Archive for March, 2007
Wednesday, March 28th, 2007
+ Workshop on Contextualized Attention Metadata: personalized access to digital resources
Scheduled for June 17-23, 2007 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The workshop will take place during the Part of the ACM IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries. Presenters and papers from the 2006 workshop.
+ Inaugural Bloomsbury Conference on E-Publishing and E-Publications
The conference will take place on 28-29 June 2007 at UCL’s (University College London) Bloomsbury Campus. “The theme for this first year is ‘Books and Journals: Models in Flux.’”
+ Call for Participation for the Fifth Semantic Web Challenge
Part of The 6th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2007) combined with the 2nd Asian Semantic Web Conference (ASWC 2007. November 11-15, 2007 in Busan, Korea. More about theSemantic Web Challenge.
Posted in Info Management and Retrieval, Information Science, Libraries and Librarianship, Scholarly Publishing, Search News, Technology and Internet | No Comments »
Wednesday, March 28th, 2007
+ Mobile News from InfoSpace, V-Enable, and ZenZui (via Screenwerk)
ZenZui is a new mobile service that Greg Sterling describes as offering “widgets” (they call them “tiles”) to make accessing services easier on mobile devices. Btw, Greg Sterling mentions “tiles” for several services that already have versions optimized for mobile. They are Flickr Mobile, Traffic.com, Amazon.com (several country and languages), Kayak, and ABC News. While it’s true than an app or “tile” might be able to offer more functionality and ease of use, the challenge is getting users to know about the service and then to download and try. This is versus simply typing a URL or clicking on a bookmark.
See Also: Hands-On with ZenZui Mobile UI
The application itself will be first deployed on the Windows Mobile platform and go into beta this summer. They hope to have a J2ME version in beta a short time after the Windows Mobile version and will eventually support Qualcomm’s Brew and Symbian’s operating system as well.
+ UpSnap and MuseGlobal Bring Metasearch to Mobile
Use a single interface to search multiple databases. Saves time and effort, both issues when it comes to mobile searching. Look for more of this type of thing. Here’s a results page from UpSnap using Muse technology. All sorts of features including saved searches and alerts.
See Upsnap WAP Site
+ New from OCLC: New Gadget for Google Customizable Homepage Offers Worldcat Search
OCLC also offers several other tools.
+ Place a Worldcat search box on any web page.
+ Toolbars available for Google, Yahoo, and Firefox.
+ We’ve created several toolbars (various types of searches) to search Worldcat and just about any other engine with Add to Search Bar. It’s an add-on for Firefox and requires no coding skills.
Posted in Info Management and Retrieval, Information Industry, Search News, Technology and Internet, Web 2.0, Wireless Web and Search | No Comments »
Wednesday, March 28th, 2007
Sharing Detailed Research Data Is Associated with Increased Citation Rate
We found that cancer clinical trials which share their microarray data were cited about 70% more frequently than clinical trials which do not. This result held even for lower-profile publications and thus is relevant to authors of all trials.
A parallel can be drawn between making study data publicly available and publishing a paper itself in an open-access journal. The association with an increased citation rate is similar. While altruism no doubt plays a part in the motivation of authors in both cases, studies have found that an additional reason authors choose to publish in open-access journals is that they believe their articles will be cited more frequently, endorsing the relevance of our result as a potential motivator.
Source: PLoS ONE
Posted in Access to Information, Scholarly Publishing, Search News | No Comments »
Wednesday, March 28th, 2007
When MS Live Academic launched one step in the right direction (though it needed work) was a list of publications and dates available in this database. When we posted about new content being added to the database a few months ago, it was still available but not updated. Today, we noticed that this list of sources is no longer online and the URL returns a blank page. What is available is a list of cooperating publishers listed in the Help section. ResourceShelf hopes the Academic Live source list will return and that Google makes a similar list (we’ve asked) available for Google Scholar. These lists and in some cases catalogs are very important not only for the info pro but for the researcher trying to get an idea of what is and is not available in a database. In other words, it can make searching easier.
Examples? Here are a few:
+ Dialog
+ Gale Databases (also available in XLS format)
+ Factiva
+ HighWire Press
+ LexisNexis ||| Cool Visualization Tool
+ PubMed Central
+ Article Level Search from the Directory of Open Access Journals
Update: The Academic Live Page titled: Windows Live Academic Information: Librarians also appears to no longer be available. However, this documentation can now be found in the Live Search Academic help section.
