New Issue of Information Research (Volume 11 No 4 July, 2006)

+ Papers presented at ISIC 2006: the 6th Information Seeking in Context Conference, Sydney, Australia, 19-21 July, 2006 — Part I
Articles include:
++ A re-examination of information-seeking behaviour in the context of activity theory
++ Fast surfing for availability or deep diving into quality – motivation and information seeking among middle and high school students
++ Beyond information seeking: towards a general model of information behaviour

Other papers include:
+ The influence that JavaScriptâ„¢ has on the visibility of a Website to search engines – a pilot study
+ Scholarly use of information: graduate students’ information-seeking behaviour
+ Towards formal evaluation of collaborative work

MedSpeak

To make informed health decisions, you have probably read a newspaper or magazine article, tuned into a radio or television program, or searched the Internet to find answers to health questions. If so, you have probably encountered “medspeak,” the specialized language of health professionals. The Medical Library Association developed “Deciphering Medspeak” to help translate common “medspeak” terms:

Three guides available:

+ Medspeak Terms

+ Rx Riddles Solved! (a prescription shorthand guide)

+ Top Ten Most Useful Medical Web Sites

NOTE: These brochures also available in Spanish.

Source: Medical Library Association

+ AOL now testing closed captions for streaming news content from CNN that will enhance the online media experience for people who are deaf or hard of hearing. Captioned CNN video content will be available throughout the AOL network, including the AOL service, the free AOL.com Web portal ) and the AOL Video portal. AOL, which is the first consumer Internet service to provide captioned online videos, has offered closed captioning since 2003 for select content on its KOL service for kids aged 6 to 12. AOL also offered synchronized text transcripts for CNN news updates that were limited to the text of a news anchor’s script. Now, content from CNN, including videos for the day’s headlines, current events, new stories, entertainment, and more will be manually captioned to ensure all of the audio in a video stream is completely accessible. AOL plans to provide closed captioning for additional video content over the coming months. Learn more here/demos.

+ “Early-stage Experiment” from Google Labs: Google site to aid the blind
See Also: Speakwire has been around for a couple of years and allows users to enter in any RSS feed and have it read to them using synthesized speech. Also, Speegle (from the Speakwire team) has been around for a couple of years and also allows Google results to be spoken. In fact, you can set Speegle to determine how much is spoken (Title only; URL and Description; URL, Title, Description). Finally, Speeglebot is experimental tech (like the others) where you can have a conversation with the database.

Last week we posted about some new Smart Answers from Ask.com using data from the CIA World Factbook posted directly on results pages. Well, another week and Ask.com is announcing a new entry in their Smart Answer arsenal.

This time around it’s the release of “RSS Smart Answers.”

Ask.com has posted info about this new feature on their blog.

In a nutshell, when you now enter the title of a blog or feed, the three most current headlines are placed at the top of the Ask.com results page, before the ads and before the organic links. These headlines are updated in near real time. Of course, not each and every feed is in there but the SA team is working to add more feeds into the SA format in a timely manner. More info about the service will be available soon. Don’t confuse this new web search feature with Ask’s new feed/blog search.

Examples include:

Library Blogs

+ Library Stuff
+ LII What’s New
+ ResearchBuzz
+ The Shifted Librarian
+ Librarian in Black
+ TVC Alert

Non-Library examples include:

+ Metafilter
+ Boing Boing
+ Daily Kos
+ Scoblelizer

Again, this is just an early release. Look for more sources and features in upcoming weeks.

Comment from Gary: A couple of people emailed me asking about this new Ask.com feature. It was in the works long before I joined Ask.com. That said, I think it’s very exciting. Why?
1) In the future we hope to use RSS feeds from not only blogs but from other types of info sources. Let’s say someone enters a library name, they might not only see web results (as expected) but other library info (new books might be one example) that’s being syndicated via RSS. With the growing amount of non-blog feeds/syndicated content out there, it’s easy to start thinking about the possibilities.
2) Access up to the minute content with no fuss, without even needing to know about a specialized interface or database. Remember, as statistics have shown, lots of people don’t know about RSS. It’s sometimes easy to forget this fact. A service like RSS Smart Answers makes as it as easy as simply typing in the name of the blog or feed into the search box. I think this is a useful way to not only get the content in the hands of more people but also (potentially) get more involved with RSS maybe moving on to an aggregator.

