The October Issue of the Internet Resources Newsletter is Now Online
All hail Roddy and his team. News and numerous links to high quality web resources from Roddy and team at the Heriot-Watt University Library in the UK.

See Also: The Herriott Watt Team Also Offers the Cool, TechXtra

Find articles, key websites, books, the latest industry news, job announcements, ejournals, eprints, technical reports, the latest research, thesis & dissertations and more!

See Also: We First Mentioned TechXtra in this June 2006 Resource of the Week post.

From Mizzou’s Tiger Eye Reading Room: Kids Love Comics

Professor Charley Seavey interviews Jimmy Gownley and John Gallagher about their organization, Kids Love Comics. This interview took place on Comic Book Row at the 2006 American Library Association Annual conference in New Orleans.

Available in Quicktime or MP3.

Source: LIS Radio

British Library calls for digital copyright action

The British Library has called for a “serious updating” of current copyright law to “unambiguously” include digital content and take technological advances into account. In a manifesto released on Monday at the Labor Party Conference in Manchester, the United Kingdom’s national library warned that the country’s traditional copyright law needs to be extended to fully recognize digital content.

Source: News.com

See Also: Summary of Manifesto ||| Full Text of Manifesto (PDF)

Lists & Rankings: Best Places to Retire (2006)

Lists include:
+ Top 5 overall
+ Best by State
+ Where homes are most affordable
+ Most golf
+ Most 50+
+ Health care
+ Many more lists

FAQ and Methodology

Source: Money

100 Best Companies for Working Mothers
“For the 21st year, we have complied our report on the family-friendliest companies in America.”
Methodology

Source: Working Mother

House Speaker Hastert Opens New National Archives Legislative Treasures Vault

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-IL) joined Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein today to open the new National Archives ‘Legislative Treasures Vault.’ The Legislative Treasures Vault holds records identified by the National Archives, with the input of the Clerk of the House and Secretary of the Senate, as the most significant historical documents of Congress.
…
The Speaker viewed the following:

• Journal of the House of Representatives from the First Congress showing the duties of the Speaker of the House, April 7, 1789
• Report of House Committee on Foreign Relations “War Manifesto,” June 3, 1812 (”we the free-born sons of America”)
• Electoral vote tally from the historic 1824 election
• 1835 map of Illinois
• Post road petition, signed by Lincoln and other citizens of Illinois, 1834
• Former House Speaker Joe Cannon’s trunk
• President Abraham Lincoln’s “Fiery Trial” message to Congress, 1862 and nomination of Ulysses S. Grant as Lieutenant General of the United States Army, 1864
• House roll-call vote on declaration of war, 1941

Source: National Archives and Records Administration

See Also: Access to Archival Databases from NARA
See Also: The Archival Research Catalog (ARC)

NISO Issues “Best Practices for Designing Web Services in the Library Context”

The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) Web Services and Practices working group has completed NISO RP 2006-01, Best Practices for Designing Web Services in the Library Context. This new Recommend Practice publication covers the following areas: HTTP caching, filtering of user input, reuse of output formats, security, and throttling. The document also describes typical output formats used in web services DTD, XML schema, RDF, Relax NG, and DSD…This Recommended Practice publication is the first to be released under NISO’s new RP designation. These documents are intended to provide guidance in emerging areas where formalized standards may inhibit innovation. “The creation of the RP Series is part of NISO’s larger strategy to develop a more robust and flexible standards development process,” said Todd Carpenter, NISO’s Managing Director. NISO will also be reassigning several existing documents to this new designation.

Direct to Full Text (17 pages; PDF)

Source: NISO

There are numerous geocoders out there. Some free, some fee-based. Some global. Some worldwide.

They permit a user to enter an address and/or Zip Code and get back basic geographic info like
+ Latitude
+ Longitude
and with the service we are going to suggest census tract info and the County FIPS Code. Here’s an example, in this case for a Zip Code. Zip+4 also works. You can be as specific as a street address.

Funny, but in the past week we received three email notes looking for a suggestion for a U.S. geocoder.

Our suggestion would be to begin with a look at the geocoder from Melissa Data. It’s free, easy to use, and is part (have you seen what else Melissa Data offers for free) of a superb collection of free look-up tools that Melissa provides. If you’ve never seen Melissa Data’s free collection, it’s MORE THAN worth a look.

Once again, libraries, in this case a national library, offering direct help to people wanting to develop and create a business plan. Kudos. At the bottom of this post, note the “see also” reference. We might have a trend starting. Actually, it’s really nothing new, but it appears the media might be picking up on it.

From British Library newsletter:

A new free service has been launched in the Business & IP Centre: the Information Advice Service.

