With the economy slowing, many Americans are doing research in the public library. Boyd County, Ky., Library Director Debbie Cosper says public-use computers are always full and people a checking out books rather than buying them.
Source: National Public Radio
People can also learn if their favorite route to work has a history of fatal road crashes. The University of Minnesota has a new Website where people can find, and view, the deadliest roads in America…Users can type in an address and discover every fatal accident within a few miles of it, or in a particular state or ZIP code. The accident information comes from Federal Highway Administration public records.
Source: MPR
As part of efforts to improve and revive the waning reading culture in the country, the Federal Government has embarked on the construction of a multi billion naira national library complex in the Federal Capital Territory, Dr Ikpaahindi has said.
The Director/Chief Executive Officer of the National Library of Nigeria, Dr. L.N Ikpaahindi said that the ongoing project is being built at the cost of N8.6 billion and is expected to be completed and commissioned by 2010.
Source: allAfrica.com
From the exec summary of a report by Sathish Menon and Michael Douma:
This report outlines key findings from surveys that explored factors that drive online experience as expressed by the three different subject groups – nonprofit organizations and cities, web designers and firms, and the general public.
The exec summary and full text (PDF) are available at no charge.
Source: Idea.org
The National Library of Australia has launched a public beta of its ‘Australian Newspapers’ site. The site will offer access to scanned images and text from historic Australian newspapers dating from 1803 to 1954.
Source: PC World
Cognition Technologies (www.cognition.com) has introduced SemanticMEDLINE (http://www.semanticmedline.com), a new free service that enables complex health and life science material to be rapidly and efficiently discovered with greater precision and completeness using natural language processing (NLP) technology. This marks the first time that users can employ a natural, conversational sentence structure to find the most complex studies within the MEDLINE data set…published by the National Library of Medicine.
Source: Info Today NewsBreaks
The opinion of the Czech National Library (NK) that the baroque building of Klementinum, NK’s current seat, is not suitable for the operation of NK as a whole in the long run is still valid, NK spokeswoman Katerina Novakova told today.
Source: CeskeNoviny.cz
The full text of the Foundation Yearbook is a fee-based document but highlights are available here at no charge. (PDF)
The edition’s key findings include:
* Overall foundation giving rose 10 percent in 2007 to an estimated $42.9 billion
* Giving by the nation’s more than 72,000 grantmaking foundations increased 7.1 percent in 2006 to $39 billion
* Assets of all active U.S. foundations were up 11.6 percent to a record $614.7 billion in 2006
* The West posted the fastest rate of growth in number of foundations, total giving, and assets in 2006
Source: Foundation Center
+ Library raises $10,000, a penny at a time (via The Mining Journal)
+ Oakland, Library Tagged By Graffiti Vandals
Oops.
A graffiti vandal tagged the Carnegie Library in Oakland, but his work contained a literary mistake (via KDKA).
Posted 28 July 2008 on DocuTicker:
+ $140 Billion Price Tag to Repair and Modernize America’s Bridges (American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials)
+ Making Work Pay Enough: A Decent Standard of Living for Working Families (Urban Institute)
+ Foreign Investment and National Security: Economic Considerations (Congressional Research Service)
Are the shelves at your local library looking more colorful these days? Chalk it up to all the comic books — and the librarians who love them.
In the quest to attract young readers, librarians are increasingly stocking up on the latest comic books and graphic novels. This week, they mingled with comic enthusiasts at Comic-Con, a massive popular arts convention in San Diego, poring over manga, or Japanese comics, and attending panels specifically aimed at librarians who want to reach younger audiences.
The one-hour live webinar take place this Friday beginning at 1pm EDST.
Learn more, register (free) here.
From the description:
The Gutenberg-e project was created as a bold experiment to explore whether peer-reviewed, born-digital monographs would alter the way historical scholarship is presented, whether scholars would receive the same professional credit for these publications as they would from work published in print, and whether the project would enable the publication of monographs that would otherwise be turned down for financial reasons by university presses. The project has a history that includes both exciting breakthroughs and significant challenges. A number of the authors have created completely new models of collaboration in the scholarly communication process as well as new models of historical scholarship and narrative. We have come to understand that e-books require a significant level of investment in both editorial and technical staff time in order to create publications that reach their full potential as works of digital scholarship. We have also learned that integrating and sustaining this work within a collaborative publishing, library, and technology organization presents significant challenges and great opportunities. Wittenberg will discuss the project’s findings and cover both the breakthroughs and obstacles encountered during the course of the project’s development.
Source: EDUCAUSE
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) unveiled Monday what it calls “a dramatically improved website with new interactive games, flash animation, videos of highlights and other features that make it a one-step source for information on the Olympic Games”.
The site, www.olympic.org, will provide continually updated results from China, as well as a behind-the-scenes look at activities in Beijing. There is also the “Olympic Express” e-journal that provides information for the pre-teen audience.
Source: GamesBids.com
Six months into the project, the library has been able to update 500 photo records with new information provided by Flickr users — everything from names of people and places in photographs to specific airplane models shown in photos, says Helena Zinkham, acting chief of the Prints and Photographs Division.
The library began with two major collections: 1,500 black-and-white photos taken from 1910 to 1920 by George Grantham Bain’s New York-based Bain News Service and 1,600 color shots from the Farm Service Administration/Office of War Information that were taken in the 1940s. It has since added 900 additional photos from the Bain collection.
