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Archive for September, 2006

Hooray! Libraries and Librarians Get Some Attention

Saturday, September 30th, 2006

Most reliable search tool could be your librarian
Personal post from Gary.
I was excited when Elinor Mills from News.com called me the other day about libraries and librarians. We’ve been asking her to do a story like this for years. This is the story that came from that conversation. Of course, I wasn’t the only one Elinor spoke with and was thrilled to see comments from other info pros including Ira Bray, ResourceShelf friend, Sarah Houghton-Jan (aka The Librarian in Black), our co-author and close friend, Chris Sherman*, and Lee Rainie are included in the final edit. Remember, most of the people who will read this article are NOT librarians.

So, a very positive headline will hopefully draw readers to learn about and visit the LII, Infomine, and IPL. Yes, it’s a good thing that perhaps a few more people will realize that a library is the home of many electronic services available 24×7 remotely.

However, what’s more important is that the value of the librarian is still important and will grow over time. The challenge for us is to speak up and demonstrate our value, be it in a traditional or, increasingly, a non-traditional library setting. Folks, we have important skills. Let’s make sure others realize this fact!

Honored to be a part of the article. Thanks, Elinor!!!

Source: News.com

See Also: Chris’s Latest Book, Google Power
Hard to comment on this one. Lots about all engines, not only Google. Disclaimer: I was contributor and served as technical editor for the book.

Posted in Libraries and Librarianship | No Comments »

A Selected List of Web Page Preservation and Archiving Projects

Saturday, September 30th, 2006

Before we begin, please note that this is far from a comprehensive list. It’s just a beginning. Many large web archiving projects (in many languages) are coming online all of the time. Plus, others already exist that we did mention in this first go around. In other words, more to come.

European Archive Foundation Launches Free Digital Library

The European Archive Foundation said Thursday it has launched its massive digital library of free music and film. The nonprofit organization collaborates with national libraries and other organizations to make non-copyrighted, or free-use material available to the public.

Direct to the European archive
At launch contents includes:
+ 22 British Government Public Information Films
+ Recordings (limited accessibility by region)
+ Web Pages and Sites
++ European Constitution Web Archive
++ UKGOV Weekly Web archive
Weekly collection of 11 UK government websites

Source: AP
Thanks to Peter Suber from Open Access News (essential reading) for the news tip.

Here’s a List of Some Other Web Archiving Projects
Remember, more to come.

+ Don’t Forget The Internet Archive is full of Music, Film, Text, and Numerous Special Collections along with the Essential Wayback Machine. Some of the special web collections include:
+ Hurricanes Katrina and Rita
+ Web Pioneers

+ Using Archive-It Technology from the Internet Archive, here are a few of the collections built so far using Archive-It. Learn about each of these archives and find links to many more on this page.

+ Anarchism
A collection of websites of anarchist organizations (groups, networks) around the world.
+ Canadian Labour Unions
+ Canadian Political Parties And Political Interest Groups
+ Canadian Political Interest Groups
+ Islamic Middle East
+ Latin American Government Documents Archive, LAGDA
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.
+ Archive Of Political Parties And Elections In Latin America
+ North Carolina State Government Web Site Archive
+ South Dakota, Legislative Research Council
+ Archive Of Venezuelan Political Discourse
+ Virginia State Government, Judicial Branch, Collection
Universities
+ Indiana University Web Sites
+ University Of Southern California Website Archive
University Of Toronto Web Archives
Learn about each of these archives and find links to many more on this page.

+ 2004 Presidential Term Web Harvest
Note: Keyword searchable using Nutch software.

The 2004 Presidential Term Web Harvest is a National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) project that produced a collection of federal web sites copied, or harvested, from the world wide web between 10/14/04 and 11/19/04. The Heritrix web harvester and a list of 982 active and unrestricted second level URLs were used to capture all linked federal sites down to the fourth level. Those initial 982 “.gov” and “.mil” URLs were provided by U.S. General Services Administration’s (GSA) “.GOV” Internet Domain Registry and the Defense Information Systems Agency (DOD/DISA)…The harvest collection contains approximately 6.5 terabytes of information, roughly 75 million web pages and represents about 50,000 “.gov” and “.mil” unrestricted federal web sites active between 10/14/04 and 11/19/04.