The service is aimed at users of the Centre who would like to have guidance on how to find information to develop a business idea. The service offers a 30-minute informal, but structured consultation in which a British Library information expert will work with you to compile a structured research plan. This plan will cover the full range of resources and services in the Business & IP Centre and elsewhere in the British Library.

Direct to BL Information Advice Service Home Page

See Also: This post from earlier today about libraries and the business person (in the See Also section).
This is a trend ResourceShelf is very happy to see.

No doubt that thousands of articles in both the mainstream press and business press have been published about click fraud. This week, BusinessWeek makes the topic its cover story in an investigation by Brian Grow and Ben Elgin. Along with the article you’ll find numerous sidebars, graphics (the differences between click fraud 1.0 and 2.0), and slide shows.

Title:
Click Fraud: The dark side of online advertising

+ Opens with the story of Mark Fleischmann, an Atlanta businessman (owns a company called MostChoice.com) who says click fraud, “cost his business more than $100,000 since 2003.”

From the article:

“A BusinessWeek investigation has revealed a thriving click-fraud underground populated by swarms of small-time players, making detection difficult. “Paid to read” rings with hundreds or thousands of members each, all of them pressing PC mice over and over in living rooms and dens around the world. In some cases, “clickbot” software generates page hits automatically and anonymously.”

From the article:

BusinessWeek’s independent analysis of the MostChoice records turned up additional indications of click fraud. Over the past six months, the company received 139 visitors through an advertisement on the parked site healthinsurancebids.com, which offers only ads supplied by Yahoo. Most of these visitors were located in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Egypt, and Ukraine. Their average stay on MostChoice.com was only six seconds, and none of them became a customer.

The story includes several sidebars and a podcast.
+ Podcast

+ Graphic: Evolution of a Scam
Click Fraud 1.0 and 2.0

+ Rogues Glossary (terms liked Parked Web Site and Paid to Read)

+ Advertisers In China Are Getting Burned, Too

+ Click Fraud Slide Show: Follow the Money

+ Graphic: Other Media Scandals

+ Taking The Search Engines To Court

+ Doing Business With A Controversial Partner

Online Extras
+ Click Fraud’s Next Frontier
From the article,
“Search engines, marketers, and law-enforcement agencies are increasingly worried about networks of automated miscreants called “botnets.” These are groups of computers that have been infected by malicious software that allows the fraudsters to seize control.”

+ Slide Show: The Botnet Threat

We’ve posted in the past about Google having “google-related” domain names first registered by others (domain name squatters?) transferred back to Google Inc. Friday, was a big day for this type of thing with over 30 .com domains transferred to Google Inc. Basically, more IP for the Google stable.

A guess (only a guess) is that some/most/all of these domains were registered by a person in Belvidere, Illinois, using GoDaddy’s registration services on November 5, 2005 or November 15, 2005. The cached pages (some still online at various times this month, using the Google Cache) are all placeholder pages. We’ve linked to a few of them.

We’ve even tracked down a blog post from April 2nd where the owner of these domains says he would like to sell them. Did Google pay? Our guess would be no. We also checked two UDRP databases and found no mention of these domains.

All of these domains were transferred to Google Inc. on Friday.

Some are domains that Google would want to have in their domain name inventory like Googlepayperview.com, Googlereservations.com, or Googletix.

Others?
Well, if Google ever wants to begin a tax prep service (Googletaxes.com), offer a college entrance exam (GoogleTests.com) or our favorite, begin a game (Googlegameshow.com) they now have the key domain names in their possession. Who would host? Howie Mandel? Larry? Sergey? Eric? Marissa? Perhaps the show would be called Search or No Search. (-:

• Googlealternatives.com
  Domain First Registered Nov. 15, 2005
  Cached version via Google from earlier this month.

• Googleapplications.com
  Cached version

• Googlebackups.com

• Googlebilling.com
  Cached

• googlecompare.com

• googledoors.com

• googleentrepreneur.com
  Cached
  NOTE: At one time this page did have some content on it. Let’s call it a placeholder +.

• googleentrepreneurs.com

• googleetc.com

• googlefarce.com
  Cache

• Googlefolders.com

• Googlegameshow.com
  Cached

• googlehiring.com
  Cached

• googlehomework.com

• googleinsight.com

• googlemonitoring.com

• googleorders.com

• googlepaperproducts.com

• googlepayperview.com

• googlereceipts.com

• googleregistration.com

• googlereservations.com

• googlerestores.com

• googlesharing.com

• googlestartups.com

• googletaxes.com

• googletaxreturn.com

• googletaxreturns.com

• googletests.com

• googletix.com

• googletransactions.com

• googletraveling.com
  Cached

• googlewebmonitoring.com
  Cached, Placeholder +

Canadian Libraries Sparked an Inventor’s Home Run
Michael White writes about a new campaign from OCLC that includes testimonials from people who did research to help start new businesses.

