Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text
R&D–United States–Lists & Rankings
Source: NSF
Master Government List of Federally Funded Research and Development Centers
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Veterans–United States–Digitization Projects
Source: LOC
Coming Monday: Library Of Congress Veterans History Project Will Add Collections from Veterans Who Served in Military Intelligence
“‘Military Intel: The Inside Story,’ a selection of 22 digitized collections of materials submitted by war veterans who served in military intelligence will be highlighted on the Veterans History Project Web site beginning May 25. Military Intel will be added to the ‘Experiencing War’ stories from the Veterans History Project at www.loc.gov/warstories. This is the 12th set of individual stories — comprising interviews, letters, photographs and written memoirs — to be featured on the site. Past themes have included D-Day, prisoners of war, and military medicine.”
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Families–United States–Statistics
Source: U.S. Census
New, Families and Living Arrangements: 2005
“The median age of first marriage was 27.1 years for men and 25.8 years for women last year, up from 23.2 and 20.8 years, respectively, 25 years earlier, according to new information on America’s families and households released today by the U.S. Census Bureau. According to Families and Living Arrangements: 2005, the proportion of households consisting of one person living alone increased from 17 percent in 1970 to 26 percent in 2005. In 2005, 10 percent of the nation’s households contained five or more people, down from 21 percent in 1970. During the same time period, average household size declined from 3.14 to 2.57 people.
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U.S. Military–Special Operations–Bibliography
Source: Air University Library
Special Operations 2006
New bibliography includes general information, information about the different Special Operations commands, Special Operations Forces core tasks, history, programs, systems, training, and equipment.
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Adolescents–Cigarettes
Source: Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (CDC)
Use of Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Among Students Aged 13–15 Years — Worldwide, 1999–2005
“This report presents estimates of self-reported cigarette and other tobacco-product use during 1999-2005 in 132 different countries and the Gaza Strip/West Bank. The data are aggregated within each of the six WHO regions. GYTS data indicate that nearly two of every 10 students reported currently using a tobacco product, with no statistically significant difference between the proportion of those reporting cigarette smoking (8.9%) and other tobacco use (11.2%). Use of tobacco by adolescents is a major public health problem in all six WHO regions. Worldwide, more countries need to develop, implement, and evaluate their tobacco-control programs to address the use of all types of tobacco products, especially among girls.”

Briefly
Dialog Seeks Scholarship Applicants from Europe, the Middle East, Asia Pacific & Africa

Briefly
Dialog Seeks Scholarship Applicants from Europe, the Middle East, Asia Pacific & Africa

Search Briefs
+ Ballmer On Google And Don’t Be Evil: Laugh & No Comment (via SEW Blog)

Search Briefs
+ Ballmer On Google And Don’t Be Evil: Laugh & No Comment (via SEW Blog)

Resource of the Week
By Shirl Kennedy, Deputy Editor

OK…as far as seasons go, I much prefer baseball season to election season. But nothing good can come from playing ostrich when political leadership is at stake. We have a cool resource to show you this week — but it has one small flaw you might not notice unless you live in my overpopulated part of west central Florida.

Elections 2006–Interactive Map
Source: Congressional Quarterly (CQ)
CQ 2006 Election Forecast Map
Generally speaking, interactive maps are A Good Thing. Usually, they are pretty straightforward — e.g., no complicated user interface that makes you scratch your head. What you see is pretty much what you get here; when you first click on the link above, you see a map of the United States broken down by congressional district. Each district is color-coded by political leaning: Safe Republican, Republican Favored, Leans Republican, No Clear Favorite, Leans Democrat, Democrat Favored, Safe Democrat. Note the two tabs at the upper right. When you first arrive at the page, you are looking at the “Projected Landscape” of the House of Representatives after the fall elections. If you click on the “Current Landscape” tab, you can view a map of the existing House political situation — seats held by Republicans, Democrats, Independents and vacant seats. That’s the static part of the map.

The interactive part happens when you click on a congressional district. Up comes a page describing that district in terms of geography, demographics, election history, workforce make-up and educational attainment. At the top, you see the name of the incumbent, his or her status (e.g., “Running for Re-election”), and CQ’s election 2006 forecast (e.g., “Safe” Republican or Democrat, “Leans” Republican or Democrat, “No Clear Favorite”). The data sources are the 2000 U.S. Census — which is worrisome because of its age at this point, especially in fast-growing parts of the country — and CQ’s Politics in America, a standard reference resource. The most current edition available is CQ’s Politics in America 2006: The 109th Congress, which has a date of May 2005. This page also provides you with some news headline links to news stories about politics in that particular state.

