Islam
Source: The African and Middle Eastern Division of the Library of Congress, The Library of Congress Global Gateway Web, Mamma Haidara Commemorative Library of Timbuktu, Mali
New, http://international.loc.gov/intldl/malihtml/malihome.html.
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Influenza–Economic Issues
Source: CBO
New Report, A Potential Influenza Pandemic: Possible Macroeconomic Effects and Policy Issues
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Children–United States–Statistics
Source: U.S. Census
New Working Paper, Changes in the Lives of U.S. Children: 1990-2000
From the media release, “This working paper uses decennial census data to present an analysis of changes in the demographic and socioeconomic state of children during the 1990s. The study, which utilizes both national- and state-level data, examines characteristics such as children’s living arrangements and languages spoken, educational attainment level and labor force status of the children’s parents, and the physical characteristics of the children’s housing.”
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Corporations–Reputation–Lists & Ranking
Source: Harris Interactive, Reputation Institute
Annual RQ 2005 – 7th Anniversary
The RQ is an assessment tool that captures perceptions of corporate reputations across industries, among multiple audiences, and is adaptable to countries outside the United States…. RQ research evaluates stakeholder perceptions across 20 attributes that are grouped into the six dimensions of reputation: Products & Services; Financial Performance; Workplace Environment; Social Responsibility; Vision & Leadership; Emotional Appeal. For seven years, the Annual RQ results have been featured prominently in The Wall Street Journal�. This annual survey measures the reputations of the most visible companies in the United States. Sixty companies were again measured as part of this year’s Annual RQ–including companies in the airline, oil/energy, automotive, technology, and retail sectors. Each company was evaluated by approximately 600 adults (18+ years) in the United States….”

Scholarly Publishing–Citation Reports
Source: ISI
+ Science in Austria, 2000-04
+ Journals Ranked by Impact: Sociology
+ Education: High-Impact U.S. Universities, 2000-04
+ U.S. Universities with Highest Concentrations in Materials Science & Engineering, 2000-04
+ What’s Are the “Hot” Papers in Chemistry and Biology?

Search Briefs
+ Alexa Offers Fee-Based Vertical Search Services
Don’t overlook this post. In addition to commentary by Danny Sullivan, you’ll find a list of tools like Rollyo and Gigablast that let you to build domain specific engines. Also, info about some free web crawlers like Nutch and Heritix from the Internet Archive, tech types should know about. You’ll also read a few thoughts by about “structured tagging.”
+ AOL Releases List of 2005’s Top Search Terms

Briefly
+ Biomed Central: Five more journals accepted by ISI
+ BIS emerges as Dialog goes Scientific
+ PAIS Archive Completed (Via OCLC)
“The PAIS Archive database on the OCLC FirstSearch service has been updated with a third and final installment. The PAIS Archive is a retrospective database chronicling global public policy and social issues from 1915-1976, and complements the contemporary social sciences coverage of the PAIS International database on FirstSearch.”

Professional Reading Shelf
Dictionaries–Online–Lists & Rankings
Source: Merriam-Webster
Just Released, Top 10 Words Looked-Up on Merriam-Webster.com in 2005
1. integrity
2. refugee
3. contempt
4. filibuster
5. insipid
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Web Resources–Compilations
Source: C&RL News
The Polish presence in North America
An updated collection of electronic resources compiled and annotated by Thomas Duszak, a librarian and the head of the cataloging section at State Library of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg.
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Digitization Projects
Source: Reuters
HarperCollins to begin digitizing books
Shocker? No. Yet another publisher announces a book digitization program. So what else is new. If you just read the press in the last year you would think the concept of digitizing books was new. So many projects, so little time. “This is going to be a costly initiative,” she said, adding that a budget had not yet been set but the cost was expected to run into millions of dollars. The publisher has invited proposals from vendors to carry out the contract to digitize some 20,000 or more books in the global back-catalogue as well as the 3,500 to 5,000 new books it publishes each year.” Btw, in case you were wondering, Wednesday is the first anniversary of the Google Library Project.