Texts to reveal ‘Whodunnit (via EurekaAlert)

sychologists at the University of Leicester are to investigate texting language to provide new tools for criminal investigation.

The forensic linguistic study based in the Forensic Section of the School of Psychology will examine how well an individual can be identified by their texting style.

A prior case where this was used was the investigation of murder a few years ago. At the 2002 trial an alibi was broken based on the evidence that the murderer and not the victim had sent crucial messages from her phone. Text analyses revealed that the texts had not been written by the victim herself, but that they had been faked to deflect suspicion from the killer as there were a number of differences in the texting styles between the victim and murderer. Linguistic analysis is therefore a useful tool which can reveal secrets within the criminal investigation, which otherwise would not be apparent. This present study aims to develop the technique further by investigating text language and style.

The innovative six-month study will assess similarities and differences in texting style, between texts sent by individuals and within and between networks of people who frequently text one another. The researchers are inviting ordinary people to help them with the study by completing an anonymous on-line questionnaire. Although forensic authorship analysis is a growing area of research, this is the first study to focus on mobile phone texting.

The research is being conducted by Dr. Tim Grant, forensic linguist and Kim Drake, a forensic researcher, at the University’s School of Psychology.

Learn More Here from the University of Leicester

Resource of the Week
By Shirl Kennedy, Deputy Editor

The Mortgage Professor

If your daily collection of spam is anything like mine, it probably contains more than one “offer” to refinance your mortgage at some unbelievably low rate. That is why computers have “delete” keys. In truth, though, the Web can be a valuable tool when you’re shopping for a mortgage, even if you eventually resort to the telephone or a bricks-and-mortar location when it’s time to “pull the trigger,” as most people seem to do, according to a study released in May by Forrester Research and Compete Inc. For example, Bankrate.com is a reliable tool for comparing mortage rates in your geographic area.

But let’s face it, even if it’s not your first home purchase, shopping and applying for a mortgage is an anxiety-generating activity; a bad decision could cost you thousands of dollars and, if you make a fatal mistake somewhere along the line, you could be turned down by multiple lenders. Maybe you’re lucky enough to have a knowledgeable friend or relative who will hold your hand throughout the mortgage process. For the rest of us, there is the Mortgage Professor — otherwise known as Jack M. Guttentag, Professor of Finance Emeritus at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

You can’t shop for a mortgage at the Professor’s website; the site is strictly ad-free and non-commercial — although Guttentag himself is founder of GHR Systems, Inc., “one of the nation’s leading providers of lending technology and related support services.” What you can do is equip yourself with enough information to shop intelligently and not be intimidated by those who wish to sell you something and likely do not have your best interests in mind.

Residential finance virgins may want to start at the beginning, a basic tutorial on selecting mortgage features. Learn about FRMs, ARMs, and interest-only options. What are “points”? What is a “lock period”? How much documentation will you need?

“The home mortgage market is a minefield for consumers shopping for a mortgage,” says the Processor. So even those who have “been there, done that,” as far as financing a home is concerned, would do well to read over Shopping Hazards You Want to Avoid. Learn how to make sure you are getting all the information you need, and how to avoid unnecessary fees and nasty surprises at the closing table. Crave more information? Read the extensive list of mistakes to avoid.

Rather than shopping directly for lenders, you may want to consider shopping for an Upfront Mortgage Broker, who is in a better position to shop the market for you. Guttentag explains what’s involved and provides a link to the Upfront Mortgage Brokers Association, which offers a searchable directory.

There is help here not only for those who are purchasing a house, but also for those who are building a house and need to know about construction loans, building financing, etc. For those who already have a home and a mortgage, there’s information about such things about prepayment, refinancing, second mortages, debt consolidation and more.

What else can you do here?
+ Learn how to shop for a mortage online, including which sites are the best.
+ Use the glossary to look up those many confusing terms and acronyms. The definitions include links to relevant articles available on the website.
+ Find useful calculators and downloadable spreadsheets.
+ Educate yourself via tutorials, or by browsing the Professor’s recent columns.
+ Leave a comment or question for the Mortgage Professor.

The website’s Table of Contents is available — oddly — via a link in the middle of the navigation pane on the righthand side of the home page, but it may not be the best way to start browsing, since there is a lot of information here. The site could use a good search engine, but if you’re desperate, you can always use Google’s site search feature.

Both of Marian Dworaczek’s classic and very useful resources were updated earlier this week.

Subject Index to Literature on Electronic Sources of Information

The same is true for Dworaczek’s, Electronic Sources Of Information: A Bibliography

EarthTrends Database Gets Another Update

EarthTrends is built and maintained by the World Resources Institute. Fully searchable.

Direct to EarthTrends

…we have recently updated nearly 70 indicators, including labor, land, GDP, and trade data sets with the most recent statistics available.

A complete list of what’s been updated is available below.