+ MINERVA (Mapping INternet Electronic Resources for Virutal Archive (via LC)
Web Archives Available:
+ 107th Congress
December 12, 2002
+ Election 2002
Jul. 1, 2002 – Nov. 30, 2002
September 11, 2001
Sep. 11, 2001 – Dec. 1, 2001
Election 2000
Aug 1, 2000 – Jan 21, 2001

+ White House Web Site “Snap Shots” (via Clinton Library)
1994, 1999, 2000, Late 2000-2001 (Final Days), White House Virtual Library (1993-Mid Jan 2001)

+ Australia, Pandora Archive (via NLA and Partners)

Australia’s Web Archive

PANDORA, Australia’s Web Archive is a growing collection of copies of Australian online publications, established initially by the National Library of Australia in 1996, and now built in collaboration with nine other Australian libraries and other cultural collecting organisations.

+ United Kingdom Web Archiving Consortium

Despite our apparent dependence on this medium, very little attention has been paid to the long-term preservation of websites. Indeed, with the life of an average website estimated to be around 44 days (about the same lifespan as a housefly) there is a danger that invaluable scholarly, cultural, and scientific resources will be lost to future generations. To address this problem, a consortium of six leading UK institutions is working collaboratively on a project to develop a test-bed for selective archiving of UK websites. View the project timeline here.

+ Books: Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web (via George Mason University, Center for History and New Media

A book that provides a plainspoken and thorough introduction to the web for historians who wish to produce online work, or to build upon and improve the projects they have already started.

Posted in Digital Preservation, Preservation/Conservation | 1 Comment »

Alexa’s Web Search Platform Releases Three Verticals to Showcase Platform including Robots.txt Search

Saturday, September 30th, 2006

While there has been a lot written lately about Amazon’s Web Services (including this recent video interview with Jeff Bezos) it’s easy to forget that Amazon’s Alexa service offers a web search platform (in addition to its public web search engine and rankings). Recently, Alexa’s team built three “alternative vertical search tools” to showcase the platform. Interesting demos and some reading for over the weekend. The robots.txt search is a fave.

+ robots.txt Search
Search by user agent. Interesting, cool, and even a bit fun. We just wish there were more ways to search. Results also available in XML. Here’s a search for sites with the Google-Media Partners bot mentioned in robots.txt. Also searches for the Googlebot-Image and MSNBot.

How it was built.

+ Camera Image Search
Search by: Camera Model, Focal Length, Exposure Time, and other criteria.

How it was built.

+ ZIP File Search
Search by file name, file date, file name.

How it was built.

Thanks to Tony Ruscoe for some help with this post.

Posted in Web Search | No Comments »

Maps: Anti-Phishing and Crimeware Map

Saturday, September 30th, 2006

Phishing and Crimeware Map

The Phishing and Crimeware map displays the most recent data collected by Websense Security Labs (WS Labs) and provides a historical look into where Phishing and Crimeware related websites are hosted on the Internet. Upon discovery, each site is looked up via its IP Address to track the country of origin through the appropriate IP registrars and plotted on the map. The data is updated approximately 15 minutes after discovery.

Source: Websense via Anti-Phising Working Group

Posted in Geographic, Technology and Internet | No Comments »

Presentation: Looking to the longer term: some perspectives on data curation and preservation

Friday, September 29th, 2006

Director’s presentation at Grand Challenge event available
Liz Lyon spoke recently in her capacity as Associate Director of the DCC [Digital Curation Centre] on the Grand Challenge Project at a one-day seminar at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. Her presentation, entitled “Looking to the longer term: some perspectives on data curation and preservation”, is now available.

Source: UKOLN

Posted in Digital Preservation, Papers and Presentations, Preservation/Conservation | No Comments »

RSS: Update Time for Google Reader and Bloglines

Friday, September 29th, 2006

Google Reader & Ask’s Bloglines Undergo Updates

Barry has the latest about new features from both services. Highlights.