To the right of the news headlines, you’ll see a “Back” link and an X in a box. Clicking on either of these will take you back to the map. At first, I didn’t notice this because the type is light gray. Instead, I used the browser’s back button to try and get back to the map, but was routed instead to the CQ Politics home page, which looks like a fairly interesting weblog (and has an RSS feed), but it’s not where I expected to go.

Note that there is a slider to the right of the map which allows you to zoom in or out. Because I live in a geographically small congressional district in the Tampa Bay area, which is quite densely populated, I wanted to enlarge the map to see the district divisions more clearly so I could click on the right one. Alas, when I enlarged the map, my part of Florida slipped behind the House “Balance of Power Scorecard” at the lower right. Fortunately, at the top of the slider, are four arrowheads which allow you to move the map to the left or right, or up or down…but I could only go so far down before the Florida peninsula got truncated. So I had to mess with things a little before I could pinpoint my own congressional district.

If you live in a state like Montana, Wyoming, or either of the Dakotas, however, clicking your congressional district is a lot easier because there is only one in each state. Note that it’s a lot less complicated when you leave the House view and choose either the Senate or Governors tabs at the upper left, since every state has just two senators and one governor.

Professional Reading Shelf
Reference Questions
Source: Project Wombat
Learn About Project Wombat, The New Stumpers-L
The latest on a “classic” reference discussion list. “Project Wombat is an e-mail discussion list for difficult reference questions. Membership is free, and non-members may submit questions for discussion. Project Wombat continues the many fine traditions started by the Stumpers list once offered by Dominican University with some helpful new options.”
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Digital Science
Source: Association of Research Libraries, Proceedings of the 148th Membership Meeting, 2006
Speech: The International Dimensions of Digital Science and Scholarship
A speech by Deanna B. Marcum, Associate Librarian for Library Services, Library of Congress.
See Also: Slides from Marcum’s Presentation
See Also: Other Presentations from the Meeting
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Library and Information Science–Glossary
Source: School of Information Resources & Library Science, the University of Arizona
SIRLS: The Information Professional’s Glossary
See Also: OCLC Glossary
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Interactive Television
Source: itvt
An Interview with the Creators of CNN’s New Interactive Service, “CNN Enhanced”
Could libraries be involved in other enhanced tv services?

Cool Tools
WINKsite
Quickly and easily create mobile tools. Free. Impressive and useful. From the site, “In minutes, you can set-up a free mobile site that’s available worldwide on any web-enabled phone, PDA or desktop PC. Each mobile site is outfitted with easy-to-use mobile channels including chat, blog, mobile feed reader, surveys, journal, forum, calendar, guestbook, bookmarks, email and more.”
See Also: Mobile Versions (Beta) of ResourceShelf and DocuTicker. Powered by WINKsite.

Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text
Business Research–United States
SEC EDGAR
Source: The Virtual Chase
Tyburski Says PWC’s EdgarScan Database Now Searching Full Text of SEC EDGAR Docs
Yes, a full text EDGAR database for free. Many of the free EDGAR services only search info found header and not the full text of documents. Direct to EdgarScan.
See Also: The Always Useful SECInfo.com (Free) Allows Full Text Searching of Document Subsets.
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Newspaper Archives
Source: NewspaperARCHIVE.com
Yet Another New Archive, This Time Over 50,000 Articles About Hurricanes in the U.S.
Wow, NewspaperArchive appears to be releasing about one new (and free) archive a week. This time thousands of full text, full image articles about hurricanes. Full text search, save, print. All free. “Newspaper articles about hurricanes tell stories of those affected by some of Mother Nature’s most powerful disasters. From the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, the deadliest natural disaster in US history, to Hurricane Katrina.”
See Also: Links to Other NewspaperArchive Free Databases
Even more here and here.
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Financial Services–United States–Statistics
Source: III
Financial Services Fact Book 2006
See Also: Insurance Related Statistics
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Phishing–Statistics
Source: Anti-Phishing Working Group
New, April Phishing Activity Trends Report
PDF. “Phish Reports drop slightly in April…Malware-dropping URLs and new Trojans continues to grow.”
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Media–Children
Source: Kaiser Family Foundation
Study Shows How Kids’ Media Use Helps Parents Cope
“Electronic media is a central focus of many very young children’s lives, used by parents to help manage busy schedules, keep the peace, and facilitate family routines such as eating, relaxing, and falling asleep, according to a new national study by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Many parents also express satisfaction with the educational benefits of TV and how it can teach positive behaviors.”
News Release/Webcast ||| Direct to Full Text

