Archive for August, 2007

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Summer 2007 Issue of UK National Archives “RecordKeeping” Available; Archives 4 All goes online

Thursday, August 30th, 2007

Summer 2007 Issue of RecordKeeping from UK National Archives Now Online
44 pages; PDF.

Articles include:

+ The National Archives and Microsoft tackle our digital heritage
* We first posted about this initiative in early July.

+ Self-assessment of local authority archives: findings and update

+ The National Register of Archives, developing into a Name Authority File database

+ Archives 4 All goes online!
Direct to Archives 4 All Web Site and Databases

+ 15 Archives in Museums Subject Specialist Network

+ Case Study: The Community Archives website – a volunteer’s perspective

+ The Archives of the Archdiocese of Westminster

+ What’s in a reference? More news about Seamless Flow

+ The National Archives – Appraisal Toolkits

Posted in Archives and Special Collections, Digital Preservation, Digitization Projects, Info Management and Retrieval, Preservation/Conservation, Search News | No Comments »

Microsoft’s Virtual Earth Updated With Lots of New/Updated Imagery & 3D Options

Thursday, August 30th, 2007

First,
Updated Ortho Imagery

In the US much of this data fills out the outlying areas around cities where we have previously published super high res imagery from 3DI with imagery from GlobeXplorer. There is also a lot of 1M satellite imagery from GeoEye around the world. Paris now has very nice aerial imagery in Virtual Earth from Interatlas and our level 18 imagery in Japan has been refreshed.

The following is take from a list at the bottom of this blog post:

New/Updated
+ Over 25 areas in the U.S. using GlobeExplorer Imagery
A specific date is not provided but the year the imagery was created is listed.

+ 1m Aerial Imagery from GeoEye added for over 30 locations around the world. Including:
++ Canberra, AU
++ Mt. Everest
++ Auckland, New Zealand
++ St Petersburg, Russia

In addition to all of this new or updated imagery, more 3D content has become availabel for VE.
At the bottom of this post, you’ll see a list of new cities/regions added over the summer.
A few of the many cities include:
+ Hamilton, ON
+ Toronto, ON
+ Orlando
+ New Orleans
+ Brooklyn
and MANY more.

Finally, VE now offers Bird’s Eye” imagery for more European cities.
A few of the cities now available include:
+ Luton, UK
+ Marbella, Spain
+ Berlin, Germany
+ Göteborg, The Netherlands
+ Athens, Greece
Links to demo “Bird’s Eye” for major European cities, here.
Here’s a “Bird’s Eye” view of Venice, IT. The white colored building, top and right, is the train station. Enjoy your “Birds Eye” tour of Venice.

Posted in Digital Repositories, Geographic, Info Management and Retrieval, Resources for Educators, Source File | No Comments »

Updated/Enhanced National Science Digital Library Collaborative Wiki

Thursday, August 30th, 2007

According to the site the “official” beta release is coming soon. The Wiki was formerly known as the OurNSDL Wiki. It is being organized and led by Ellen J. Cramer aka “elly” from Cornell University. If called upon, we hope that ResourceShelf and DocuTicker can be of value to the Wiki moving forward. From a blog post:

The National Science Digital Library (NSDL) Wiki provides a collaborative online environment where users can organize, create, and annotate resources.

Source: NSDL Blog

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

Briefs: Special Libraries Association Recognizes Military Librarians; Flash Earth Puts Google Earth, Virtual Earth & Others On Web

Thursday, August 30th, 2007

+ Special Libraries Association Recognizes Military Librarians with 2007 Professional Award

+ Flash Earth Puts Google Earth, Virtual Earth & Others On Web (via Search Engine Land)
Barry points to an RS post from earlier this month where we posted about Google sending a cease and desist letter to Mobile GMaps about using Google Maps in a way similar to Flash Earth.

+ A Video of Yahoo Search Assist in Action (via Cartoon Barry)

+ Blog of Note: libraryassessment.info

A blog for and by librarians interested in library service assessment, evaluation, and improvement supported by the Association of Research Libraries

Posted in Info Management and Retrieval, Libraries and Librarianship, Search News, Web Search | No Comments »

Libraries: Johns Hopkins Acquires 6,000-Item H.L. Mencken Collection

Thursday, August 30th, 2007

+ Johns Hopkins Acquires 6,000-Item H.L. Mencken Collection
From the announcement

The Johns Hopkins University has acquired what is believed to be the largest privately held collection of items associated with writer and journalist H.L. Mencken, nearly 6,000 books, articles, letters, photographs and other items amassed over 44 years by an Ohio accountant with a passion for the Sage of Baltimore.

