Archive for June, 2007

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ARL Offers Tools for Leading Discussions of Scholarly Communication Issues

Wednesday, June 27th, 2007

ARL Offers Tools for Leading Discussions of Scholarly Communication Issues

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Office of Scholarly Communication is offering a free series of guides on current scholarly communication issues to facilitate summer discussion programs among library staff.

The scholarly communication system is changing rapidly. An increasing number of librarians across job categories are being asked to engage in outreach to campus faculty and other stakeholders in these issues. A brown-bag lunch series of informal discussions is a good way for staff to deepen their knowledge of key topics, learn from one another, and track changing perspectives.

Direct to Guides

Source: ARL

Posted in Libraries and Librarianship, Scholarly Publishing, Search News | No Comments »

New: DSpace How-To Guide: Tips and Tricks for Managing Common DSpace Chores

Wednesday, June 27th, 2007

Direct to Full Text
PDF.
by Timothy G. Donohue, Scott A. Phillips, Dorothea Salo
From the summary:

This short booklet is intended to introduce the commonest non-obvious customization-related tasks for newcomers to DSpace administration. It has been written against the stable version 1.4.2 of DSpace and Manakin 1.1. We have tried to include instructions for different operating systems as required; most customizations, however, work identically cross-platform. This booklet was created as a handout for the tutorial “Making DSpace Your Own”, at the Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL) 2007 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Source: DSpace

Posted in Digital Preservation, Info Management and Retrieval, Scholarly Publishing, Search News | No Comments »

New Bibliography: Content Recruitment for Institutional Repositories (IR’s)

Wednesday, June 27th, 2007

New Bibliography: Content Recruitment for Institutional Repositories (IR’s)
by Adrian K.Ho and Joe Toth (2007)

An annotated bibliography for a panel discussion at the 2007 American Library Association Annual Conference. It focuses on relevant articles published from Jan. 2005 through May 2007.


Direct to Document (MS Word)

Source: dLIST

Posted in Digital Repositories, Information Industry, Libraries and Librarianship, Scholarly Publishing, Search News | No Comments »

More OPAC News: Bowker Acquires AquaBrowser from MediaLab Solutions

Wednesday, June 27th, 2007

R.R. Bowker Acquires Medialab Solutions, Developer of AquaBrowser Library
These days, keeping track of who owns what OPAC provider requires a scorecard.

From the announcement:

R.R. Bowker, the global leader in bibliographic information management, today announced that it has acquired Medialab Solutions by Amsterdam, creators of the highly regarded AquaBrowser Library search and discovery platform that is used by more than 60 million patrons in public libraries throughout the U.S. and Europe.

Want to see AquaBrowser in Action? One of the many library systems that use the database is the Howard County Library System in Maryland.

Posted in Databases, Directories, and Guides, Info Management and Retrieval, Information Industry, Libraries and Librarianship, Search News | No Comments »

Briefs: University of California Libraries Collaborate with OCLC on Next Generation Melvyl Catalog; Judge rejects Google’s anti-Microsoft antitrust bid;

Wednesday, June 27th, 2007

+ YellowPages.com Testing Dramatically Improved Beta Site (via Search Engine Land)

+ University of California Libraries Collaborate with OCLC on Next Generation Melvyl Catalog

+ Two Encyclopaedia Britannica Products Win Awards from Association of Educational Publishers
The two products are the Enciclopedia Universal en Español and Compton’s by Britannica, the 26-volume print encyclopedia for middle- and high-school students.

+ A federal judge refused on Tuesday to rule on a last-minute Google antitrust complaint about Windows Vista’s desktop search, saying she trusted government attorneys who said they were already satisfied with Microsoft’s planned changes. (via News.com)

Posted in Information Industry, Search News, Web Search | No Comments »

International Federation of Library Associations Annual Report, 2006

Wednesday, June 27th, 2007

International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) Annual Report, 2006
23 pages; PDF.
From the preface:

We made progress with two aspects of advocacy. Conceptually, we clarified what advocacy IFLA should be engaged in, how it should be organised, and what resources it requires. Practically, we focussed on the follow-up of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS).