Water Resources and Freshwater Ecosystems
Industrial Water Pollution: Organic water pollutant (BOD) emissions

Population, Human Health, and Well-being
Labor: Agricultural labor force as a percent of total labor force
Labor: Agricultural labor force
Labor: Total labor force
Transportation: Passenger cars per 1000 people

Economics, Business and the Environment
Debt: Present value of debt as a percent of GNI
Debt: Total debt service
Debt: Total debt service as a percent of export earnings
Debt: Total external debt
Development Assistance: Aid as a percent of government expenditure
Development Assistance: Aid as a percent of GNI
Development Assistance: Aid per capita
Development Assistance: Aid received
GDP: Currency conversion factors (exchange rate)
GDP: GDP per capita, annual growth rate
GDP: GDP per capita, constant US dollars
GDP: GDP per capita, current US dollars
GDP: GDP per capita, PPP, current international dollars
GDP: GDP, annual growth rate
GDP: GDP, constant US dollars
GDP: GDP, current US dollars
GDP: GDP, PPP, current international dollars
GDP: Percent GDP from agriculture
GDP: Percent GDP from industry
GDP: Percent GDP from manufacturing
GDP: Percent GDP from services
GNI: Atlas method, current US dollars
GNI: PPP, current international dollars
Government Expenditure: General government final consumption expenditure
Government Expenditure: Government cash deficit or surplus as a percent of GDP
Government Expenditure: Military expenditure as a percent of government expenditure
Government Expenditure: Military expenditure as a percent of GDP
Government Expenditure: Public education expenditure as a percent of GDP
Government Expenditure: Public health expenditure as a percent of GDP
Labor: Workers’ remittances and compensation of employees, paid
Labor: Workers’ remittances and compensation of employees, received
National Savings: Gross savings as a percent of GNI
Tourism: International tourism expenditures
Tourism: International tourism receipts
Trade in Goods and Services: Current account balance
Trade in Goods and Services: Imports of goods and services
Trade in Goods and Services: Imports of goods and services as a percent of GDP
Trade in Goods and Services: Exports of goods and services
Trade in Goods and Services: Exports of goods and services as a percent of GDP
Trade in Goods and Services: Net trade in goods and services (balance of trade)
Trade in Goods: Agricultural raw materials exports as a percent of merchandise exports
Trade in Goods: Agricultural raw materials imports as a percent of merchandise imports
Trade in Goods: Fuel exports as a percent of merchandise exports
Trade in Goods: Fuel imports as a percent of merchandise imports
Trade in Goods: Food exports as a percent of merchandise exports
Trade in Goods: Food imports as a percent of merchandise imports
Trade in Goods: Merchandise exports
Trade in Goods: Merchandise imports
Trade in Goods: Manufactures exports as a percent of merchandise exports
Trade in Goods: Manufactures imports as a percent of merchandise imports
Transnational Corporations: Foreign direct investment, net inflows

Agriculture and Food
Agricultural Inputs: Water use intensity
Food Aid: Cereals donated by country
Food Aid: Cereals received by country
Labor: Agricultural labor intensity
Land: Arable land
Land: Irrigated land
Land: Irrigated land as a percent of total agricultural area
Land: Permanent cropland
Land: Permanent pasture
Land: Total area
Nutrition: Grain fed to livestock as a percent of total grain consumed

Source: WRI

Discovery Guides from CSA

Discovery Guides brief you in the basics of a subject and offer recent insights, while providing the technological tools to enhance your understanding.

Guides include:

+ Arts & Humanities
Performing Identity in the Digital Age

+ Natural Sciences
Genetically Modified Foods
Tsunamis and the International Response: Economic, Social and Environmental Dimensions

+ Social Sciences
Alzheimer’s Disease: A Family Affair and a Growing Social Problem

+ Technology
Publish or Perish: Afterlife of a Published Article
The Protection of Public Facilities against Terrorist Attacks

Note: Although these guides are of primary use to CSA subscribers we still think they will be of interest and value to those of you who do not have access to CSA databases.

Inquiring Minds at the Library
Lorene Roy, President-Elect of ALA, has a brief comment about a recent Washington Post article re: social search.

Thanks to David Dillard for the news tip.

rdfs:frbr: Towards an Implementation Model for Library Catalogs Using Semantic Web Technology
by Stefan Gradmann

From the abstract:

The paper sets out from a few basic observations (bibliographic information is still mostly part of the ‘hidden Web,’ library automation methods still have a low WWW-transparency, and take-up of FRBR has been rather slow) and continues taking a closer look at Semantic Web technology components. This results in a proposal for implementing FRBR as RDF-Schema and of RDF-based library catalogues built on such an approach. The contribution concludes with a discussion of selected strategic benefits resulting from such an approach.