The acquisition of the George H. Thompson Collection by the university’s Sheridan Libraries is in part a purchase and in part a gift from Thompson’s wife, Betty Thompson, and son, Bradford G. Thompson.

The collection, which more than doubles the university’s Mencken-related holdings, will be housed at the George Peabody Library, which already has a significant research collection on Mencken.

See Also: Peabody Library Blog

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

Ready Reference Shelf: NFL Football 2007 Fast Facts, Stats and Related Resources

Thursday, August 30th, 2007

Since we’re proud to have thousands of you visiting ResourceShelf from all over the World (thanks!), we need to remember that in many other parts of the world, football is what we call soccer.

So, what follows is a quick compilation or if you prefer, a “virtual ready reference shelf” of resources as the 2007 NFL (aka American Football) season pre-season concludes and the regular season gets underway. Are you ready for some football?

+ Official NFL Rulebook
++ Digest of Rules
++ NFL Official Signals
++ Beginners Guide to Football

+ Record and Fast Facts
An essential source.

The NFL Record & Fact Book features information for the most avid football fan, including all-time statistics, a year-by-year history of the NFL, regular-season and postseason records, a rules digest and much more.

See Also: Team-by-Team Histories

Also available on this page:
++ History of the League (by Decade)
++ 75th Anniversary All-Time Team
++ Retired Numbers
++ Standings (back to 1920)

+ Day-by-Day
This Day in NFL History

+ 2007 Schedules
by team (Pre-Season, Regular Season, Post Season)

+ NFL Calendar
Feb. 3 — Super Bowl XLII, Glendale, Arizona

Stats
by Player
Data back to 1932
by Team
Data back to 1932
Weekly Leaders
Data back to 1970
Top Performances
Data back to 1970

Super Bowl
+ Super Bowl recaps
+ Super Bowl MVPs
+ Super Bowl records
+ Super Bowl standings
+ Super Bowl tickets and rings
+ Super Bowl halftime entertainment

Draft
+ All-Time No. 1 Draft Picks ||| All-Time #2 Draft Picks
+ NFL Drafts (1936-2007)
Sort by School, Name, Year, Team, Position
+ All Time Round-by-Round (by Team)

Posted in Chronologies and Timelines, Databases, Directories, and Guides, Fast Facts, Lists and Rankings, Resources for Educators, Source File | 1 Comment »

Cheers! New from askSam: Drink Recipes Database

Thursday, August 30th, 2007

Drink Recipes: Free Searchable Version

The askSam Drink Recipes is a collection of over 11,000 mixed drink and cocktail recipes. Complete with title, glass type, complete drink ingreditents and even instructions on how to mix the drink. If you have a full copy of askSam you can download the file and add your own drinks or cocktails and even add notes, modify existing drink recipes and more. This is a perfect database for anyone wanting to mix drinks at home, bartenders, or anyone just looking for a laugh (the names a very creative).

How about a Mango Mojito?

Browse or search online.

Source: askSam Systems

All of askSam’s free searchable eBooks & databases

Posted in Fast Facts, New Websites and Resources, Source File | No Comments »

Briefs: WSJ’s StartupJournal Receives New Name; GPS+Aerial Imagery=New Bushnell Products

Thursday, August 30th, 2007

WSJ’s Startup Journal Receives New Name
+++ The new site is named, WSJ.com/Entrepreneur
One feature of potential interest will be the Small Business Video Collection (on the right side of the page.) Access to WSJ.com/Entrepreneur is free.
See Also: Database of Franchises for Sale

+ Bushnell Enhances the Utility of their GPS Devices by Putting the Power of DigitalGlobe’s Satellite Imagery into the Hands of Outdoor Enthusiasts
Now even more tools when you pretend to be Jack Bauer. :-)

+ Microsoft to buy corporate group chat company
MS acquires Chicago’s Parlano.

Posted in Databases, Directories, and Guides, Information Industry, Search News | No Comments »

Canada: Profiles of Various Ethnic Communities (10 Reports + Index)

Thursday, August 30th, 2007

Profiles of Ethnic Communities in Canada
All of these documents were released this week or two.

