Archive for March, 2007
Saturday, March 31st, 2007
Reference Resource Reviews: Peter Jacso on American Reference Books Annual (ARBA)
Jacso writes:
This popular resource of nearly 17,000 reviews of ready-reference publications has been enhanced by a swift and smart software, and offers an excellent tool not only for acquisitions and reference librarians to know which ready-references sources may complement their existing collection, but also for end-users to find out which encyclopedias, dictionaries, almanacs, atlases, biographies, bibliographies yearbooks, directories and handbooks may be the most appropriate for looking up a fact.
Source: Gale.com
Posted in Databases, Directories, and Guides, Information Industry, Libraries and Librarianship, Reviews, Search News | No Comments »
Saturday, March 31st, 2007
Spam experts at MIT lift curtain on search
With no real cure for search engine spam in play, educating legitimate marketers is key. …If there is a solution to search engine spam, no one’s going to reveal it, according to experts at the MIT Spam Conference 2007 on Friday.
Using the right search tool at the right time, taking advantage of special features and advanced search resources, along with some basic knowledge of how web search works can make for a better search experience and improved results.
Source: News.com
Posted in Information Industry, Search News, Web Search | No Comments »
Saturday, March 31st, 2007
Libraries at the Cutting Edge
The trendiest meeting place on many college campuses these days features a coffee bar, wireless Internet zones, free entertainment and special programs, modern lounge areas and meeting rooms.
And free access to books. Lots of books.
This educational social hub is the campus library, which is beginning to look more like an Internet café than the academic library you remember from your college days.
Far from fading away in the Age of Google, which has begun digitizing millions of books from university and other libraries, and despite the almost universal availability of vast online resources, circulation and visits at college and research libraries are on the rise. Campus librarians now answer more than 72 million reference questions each year — almost twice the attendance at college football games.
In other words, this is not the beginning of the end for campus libraries, but the dawn of an exciting new age.
Column by Pamela Snelson, president of the Association of College and Research Libraries
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Posted in Libraries and Librarianship, Search News | No Comments »
Saturday, March 31st, 2007
Posted in Best of DocuTicker, Source File | No Comments »
Friday, March 30th, 2007
Conference addresses archiving and preservation of e-journals
Presentations from the workshop can be accessed via the Digital Preservation Coalition.
From the summary:
A major event, held yesterday (March 27th) at the British Library, attracted an international audience drawn to discuss the issue of e-journal archiving and preservation, to look at key initiatives in the field and to explore ways forward.
Hazel Woodward, a member of the JISC e-journals working group, introduced the day by saying that while a great deal of progress had been made in the last few years, major challenges remain in developing long-term e-journal archiving solutions, challenges which both academic libraries and national organisations such as JISC, the Digital Preservation Coalition and the British Library are closely involved. ‘while a great deal of progress had been made in the last few years, major challenges remain in developing long-term e-journal archiving solutions’
Source: JISC and DPC
Posted in Digital Preservation, Digital Repositories, Info Management and Retrieval, Search News | No Comments »
Friday, March 30th, 2007
UK: New Version of Copac Union Catalogue Released
From the announcement:
A new version of the Copac has been released (http://copac.ac.uk/). Copac is a union catalogue, giving free access to the merged online catalogues of members of the Consortium of Research Libraries (CURL). There are over 32 million records on Copac representing the merged holdings of most CURL member institutions. This includes the British Library, the National Library of Scotland, and the National Library of Wales / Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru. There are also collections catalogues from a small number of non-CURL libraries…The new release includes significant changes to the interface and the underlying structure. The appearance of the Copac interface has changed considerably, with a whole new layout. Copac is now built on top of a completely new database, in XML format. In addition, record de-duplication has been redesigned and the number of duplicate records will continue to decline over the coming weeks. The Copac web site has also been re-designed and completely revised. This includes access to revised Copac user guides.
Source: Copac
Posted in Databases, Directories, and Guides, Info Management and Retrieval, Libraries and Librarianship, Search News | No Comments »
Friday, March 30th, 2007
The March/April 2007 edition of CLIR Issues is Online
Articles include:
+ A CLIR Perspective on the Future by Chuck Henry
Mr. Henry is CLIR’s new President.
+ CLIR Hosts Workshop on Faculty Research Behavior
+ DLF Aquifer Receives Mellon Grant to Make Scholarly Collections Interoperable
+ Peter Brantley Takes Helm of DLF
Source: Council on Library and Information Resources
Posted in Libraries and Librarianship | No Comments »
Friday, March 30th, 2007
New Book: UNIMARC & Friends: Charting the New Landscape of Library Standards
Edited by Marie-France Plassard
With the expansion of the World Wide Web during the last decade, libraries and their standards face an ever more complex environment, with new types, genres and forms of information resources. Changing information network structures and the emergence of new retrieval methods all play their roles. A three day conference was held in Lisbon, Portugal in March 2006, in order to review the current state of bibliographic standards and to discuss a number of questions in charting a future for their development.
München: Saur, 2007, 133 p.
ISBN-13: 978-3-598-24279-3
ISBN-10: 3-598-24279-4
Source: IFLA
Posted in Cataloging and Metadata, Search News | No Comments »
Friday, March 30th, 2007
Business Search, Hoover’s 100: Most Searched For Companies on Hoovers.com
The February 2007 list.
Top 5 From The Hoover’s 100 for February 2007:
1) Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.
2) Apple Inc.
3) Johnson & Johnson
4) Dell Inc.
5) Target Corporation
“The biggest movers in this latest edition of The Hoover’s 100 represent three companies that have at various times slipped past the 100-mark over the past year, and one company that has been in the top 100 since the list’s inception – Anheuser-Busch,” said Tim Walker, Hoover’s industry analyst. “The news behind the latest movers ranged from industry consolidation and strong earnings, to price increases and international expansion.”
Source: Hoover’s
See Also: Hoover’s Gains New Subsidiary in D&B Acquisition—First Research (via Info Today)
Posted in Business and Economics, Lists and Rankings, Source File | No Comments »
Friday, March 30th, 2007
The Wired 40: Our 10th annual list of the most innovative companies in the world
They’re masters of innovation and technology, global thinkers that dominate their industries and point the way to the future. Our 10th annual list of the 40 most wired companies in the world.
+ Direct to list
Selected Companies on the List
The number in parenthesis is last year’s ranking.
1) Google (1)
2) Apple (2)
5) News Corp (9)
11) Baidu (New)
23) Amazon.com (6)
24) NTT DoCoMo (New)
30) Yahoo (5)
32) eBay (19)
40) Microsoft (36)
Last year InfoSpace made the list. This is not the case in 2007.
Source: Wired
Posted in Business and Economics, Lists and Rankings, Source File | No Comments »
Friday, March 30th, 2007
+ Citizendium Launches
Citizendium, a new web-based user contributed encyclopedia, is now online. Larry Sanger, a co-founder of Wikipedia, is the person in charge.
…aims to improve on that model by adding “gentle expert oversight” and requiring contributors to use their real names.
More on Citizendium soon.
See Also: More Citizendium Coverage
+ Shopping Comparison Site Partners with Blinkx
DinPris offers comparison shopping search for Finland, Norway, Sweden.
+ Microsoft Expands Virtual Earth Reach (via BetaNews)
InfoNow’s LocationInsight (used on many retail, bank, etc. websites) will use MS VE. Previously, the service used MapQuest maps.
See Also: Official Announcement ||| Wachovia Bank Locator Powered by InfoNow
+ Microsoft On Poprank And Indexing Objects For Vertical & Web Search (via SEL)
Posted in Geographic, Search Tools, Technology and Internet | No Comments »
Friday, March 30th, 2007
British Library launches Sounds Familiar, an interactive spoken English website
Celebrating the UK’s many different accents, dialects and vocabularies, Sounds Familiar is a unique and groundbreaking new interactive website from the British Library. Users will be able to hear recordings of people from all over England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland – and children and young adults are being asked to add their own.
Sounds Familiar is the only English language website of its kind. It features 72 recordings of regional accents and dialects from every corner of the UK, some recorded in the 1950s and some almost half a century later, in 1998-1999, making it possible for users to explore how spoken English varies regionally and how accents and dialects have changed over time
Direct to Sounds Familiar
See Also: The British Library Sound Archive
Posted in Archives and Special Collections, New Websites and Resources, Resources for Educators, Source File | No Comments »
Friday, March 30th, 2007
New Files from State Department Added to NARA’s Access to Archival Database Collection
Central Foreign Policy Files
We have added the 1975 digital and fully releasable permanent portion of this series to AAD. The series, popularly known as the “State Department Cables” or the “State Department Telegrams”, consists of telegrams, and an index to airgrams, memoranda, correspondence, reports, diplomatic notes, and related material.
Source: NARA
Posted in Archives and Special Collections, Databases, Directories, and Guides, New Websites and Resources, Resources for Educators, Source File | No Comments »
Friday, March 30th, 2007
YP411 From AT&T’s YellowPages.com
To use the service, consumers simply send a text message to YP411
(97411) with a business name or business category, along with a city and
state or ZIP code. YELLOWPAGES.COM then returns text message results with up to three listings. Consumers can simply click the phone number included in the results to initiate a call to a business. Additionally, for phones and PDAs that support the capability, consumers can click the WAP link to see more details of the business such as a map or directions.
An app (requires download) for some phones is also available.
Source: AT&T
Posted in Web 2.0, Wireless Web and Search | No Comments »
Friday, March 30th, 2007
Diseases and Conditions Index (DCI)
…the Diseases and Conditions Index (DCI). This new Web health index gives you a quick-and-easy way to get complete and dependable information about heart, lung, and blood diseases and sleep disorders. New topics will be added regularly…The NHLBI developed the DCI for patients and the public. The DCI contains health information, written in plain language, on diseases, conditions, and procedures related to:
+ Heart diseases
+ Lung diseases
+ Blood diseases
+ Sleep disorders
We continue to add new information to the DCI. When complete, the DCI will contain information on over 300 diseases and conditions. Registered users will receive email notices when new information is added.
Search or browse using a list of diseases and conditions or by category.
Source: National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute
Posted in Databases, Directories, and Guides, New Websites and Resources, Resources for Educators, Science, Source File | No Comments »
Friday, March 30th, 2007
UK: Election Timetables
This Research Paper sets out the model timetables for Parliamentary general elections and by-elections. A model local election timetable is included, together with the timetable for 3 May 2007. Timetables for the elections to the Scottish Parliament and the National Assembly for Wales on 3 May 2007 are also given. The Paper updates and replaces Research Paper 04/38 Parliamentary Election Timetables.
22 pages; PDF.
Source: House of Commons Library
Posted in Chronologies and Timelines, Fast Facts, Source File | No Comments »