Posted in Databases, Directories, and Guides, Libraries and Librarianship, Search News, Web Search | Comments Off
Wednesday, March 28th, 2007
Google seeks world of instant translations
A look inside the translation research going on at the Googleplex. Interesting read. However, we think that a well-balanced article would also mention some of the other mechanical translation services and companies (many around pre-Google) that are continuing to develop translation software.
A Few (of Many) Companies Offering Mechanical Translation
+ Systran
Systran technology powers BabelFish from Yahoo. Babelfish was the first translation tool from a major web engine when it debuted on AltaVista on December 9, 1997. The original news release and the AV Babelfish page about a year after launch. As you’ll see on their site, Systran provides a number of personal and enterprise translation tools. Btw, Systran was founded in 1968, a few year’s before Larry Page and Sergey Brin were born. 
+ FreeTranslation.com
From SDL International.
+ Ajeeb.com
+ Translation Experts Ltd.
+ Softissimo and Reverso
+ WorldLingo
+ InterTran
Thanks to Michael Fagan for his help.
+ Basis Technology
The Rosette Linguistics Platform uses state of the art Natural Language Processing techniques to improve information retrieval, text mining and other applications that process unstructured multilingual text. It’s designed for large-scale systems that need to identify, classify, analyze, index, and search text in Asian, European and Middle Eastern languages.
In 2004, we posted that Basis Technology had received funding from In-Q-Tel, the venture capital arm of the CIA.
See Also: TR06: Babelfish: Real-Time Machine Translation on the Internet
A brief history.
See Also: Danny Sullivan’s First Story about Babelfish (1/9/1998)
See Also: InfoRaptor – SYSTRAN’S Multilingual Data Retrieval System
PDF. From 1997.
Posted in Search News, Search Tools, Software and Web-Based Applications, Technology and Internet | Comments Off
Wednesday, March 28th, 2007
First, the Logos verb translator. Enter a verb, click conjugate and the conjugations appear.
Second, from MS Encarta, conjugate verbs in Spanish, French, and German.
Posted in Databases, Directories, and Guides, Fast Facts, Resources for Educators, Search Tools, Source File | No Comments »
Wednesday, March 28th, 2007
+ Acquisition Of Casper Weinberger Papers To Be Marked At April 4 Ceremony At The Library
+ Many Americans see little point to Web (via Reuters)
See Also: Official News Release
Includes Pie Chart: Reasons for Not Subscribing to Internet Service Q1/2007 and Graph: Internet Access in the U.S. 2005 vs. 2006
+ Databases: NLM’s LactMed Database Updated
See Also: Learn More About LactMed
+ New Issue of the Google Librarian Newsletter is Online
The feature article takes a look at Google Docs and Spreadsheets. Cool stuff being done in the classroom. The RS team would also suggest taking a look at what Zoho has to offer including:
+ Word Processing
+ Spreadsheets
+ Presentations (aka Slides)
+ Online Polls, poll your class, parents, etc.
+ Zoho Planner
+ Coming Soon: Zoho Notebook and Zoho Meeting
Btw, almost all Zoho services are free.
Posted in Information Industry, Science, Search News, Source File, Technology and Internet, Wireless Web and Search | No Comments »
Wednesday, March 28th, 2007
Yahoo to Provide Unlimited E-mail Storage
Big news? Perhaps. Unexpected, we don’t think so. For the RS team the question is, what took Yahoo so long? Yahoo has offered 1GB of mail storage for free and 2GB of storage space (Yahoo Mail Plus) for about $20/year. Mail Plus provides a bunch of features including “toss away” addresses, offline backup, and more. No word if all of Yahoo’s Mail Plus features will become free.
“We are giving them no reason to ever have to delete old e-mails,” Yahoo co-founder David Filo said in a phone interview. “You can keep stuff forever.”
“People should think about e-mail as something where they are archiving their lives,” said Filo, who remains active in managing technical operations at the Sunnyvale, California, company and carries the honorific title of Chief Yahoo.
Starting in May, the changeover to unlimited storage should take a month, said John Kremer, vice president of Yahoo Mail. “We have been closely monitoring average usage. We are comfortable that our users are far under 1 gig(abyte), on average,” Kremer said by phone. “What we see are an increasing number of rich media files as consumers send more photos.”
Lately, we’ve been using, and are very impressed with, Inbox.com. They offer 10GB (yes, 10GB) of storage space at no charge along with a powerful web-mail interface.