Barry points out* that Google Finance now offers suggestions as you enter a company name or ticker symbol. This is a trend we’ve written about many times and from many players. Here’s a quick review of non-Google suggest options.

+ SurfWax LookAhead (Several demos available).
Full review here. Unlike what others offer, LookAhead technology that can be licensed by any webmaster or site owner.

Selected Demos:

+ SurfWax LookAhead Blog Search
Very useful. A great way to see the technology in action.

+ Librarians and information professionals might be interested to view LookAhead technology used with a library OPAC. Here’s a demo using the SWAN OPAC from a group of libraries in suburban Chicago. Again, instead of rerunning a search for a keyword , you’ll see actual entries suggested prior to clicking the search button. Useful also as a knowledge discovery tool.

+ SEC Docs
This demo has been around for over 18 months and allows you to see the technology while searching for non-EDGAR docs on the SEC.gov site. Also, NEW, LookAhead using Yahoo Finance. Surfwax CEO Tom Holt was able to put together this quick and dirty demo (in only 15 minutes with just a list. Features over 30,000 companies/instruments and ticker symbols.
+ Yahoo Finance + LookAhead.
Expect more EDGAR search soon.

+ WikiWax (Direct to Wikipedia Entries)

+ Surfwax News
In this case, mapped to a controlled vocabulary.

More examples:

+ Answers.com
As you type direct links to entries are provided.

+ AOL Pinpoint Shopping
Mapped to a controlled vocabulary

+ Become.com
As you type, note the suggestion links (will run a search) below the search box.

+ Snap.com

+ Yahoo/AllTheWeb LiveSearch Demo

+ Finally, AOL Search used to offer something similar to what Google announced today (as far as ticker symbols go) but we were unable to get it to work today.
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*Btw, Barry also points out that Google Finance now offers a direct link to “unofficial” transcripts of conference calls. In April we posted about SeekingAlpha and also listed a couple of other services offering similar info.

+ Google and ACS Quietly End Lawsuit Trademark Case Re: Google Scholar (via News.com)

+ UK National Archives Chooses Autonomy To Personalise 30 Million Records And 1,000 Years Of British History

+ AlacraStore Adds Premium Content RSS Feeds

+ AOL’s In2TV Service Now Available in Spanish
Complete “classic tv shows” available with a Spanish language soundtrack. The news release has a list of the shows currently available. Direct to In2TV.

+ AOL’s AIM Pro Leaves Beta

+ Zillow and Yahoo Real Estate Announce a Deal

UK: Information Commissioner’s Office Releases Annual Report 2005-2006
72 pages; PDF.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is the UK’s independent public body set up to promote access to official information and to protect personal information. We enforce the Data Protection Act, the Freedom of Information Act, the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations and the Environmental Information Regulations, regulating the organisations that come within their remits.

Thanks to JISC Legal for the news tip.

Mapping Interdisciplinarity at the Interfaces between the Science Citation Index and the Social Science Citation Index (2006)
by Loet Leydesdorff.

The two Journal Citation Reports of the Science Citation Index 2004 and the Social Science Citation Index 2004 were combined in order to analyze and map journals and specialties at the edges and in the overlap between the two databases. For journals which belong to the overlap (e.g., Scientometrics), the merger mainly enriches our insight into the structure which can be obtained from the two databases separately; but in the case of scientific journals which are more marginal in either database, the combination can provide a new perspective on the position and function of these journals (e.g., Environment and Planning B—Planning and Design). The combined database additionally enables us to map citation environments in terms of the various specialties comprehensively. Using the vector-space model, visualizations are provided for specialties that are parts of the overlap (information science, science & technology studies). On the basis of the resulting visualizations, “betweenness”—a measure from social network analysis—is suggested as an indicator for measuring the interdisciplinarity of journals. This paper is forthcoming in Scientometrics.