We identified the WSIS “action lines” that are of greatest relevance to IFLA and our profession, and deployed staff and volunteers to represent us at international meetings held to pursue the action lines. To coordinate the advocacy work, the President-elect’s Information Society Contact Group was set up.
This report reflects progress that was achieved in many other facets of our Federation: strategic planning; reviews of our professional structures, core activities and governance; multilingualism; regional offices; the organisation of congresses; partnerships; and the development and promotion of professional practice across the full spectrum of our profession, world-wide. If it seems sometimes that we are not advancing rapidly enough, it is because we are advancing on such a broad front.

Source: IFLA

Posted in Libraries and Librarianship, Search News | No Comments »

Declassification at the Central Intelligence Agency: Two Collections of Historical Documents Now Online

Wednesday, June 27th, 2007

CIA Releases Two Collections of Historical Documents
Today the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) released two sets of previously classified historical documents.

1) The first collection, which some call the “Family Jewels,” consists of almost 700 pages and was compiled in 1973 under Director of Central Intelligence James Schlesinger, who asked CIA employees to report activities they thought might be inconsistent with the Agency’s charter…The release of this collection answers a Freedom of Information Act request from 1992. In the past year, the Agency has made a concerted effort to close out its old cases under the law. Since October 2006 alone, the Agency has reduced the number of FOIA cases older than 5 years old by more than half.

The second collection, the CAESAR-POLO-ESAU papers, consists of 147 documents and 11,000 pages of analysis from 1953 to 1973. The CAESAR and POLO papers studied Soviet and Chinese leadership hierarchies, respectively, and the ESAU papers were developed by analysts to inform CIA assessments on Sino-Soviet relations.

Source: FOIA Web Site, CIA

Posted in Access to Information, Digitization Projects, History, Resources for Educators, Source File | No Comments »

Rich Skrenta Leaves Topix, Chris Tolles Takes Command; Did You Know Topix Offers Case Senstive Searching?

Wednesday, June 27th, 2007

A quick note from Gary.

Over the past few years one of the most useful research tools we have at are disposal (you do to) has been Topix. We often find items here we don’t see elsewhere and/or spot them first on Topix. Their crawl is first-rate as are the services they offers researchers. It’s good to see that more and more people are learning about and using the Topix service. I can only remember a few presentations during the past few years where I haven’t discussed Topix.

So, what’s up? Why this post?

We’ve learned that Rich Skrenta, a co-founder of the company and the CEO is leaving to spend more time with his family. He shares his thoughts here. Skrenta will remain on the Topix Board of Directors.

The good news is that Topix isn’t going anywhere. Chris Tolles has been named the new CEO. That’s great news. Chris has been a part of the Topix team since the very beginning, back in the days that Topix was located above a trophy shop in Palo Alto.

Rich has not only a friend but is a wonderful developer and business person. In other words great “technical vision” (building something useful for the searcher) and on the business side both hiring great people. Don’t also forget that in 2005, 75% of Topix was acquired by three major publishers, Tribune, Knight-Ridder, and Gannett.

Before Topix, many of you know that Rich was at AOL where he was a part of the team that developed the DMOZ software.

So, that’s the latest.

ResourceShelf wishes Rich the very best and we hope that in the near future this “infopreneur” is back online with what is likely to be an interesting and useful service. We will also monitor his blog for updates and some of the most interesting commentary about the Internet.

We also wish the very best to Chris Tolles and the rest of the team.

Topix illustrates that good things can happen to good people.

Fast Facts About Topix
Did you know that Topix provides very useful timelines to help focus a search by date and also spot trends.

Topix also offers cases sensitive searching. In other words, SAT is different than sat. Finally, the offer thousands of pre-built topical topics updated in near real-time with content. In fact, you’ll also find pages for every Zip Code in the U.S. and most Postal Codes in Canada.