Briefly
+ Mary Rasenberger Named Director of Program Management for National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program
–
+ ProQuest Ponders Divestment in Face of Financial Woes
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UK: British Library Introduces New Icons to Help Show Do’s and Dont’s

Search Briefs
+ Coming Soon: AOL Plans Broadband Search Service (via News.com) & Link to AOL Video Now Found On Google Video Home Page
Federated or meta search from AOL? From the article, “[AOL's CEO Jonathan] Miller did not provide details beyond saying that the new search function would involve multiple sources and load quickly.” Of course, AOL’s web database is powered or as they say “enhanced” by Google. The AOL/Google deal was renewed last December. Speaking of AOL and Google, have you noticed the direct link (upper right in the gray bar) to AOL’s Video Search engine on the Google Video home page? Not at all a surprise. When the AOL/Google deal was announced we learned that part of it would include video. Specifically, the news release read, “collaborating in video search and showcasing AOL’s premium video service within Google Video.” It looks like this is it or at least the beginning. One wonders if the Google Video and AOL Video databases will one day merge into one and/or will negotiating for video content become a joint effort between both organizations?
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Web Search–MSN
MSN Autos Vertcal Now Offering It’s Own Search Tool (Beta)
Look for the MSN Auto search box, top right on the home page and other “inside” pages. SERPS contain results in 4 categories. Here’s a sample search for Toyota Prius.
+ All Results
+ Research
+ Articles
+ Auto Shows (News from various auto shows like Detroit (NAIAS), Tokyo, Chicago, etc.)

Multimedia Shelf
Recent lectures and presentations available for streaming or download.
Intelligence
Source: Council on Foreign Relations
+ The Digital Spy: How Technology is Changing the Intelligence Community (audio)
Speakers: Bryan Cunningham, Principal,Morgan & Cunningham LLC
Jeff Jonas, Distinguished Engineer and Chief Scientist, IBM Entity Analytics
Presider: Daniel B. Prieto, Director and Senior Fellow, Homeland Security Center
The Reform Institute; former executive at America Online
Recorded May 19, 2006. MP3.

