One of the very early desktop search players, have renamed X1 Desktop Editon to X1 Enterprise and made the program available for free. This enterprise edition is just that, available for an enterprise (if so desired). We had no trouble loading and running it on a single PC.

The “new” enterprise version includes several new features including:
+ bundled Yahoo! Toolbar
+ search calendars and tasks
+ drag and drop search results
+ real-time indexing
+ search off-line or archived email
+ integrated web search button allows searches to be extended to the Internet.

As you know, X1 technology also powers Yahoo Desktop Search (YDS). This program became available in Jan 2005 and was last enhanced in October 2005. YDS currently does not index or search network drives.

The format lists (what each program is capable of indexing) for Yahoo Desktop and X1 look just about identical. YDS can also index Yahoo Messenger Chats and your Yahoo Address Book. YDS also installs LiveWords from Yahoo.

When we went to load X1 Enterprise we were first asked if we wanted to download several Yahoo products including the Yahoo toolbar and also change our home page to Yahoo. The X1 UI includes a link to Yahoo Search.

It’s a challenge (impossible? no way, geeks can do whatever needed) to have YDS and X1 Enterprise on your system at the same time.

For the rest of us, if you have X1 on your system and want to try Yahoo Desktop, a warning appears asking the user to remove X1 and then install the Yahoo tool.

Interestingly, a download of YDS also includes a link (upper right side of UI) inviting you to try X1 Enterprise.

We’ve always been very impressed with X1 minus copying and pasting from documents. Since PDF’s and PPT’s are saved (when indexed) as image files, cutting and pasting from them is a challenge and not as easy as with Copernic Desktop Search and others.

UI Screen Caps: YDS ||| X1 Enterprise

Thanks to Searchblog for the news tip.

IEEE and IBM have collaborated to launch a new website that combines interactive activities with information on careers in engineering. Tryengineering.org is designed to educate a variety of audiences about the different engineering disciplines and the impact engineers have on society. Targeted toward teachers, school counselors, parents and students, site visitors can explore how to prepare for an engineering career, ask experts engineer-related questions and play interactive games. Tools for teachers include lesson plans and engineering projects as well as a list of student competitions and science and engineering-oriented summer camps. The site launched on 5 June with a searchable list of accredited engineering
programs in the U.S. and Canada, and will be expanded to include programs in other English-speaking countries as well as Germany and France.

Bibliography: Leadership Accountability and Responsibility
Includes Internet resources, books, documents, periodicals.
Source: Air University Library

We’ve posted about ZoomInfo many times. This product, while far from perfect, uses open web content and aggregates information found on the open web about people. They offer a number of other features. More about ZoomInfo here.

Recently, ZoomInfo unveiled a beta named The Zoom List. Like their “people” database, The Zoom List uses artificial intelligence and NLP technology to build profiles about companies. To be more precise, they call the new service “A Directory of Companies, Products, and Services.”

At this point it’s not searchable (browse by category only). You can register for updates including when a company can go in and edit/modify their profile. You’ll also find lists of “Top Categories” and “Top Keywords” on the home page. Here’s the credit card processing category. Note the “Did you Mean” refinements and a list of products and services listed next to each entry. As you can see, some of these need work.

We’re going to add The Zoom List to our list of tools to keep a close eye on and regularly use.

Library Director Michele Reutty is under fire for refusing to give police library circulation records without a subpoena.

Reutty says she was only doing her job and maintaining the privacy of library patrons. But the mayor called it “a blatant disregard for the Police Department,” which needed her help to identify a man who allegedly threatened a child.

Reutty, the director for 17 years, now faces possible discipline by the library board. Members of the Borough Council have suggested she receive punishment ranging from a letter of reprimand in her personnel file to a 30-day unpaid suspension. But the Library Board of Trustees said it would reserve judgment until a closed-door hearing next month.

Source: NorthJersey.com

Library of Congress Webcast: Book Industry Trends
Presented at LC on 05/19/2006 by Albert Greco

The Science, Technology and Business Division sponsored a lecture by Albert Greco, who discussed recent and predicted book industry trends. This event was cosponsored with the Office of Technical Policy of Library Services.

Albert Greco is the author of “The Book Industry,” coordinator of the annual statistics gathering for the Book Industry Study Group, and professor of marketing at the Fordham University Graduate School of Business.

A pseudo press release from Microsoft discusses the work of Marc Najork, a researcher at MSR in Silicon Valley.

“I’m interested in Web search,” Najork explains, “and in particular, I’m interested in the ranking of search results.”