Source: The Patent Librarians Notebook

See Also: We’ve read several articles in the past few months about the small business person and their use of the library. For example:

+ Small Talk: Libraries can be business resources

+ The Library: Next Best Thing to an MBA (via BusinessWeek)

+ Businesspeople are wise to check out JoCo Library (via Kansas City Business Journal)

New from Pew Internet & American Life Project: The Future of the Internet II

From the summary:
A survey of internet leaders, activists, and analysts shows that a majority agree with predictions that by 2020:

+ A low-cost global network will be thriving and creating new opportunities in a flattening world.
+ Humans will remain in charge of technology, even as more activity is automated and smart agents proliferate. However, a significant 42% of survey respondents were pessimistic about humans’ ability to control the technology in the future. This significant majority agreed that dangers and dependencies will grow beyond our ability to stay in charge of technology. This was one of the major surprises in the survey.
+ Virtual reality will be compelling enough to enhance worker productivity and also spawn new addiction problems.
+ Tech refuseniks will emerge as a cultural group characterized by their choice to live off the network. Some will do this as a benign way to limit information overload, while others will commit acts of violence and terror against technology-inspired change.
+ People will wittingly and unwittingly disclose more about themselves, gaining some benefits in the process even as they lose some privacy.
+ English will be a universal language of global communications, but other languages will not be displaced. Indeed, many felt other languages, such as Mandarin, would grow in prominence.

Direct to Full Text (115 pages; PDF)

Search Engine Watch editor Danny Sullivan particpated in the survey.

Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project

Sexual and pornographic Web searching: Trends analysis by Amanda Spink, Helen Partridge, and Bernard J. Jansen

The level of sexual or pornographic Web searching is a major subject of political debate, particularly in the United States. United States federal prosecutors recently, as of 2006, requested that the major Web search engines, Yahoo, American Online (AOL), MSN and Google provide a sampling of their search queries and indexes of Web sites, in order to allow the examination of various aspects of pornographic searching and retrieval. This paper examines studies that have analyzed Web search logs to determine the level of sexual or pornographic searches on publically available Web search engines from 1997 to 2005. Results show that sexual or pornographic queries have declined as a proportion of all Web queries since 1997 and currently represented less than four percent of Web queries. In conclusion, the paper provides perspectives on the results, including issues of self–regulated choice and human mating behavior.

Source: First Monday

See Also: Much More About This Topic (and other web search research by the authors)in this Recent ResourceShelf Post. Includes Direct Links to Papers and Quotes.

Selected Papers from the September Issue of First Monday

+ Public access computing and Internet access in public libraries: The role of public libraries in e–government and emergency situations

+ Unpacking “I Don’t Want It” — why novices and non–users don’t use the Internet

+ False Web memories: A case study on finding information about Andrei Broder

+ A privacy paradox: Social networking in the United States

Google relents, publishes Belgian court ruling (via Reuters)

Google on Saturday published on its Belgian Web site a court order that forbids the Internet search engine to reproduce snippets of Belgian press on its news amalgamation service.

The move constituted a u-turn as Google had said on Friday that it would not comply with the court order, despite facing a fine equivalent to $640,900 daily if it did not publish the ruling.

A spokesperson for Google declined to elaborate on the reasons that made the company change its mind but said it would seek to cancel the ruling.

“We are pleased that a judge has given Google the opportunity to appeal the substance of this case. This will be heard in November,” the spokesperson said.

See Also: Google Publishes Ruling (via Google Blogoscoped)

See Also: CAVEAT EMPTOR
Mechanical Translations of Ruling Using Various Sources. Just to allow for a rough idea. Again, beware.
+ Word Lingo
+ Yahoo’s Babel Fish
+ Google

For more sources, see Fagan’s Translation Wizard

EPA Closing Its Headquarters Library October 1

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is closing its Headquarters Library to the public, as well as its own staff, effective October 1. This shutdown is the latest in a series of agency library closures during the past few weeks, according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). As with the other library collections, the books, reports and research monographs in the EPA Headquarters Library have been boxed up and are currently inaccessible to anyone.

The Headquarters Library collection contains 380,000 documents on microfiche (including technical reports produced by EPA and its predecessor agencies), a microforms collection that includes back files of abstracts and indexes, 5,500 hard copy EPA documents, as well as more than 16,000 books and technical reports produced by government agencies other than EPA.

+ Notification of Closure of the EPA Headquarters Library (71 FR 54986; September 20, 2006) (PDF; 19 KB)
+ OMB Circular A-130 (see Section 8 (a)6(j) for public notice of changes to information access; PDF; 92 KB)
+ Congressional call for a Government Accountability Office review (PDF; 3.91 MB)
+ More about EPA’s effort to close down its network of technical libraries
+ More information about EPA’s library network

Source: Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER)