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

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

+ A “Swiss Army” Meta Search Engine (via SEL)
by Chris Sherman

+ YellowPages.com Launches YP411 Text Messaging Service (via SEL)
by Greg Sterling.

+ A9 Searching for Search Relevance Engineers (via SIG-IR List)

+ Is Google Too Powerful? (via BusinessWeek)

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 30 March 2007 on DocuTicker:
+ Wasting the Best and the Brightest: Substance Abuse at America’s Colleges and Universities (The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University)
+ Understanding the Internet’s relevance to media ownership policy: a model of too many choices (Munich Personal RePEc Archive)
+ Cancer Biomarkers: The Promises and Challenges of Improving Detection and Treatment (Institute of Medicine/National Academies Press)

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

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

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

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

+ Electronic Journals Service Reaches E-journal Benchmark – 15,000 Journals Now Accessible

+ Reed Elsevier announces appointment of Mark Popolano as Chief Technology Officer
Mark Popolano joins RE from American International Group.

+ NAVTEQ adds 3D City Models and 3D Landmarks to digital maps

+ Polls Open for Canadian Library Association Elections

Lists & Rankings: Europe’s Top 100 Private Companies
The Europe 100 is made up of the following lists. A brief profile of each company is included:

+ Internet/Services 100

+ Bioscience 100

+ Entertainment/Media 100

+ Communications 100

+ Computing 100

+ Security Defense 100

+ Energy 100

+ Other 100

Source: Red Herring

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)

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

+ 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)

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