Professional Reading Shelf
International Federatation of Library Associations
Source: IFLA
A Selection of Papers to be Presented at World Library and Information Congress: 72nd IFLA General Conference #2
+ Directories of international repositories: research results and recommendations
+ Web accessibility: a review of research and initiatives
+ Information literacy as an emancipatory process directed to social inclusion in a knowledge society
+ Dynamic Transformation of the National Diet Library: From the Researcher’s Library to the Library for All
+ Enabling Library and Information Skills: Foundations for Entering Students
+ Integrating Information Literacy in a First-Year University Course: A Case Study from Canada
See Also: Compilation #1
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Scholarly Literature
Open Computation: Beyond Human-Reader-Centric Views of Scholarly Literatures
A new book chapter by Clifford Lynch to appear in Open Access: Key Strategic, Technical and Ecomomic Aspects, Neil Jacobs (Ed.), (Oxford: Chandos Publishing), Spring 2006. “…speculating about the interactions between the emerging technologies of text mining, licensing electronic scholarly journals, and open access.”
Also available in PDF.
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Medical Literature–Open Access
Source: Canadian Health Libraries Association 2006: Pearls of Wisdom (via E-LIS)
Open Access for the Medical Librarian
“The most important aspects of open access for the medical librarian are presented. Reasons for open access include access to research information, access to taxpayer-funded research, facilitation of evidence-based medicine, equity of access, promotion of author control, and controlling library costs. The two primary approaches to open access, via author self-archiving and open access publishing, are presented. Key open access policy developments are highlighted. Many of the major policy initiatives of the moment are from the research funders. From the researcher funders’ point of view, open access means more research impact, more real-world impact when professionals can access the literature, and value is illustrated to the taxpayer, building support for further research funding. The world’s largest medical research funders, including the U.S. National Institute of Health and the Wellcome Trust, have public access policies, and many more policies are in development. For example, two weeks ago the Federal Research Public Access Act was introduced in the U.S. Senate. One of the essential elements of open access policy is ensuring that researchers are required, not requested, to deposit works. In Canada, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research has a policy in development called Access to Products of Research; public comments are due May 15, 2006. The dramatic growth of open access – over 2,220 journals in DOAJ, over 7.3 million items in an OAIster search – is discussed, as is the idea of new roles for librarians in an open access environment.” Presentation; PDF (137 KB) or PowerPoint (80 KB).
See also: Bill demands free public access to science reports (Federal Computer Week)
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Scholarly Publishing–Avian Influenza–
Source: Proceedings International Workshop on Webometrics, Informetrics and Scientometrics & Seventh COLLNET Meeting (via E-LIS)
Cooperation bibliogram of bird flu
“The published literature on Bird Flu, now a pandemic animal disease with a possible potential of evolving into a devastating human disease, was analysed primarily with respect of national and international cooperations and networks of authors and countries. The output of research-relevant papers is now around 150 per year and was less than 100 papers per year before 2003. The field is highly cooperative; nearly 90% of the articles have two or more authors. National extramural cooperation is around 50% since 1998, intramural cooperation shows a decreasing tendency and is now about 20%. Between 20% and 30% of the papers have been published in bi- or multinational cooperation. Observed and expected citation rates of international papers are twice as high as the citation rates of national papers. 47 countries are engaged in Bird Flu research, on top USA, followed by PEOPLES R CHINA, UK and JAPAN. These countries are also centers of country networks, but minor centers exist. An Asian local network with strong ties consisting of countries most affected by Bird Flu can be identified.. No strong direct connections exist between Europe and Asia; thus it seems necessary to intensify international cooperation. Author network show interesting cluster structures which must be studied in detail.”
Full Paper (PDF; 1.27 MB)
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Digital Archiving
Source: UKOLN
Material on Digital Archiving presentation available
“Slides are now available from the presentation entitled ‘Digital Archiving’ to the East Anglia Online User Group (EAOLUG) given by Maureen Pennock of UKOLN. The event, called ‘Digital Archives and Records Management’, took place at the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, on 23 May 2006.”
See Also: Archiving Web Site Resources : a Records Management View
Poster presented at the WWW 2006 conference, Edinburgh Scotland. Thanks to PADI for the news tip.

Scholarly Publishing–Citation Reports
Source: ISI
+ The Most-Cited Institutions in Computer Science, 1995-2005
+ Australian Universities: Most Prolific in Agricultural Sciences, 2001-05
+ Science in Germany, 2001-05 ||| 10-Year Country Rankings for: Germany
+ Journals Ranked by Impact: Education & Educational Research
+ U.S. Universities with Highest Concentrations in Mathematics, 2001-05
+ The 10 most-cited countries in Immunology, 1995-December 31, 2005, sorted by 3 separate measures

Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text
Elections–Worldwide
Source: Parliamentary Library, Australia
Guide to Elections Around the World 2006
“This electronic brief provides links to web-based information and full-text articles relevant to selected countries having national elections in 2006.”
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Computers–Statistics
Source: Computer Industry Almanac
New, PCs In-Use Surpassed 900M in 2005. USA Accounts for over 25% of PCs In-Use
Includes list of Top 15 Countries In PCs In-Use.
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Outsourcing–Companies–Lists & Ranking
Source: International Association of Outsourcing Professionals (IAOP)
The Global Outsourcing 100
“The International Association of Outsourcing Professionals (IAOP) is pleased to announce the following companies have been selected to the first-ever listing of the world’s top outsourcing service providers — The Global Outsourcing 100.”
Methodology
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Aging–Web Resources
Source: AARP Policy & Research
Global Aging Program
“AARP was one of the first organizations to recognize aging as a truly worldwide phenomenon that requires global cooperation. We wish to facilitate international understanding and dialogue around the global aging agenda. AARP will work with governments and opinion leaders by participating in international, social and economic policy debates to formulate global responses addressing the challenges associated with world aging.” In addition to news, reports and other publications, includes:
+ International Conference Calendar
+ International and Regional Organizations and Networks Concerned With Aging
+ Periodicals for Seniors From Around the World
+ Organizations for Seniors Around the World
+ Aging Everywhere: Intereactive map offering “resources on the 50+ population worldwide.”
+ AgeSource Worldwide: Database that “provides links to over 300 major or unique libraries, clearinghouses, databases, directories, bibliographies, and Web metasites around the world that focus on aging or closely allied subjects. Some 30 countries are represented in AgeSource Worldwide.”
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Information Technology–Lists & Rankings
Source: Business 2.0
100 Fastest-Growing Technology Companies, 2006
Sort by state available. Top 10 are:
1. Celgene
2. Red Hat
3. Apple Computer
4. SanDisk
5. ValueClick
6. Palomar Medical Technologies
7. aQuantive
8. LifeCell
9. Gilead Sciences
10. Clinical Data
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Parks–United StatesLists & Rankings
Source: Center for City Park Excellence
Fast Facts: Parks
+ The 100 Largest City Parks
+ City Park Acreage as a Percentage of the Area of the City
+ Total Spending on Parks and Recreation Per Resident in the Major Cities
+ The Oldest City Parks in the U.S.