Source: DLIST

Recently Released: Documentation for the Academic Library Survey (ALS) Data File: Fiscal Year 2000 (Public-Use)

This manual describes the methods, procedures, techniques, and activities that were used to produce the Academic Library Survey of 2000 (ALS:2000). This manual is designed to provide guidance and documentation for users of the ALS data. Included in the manual are the following: an overview of the study and its predecessor studies; an account of instrumentation; a summary of the data collection methodology and results, including detailed response rates; a description of data preparation and processing activities; and an overview data file structure and contents. In addition, there are a number of appendices. The ALS: 2000 provides information pertinent to libraries at 3,527 degree-granting postsecondary educational institutions throughout the 50 states, and the District of Columbia.

See Also: Compare Academic Libraries Tool (Using 2004 Data)
See Also: Compare Public Libraries (2004 Data)
See Also: More Info and Materials via NCES Library Statistics Program

Source: NCES

From the article:

The Scottish Executive has provided almost £280,000 for a three year project, named Future Museum, to set up an integrated website linking all museums between Largs, Kilmarnock, Ayr and Dumfries, it announced on 17 July 2006.

Other public sector organisations – notably by East, North and South Ayrshire Councils plus Dumfries and Galloway Council – have provided the rest of the £500,000 funding. The project is aimed at highlighting the historical and cultural distinctiveness of the south west region.

To date, 2,000 images that chronicle the industries which helped shape the development of the region have been posted on the website. That figure will rise to 10,000 over the next three years.

National heroes with a link to the south-west – including Robert the Bruce, Robert Burns and William Wallace – also feature.

Source: Kable’s Government Computing

See Also: Art Museums: A Collection of Searchable Databases

Access this site optimized for mobile web browsers at: wap.gc.ca or www.gc.ca

Features include:
+ Canadian Company Capabilities (New Feature)
+ Government of Canada news releases, media advisories, background news, and more
+ Border Wait Times
+ Canadian Hurricane Centre
+ Currency Converter
+ Economic Indicators
+ Government of Canada Employee Phone Numbers
+ 1 800 O-Canada International Toll-free Numbers
For more info and instructions check this page.

Animation at the NFB
“Explore the NFB’s rich animation heritage, learn about the techniques used in our films and discover some of our key filmmakers.”
+ A little history: The first team
+ Techniques
+ Key Filmmakers
+ Fifty NFB animated shorts

Source: National Film Board of Canasa

Just Released: Light-Duty Automotive Technology and Fuel Economy Trends: 1975 Through 2006

This report provides data on the fuel economy and technology characteristics of new light-duty vehicles (cars, vans, sport utility vehicles (SUVs), and pickup trucks) for model years 1975 through 2006. Since 1992 average fuel economy has been relatively constant, ranging from 20.6 to 21.4 miles per gallon (mpg). Based on sales projections provided by automotive manufacturers to EPA, model year 2006 vehicles are estimated to average 21.0 mpg, the same as last year, but five percent below the fleet-average fuel economy peak value of 22.1 mpg achieved in 1987. After two decades of steady growth, the light truck market share has been relatively stable for five years.

+ Direct to Full Text Exec Summary
+ Direct to Full Text (101 pages; PDF)

Source: EPA

A Selection of New Statistical Reports from the European Union (all of these reports are PDF files)
+ Causes of death in the EU25 – Significant differences among Member States

+ Comparative price levels for selected consumer services in Europe for 2005

+ Euro area annual inflation stable at 2.5%

+ Minimum Wages 2006

Source: EuroStat

Timeline of Key Events in Lebanon

Source: InfoPlease.com