+ The Japanese Community in Canada, 2001, no. 13

+ The Haitian Community in Canada

+ The Jamaican Community in Canada

+ The Korean Community in Canada

+ The Lebanese Community in Canada

+ The Caribbean Community in Canada

+ The Latin American Community in Canada

+ The Arab Community in Canada

+ The African Community in Canada

++ See Also: Complete List

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

Updated: Selected Internet Resources on the Migration of the Monarch Butterfly

Thursday, August 30th, 2007

Updated: Selected Internet Resources on the Migration of the Monarch Butterfly

Source: Science Reference Section, Science, Technology, and Business Division, 0Library of Congress

Posted in Fast Facts, Resources for Educators, Science, Source File | No Comments »

New Bibliography: Terrorism 2007

Thursday, August 30th, 2007

New Bibliography: Terrorism 2007
Comprehensive bibliography includes: General Information, The Threat, Methods, Trends, Vulnerabilities, Regional Issues

Source: Muir S. Fairchild Research Information Center, Air University.

Posted in Bibliographies, Webliographies, Source File | No Comments »

New Website for National Response: The National Response Framework

Thursday, August 30th, 2007

Via the On the HomeFront Blog
+ The National Response Framework
The Federal Emergency Management Office (FEMA) has unveiled a prototype of the National Response Framework website. Though much of it is still underdevelopment, it contains several documents detailing the direction of the National Response Plan to include the Draft version of the National Incident Management System.

The introductory statement of the website is as follows:

“This prototype site shows the elements that will be contained in the National Response Framework Resource Center. Please note that the National Response Plan, dated 2004, with Notice of Change amendments from 2006, remains in effect. This site is for demonstration purposes only.”

Source: FEMA (via Homeland Security Digital Library)

Posted in Government Documents and Political Information, New Websites and Resources, Resources for Educators, Source File | No Comments »

An Attack on Cancer Research…and other full-text reports on DocuTicker

Thursday, August 30th, 2007

Posted 29 August 2007 on DocuTicker:
+ An Attack on Cancer Research (OMB Watch)
+ The Role of Broadcasting in U.S. Public Diplomacy toward Iranians (Washington Institute for Near East Policy)
+ Rising Incomes Cushion Economy: Finding highly skilled workers remains a long-term challenge for manufacturers — The 10th Annual Labor Day Report (National Association of Manufacturers)

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

ARL Affirms Importance of Preservation for Research Libraries

Wednesday, August 29th, 2007

ARL Affirms Importance of Preservation for Research Libraries
From the statement:

“Preservation is a fundamental role and responsibility of the research library,” according to a new statement from the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), “Research Libraries’ Enduring Responsibility for Preservation.”

With digital information forming a growing share of the cultural record—joining a variety of analog formats—a new level of attention needs to be focused on preservation strategies. Research libraries must continue to invest in local preservation activities while increasingly engaging in collaborative preservation activities as well.

Collectively ARL libraries hold more than 470 million print volumes.

Full Text: Research Libraries’ Enduring Responsibility for Preservation

Source: ARL

Posted in Digital Preservation, Libraries and Librarianship, Preservation/Conservation, Search News | No Comments »

New Version of TOXMAP Adds Search Options

Wednesday, August 29th, 2007

A new version of TOXMAP was recently released.

New Features include:

+ More search options: Users can now search TOXMAP by Chemical Abstracts Service/Registry Number (CAS/RN), Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) facility name/ID, release medium, release year ranges, release amount, Superfund (NPL) site name/ID, and Hazard Ranking System (HRS) score.

+ Geographic regions: Users can create their own geographic region, or select a pre-defined region from a menu. Setting a geographic region limits search results to those inside the specified region. Regions can be saved for future access.

+ Regional TRI summary tables: Users can view summary (aggregate) TRI release amounts for their geographic region. Updated and expanded glossary and FAQs.

Source: Specialized Information Services at NLM

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

New from Map24: Adds Hotel Map Database and Reservations Option

Wednesday, August 29th, 2007

Map24: Adds Hotel Map Database and Reservations
70,000 hotels and numerous search options. Maps24 also offers personalization (for all maps), interactive or static maps, and much more. Interface available in 20 languages.

See Also: Map Out Points of Interest (by Category)

See Also: Wi-Fi Locator with Data from Spotigo

Posted in Geographic, Search Tools, Source File | No Comments »

Two New Demos from OCLC Research: Identities Database and Tag Clouds

Wednesday, August 29th, 2007

New and cool demos from OCLC Research Works

WorldCat Identities

Search and browse over 25 million personal and corporate authors.

Example: Carlos Santana
Note the actual record contains stats, number of OCLC holdings and a cool publication timeline. Names are automatically inverted. Here’a another record, this time for Colin Powell.

Also new from OCLC is the Tag Cloud Builder. Simply enter text or create a “cloud” by entering a url. Here’s a cloud for DocuTicker and another for PBS.org. See terms on the page in a “cloud” format.