Posted in Information Industry, News Search, Search News | No Comments »

More Maps Made Available on RefliefWeb from Various UN Agencies and and Other Sources

Wednesday, June 27th, 2007

+ Africa’s Hunger Crisis

+ Sudan: General Threat Map with the Result of Landmine Impact Survey (LIS)

+ Sri Lanka: Topographic Map

+ Reference Map of Timor-Leste (as of Mar 2007)

+ Reference Map of Central Asia

+ Reference Map of Kosovo Region (as of Mar 2007)

+ Reference Map of Bosnia and Herzegovina (as of Mar 2007)

+ Reference Map of South Africa (as of Feb 2007)

Source: ReliefWeb

Posted in Geographic, Resources for Educators, Source File | No Comments »

3D Digital Globes: NASA’s World Wind Adds Tour de France 2007 Layer

Wednesday, June 27th, 2007

3D Digital Globes: NASA’s World Wind Adds Tour de France Layer
NASA’s free 3D digital globe (volunteer built has just added a new layer with information about the 2007 Tour de France. Including:

+ track profiles.

+ icons that link to the official TdF site with detailed information about every stage.

The add-on also includes maps for the all stages of 2006 and 2005 events.

See Also: Compare World Wind and Google Earth

See Also: Learn More About World Wind and SkylineGlobe

Source: World Wind Central

Posted in Geographic, Source File | 1 Comment »

Statistics: New CDC Report Documents Percentage of People Without Health Insurance

Wednesday, June 27th, 2007

Statistics: New CDC Report Documents Percentage of People Without Health Insurance

The study examines data collected from interviews in over 100,000 households nationwide. Some of the highlights include:

In 2006, there were 43.6 million Americans of all ages who did not have health insurance (at the time of the interview), or 14.8 percent of the population.

Among working-age Americans (those ages 18-64), there were 19.8 percent who did not have health insurance in 2006, a slight increase from 18.9 percent in 2005.

Approximately 9.3 percent of children under the age of 18 did not have health insurance in 2006, a decrease from 13.9 percent in 1997.
In 2006, the percentage uninsured at the time of interview among the 20 largest states ranged from 7.7 percent in Michigan to 23.8 percent in Texas.

Direct to Full Text of NCHS Report
19 pages; PDF.

Source: National Center for Health Statistics (via DocuTicker)

Posted in Business and Economics, Source File, Statistics | No Comments »

Annual Disaster Statistical Review: Numbers and Trends 2006…and other full-text reports on DocuTicker

Wednesday, June 27th, 2007

Posted 26 June 2007 on DocuTicker:
+ Annual Disaster Statistical Review: Numbers and Trends 2006 (Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters)
+ The Adult Film Industry: Time to Regulate? (PLoS Medicine)
+ New Findings Show Half of Americans Surveyed Importing Drugs without a Prescription (Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America)

Posted in Best of DocuTicker, Source File | No Comments »

Webcast: Library History Laws, Leaders and Legends of the Modern National Library of Medicine

Tuesday, June 26th, 2007

Webcast: Laws, Leaders and Legends of the Modern National Library of Medicine (NLM)

On May 23, 2007, Kent A. Smith, former Deputy Director, NLM, gave the 2007 Joseph Leiter MLA/NLM Lecture – “Laws, Leaders and Legends of the Modern NLM” – at the Annual Meeting of the Medical Library Association in Philadelphia. The lecture is named in honor of NLM’s first Associate Director for Library Operations. In response to popular demand, Kent has agreed to reprise the Lecture. Come be enlightened and entertained by his unique perspective on some pivotal events in the past five decades of NLM history.

Direct to Video

Source: National Library of Medicine

Posted in Libraries and Librarianship, Search News, Webcasts and Podcasts | No Comments »

New Report (Final): Dealing With Data

Tuesday, June 26th, 2007

UKOLN was asked to undertake a small-scale consultancy for JISC to investigate the relationships between data centres and institutions which may develop data repositories. The resulting direction-setting report will be used to advance the digital repository development agenda within the JISC Capital programme (2006 – 2009), to assist in the co-ordination of research data repositories and to inform an emerging Vision and Roadmap. The study includes a synthesis of some of the lessons learned from the projects within the Digital Repositories programme that were concerned with research data.