Briefly
+ UBM and Convera to Co-develop Search Engine for Healthcare Professionals
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+ Website for Wales
“The website, www.library.wales.org, brings together a range of free online services with a Welsh flavour. It includes useful links, live information feeds (RSS), the reference library KnowUK and news database NewsUK, along with established services such as Ask Cymru and Wales on the Web.”

Search Briefs
Online Maps & Aerial Imagery
Ask.com Maps and Aerial Imagery of Europe
Barry’s post on Tuesday about MSN Live Local rolling out more imagery of Europe (cool stuff!) reminded us to mention that Ask.com Maps provides aerial imagery and street maps for some parts of Europe.

It’s still a work in progress (street names, locations for searching) but the Ask.com Maps imagery looks very impressive. We also have imagery for a small portion of Australia. This map (PDF) offers a look at what resolution you’ll find for imagery for various parts of Europe.

Some examples:
+ Charles De Gaulle Airport in Paris, France

+ Houses of Parliament, London

+ The Canals of Amsterdam
Btw, in many, but not all cases, Ask Maps “dynamic locations” feature will work for European locations. The same is true for driving and walking directions. Remember, “right-clicking” on a specific point on a map allows you to quickly and easily add that location to your location list.
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Web Search–MSN Live Local
Microsoft Live Local Adds Traffic Info, Traffic Info Has Been Accessible via MSN Autos for Some Time
1) Map Live Traffic for Major Cities
Over 30 cities available. Click the traffic link at the top of the page to find the cities available. MS has offered real-time traffic info on maps on their MSN Auto site for a long time. The only difference from what we can see, the maps themselves. Actually, traffic info is available for many more cities via MSN Autos than MSN Live Local. Btw, the MSN Auto site also offers real-time traffic info delivered via SMS, MSN Messenger, or email for very localized areas. Yahoo Maps also offers real-time traffic maps. Traffic data is provided by Traffic.com. Btw, Traffic.com offers a great set of services (free) including traffic alerts via RSS and custom alerts delivered by voice (via your phone).
2) Save favorite Maps to Windows Live Favorites
3) Collections, “Keep lists of important Windows Live Local locations, order them any way you want, and share them with your friends.”
4) You’ll also notice that the Live Local search boxes have moved from side-by-side placement to vertical placement.
5) Bird’s Eye Imagery of Some UK Locations
6) Driving Directions for Europe
7) More info here.
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Web Search–Google
Google Wants to Talk, Again
Just a few weeks after the Google shareholder meeting, Google Press Day, and Google Analyst Day, Google brass have announced yet another get together. This time around, a web conference/webcast (May 31, 2006 at 11am PDST) to tell investors and analysts more about what’s happening at the company. From an email, “As our CEO Eric Schmidt mentioned during our last earnings call (listen here), we would like to offer more opportunities for the investment community to interact with our senior management,” said Kim Jabal, Director of Investor Relations, Google. “We hope that this call will be valuable to investors and provide further insights into our business.” Interesting, a company that was first quiet about talking about the future, now wants to talk a lot. Reuters goes on to point out, “The stock is down roughly 10 percent so far this year on concerns about mounting competition in the Internet industry and Wall Street’s frustration with Google’s refusal to provide guidance on its financial outlook.” Interesting to note that today’s announcement comes about a day after Google CEO Eric Schmidt gave an exclusive interview to CNBC. Highlights and video from the interview are posted here on ResourceShelf. Btw, no word about who will be able to ask questions.