+ Google Reader:
Unread counts, mark all as read, folders, and more

+ Faster access, support for DHL package tracking, and the use of Skweezer (a service we often mention) with Bloglines Mobile or better page rendering of non-optimized mobile pages.

See Also: We recently posted about another service that very similar to Skweezer that we also like a lot called MobileLeap.

Posted in RSS | No Comments »

New Prototypes Hit the JSTOR Sandbox

Friday, September 29th, 2006

JSTOR subscribers have some new prototypes to try out via the JSTOR Sandbox

+ JSTOR/ARTstor Search Prototype
++ The ability to search for article content, images from articles, and ARTstor images, all at the same time.
++ The display of article image thumbnails in search results, along with the image caption.
++ ARTstor results that contain title, creator, and date information. If your institution is an ARTstor participant, you will also see ARTstor image thumbnails in your results and be able to click to view the full-sized image and complete metadata.
++ The separation of the search results into three tabs, Articles, Images from Articles, and ARTstor Images, so that you can easily focus on the kinds of results you’re interested in.

Search Prototype
Features
+ The ability to limit your search to a particular discipline(s) from Basic Search.
+ An option to limit your search to a particular language from Advanced Search.
+ Modifications to Advanced Search that make it easier to search for different terms in multiple fields. For example, a search for keywords in the article title and an author name can be quickly and easily constructed using Advanced Search

Have fun in the sandbox.

Posted in Information Industry | No Comments »

Learn About: The GPO Legacy Documents Collection of Tangible U.S. Government Publications

Friday, September 29th, 2006

Learn About: The GPO Legacy Documents Collection

One of the strategic goals of the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) is to digitize a complete legacy collection of tangible U.S. Government publications to make sure that these materials are available, in the public domain, for permanent public access. The conversion of tangible materials will begin with printed publications, and will eventually include microfiche and other formats.

GPO will:

* Coordinate this effort;
* Assist in the establishment and implementation of standards;
* Maintain a registry of digitization projects;
* Serve as a trusted repository for preservation and access, in addition to any other places that the materials might be held;
* Certify and authenticate the electronic files; and
* Ensure that there is appropriate cataloging and metadata for the items in the collection.

GPO is looking for donations of these legacy publications in support of its digitization demonstration project. The list of needed publications, which will be updated weekly if there are any changes, is attached. This list will be posted throughout the digitization pilot, which runs through December, or until we acquire all needed publications].

Source: GPO

Posted in Government Documents and Political Information | No Comments »

Educational Resources Guide: Center for Non-Proliferation Studies, Monterey Institute

Friday, September 29th, 2006

Educational Resources Guide: Center for Non-Proliferation Studies, Monterey Institute

The Internet represents an important resource for the field of nonproliferation studies. Many sites maintained by key organizations for nonproliferation studies contain easily accessible and detailed information. Especially in a dynamic field such as nonproliferation studies, the Internet can provide a useful educational tool for students, professors, researchers and the general public. However, in the past years, the Internet revolution has made the location of reliable, accurate and educational information more and more challenging. The Center for Nonproliferation Studies Educational Resources Guide (CNSERG) aims to guide students, educators, researchers and the general public to the location of educational nonproliferation information on the Internet.

Source: Monterey Institute

Posted in Resources for Educators | No Comments »

Small Business: State Economic Profiles

Friday, September 29th, 2006

State Economic Profiles

The economic condition of small businesses in the United States, each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia and the U.S. territories is illustrated in Small Business Profiles for the States and Territories, published in 2006. Each state profile contains sections on the following topics: the number of firms, industry composition, small business income, banking, women and minority business ownership, and employment. For additional information, detailed historical data may be found in the Small Business Economic Indicators.