Direct to Full Text: Dealing with data: Roles, rights, responsibilities and relationships (Consultancy report)
PDF.

Source: UKOLN

See Also: Summary of Report in this article from Kable’s Government Computing

The report recommends that Jisc develop a data audit framework to enable all universities and colleges to carry out an audit of departmental data collections, awareness, policies and practice for data curation and preservation.

The paper also calls on research funding organisations to openly publish, implement and enforce a data management, preservation and sharing policy. In addition, says the report, each higher education institution should implement its own policy, which recommends data deposit in an appropriate open access data repository and/or data centre where these exist.

Posted in Access to Information, Digital Repositories, Info Management and Retrieval, Information Industry, Libraries and Librarianship, Search News | No Comments »

New Report: Making Image Retrieval Easier: Photo Metadata White Paper 2007

Tuesday, June 26th, 2007

From press release:

Building better ways to catalogue and search for images has led to an important white paper just approved by the International Press Telecommunications Council.

At its annual general meeting held in Tokyo last week, more than 50 IPTC delegates from around the world unanimously approved publication of the Photo Metadata White Paper. It outlines photo work flow at many types of agencies that buy, sell and use images, and offers crucial suggestions for expanding the amount and types of metadata that are embedded in photos. The white paper targets the entire photo industry, not just journalists.

Direct to Full Text
27 pages; PDF.

Source: International Press Telecommunications Council’s Photo Metadata Working Group (via DocuTicker)

See Also: Of course, don’t forget that a lot of research is going into combining human generated
headings with content-based image retrieval. Examples and more here.

Posted in Cataloging and Metadata, Search News | 1 Comment »

New Web Tools: Start Capturing/Saving/Sharing Your Favorite Web Video Using Beta Version of Real Player 11

Tuesday, June 26th, 2007

There are currently numerous tools, Firefox add-ons, etc. that you can use to record and save web video to your hard drive, memory stick, etc.

Today, one of the largest players in the video/audio player space, Real Networks, has released (beta) a new version of their free player that makes it possible (and easier) to locally save video content from a number of services and in a number of formats (including Flash, Windows Media, QuickTime, and Real).

RealPlayer 11 (beta) is online and ready for downloading. In this case, we are specifically talking about the free RealPlayer. Now, creating your own personal video library and even burning it to a DVD has been easier.

Note: The premium version of RealPlayer ($29.95) allows you to burn your saved video directly to DVD with a single click. It will be very interesting to not only see the reaction to this service but what, if anything, content producers might do to prohibit local recording and even sharing. Material that has DRM attached to it cannot be downloaded.

Fast Facts:
+ Consumers can send links of their favorite videos to their friends with a convenient “Share with a Friend” feature.

+ RealPlayer supports both downloading and recording for popular streaming format (Windows Media, Real, and QuickTime).

+ RealPlayer will only download/record video that is not protected by DRM (Digital Rights Management) systems. Of course, one wonders how long it will take for a hacker to eliminate this issue.

+ Real plans a version for the Mac to be released later in the year.

Comments from Real Networks CEO, Rob Glaser to Questions Posed by Rafat Ali:

The new RealPlayer is just like a VCR, a DVR, or a photocopier: It knows nothing about whether or not a piece of content is copyrighted. Like these earlier video players, the new RealPlayer facilitates many legal and appropriate uses, for instance downloading public domain content and content for which the owner has given permission.

Because the new RealPlayer is not limited to a single site or format, it’s far more valuable to consumers than something that’s limited to one Web site or format. The new RealPlayer makes downloading easier for site designers and for consumers, thanks to the simple one-click feature built right into RealPlayer.