Professional Reading Shelf
Digitization
Source: HP Research
Quality Assurance in High Volume Document Digitization: A Survey
“Quality assurance (QA) plays a critical role in high volume document digitization projects by making sure that the specified quality standard is reached under cost and time constraints. This paper takes a systematic view on this issue by summarizing and abstracting related existing work: quality bottlenecks and technical solutions throughout the whole processing pipeline, including cataloging, capture, image analysis and recognition, and error cascading; various strategies to conduct cost-effective QA, such as combination of auto-QA and manual QA, batch QA, special QA user interface, and open source QA.”
See Also: A Content Integrity Service For Long-Term Digital Archives
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National Science Digital Library
Source: EDUCAUSE
Building a National Science Digital Library
An archived version of this lecture and Q&A with Dean B. Krafft is now available. It was presented live on May 8, 2006. Access is free. From the overview: “Since 2000, the National Science Digital Library (NSDL) Core Integration team has been creating the infrastructure for a digital library of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics resources. That library now contains more than a million resources from approximately 100 collections. In this talk, Dean Krafft will give a short historical overview of the NSDL and describe the current NSDL community and participants. He will then review the technical underpinnings of NSDL 1.0, a library built on metadata harvesting, and describe some of the challenges encountered. For the past year, the project has been working on NSDL 2.0, a new version of the library built on the Fedora repository architecture. For the last part of the talk, Krafft will describe this new library architecture and explain how it supports creating context for science resources, how it enhances the selection and use of library materials, and what these capabilities mean for the users of the NSDL.”
–
Council on Library and Information Resources
Source: CLIR
CLIR Issues
Articles include:
+ Symposium Kicks Off Fiftieth Anniversary Celebration (CLIR’s Fiftieth Anniversary Sponsors’ Symposium)
+ Libraries: Diffuse and In the Flow
+ CLIR Appoints Committee to Advise on Place as Library
–
PubMed
Source: NLM
Search Help: NIH Grant Numbers in PubMed Citations
See Also: PubMed Tutorial Updated
See Also: Wellcome Trust Grant Number Added to MEDLINE/PubMed Citations
See Also: New MedlinePLUS Magazine
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Brazil–Webliographies
Source: C&RL News
New, Brazilian studies: Online resources for researchers
Compiled by Edward A. Riedinger. “[Riedinger] heads the Latin American Studies Library and is professor for Brazilian Studies at Ohio State University. He is also editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia of Brazilian History and Culture (Routledge, 2009) and will be a visiting researcher in the Centre for Brazilian Studies at Oxford University in the autumn.”

Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text
Driving Laws–United States–Databases
Source: AAA
The Digest of Motor Laws
>–
Hurricanes–United States–Predictions
Source: NOAA
Just Released: 2006 Atlantic Hurricane Outlook
“NOAA’s 2006 Atlantic hurricane season outlook indicates an 80% chance of an above-normal hurricane season, a 15% chance of a near-normal season, and only a 5% chance of a below-normal season. This outlook is produced by scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center (CPC), National Hurricane Center (NHC), and Hurricane Research Division (HRD). See NOAA’s definitions of above-, near-, and below-normal seasons.”
See Also: Fast Facts: 2006 Hurricane Season Begin (via U.S. Census)
A myriad of fast facts and stats about the upcoming season.
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Federal Court–United States
Source: U.S. Courts
New Locator: U.S. Federal Court Lookup Database
“Contacting the nearest federal court, or the federal court you need, is easier than it used to be. You now can search for the right court, or court office, by city, zip code, area code, and more.” Thanks to Genie Tyburski at The Virtual Chase for the news tip.
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Government–Latin America–Archives
Source: LANIC (University of Texas)
Latin American Government Documents Archive
From the site, “The Latin American Government Documents Archive (LAGDA) seeks to preserve and facilitate access to a wide range of ministerial and presidential documents from 18 Latin American and Caribbean countries. The Archive contains copies of the Web sites of approximately 300 government ministries and presidencies. Capture of sites began on multiple dates in 2005 and 2006, and will continue with regularly scheduled captures.” Powered by the Internet Archive’s Archive-It service.
See Also: Political Database of the America’s (via Georgetown University)

Search Briefs
Web Search–Google
Source: WSJ/CNBC
Video: Google CEO Eric Schmidt Interviewed on CNBC, Part One
++ Video: Part Two (Google and Microsoft)
While Schmidt is in London for a Google “Zeitgeist” Conference, Maria Baritromo talks with with the CEO about advertising, and “whether Google is becoming the next Microsoft.”