Source: USA Today
Resources of the Week: Niche Information
By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor
For the last couple weeks, we’ve highlighted sources for niche statistics — i.e., data you may not need on a regular basis, but…well, you never know. For the next couple weeks, we’ll point out some places you can go to ferret out very specific types of information. Enjoy.
The Center for Gaming Research is a world-class hub for the scholarly analysis of gambling and gaming issues.
Located within Special Collections at UNLV’s state-of-the-art Lied Library, its main resource is the Gaming Collection.
Many unique primary resources can be found only within the Collection. The Gaming Collection is the repository of record for the commercial casino industry; we preserve and make accessible company documents, state publications, and other important resources.
OK, so it’s not surprising this is located at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. But think about it for a minute. Do you really want to go to Google and type in “casino” or “gambling” if you’re looking to do research? The breadth and depth of information here is staggering. Especially cool are the three specific pathfinders:
If you’re looking for the latest links in disaster information, the Disaster Finder finds them for you, and even lets you preview your selections with brief site descriptions. All sites are clickable from the Disaster Finder’s category screens. The Disaster Finder also allows you to perform quick or detailed searches of its links database.
Disaster Finder is a service developed and maintained by the NASA Solid Earth and Natural Hazards Program (Code YO), NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C., USA. This service was created for the disaster community at-large so that the best links in disaster information could be found quickly and easily.
What this looks like is a mini-Yahoo! for disaster info. Currently, there are five main categories:
Browse the directory, browse the “links tree,” or search. Contains just under 650 links.
Ever wonder what foods the Vikings ate when they set off to explore the new world? How Thomas Jefferson made his ice cream? What the pioneers cooked along the Oregon Trail? Who invented the potato chip…and why?
Welcome to the Food Timeline! Food history presents a fascinating buffet of popular lore and contradictory facts. Some people will tell you it’s impossible to express this topic in exact timeline format. They are correct. Most foods we eat are not invented; they evolve.
This site is the work of Lynne Olver, “(a) reference librarian with a passion for food history.” It’s awesome! If you’ve never visited this site, stop what you’re doing and zip over there now. The section of this site that I, personally, use most often is Historic Food Prices. Seems like somebody always wants to know what a gallon of milk cost Back In The Day (PDF; 2.2 MB; scroll down to page 31). Some data from other countries can be found here as well.
+ Federal Forms Catalog for Citizens
The Forms Catalog provides citizens and businesses with a common access point to federal agency forms.
Yep. Forms.gov provides one-stop shopping for forms across all government agencies. Excellent search functionality. There’s even a link to Internal Government Forms for Federal Employees. Keep this one in the ref desk bookmark list.
Since 1984, the MEASURE DHS (Demographic and Health Surveys) project has provided technical assistance to more than 200 surveys in 75 countries, advancing global understanding of health and population trends in developing countries. The strategic objective of MEASURE DHS is to improve and institutionalize the collection and use of data by host countries for program monitoring and evaluation and for policy development decisions. MEASURE DHS is funded by USAID with contributions from other donors.
DHS, here at least, does not stand for Department of Homeland Security. This is a resource that offers free data and publications related to population, health and nutrition in 75+ countries. It’s particularly strong on HIV/AIDS data, and allows you to browse by country.
The WorldPublicOpinion.org website provides information and analysis about public opinion on international policy issues from around the world. While the studies of the WorldPublicOpinion.org network figure prominently, the website draws together data from a wide variety of sources from around the world. We have found that data from all reliable sources are important contributions and that as more studies are integrated into analyses, world public opinion comes into increasing focus.
Want to find out what vox populi in India and Pakistan think about the Kashmir situation? Curious about how people around the world regard the energy crisis? Interested in what Russians and Americans have to say about space weapons? This is your fishing hole. Browse by region or topic, or use the keyword search box.
From the summary:
The Web contains thousands of mashups that recombine everything — including Google Maps, Flickr, Amazon.com, NASA, the New York Times, and Wikipedia — with useful information about travel, finance, real estate, and more. By fusing elements from multiple web sites, mashups are often informative, useful, fun, and even transformative. Raymond Yee’s presentation shows you how to create and apply mashups to make sense of the web, especially in the context of libraries.
Source: Library of Congress
Web 2.0 has raised new expectations from the library users : after reading a book, they wish to rate it, provide some comments or review about it and tag it for themselves or for others. They also expect to discover other interesting books thanks to the contribution of other people. Those functions, summarized under OPAC 2.0, are now provided by several Integrated Library Systems (ILS), at least partially. But, due to the slow development of some products, other paths were also explored: Content Management Systems (CMS) or specific software.
CMS does provide the required functionalities like tagging and commenting. Some pioneers thus decided to develop a new Web OPAC based on CMS. Another approach was to build an OPAC that is independent from any ILS and which offers the required functionalities.
In this paper, we propose to review the options available for the librarians wishing to offer Web 2.0 functionalities to their users. We also provide a synthesis of our own experience in implementing an OPAC 2.0 into our Library.
by: Chalon, Patrice X. and Di Pretoro, Emmanuel and Kohn, Laurence (2008) OPAC 2.0: Opportunities, development and analysis. In Proceedings 11th European Conference of Medical and Health Libraries, Helsinki (Finland).
Source: E-LIS
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