Source: Real Networks

See Also: Light Reading “Cheat Sheet” to 80 Video Sharing/Hosting Services

One site not listed (copyright emptor, of course), is the often mentioned (NY Times, WSJ, Guardian, etc.), Alluc.org. It’s a directory to thousands of tv shows and movies. It’s amazing what you can find and now with Real Player making copying content even easier and more widely known, it’s going to make preserving copyright even more of an issue. So, simply getting a clip, movie, tv show off of one service doesn’t mean it’s not readily available elsewhere.

Posted in Multimedia Search, Software and Web-Based Applications, Web 2.0 | No Comments »

The June 2007 Issue of Weblology is Now Online

Tuesday, June 26th, 2007

Editorials and articles in this issue include:

+ Folksonomies: Why do we need controlled vocabulary?

+ Use of Web in Tertiary Research and Education

+ Web 2.0 as a Social Movement

+ Structure and form of folksonomy tags: The road to the public library catalogue

+ Overview of Ontology Servers Research

Source: Webology

Posted in Cataloging and Metadata, Info Management and Retrieval, Search News | No Comments »

Information Literacy: When ‘Digital Natives’ Go to the Library

Tuesday, June 26th, 2007

When ‘Digital Natives’ Go to the Library

College and university librarians got some unconventional advice Saturday: Play more video games.

At a packed session for academic librarians attending the annual meeting of the American Library Association, in Washington, the topic was how to help students who have learned many of their information gathering and analysis skills from video games apply that knowledge in the library. Speakers said that gaming skills are in many ways representative of a broader cultural divide between today’s college students and the librarians who hope to teach them.

Source: Inside Higher Ed

Posted in Information Literacy, Libraries and Librarianship, Search News | No Comments »

Several Google Execs Head to Paris to Give Presentations at Google Press Day France

Tuesday, June 26th, 2007

Webcasts from Google Press Day: Paris, France, Now Online
Recorded on June 19, 2007 in Paris, France.

Presentations by:
+ Nikesh Arora audio | video

+ Chad Hurley & Steve Chen audio | video

+ Marissa Mayer audio | video

+ Urs Hoelzle audio | video

+ Eric Schmidt audio | video

Source: Google

Posted in Web 2.0, Web Search, Webcasts and Podcasts | No Comments »

Conference Program: First Workshop on Web Information-Seeking and Interaction

Tuesday, June 26th, 2007

Conference Program Now Available: First Workshop on Web Information-Seeking and Interaction
The workshop will take place in Amsterdam on July 27th. We will be monitoring the web for full text copies of the very interesting papers listed below. We will keep you posted.

The Agenda includes:
+ Panel: “Challenges and Opportunities in Supporting Web Search Interaction” including an expert in: a) information seeking, b) user interfaces for search, and c) large-scale Web search interface development and/or evaluation. The aim of the panel is to provide a broad overview of the issues in this area.

+ Papers:
Adaptive Personalization of Web Search (Abstract Only)
Shady Elbassuoni, Julia Luxenburger, Gerhard Weikum
(Max-Planck-Institute of Informatics)

++ Exploring How Mouse Movements Relate to Eye Movements on Web Search Results Pages
Kerry Rodden* (Google Inc.); Xin Fu (University of North Carolina)

++ Evaluating Engagement in Interactive Search
Heather O’Brien, Elaine Toms (Dalhousie University)

++ Clickthrough-based Measures of Search Engine Performance
Erik Graf, Craig Macdonald, Iadh Ounis (University of Glasgow)

* Some of Google’s Kerry Rodden papers are available online. They are all listed here. Three of special note:
+ Incorporating Eyetracking into User Studies at Google, Position paper for workshop Getting a Measure of Satisfaction from Eyetracking in Practice, 2006

+ Y. Nakhimovsky, R. Schusteritsch, and K. Rodden, caling the card sort method to over 500 items: Restructuring the Google AdWords Help Center (experience report), 2006.

+ Mobile Search with Text Messages: Designing the User Experience for Google SMS (poster presentation), ACM

Posted in Info Management and Retrieval, Information Science, Search News, Technology and Internet, Web Search | No Comments »

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