Q: Is there a plan “b” on where growth comes from now?
Eric Schmidt: I don’t know if there is a plan “b” beyond what you said [targeted advertising]. “It seems to me that Google as a business is in the targeted advertising business.”
NOTE: About a week ago Schmidt said that Google is the only player emphasizing search. A week early and again last week Ask.com CEO, Jim Lanzone told CNBC that Ask.com is also focusing on and emphasizing search.
Q: Is your goal to become a portal?
Eric Schmidt: It depends on what you mean by a portal. Many people use the word but mean different things. We prefer to think we want to get you to the information as quickly as possible. A lot of information is personal and a lot of that information is searchable. So, when we talk about search we talk about it in a very broad context. We mean not only the world’s information but your personal information.
Q: So it sounds like that is pretty much a portal.
Eric Schmidt: It’s the way portals used to be. Before portals became specialized content. The original portal in the early 1990’s, was simply a window to go through to get to that information. Indeed, Google will be that and will be a good one.
Other Comments
+ “We don’t compete with content companies because we don’t produce content ourselves.”
+ On the CNET issue from last year. Schmidt: “There is a difference between information being available and publicizing that information. The fact that personal information is around doesn’t mean it should be publicized.” Schmidt adds they’re working well with CNET now.
Note: The Google/CNET story was years ago (in Internet time) but it still seems odd (especially after these comments) that a legitimate news organization (CNET) runs into problems by using public information in a profile of a public figure. If the public only new what was easily accessible about them in specialty databases.

Google and Microsoft
Q: Is Google underestimating Microsoft
Eric Schmidt: We’re focused on our overall mission…Competition is very healthy. What people miss however is that this is a much much bigger space that the IT industry for example. Multiple choices, multiple choices may be successful. So, we believe that our strategy will be succesful and it may also be true that our competitors strategies will also be succcessful, at least for a while. I don’t think it’s a zero-sum game.

On MS taking search market share.
Schmidt: They need to ship the products first.

On Asia
Long-term, Asia is biggest opportunity.

On Click Fraud
Schmidt: It’s not a material issue. It’s a fight. We have it [click fraud] under control.
See Also: Schmidt Talks with Charlie Rose (4/2006)
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Enterprise Search
Source: ACM Queue
Search Considered Integral
Two people from the IT department at Morgan Stanley weigh-in on enterprise search. Lots of material on faceted classification (breaking down an entry into components), metadata, folksonomies (not very positive about them in the workplace, the same with user ratings), alerts, and more. Overall a good overview. Those of you who have read our blog for a long time know that we’re big fans of what faceted classification can offer. Two comments. 1) Sorry to see that information professionals (people with many years or metadata training (aka cataloging experience, were not mentioned). 2) If you want to demo a faceted search solution, try TheGateway.org or Indiana’s Smart Desktop. Both are databases of educational resources with technology powered by Siderean. Elegant, useful, easy, small, if any learning curve and faceted classification shows what the power of well constructed metadata can do. Btw, here’s another example of faceted classification/search in a news setting. Finally, for the non-librarians out there who love to mention Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC). You might be interested to know that DDC is a faceted classification scheme.
See Also: Have You Checked Out the Dewey Browser Project from OCLC Research? Cool!
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Web Search–Technorati
Source: Technorati
The Associated Press and Blog Search Engine Technorati Announce Agreement
From the announcement, “to provide up-to-the-minute links helping readers navigate between AP news coverage and recent blogs about stories on AP’s Hosted Custom News service for Web sites. When readers visit an AP member Web site that uses AP Hosted Custom News, they will see a module featuring the “Top Five Most Blogged About” AP articles. This module is dynamically powered by Technorati and within it, the reader will see links to a Technorati page that guides them to recent blog posts about that specific AP article. Additionally, when readers click on an AP article, Technorati will deliver “Who’s Blogging About That Article,” a listing of blog names with the date and time recent posts were made. The new functionality will be available to the more than 440 AP member Web sites in the United States that take AP’s Hosted Custom News.”