That interest has resulted in the creation of the Scalable Hyperlink Store, a specialized database that distributes a compressed version of the entire Web graph across a series of computers to deliver fast access to hyperlink information.

“There are, customarily, three different ways to rank search results,” Najork says. “One way is to see how well the query terms correlate with what’s on a Web page. You might compare the query to the actual content of the page. That’s been well explored.

“Another way to look at it would be to see what pages are popular with users. Essentially, you get feedback from the actual user population. There has been work done in that area, as well.

“The third possibility is that you examine the link structure of the Web: how Web pages link to one another. If a Web page links to another Web page, then, presumably, it’s saying: ‘This other Web page is a good page; why don’t you visit that?’ People caught up to that a long time ago.”

What hasn’t occurred, though, is a thorough evaluation of both types of algorithms that evaluate link structure. Query-independent algorithms, in which Web content is analyzed without taking a specific query into account, rely on the hypothesis that pages to which many other pages link are important and therefore elevated in the ranking of results to subsequent queries. This is the model for search technology, circa 2006.

Detecting Spam Web Pages through Content Analysis
10 pages; PDF.
by Alexandros Ntoulas, Marc Najork, Mark Manasse, and Dennis Fetterly
Fulll text of paper presented at 15th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW 2006), Edinburgh, United Kingdom, May 2006.
From the abstract:

In this paper, we continue our investigations of “web spam”: the injection of artificially-created pages into the web in order to influenc the results from search engines, to drive traffic to certain pages for fun or profit. This paper considers some previously-undescribed techniques for automatically detecting spam pages, examines the effectiveness of these techniques in isolation and when aggregated using classification algorithms. When combined, our heuristics correctly identify 2,037 (86.2%) of the 2,364 spam pages (13.8%) in our judged collection of 17,168 pages, while misidentifying 526 spam and non-spam pages (3.1%).

Libraries committed to equitable online access

The Australian Library and Information Association would like to work with the Federal Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts and her Department on the implications for Australia’s public libraries and their users of the Protecting Families Online program, announced today.

The Australian Library and Information Association supports the provision of free internet filters to Australian families and the increased support for community education on safe internet use included in the Protecting Families Online package.

The Association’s Executive Director, Sue Hutley, said that the increased funding for NetAlert, the government’s internet education and advisory body is welcomed as it will allow NetAlert to expand its community education activities.

Source: Australian Library and Information Association

LexisNexis to Unveil Plans for Congressional Hearings Digital Collection, Forming the Largest Online Collection of Congressional Information

LexisNexis U.S., a leading provider of information and services solutions, will unveil its plans for the LexisNexis® Congressional Hearings Digital Collection (www.lexisnexis.com/hearings) this week.

May Phishing Trends Report Available
+ Numbers of Targeted Brands Soar in May
+ European and Smaller US Banks Account for Target Scope Growth
+ Malware-dropping URLs and new Trojans subside slightly

7 pages; PDF.

Source: Anti-Phishing Working Group

A Political and Economic Introduction to China
86 pages; PDF.

Part I provides key facts and figures about China. Parts II and III review recent developments and future prospects by addressing four key questions. Is political authoritarianism sustainable? Can China’s development be peaceful? What are the main domestic economic challenges facing China? What is China’s impact on the world economy? Part IV summarises key aspects of UK and EU relations with China. The Paper ends with a select bibliography of key sources. The Research Paper is intended to act as a platform for a series of Library Standard Notes that will address in more depth specific issues about China that there is space here only to discuss briefly.

Source: House of Commons Library, UK

Cultivating Careers: Professional Development for Campus IT, a new EDUCAUSE e-book, provides an overview of practices for mentoring the next generation of IT leaders in higher education. Hear audio interviews with current leaders in the industry about how they got to where they are today. Cultivating Careers is available online in PDF and HTML. It can be viewed in its entirety or chapter by chapter at no charge.

Source: EDUCAUSE

Here’s the May list and some commentary. The April list is posted here.

Plan and Report of the Central Intelligence Agency Submitted to the Attorney General of the United States and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget In Compliance with Executive Order 13392. This report is the response of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to Section 2(b) of Executive Order 13392 which requires the Chief Freedom of Information Act Officer of each federal agency subject to the FOIA to develop an “agency-specific plan to ensure that the agency’s administration of the FOIA is in accordance with applicable law and the policies set forth in section 1 of this Order.”

7 pages; PDF.