Source: U.S. Small Business Administration, Office of Advocacy

Posted in Business and Economics, Statistics | No Comments »

Toys “R” Us Unveils “Hot Toy” List for 2006 Holiday Season

Friday, September 29th, 2006

Toys “R” Us Unveils “Hot Toy” List for 2006 Holiday Season
“Organized by age from Babyâ€™s First Christmas to Big Kids, customers looking for the perfect gift can turn to Toys ‘R’ Us for the best selection of must-have and exclusive toys new to the market in 2006. From the overall list, the ‘Fabulous 15′ were chosen, representing the very best, new toys of the holiday season.”

Source: Toys “R” Us

Posted in Lists and Rankings | No Comments »

Study: UNESCO releases study on innovative media use of youth

Friday, September 29th, 2006

UNESCO releases study on innovative media use of youth

Young people, working with a range of media materials, produce innovative content through dialogue and discussions says a recent UNESCO study on â€œInnovative Practices of Youth Participation in Mediaâ€. On the basis of case studies in Ghana, Haiti, India, Kyrgyzstan, Mexico, Mozambique, Nigeria, Somalia, South Africa, Vietnam, and Zambia, the study examines how youth get involved with an assortment of media including newspaper and magazine, radio, television and video, the Internet, and personal digital assistants.

Direct to Full Text (76 Pages; PDF)

Source: UNESCO

Posted in Access to Information, Information Seeking, Technology and Internet | No Comments »

Resource of the Week: United States Naval Observatory Library

Thursday, September 28th, 2006

Resource of the Week: United States Naval Observatory Library
By Shirl Kennedy, Editor

The first question you might have is, “What the heck is the U.S. Naval Observatory?” Well, it does some very cool things:

The U.S. Naval Observatory performs an essential scientific role for the United States, the Navy, and the Department of Defense. Its mission includes determining the positions and motions of the Earth, Sun, Moon, planets, stars and other celestial objects, providing astronomical data; determining precise time; measuring the Earth’s rotation; and maintaining the Master Clock for the United States. Observatory astronomers formulate the theories and conduct the relevant research necessary to improve these mission goals. This astronomical and timing data, essential for accurate navigation and the support of communications on Earth and in Space, is vital to the Navy and Department of Defense. It is also used extensively by other agencies of the government and the public at large.

In our wanderings around the federal Internet, the library website here is one of the more intriguing ones we’ve seen. It offers three basic ways to navigate — via links in a vertical navigational window on the left, via text links at the bottom of the page, or via links surrounding the attractive image of the Greek muse Urania, who is the muse of astronomy. This image is the Observatory Seal, and is also featured on the library bookplate. And the OPAC here is called Urania.

The library is in the process of scanning its historical photo collection. More than 800 of the 5,000+ photos and glass plates have been scanned so far. Use the box provided to search the collection. Dropdown menus provide boolean, case matching and image type options. Alternately, you can use the list of search keywords; simply check the box or boxes next to the relevant terms.

For more eye candy, have a look at Images, Artwork and Historical Objects at the US Naval Observatory for pictures of old globes and maps, clocks, telescopes and more.

Speaking of eye candy, check out this historical picture of the library, probably from the 1890s.

The electronic journals page is extensive; a few links are restricted to the Observatory community, but most are not. Browse alphabetically; obviously, the listings are heavy on astronomy specifically and science in general. There’s a nice page of links to other libraries; you’ll find many that are new to you and may be worth a browse. Links to key astronomical resources are available from another page.

The Abstracts & Indexes page also provides links to useful resources such an acronym finder, an astronomy thesaurus, bibliographies, historical and biographical documents, and more. You’ll find something new here — guaranteed.

Alas, while I enjoyed browsing here, it reminded me of how I am still upset about Pluto being kicked to the curb, unceremoniously demoted to “dwarf planet” status. Oh well…

Posted in Libraries and Librarianship, Resource of the Week | No Comments »

New: Public Libraries and the Internet 2006: Study Results and Findings (U.S.)

Thursday, September 28th, 2006

Public Libraries and the Internet 2006: Study Results and Findings
Get ready for some serious reading, the report is a 255-page PDF file.
This report from the Information Use Management & Policy Institute, Florida State University was written by John Carlo Bertot, Ph. D., Charles R. McClure, Ph. D., Director and Francis Eppes Professor, Paul T. Jaeger, Ph.D. and J. D., Assistant Professor, and Joe Ryan, Senior Research Associate.