Source: Cataloging and Classification Quarterly (via E-LIS)

Remember when Amazon.com’s A9 might quite a splash with the release of BlockView imagery for several U.S. cities? That was in January, 2005 and since then A9 has released BlockView or “street level” imagery for a few more cities but it has been some time since any new cities came online. Let’s be clear, the service is still online.

In the mean time, Microsoft is currently demonstrating something similar for San Francisco and Seattle.

While perusing the A9 site yesterday, I noticed that they’re looking for “Block View Drivers” to head out and start getting street imagery into the database. So, perhaps imagery for more cities and parts of cities is on the way. More about how they do it here. Stay tuned.

See Also: Pages Jaunes (Street Level Imagery for Cities in France and Spain)

+ Coleridge family papers saved for the nation (via BL)

The archive of the extended family of one of the greatest English Romantic poets, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, dating from the mid 18th to the early 20th centuries has been acquired by the British Library.

Formerly preserved in family ownership at The Chanter’s House, Ottery St Mary, Devon, it has now been purchased for the nation with the aid of generous grants from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, the Pilgrim Trust, the Friends of the National Libraries, the Friends of the British Library, the Lynn Foundation, the Gamlen Charitable Trust and the Denton Wilde Sapte Charitable Trust.

+ Newberry Receives Valuable Polish-American Records

+ Getty Will Distribute Images from AP Archive

The National Park Service Launches Improved Website
“The new homepage allows each of the country’s 390 NPS units to be searched by name, location, topic, or activity. Each park’s expanded website contains park trivia, updated information, and enhanced multimedia including video and graphics. Several parks have live web cams constantly displaying significant features such as the Old Faithful Geyser in Yellowstone National Park.”

+ Answers.com Places New Content Online
New sources include:
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific and Technical Terms
McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology
Barron’s Dictionary of Real Estate Terms

+ Swets launches ‘China Suite’

+ ProQuest Launches Highly Anticipated Digital Collection of Obituaries

New Report: Federal Criminal Justice Trends, 2003

Highlights include the following:
Drug offenses remained the most prevalent offense across stages over 10-year period.
The percent of suspects prosecuted (of matters concluded by U.S. attorneys) increased from 54% in 1994 to 62% in 2003.
Seventy-six percent of defendants terminating pretrial services in 2003 were detained compared with 58% in 1994.

Source: BJS

Fast Facts: Labor Day 2006

Another entry in the U.S. Census “Fact for Features” compilation series.

Facts include:

151 million
Number of people age 16 or older in the nation’s labor force in May 2006. Among the nation’s workers are 81.2 million men and 69.8 million women.

Another Day, Another Dollar
$40,798 and $31,223
The 2004 annual median earnings, respectively, for male and female full-time, year-round workers.

7.5 million
Number of workers who hold down more than one job.

Many more stats along with links to the primary source included in the document.

Source: U.S. Census

The 10 Most Expensive Paintings Ever Sold

Source: Infoplease.com

From the announcement:

England’s public libraries are playing a crucial, but often overlooked, role in the growth of the knowledge economy, a new study has found.

The report, ‘Public Libraries in the Knowledge Economy’, commissioned by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA), shows libraries play a central role in communities’ economic vitality.

Direct to Full Text of Report: Public Libraries in the Knowledge Economy (80 pages; PDF)

Librarians at the Gates
“The day-to-day challenges librarians face are inherent in the job description: defending access to controversial or banned books, staving off budget cuts, and creating and expanding programs to draw more citizens into one of the few remaining genuinely public commons in American life. While the ethic of secrecy often prevails in the gathering and dissemination of corporate and governmental information, the work of a librarian is imbued with just the opposite. Be it in the capacity of archivist, reference librarian or information technology professional, a common thread is the profession’s dogged commitment to safeguarding books, research and information to make knowledge more widespread, not less.”

Source: The Nation

Via MSNBC:

Using Google’s Book Search service, Web surfers hunting titles like Dante’s “Inferno” and Aesop’s “Fables” will be able to download PDF files of the books for later reading, to run keyword searches or to print them on paper. Up to now, the service only allowed people to read the out-of-copyright books online.

Useful idea? Sure. But it’s hardly a new one. For example, Michael Hart (Wikipedia entry) and Project Gutenberg have been making books available online for 35 years and allowing downloads in a number of formats.

Here are a few sample searches (using titles promoted in the news stories) of Google Book Search along with a list of more sources for full text books.

+ A Google Book Search for Aesop’s Fables. We’ve also limited the search to “full view” books. The first 10 results (when we searched) do NOT include the original Aesop’s Fables by Aesop.

Results #9 is The Fables of Aesop
No link to print the book in PDF. Perhaps this is an opening day glitch?

Update: Since several versions are available we did find one that is printable. The books are searchable by keyword but cannot be browsed by chapter/section or in this case fable.