Cataloging Electronic Resources: OCLC-MARC Coding Guidelines
“This document originally combined and superseded two older sets of OCLC guidelines for dealing with electronic resources: ‘Cataloging Electronic Resources: OCLC-MARC Coding Guidelines,’ by Rich Greene, first published in February 1998; and ‘OCLC Guidelines on the Choice of Type and BLvl for Electronic Resources,’ by Jay Weitz, first published in March 1998. This consolidated document was originally prompted by the issuance in June 1999 of ‘Guidelines for Coding Electronic Resources in Leader/06‘ by the Library of Congress Network Development and MARC Standards Office. Since that time, it has also incorporated changes prompted by the 2001 revision of AACR2 Chapter 9, ‘Electronic Resources;’ the 2002 revision of AACR2 to take into account integrating resources; the MARC 21 changes implemented on 2002 December 1 in preparation for the full implementation of coding for integrating resources; and the MARC 21 changes implemented in June 2006 that fully implement Bibliographic Level ‘i’ for integrating resources.”
Source: OCLC

House votes to create grants database

The House passed legislation that will establish a public database tracking federal grants, a move that advocates say will bring a new level of transparency to the government grant-making process. The bill, HR 5060, requires the government to post information as to whom a grant was awarded, a breakdown of assistance by agency and program source, all awards a grantee has received over the past 10 years and a list of dates and amounts of federal financial assistance the grantee has received.

Source: GCN

UPDATE 9/11: Senate backs online search of spending (via AP)

A far-flung coalition of groups across the political spectrum supports the idea and their efforts were rewarded Thursday as the Senate passed a bill to build a Google-like search engine to allow people to track online approximately $1 trillion in federal grants, contracts, earmarks and loans…The House passed a narrower version of the measure in June. The House version would allow searches of grants – which often go to nonprofits – but not contracts awarded to businesses.

See Also: Read the Legislation of the Senate Bill (S 2590) via THOMAS

See Also: Looking for a Database of Government Pork Spending? The Visit the Congressional Pig Book and Database
The Pork Database has Over 9,963 projects by keyword, state, or appropriations bill. The book and datbase is produced by Citizens Against Government Waste.

See Also: Although Google is used as a verb in the article (be careful), don’t forget the MUCH improved and very useful FirstGovSearch powered by MSN with dynamic clustering and other useful tools from Vivisimo. It’s a very useful product.

AALL Annual Meeting Handout Materials Collection
“Welcome, attendees! Now you can preview and print handout materials before you get to St. Louis and bring only the materials for the programs you plan to attend…. The materials posted below include all files submitted to AALL for inclusion in this collection in PDF format. Files were solicited, but not necessarily received, for all programs. Additional materials may be provided on site by the programs’ speakers.”
Source: American Association of Law Libraries (Annual Meeting and Conference; July 8 – 12, 2006 – St. Louis, Missouri)

HealthComm Key is a searchable database containing comprehensive summaries from published peer-reviewed studies related to health communication. You can use HealthComm Key to improve your public health programs by applying findings from previous studies and evaluations.

Health Communication Web Resources is a monthly compilation of sites, articles, etc., organized by Marcia Zorn, MLIS. Archived issues (MS Word, Available). A must if this is a topic of interest.

It’s always cool (but rare) when two of your favorite resources announce that they’ll be working together. Long time readers of ResourceShelf know that we think the Librarians’ Internet Index is an essential research tool and one of the shining examples of information professionals not only organizing the web but making decisions over what is and is not of quality. In other words, doing collection development on the open web.

Another product that we’ve written about many times is Siderean, technology from an El Segudo, CA company that offers technology that makes retrieval easier via faceted navigation. Their technology also illustrates the power that great metadata can provide. This post (2nd item), for example, offers more and several examples of Siderean technology in action. Both cool and VERY useful!!!

So, what’s today’s news?

We’ve learned that the LII has selected Siderean technology to help users navigate their index.

Siderean will enable LII’s thousands of users to leverage powerful faceted navigation functionality to facilitate browsing, illuminate hidden content, and enhance discovery to improve their overall search experience on the site. For users looking for ways to find and organize information quickly and accurately, Siderean’s Seamark Navigator will help them rapidly browse these collections to improve discovery. “One of the key reasons for selecting Siderean’s Seamark Navigator was its front-end navigation features,” said Karen G. Schneider, director of LII. “By replacing our existing, cumbersome search capabilities with faceted navigation, our growing community of users will be able to quickly and easily browse our vast collection of peer-reviewed content.

Great choice, Karen. You’ve made a good choice to make the LII even more useful. ResourceShelf will keep you posted as Siderean technology is implemented on the LII site. You can find links to several examples of Siderean tech already in use in this post (2nd item).