Key Findings

Libraries as Community Public Access Computing and Internet Access Points
Public libraries continue to provide important public access computing and Internet access in their communities:
â€¢ 98.9% of public library branches are connected to the Internet.
â€¢ 98.4% of connected public library branches offer public Internet access.
â€¢ 36.7% of public library branches offer wireless Internet access, up from 17.9% in 2004.
â€¢ 100% of high poverty branchesâ€”those with greater than 40% poverty in the service areaâ€”are connected to the Internet and offer public Internet access.
â€¢ Public library branches have an average of 10.7 public access computers, with rural libraries having an average of 7.1 workstations and urban libraries having an average of 17.9 workstations.

(more…)

Posted in Libraries and Librarianship, Technology and Internet | No Comments »

Indeed.com Launches Salary Search (Beta)

Thursday, September 28th, 2006

Indeed.com is one of a couple web resources (free) that aggregates job listings from numerous databases and company web sites. Others include SimplyHired.com and Yahoo Job Search.

Today, Indeed.com released (beta) and salary search tool that integrated in their search results. For example, librarian employment. Results can also be narrowed by location, librarian jobs in Seattle.

To access the salary info, look for the ‘more actions’ link beneath any job search result. It should read “Research xxx salaries in xxx.”

In the more actions box you’ll also see a feature that allows you to group duplicate job lisitings together.

Even if you’re not in need of employment, these databases can serve as excellent CI tools. Most offer keyword alerts delivered via email or RSS and now the salary data can also be of value. Remember, this is a beta and just released today.

Bottom Line for the Beta:
Great idea and if you think about it another potential revenue stream for Indeed.com as they gather and store this info over time. The “Average Salary of Jobs with Related Titles” is useful and interesting to see how the actual published title can make a difference. That said, our search for “Search Engine Marketer in midtown Manhattan also said that Director of Corporate Communications, a Recruiter Sourcer, and VP of Sales were all related. Are they? Our very quick review of Sales VP jobs in New York found little about SEM. Also, a reminder that in some cases you’re searching a very specific area. For example, we found different salaries for a Certified Public Accountant in Chicago, IL, vs. a CPA in a zip code just a few miles away. Also, some type of autogenerated controlled vocab to bring like jobs with similar titles (or where acronyms are used) would help. For example a New York Certified Public Accountant averages one amount while a New York CPA averages another.

Most of this goes towards how the numbers are determined and hopefully a methodology will be part of the next release as the technology is also tweaked.

Search Briefs…Ask.com Launches Earthquake Info Maps & Enhances Weather Info…Yahoo Acquires Video Hosting & Remixing Company…Local Search: Merchant Full Circle

Thursday, September 28th, 2006

Ask.com Launches Earthquake Info Maps & Enhances Weather Info

Live today on the Ask.com web site are enhancements for two services.

(more…)

Posted in Geographic, Web Search | No Comments »

Elsevier’s Scopus Announces Two New Features: PatentCites and WebCites

Thursday, September 28th, 2006

Elsevier’s Scopus Announces Two New Features: PatentCites and WebCites

From a news release:

+ Patent Cites (went live last week)

…allows users to track how primary research is practically applied in patents. Scopus PatentCites clearly identifies citations from patent sources that cite Scopus articles on the Abstract and References page. Just like article citation counts, PatentCites links directly to the source items. This unique feature enables users to immediately see the relationship of primary research to its practical application in patents and will be of particular value to those working in disciplines such medicine, engineering, chemistry, agriculture or other applied sciences. Among the key growing number of patent sources covered and updated daily are the US Patent Office, European Patent Office and the World Intellectual
Property Organization.