Source: Reuters
Update: Worth noting that Lycos offers 3GB of Mail Space at No Charge
Posted in Information Industry, Software and Web-Based Applications, Source File | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, March 28th, 2007
Posted in Best of DocuTicker, Source File | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 27th, 2007
Testimony: Librarian of Congress James H. Billington Testifies on the Library’s Digital Evolution
From the Summary:
In today’s digital environment, it takes only 15 minutes to produce an amount of information equivalent to the 134 million analog (physical) materials the Library of Congress has acquired in more than two centuries. Librarian of Congress James H. Billington and other Library officials today provided testimony to the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Legislative Branch regarding how the Library is transforming itself to accommodate the digital age…Dr. Billington emphasized that digital materials, contrary to some assumptions, are less stable than analog materials, because digital content is easily altered, corrupted or even lost. He noted that the average Web site’s life span is between 44 and 75 days and that important materials relating to Hurricane Katrina that are used by Congress, which were once available on the Web, are no longer there.
Direct to Full Text of Dr. Billington’s Testimony before the House Subcommittee on Legislative Branch, U.S. House of Representatives.
Source: LoC
Posted in Digital Preservation, Digitization Projects, Info Management and Retrieval, Information Industry, Information Literacy, Preservation/Conservation, Search News | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, March 27th, 2007
2.0 apps and tools that might be of interest. All are available at no charge.
+ Nowsy
Create a personalized home page. Registered users can share pages.
+ Timeline
From MIT. Very cool. Very useful. Does require some coding skills.
+ Calcoolate.com
Web-based calculator and converter.
+ Distance & Length
+ Speed
+ Temperature
+ Weight
+ Volume
+ Area
+ Currency (Money)
You can also use Calcoolate to replace the calculator that comes as a default with Windows.
Review Parts 1 and 2 of the “Worth Look Series”
Posted in Web 2.0 | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 27th, 2007
European Digital Library grows after new French Contribution
The Bibliotheque nationale de France (BnF) helped the European Digital Library move a step closer to the goal of a fully comprehensive European collection of cultural heritage after announcing the development of their new Europeana portal.
According to the Conference of European National Librarians (CENL) the BnF managed to raise funds as well as provide a possible template of what a future European Digital Library may be. The funding will now allow the digitisation and uploading of an additional 80-100,000 items each year from the BnF’s Gallica collection.
See Also: Learn More about the Gallica Collection (via BnF, English)
See Also: Direct to The European Library
See Also: A Recent ResourceShelf Post About Several New Collections Being Added to The European Library
Content from Denmark, Austria, and Poland.
Sources: IWR, BnF
Posted in Archives and Special Collections, Databases, Directories, and Guides, Digitization Projects, Resources for Educators, Search News | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 27th, 2007
Journal of Medical Internet Research Vol 9, No 1 (2007)
Full text articles available (HTML or PDF):
+ Rates and Determinants of Repeated Participation in a Web-Based Behavior Change Program for Healthy Body Weight and Healthy Lifestyle
+ Psychological Assessment via the Internet: A Reliability and Validity Study of Online (vs Paper-and-Pencil) Versions of the General Health Questionnaire-28 (GHQ-28) and the Symptoms Check-List-90-Revised (SCL-90-R)
+ A Website to Improve Asthma Care by Suggesting Patient Questions for Physicians: Qualitative Analysis of User Experiences
+ Term Identification Methods for Consumer Health Vocabulary Development
+ Assessing Consumer Health Vocabulary Familiarity: An Exploratory Study
Posted in Information Science, Search News, Technology and Internet | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 27th, 2007
Jenkins Law Librarian and ResourceShelf Contributing Editor, Dan Giancaterino, recently had an article in The Philadephia Lawyer published about a subject near and dear to the entire ResourceShelf team. Dan offers an in-depth look at what public libraries (and many other types of libraries, for that matter) provide their users with for:
1) Free. Each library has its own collection.
2) 24×7x365
3) From any computer connected to the Internet. In some cases, you don’t even need to have a library card. Caveat, these databases are licensed for personal use.
Note: Access to these and similar tools can be found in libraries around the world.
The full text and full image (PDF) of Dan’s excellent article titled: Better Than Google: Libraries Offer Online Databases With Quality Information — For Free is available (PDF) here.
© 2007 The Philadelphia Lawyer. Used with permission.
Kudos and congrats Dan! It’s always exciting to see that information about these tools is reaching non-librarians.
Posted in Databases, Directories, and Guides, Libraries and Librarianship, Resources for Educators, Search Tools, Source File | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 27th, 2007
Internet Crossroads in Social Science Data
DISC’s Internet Crossroads contains over 825 annotated links to data-related resources on the Internet. Feel free to search Internet Crossroads by using the above form or browse the categories below.