Another title mentioned is Dante’s “Inferno”. Here’s a search for that title limited to full view books. We did not find the book in the Top 20 results. However, an advanced search limited to author does show the book and it’s available for printing. Will people take the time to limit by author? Again, the PDF versions do not allow browsing by chapter and for those of you who like scanned fingers (this was a meme going around a few week’s ago) look at page 5.

OTHER SOURCES
Project Gutenberg just celebrated its 35th anniversary. You’ll see they provide several versions (various translations) of Aesop’s Fables available for download. In the case of this title, it can be downloaded in numerous formats including:
+ HTML
+ Plain text
+ MS Lit for PocketPC
+ Palm Database
More info here including history and various FTP sites located around the world.

Want more? No problem.

Perhaps the best place to begin is Dave Mattison’s British Columbia Digital Library.
Although the site is named the British Columbia Digital Library there is something here for everyone. The Directories, Guides, Portals and Search Engines to Digital Libraries section is enough to keep one going for several weeks. MORE THAN worth a look. You’re likely to come away with many databases and sites to explore. Kudos Dave!

What follows is the a very small tip of a very large iceberg.

The World eBook Library
Here, in one place, access to over 330,000 full text books and growing. All in PDF and ready for printing. The cost? Only $8.95/year. They plan to have over 500,000 titles by 2007. Institutional memberships are also available. Titles in more than 100 languages and powerful advanced search features. A guided tour is available here. NOTE: The World eBook Library just completed the World eBook Fair where their ENTIRE library was available at no charge. Another eBook Fair will be coming in October.

2) International Children’s Digital Library
From the University of Maryland. Here’s a list of some recently added books. Very impressive!!! The search interface is amazing and is the way the books are presented. We also love the “Simple” search interface.
NOTE: The books here are not available for printing but the scanning is impressive and so is the presentation we thought it was worth an entry.

3) Shop ebrary
Many know this service as one licensed to libraries. However, they also offer over 20,000 NEW books free. All you need to do is put a minimum of $5 on account. You are only charged to print or copy a page. About 25 cents.

4) NetLibrary Text and Audio Books
Lots of content including books from Project Gutenberg that can be printed and nicely organized by chapter. Many libraries of all types offer this service for free. All you need is a library card. Both OLD and just released books. Again, a library card is all you need. We sure wish OCLC would do more to help libraries promote these services.

5) The Online Books Page at the University of Pennsylvania provides access to 10s of thousands of free books. As you’ll see here, new books are added daily. Access to all books, free.
See Also: DigitalBookIndex

6) The Open Access Text Archive from the Internet Archive
Includes over 10,000 books from the Million Books Project. The Internet Archive is also running the Open Content Alliance.

7) A few titles and collections that caught our eye today:

+ Digital Collections of the National Library of Australia
Most material printable. Manuscripts, sheet music, books, maps, and more.

+ Biologia Centrali-Americana from the Smithsonian Libraries (a work in progress, over 58 volumes)

+ The Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection from the Library of Congress (Many available as PDF’s)
The illustrated book, fifteenth through twentieth centuries.

+ Canadian Corporate Report Archive (prototype, via McGill University)
Materials in PDF.

+ Medicine in the Americas, 1619-1914: A Digital Library
Titles in PDF form.

+ National Center for Biotechnology Information Medical Bookshelf

+ Making of America (MoA)

Making of America (MoA) is a digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. The collection is particularly strong in the subject areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology. The collection currently contains approximately 9,500 books and 50,000 journal articles with 19th century imprints.

+ Harvard University Open Collections Program

+ The Library of the Internet Shakespeare Edition (via University of Victoria)

View and compare facsimiles of the works as originally printed; explore in-depth annotation of the plays as they are edited by our team of scholars.

+ Historic American Sheet Music (via Duke University)

Digital images of over 16,000 pages of sheet music from 3042 pieces published in the United States between 1850 and 1920.

Images are .jpg files and can be printed.

See Also: Using CustomizeGoogle, a well-known (over 5 million downloads) and very robust program for Firefox you can restablish right-click image printing for any Google Book Search book page.

See Also: Looking for Some Digitized “Historic” Video? Check out a Few Databases at the Bottom of this Post

See Also: Google Adds Library Search to Book Search: Thoughts, Issues, Questions

+ Science in Switzerland, 2001-05

+ Canadian Universities: Most Prolific in Anthropology, 2001-05

+ Microbiology: High-Impact U.S. Universities, 2001-05

+ What’s the “Hot” Paper in Chemistry

+ What’s the “Hot” Paper in Biology

+ Journals Ranked by Impact: Optics

Source: ISI

+ ProQuest Selected to Digitize Major Historic Newspapers

The Library of Virginia is partnering with ProQuest Information and Learning on the digitization of historically significant newspapers.

+ The Kids’ Site of Canadian Settlement: Phase two
(via Library and Archives Canada)