The Tag Cloud tool generates the cloud by removing punctuation, calculating term frequencies, and selecting the font sizes to display. The terms are presented alphabetically in a paragraph-style display.

See Also: Clusty began offering a Cloud generator last year. The terms come from dynamically generated clusters found on Clusty results pages. Here are two examples. Only words can be used. You cannot “cloud” a URL.
++ Example 1: “Great Barrier Reef”

++ Example 2: iPhone

Posted in Cataloging and Metadata, Info Management and Retrieval, Information Industry, Libraries and Librarianship, Search News | No Comments »

Research: Who Gets That Email? Transfer Learning for Enhancing Information Flow

Wednesday, August 29th, 2007

Transfer Learning for Enhancing Information Flow in Organizations and Social Networks
4 pages; PDF.
by: Chris Pal, Xuerui Wang and Andrew McCallum (UMass)
This paper gets a bit technical but even without being able to understand that portion of the article, the rest is very very interesting.

From the abstract:

The task of suggesting recipients for an email has recently received attention as it has potential to enhance the flow of knowledge and information within an organization or social network. We investigate two transfer learning techniques to improve recipient prediction performance through considering predictions for multiple users. We present a novel continuous hidden variable conditional random field for the recipient prediction problem. We characterize this construction as a type of discriminative author recipient topic or DART model. First we show transfer based performance increases achieved through shared hidden variables for prediction across different users. Second, we show how transfer from an organization wide model to a user specific model through parameter prior structure also confers substantial advantage, especially when models are constructed for new users.

Source: UMass Computer Science Dept.

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

Briefs: OCLC Promotes Execs; Google CFO to Retire; Godfather of Internet Predicts Demise of TV

Wednesday, August 29th, 2007

+ OCLC Promotes Three Execs
Congrats to all and an extra special congrats and kudos to ResourceShelf friend, Chip Nilges, on his new job.

+ George Reyes To Retire As Google CFO (via David Dalka Blog)

+ Godfather of Internet Predicts Demise of TV (via IMDB)
Vin Cerf is also a Vice President & Chief Internet Evangelist at Google.

Posted in Information Industry, Search News | 1 Comment »

Conference Beat: Presentations for 7th International Symposium on Web and Wireless GIS Now Available

Wednesday, August 29th, 2007

Conference Beat: Presentations for 7th International Symposium on Web and Wireless GIS Now Available (W2GIS 2007)
The conference will take place on 28th-29th November, 2007 in Cardiff, UK.

+ Web architectures for monitoring and visualizing mobile objects in maritime contexts
Bertrand, Bouju, Claramunt, Devogele and Ray

+ A theoretical grounding for semantic descriptions of place
Edwardes and Purves

+ FRAMY: visualizing spatial query results on mobile interfaces
Paolino, Sebillo, Tortora and Vitiello

+ Supporting range queries on web data using k-nearest neighbor search
Bae, Alkobaisi, Kim, Appa and Shahabi

+ Automated schematization for web service applications
Swan, Anand, Ware and Jackson

+ OGC web processing service interface for web service orchestration
Stollberg and Zipf

+ Continuous perspective query processing for 3d objects on road networks
Kim, Kim and Li

+ The need for web legend services
Bucher, Buard, Jolivet and Ruas

+ PHOTOMAP: automatic spatiotemporal annotation for mobile photos
Viana, Filho, Gensel, Oliver and Martin

+ Towards the next generation of location based services
Frentzos, Gratsias and Theodoridis

+ GEMINIMAP: geographical enhanced map interface for navigation of the internet
Hirose, Hiramoto and Sumiya

+ Historic queries in geosensor networks
Winter, Dupke, Guan and Vieira

+ XFORMSGI: extending xforms for geospatial and sensor data
Weitkamper and Brinkhoff

+ A continuous spatial query processing for push-based geographic web search systems
Lee and Kwon

+ Towards the geo-spatial querying of the semantic web with ONTOAST
Miron, Gensel, Oliver and Martin

+ A GIS approach to predicting road surface temperatures
Fry. Slade, Taylor and Davy

+ Modeling environmental process using semantic geospatial web service
Yi and Huang

+ Thematic clustering of geographic resource metadata collections
Lacasta, Nogueras-Iso, Medrano and Zarazaga-Soria

+ Wireless positioning techniques: a developers perspective
Rooney, Gardiner and Carswell

+ A client for distributed geo-processing on the web
Foerster and Schaffer

+ Heuristic evaluation of usability of geoweb sites
Komarkova, Visek and Novak

Posted in Geographic, Search News, Technology and Internet | No Comments »

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