See also: Dataset User Guides
Source: Data and Information Services Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Posted in Databases, Directories, and Guides, Source File | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 27th, 2007
+ New Platform From ClipBlast
Direct to ClipBlast
+ Shopping Search Engine Management Changes via Search Engine Land)
A roundup by shopping search guru, Brian Smith
+ Rebranded Canadian Local Search Site ZipLocal Launches (via SEL)
+ New:MapQuest: Send to Cell
Greg Sterling has the news.
A Few Additional Players
These services many which have been available for some time do not require a software download.
Ask.com
An Ask.com Local Search allows you to send directory info via SMS). Locations and directions searched using Ask’s mobile interface include a link to a map and aerial imagery.
Google
Local listings (address and phone number) can be sent as a text message or email. No maps. The same goes for driving directions. Google Mobile offers maps with local listings but not with directions. Ask Mobile will also allow a mobile searcher (let’s say you’re looking for a restaurant) to send the location to another mobile user. Makes it easy for friends to meet up.
MS Live Local
Driving directions and local listings can be sent to a mobile device. Screen cap. Maps or links to maps are not included when an address/phone number is sent via SMS. If you use Live Mobile from a phone/device maps are provided for local listings and directions.
Yahoo
Yahoo Local has allowed users the chance to send driving directions and address along with an optional map for some time. Here’s a screen cap. Yahoo Mobile offers directions without maps. The mobile version of Live.com offers maps with local listings and directions.
Others
+ Yelp offers a send to phone feature.
+ Switchboard.com Maps not Available.
+ SuperPages
Send to phone available. Maps not available.
Btw, MapQuest has offered some form of mobile/wireless service since 1999. Here’s a page from October 1999 that mentions the availability of real time traffic info, a service that’s now back in vogue. We’ve also seen mentions of MapQuest offering wireless tools in one form or another back to 2000. Here’s a news release from 2001 about MapQuest for wireless PDA’s. For the online historians out there, don’t forget that MapQuest began offering aerial imagery back in
2001. It returned late in 2006.
Posted in Information Industry, Wireless Web and Search | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 27th, 2007
Briefs: IMLS Requests Proposals for the Native Hawaiian Library Services Grant
+ Walking, Talking, Searching, Finding (via Google Blog)
With today’s news from Google and recent news from Yahoo, a reminder that Gary put on his Ask.com cap last week to provide an overview of Ask Mobile.
Update: The Guardian reports on a new survey listing the Top 10 Mobile Sites from dotMobi.
dotMobi, the mobile industry trade body, has published a list of the top ten mobile-ready websites, but only three of them scored more than three out of five on dotMobi’s scale of “readiness”. The top ten were Google.com, WashingtonPost.com, Ask.com, Yahoo.com Flickr.com, Live.com, Facebook.com, Overstock.com, Weather.com and USA Today.com. Only Google, Facebook and Yahoo scored well for good practice, but most of the 100 sites tested scored an average 1.3 out of five.
Posted in Libraries and Librarianship, Search News | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 27th, 2007
NLM’s Haz-Map Database Updated
The National Library of Medicine’s (NLM) Haz-Map has been updated. 226 new agents in the categories of metals, solvents, pesticides, mineral dusts, toxic gases and vapors, plastics and rubber, nitrogen compounds, and other compounds were added. Haz-Map is an occupational health database designed for health and safety professionals and for consumers seeking information about the health effects of exposure to chemicals and biologicals at work. Haz-Map links jobs and hazardous tasks with occupational diseases and their symptoms.
See Also: Learn More about Haz-Map
Source: NLM
Posted in Databases, Directories, and Guides, Resources for Educators, Science, Source File | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 27th, 2007
From the summary and tables:
Nineteen-year-old men were more likely to have dropped out of high school and less likely to be enrolled in college than 19-year-old women, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. Women who were high school graduates and not enrolled in college during the October when they were age 18 were more likely than their male counterparts to be attending college the following October. Moreover, women enrolled in college during October when they were age 18 were less likely than men to have dropped out by the following October.
These findings are from the first eight annual rounds of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, which is a nationally representative survey of about 9,000 young men and women who were born during the years 1980 to 1984. These respondents were ages 12 to 17 when first interviewed in 1997, and ages 19 to 25 when interviewed for the eighth time in 2004-05. The survey provides information on the employment experiences, schooling, family background, social behavior, and other characteristics of these youths.
PDF Version of Announcement and Stats
11 pages.
Source: BLS (via Stuart Basefsky’s IWS Documented News Service)
Posted in Business and Economics, Education, Source File, Statistics | No Comments »