+ Web Cites (coming soon)

WebCites, which is to be launched shortly, is the first step towards enabling Scopus users to track the influence of peer reviewed research on web literature. Influence can be evaluated by how often an article has been cited in other research articles; however, research influence often extends beyond the official scholarly literature. For example, how the article has been used in patents, theses or other “grey literature” often available on the web…users will be able to view citations to articles in Scopus from a growing number of carefully selected scientific web sources such as Institutional Repositories and Thesis and Dissertation databases. Users will be able to gain additional insights into the influence of specific articles and place article citation numbers from outside the peer-reviewed realm into perspective.

Scopus will celebrate its 2nd birthday in November.

(more…)

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

NLM Updates Tutorials and Training Manuals & Releases NIH Clinical Alerts and Advisories RSS Feed

Thursday, September 28th, 2006

+ NLM has updated both the PubMed online tutorial and the NLM Gateway and ClinicalTrials.gov Training Manual

+ NIH Clinical Alerts and Advisories RSS Feed Goes Live
NLM began offering clinical alert notices online in January 1991. Clinical alerts are provided to expedite the release of findings from the NIH-funded clinical trials where such release could significantly affect morbidity and mortality.

There are currently:
+ 30 clinical alerts
+ 7 clinical advisories

Source: NLM

Posted in Databases, Directories, and Guides, RSS | No Comments »

British Library and JISC Launch Massive Archival Audio Archive; Nat Library of New Zealand and BL Announce New Web Harvesting Programme

Thursday, September 28th, 2006

+ Now Live: Explore 12,000 selected recordings of music, spoken word, and human and natural environments
Massive digitisation programme by the British Library and JISC makes 3,900 hours of historic sound recordings available to students, researchers and academics A major new online resource available free to everyone in Higher Education (HE) and Further Education (FE) will provide easy access to thousands of hours of rare and historic sound recordings. Archival Sound Recordings (ASR), launched today by the British Library in partnership with JISC (the Joint Information Systems Committee), will make available to students, researchers and academics some 12,000 unique materials from the dawn of recording history to the present day. Searching the archive is open to everyone. However, ”

For copyright reasons, only people in licensed UK higher and further education institutions, or in our reading rooms can play the recordings. Downloading is available in licensed institutions.”

Direct to Archive.

Highlights of the fully searchable archive include:

* Unique and previously unpublished recordings of East African and South African music and cultural activities;
* The story of six decades of jazz in the UK, its varied styles, venues and characters, as told by musicians, promoters and label owners;
* A comprehensive archive of performances of Beethoven string quartets â€“ unique in the way it reflects changing performance styles over the past 100 years;
* Insights into the lives and concerns of painters, photographers and sculptors through interviews with artists such as Elisabeth Frink, David Bailey, Fay Godwin, Eduardo Paolozzi and Anthony Caro;
* Radio material illustrating the richness and diversity of African writing and political culture during the 1960s and 70s.

+ Harvesting Digital Heritage

The National Library of New Zealand Te Puna MÃ£tauranga o Aotearoa, The British Library and Sytec, a subsidiary of TelstraClear, have announced the successful development of a web harvesting management system.

The system, known as the web curator tool, will enable organisations to easily gather online material for storage in digital archives.

The web curator tool is the latest development in the practice of web harvesting (using software to â€˜crawl’ through a specified section of the world wide web, and gather â€˜snapshots’ of websites, including the images and documents posted on them)…The partnership was brought together under the auspices of the International Internet Preservation Consortium (IIPC) to find a desktop solution to the challenge of collecting web material that would allow widespread implementation of web harvesting without requiring a high level of technical understanding within organisations.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Survey, Full Text Article: IEEE Fellows Imagine the Future Of Technology

Thursday, September 28th, 2006

Survey, Full Text Article: Imagining the Future Of Technology
From the intro:

In our latest survey of IEEE Fellows [â€œBursting Tech Bubbles Before They Balloonâ€], conducted in conjunction with The Institute for the Future, in Palo Alto, Calif., some 700 of the worldâ€™s leading technological minds took an optimistic but clear-eyed look at which technologies willâ€”and wonâ€™tâ€”be making our lives bigger and better over the next 20 or so years.

Source: IEEE Spectrum (via What’s New @ IEEE)

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »