Archive for April, 2009

Free Access to Swine Flu Information from DynaMed

Thursday, April 30th, 2009

Free Access to Swine Flu Information from DynaMed

Due to the recent global outbreak of Swine Influenza, EBSCO Publishing and the DynaMed Editors have made the main elements of the DynaMed clinical summary for Swine Influenza free to health care providers and institutions throughout the world. The DynaMed topic on Swine Influenza consolidates information from multiple sources for health care providers to stay current with recommendations for monitoring, diagnosing, and treating patients with flu-like illnesses during this outbreak. DynaMed Editors will continue to monitor information and update this topic as needed throughout this global crisis.

DynaMed is a point-of-care reference resource designed to provide clinicians with the best available evidence to support clinical decision-making. DynaMed is part of the suite of medical products owned and provided by EBSCO Publishing and is updated daily by monitoring medical literature sources.

via Bill Drew, Baby Boomer Librarian

See also: Resources of the Week: Swine Flu

Video: Harvard Law School Presentation about Wolfram|Alpha Now Archived and Available Online

Thursday, April 30th, 2009

Earlier this week Steven Wolfram gave a live demo of the soon to launch Wolfram|Alpha “knowledge engine” at Harvard University’s Law School. This is a must watch video of the nearly two hour presentation.

Last night, I was included in demo (thanks Danny) that Mr. Wolfram gave about this new service. We’ll have more to say next week but for now please know that in our view this is truly a wonderful (amazing) product. It’s one all information professionals will likely be using for years to come. The first fact/answer/knowledge engine that really works (for some BUT not all information needs) is just a few weeks away. When so much we come across doesn’t lives up to the hype it receives, this new product, in our view, exceeds the attention it has been getting.

Watch this video and see several examples (tip of the iceberg stuff) of what Wolfram|Alpha tool can do.

More to come next week.

See Also: Wolfram|Alpha Blog and Twitter Feed Debut as New “Knowledge Engine” is Demonstrated

Webcast: Open Content Alliance: Brewster Kahle Interviewed on Democracy Now!

Thursday, April 30th, 2009

From a Blog Post:

Today Democracy Now! broadcast an interview between Amy Goodman and Brewster Kahle about digitization, the Google Book Search Settlement, and the future of books and libraries (taped on April 17 in San Francisco).

Direct to Video/Audio and Transcript

Source: OCA Blog

New from Primary Research Group: The Survey of American College Students: Who Goes to the College Library and Why

Thursday, April 30th, 2009

This info comes from a fee-based report. However, the highlights below are available for free.

From the Summary (via e-mail):

This report presents approximately 165 tables of data exploring how often full time college students in the United States go to their college library, what they do when they are there, and how they rate their library’s accessibility and comfort.

The data in the report is based on a representative sample of more than 400 full time college students in the United States. Data is broken out by 16 criteria including gender, grade point average, major field of study, income level of students and type, size of college, and mean SAT acceptance score
of colleges, among other variables.

Just a few of the report’s many conclusions are that:

+ Business and economics students reported the highest rates of taking library instruction courses; 12.27% of them had take such a class within the past month

+ Students from families with annual incomes of greater than $150,000 were somewhat more likely to have used the library than others.

+ The higher a student’s grades the more likely was that student to have visited the library within the past month.

+ More than 69% of private college students visited the library in the past month while only 56.66% of public college students did so.

+ Approximately twice as many females (9.34%) as males (4.73%) report taking a library instruction class within the past year.

+ Close to 55% of the students in the sample have used a public computer workstation at their college library within the past month.

+ Only 43.9% of students raised in families with annual incomes of greater than $150,000 have used a library workstation within the past month while 55.7% of students raised in families with incomes of less than $40,000 and 57.03% of students from families with incomes of between $40,000 and $75,000 have used a library workstation within the past month.

+ Close to 47% of students raised in major cities have held meetings with other students in the library within the past month; only 27.3% of students raised in suburbs have done so.

+ 8.71% of the students in the sample say that they virtually never go to the library and don’t really like being there.

+ We asked the students in the sample whether they use the library more often, less often, or about the same as their fellow students at their college. Only 37.72% felt that they used the library about the same extent as most other students.

Learn more about the report (purchasing information).

Source: Primary Research

Global Legal Information Network (GLIN) Garners Excellence in Government Award

Thursday, April 30th, 2009

From an Announcement:

The Global Legal Information Network (GLIN), a database administered by the Law Library of Congress, was among the “Top Five” projects to receive a 2009 excellence in government award from the Industry Advisory Council (IAC). GLIN was recognized for “excellence in transparency” (openness and accountability).

GLIN is a public database of official texts of laws, regulations, judicial decisions and other complementary legal sources contributed by 36 governmental agencies and international organizations, covering 51 jurisdictions. The database, searchable in 14 languages, is accessible online at www.glin.gov. Each document is certified as authentic, cataloged and tagged using a controlled vocabulary, which facilitates search and retrieval.

Direct to Global Legal Information Network Home Page

See Also: Global Legal Monitor (GLM)

Source: Library of Congress

Open Access Directory Celebrates its First Year Online

Thursday, April 30th, 2009

From the SPARC Announcement:

As growing appreciation of Open Access to research drives demand for new resources — on what Open Access is and how it benefits faculty, students and researchers worldwide — the popular Open Access Directory (OAD) marks its first anniversary today. The Open Access Directory, hosted by Simmons College, is a wiki where community contributors create and maintain simple, factual lists about Open Access to science and scholarship. Launched just one year ago, and operated entirely by an international corps of volunteers, the OAD quickly blossomed from six to 40 lists and has served more than 250,000 unique users.

Designed by Robin Peek (Associate Professor, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, Simmons College) and Peter Suber (Research Professor of Philosophy at Earlham College, Visiting Fellow at Yale Law School, and Senior Researcher at SPARC), the OAD has quickly become a “go-to” resource in the academic community. The Directory’s “signature” lists include:

+ Timeline of the Open Access movement, based on the work of Peter Suber

+ Bibliography of Open Access, based on the work of Charles W. Bailey Jr

+ Events celebrating Open Access Day 2008, which captured participation by 129

+ Conferences and workshops related to Open Access, which tracks events from 2002 to 2010

Source: SPARC

Seven ARL Libraries Face Major Planned or Potential Budget Cuts

Thursday, April 30th, 2009

From the Post:

Seven ARL libraries are facing major planned or potentia budget cuts: Cornell University Library, Emory University Libraries, MIT Libraries, UCLA Libraries, University of Tennessee Libraries, University of Washington Libraries, and Yale University Library. These examples suggest that significant budget cuts may be widespread in ARL libraries.

Source: DigitalKoans

Updated: Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George W. Bush

Thursday, April 30th, 2009

From the Web Site:

Each Public Papers volume contains the papers and speeches of the President of the United States that were issued by the Office of the Press Secretary during the specified time period. The material is presented in chronological order, and the dates shown in the headings are the dates of the documents or events. In instances when the release date differs from the date of the document itself, that fact is shown in the textnote. Files are available in ASCII text and PDF formats.

Just released on 29 April 2009: Book II – July 1 to September 30, 2004

Source: GPO
Hat Tip: S.B.

U.S. Government: Kundra talks Data.gov & Remixing government data

Thursday, April 30th, 2009

From the Article:

Government data prepared for public reuse should be offered in multiple-formats, be machine-readable and adhere as closely as possible to lightweight standards, advised federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra, speaking at the 2009 Government Web Managers conference held this week in Washington.

In March, when Kundra assumed the role of federal CIO, he promised that the federal government would set up a new repository, called Data.Gov, that would be populated with links and sources of data from federal agencies, which could be reused by citizens and organizations for their own Web applications.

See Also: Remixing government data

Source: GCN

Citation Brief: Top 20 Countries in Engineering

Thursday, April 30th, 2009

+ Direct to Rankings

From the Web Page:

…a listing of the top 20 countries which, as of the latest bimonthly update of Essential Science IndicatorsSM, attracted the highest total citations to their papers published in Thomson Reuters-indexed journals of Engineering over an 11-year period, (1998-December 31, 2008). These countries are of a pool of 96 countries comprising the top 50% ranked by total citation count in this field.

Source: Thomson Reuters

The May Issue of the Internet Resources Newsletter is Now Online

Thursday, April 30th, 2009

A full batch of news and new resources from Roddy MacLeod and crew at the Heriot-Watt University Library.is


Direct to Newsletter

New Presentation: Open Access in Canada – Overview and Update

Thursday, April 30th, 2009

Direct to PDF Files

From the Abstract:

An overview of open access around the world, and in Canada in particular. There are more than 100 fully open access, peer reviewed journals published in Canada, and more than 2 have been added to DOAJ each month so far in 2009. Presents examples of the journals. Research funding agency open access policies are discussed, and university perspectives on OA. Early announcement of a new OA policy by and for University of Calgary library faculty is featured. The unique perspective of the health sector on OA is discussed.

A presentation by Heather Morrison, Donald Taylor, Andrew Waller, and Devon Greyson. It was delivered at the British Columbia Library Conference in April, 2009.

Source: E-LIS

The United Nations Has a YouTube Channel

Wednesday, April 29th, 2009

You can now view videos from the United Nations on their YouTube Channel.

Direct to Channel

Source: United Nations

Seamless Environment: NISO Announces New Work on Single Sign-On Authentication

Wednesday, April 29th, 2009

From the Announcement:

NISO is pleased to announce the approval by the NISO Voting Members of a new work item to focus on perfecting single-sign-on (SSO) authentication to achieve seamless item-level linking in a networked information environment. A new working group will be formed under the auspices of NISO’s Discovery to Delivery Topic Committee to create one or more recommended practices that will explore practical solutions for improving the success of SSO authentication technologies and to promote the adoption of one or more of these solutions to make the access improvements a reality.

Possible solutions include providing a generic mechanism for passing the authentication method from site to site; use of cookies to remember the authentication method that was used the last time the site was accessed by that computer; and/or providing a mechanism to discover if the user has an active session for one of the common SSO authentication methods. “By developing recommended practices that will help make the SSO environment work better (smarter),” said Pesch, “libraries and information providers will improve the ability for users to successfully and seamlessly access the content to which they are entitled.”

Source: National Information Standards Organization

The April, 2009 Issue of the Journal of the Medical Library Association is Now Available Online

Wednesday, April 29th, 2009

Direct to Table of Contents (via Pubmed Central)

Articles include:

+ A case study: using social tagging to engage students in learning Medical Subject Headings

+ Search strategies to identify information on adverse effects: a systematic review

+ Development of a new academic digital library: a study of usage data of a core medical electronic journal collection

+ A bibliometric analysis of the scientific literature on Internet, video games, and cell phone addiction

+ The great contribution: Index Medicus, Index-Catalogue, and IndexCat

+ Web usability testing with a Hispanic medically underserved population

+ Disappearing act: decay of uniform resource locators in health care management
journals

+ Medical librarians’ uses and perceptions of social tagging

+ Embedded librarians: one library’s model for decentralized service

and Much More.

UK: JISC project looks at eBook usage

Wednesday, April 29th, 2009

From a Summary (via OCLC):

The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) has collaborated with 127 universities in the U.K. since 2007 to study eBook usage by students and teachers. Analysis is ongoing. Among the preliminary findings from the project’s user surveys and server log evaluations:

+ 64.2 percent of students use eBooks and 52.3 percent obtain them through their university library as opposed to free via the Internet, from a friend or colleague or purchasing it.

+ Most students (57.3 percent) read by dipping in and out of several chapters and spend 11 minutes or longer (75.7 percent) reading an eBook on the screen in one session.

+ Well over one-third of students (42.2 percent) had consulted at least three eBook titles in the month prior to the survey.

+ Only 26.2 percent of university teachers do not recommend or actively encourage their students to use eBook resources.

Direct to Complete Report (8 pages; PDF)

Source: JISC (via OCLC Abstracts)

EMBL and DERI triumph in Elsevier Grand Challenge

Wednesday, April 29th, 2009

From the Article:

Two projects representing the most innovative and easily implemented life science tools have scooped the Elsevier Grand Challenge.

Launched by the global healthcare and scientific publisher in June 2008, the competition invited researchers to prototype tools dealing with the ever-increasing amount of online life sciences information. The judges included academics, library professionals, information science experts and product developers.

Source: Information World Review

A Smarter Search for What Ails You

Wednesday, April 29th, 2009

From the Article:

Finding information on the Web isn’t hard, as long as you know what you’re looking for. Sometimes, though, the most useful information can remain hidden within the body of a complex document, and only the most carefully chosen combination of keywords will uncover it.

Semantic search technologies promise to help change this by returning more relevant information based on an understanding of the relationships between different words. Last week, Netbase Solutions, a company based in Mountain View, CA, released search software called Content Intelligence that organizes searchable content by analyzing sentence structure in a novel way. The company created a demonstration of the platform that searches through health-related information.

Direct to Netbase Web Site

Source: Technology Review

U.S. Government: Intellipedia Celebrates Third Anniversary with a Successful Challenge

Wednesday, April 29th, 2009

From the Post:

During a typical workday, Intellipedia—the Intelligence Community’s version of Wikipedia—receives about 5,000 contributions. The third anniversary of Intellipedia on Friday, April 17, was anything but a typical workday. Intellipedia users broke the record for contributions in one day with 15,046 edits.

See Also: Intellipedia Marks Second Anniversary

Source: CIA

Twitter quitters are fleeing the site in droves

Wednesday, April 29th, 2009

From the Story:

It seems that while people are joining the micro-blogging site in droves, a whole lot of them don’t sticking around for long. A Nielsen Co. report released yesterday shows that 60% of Twitter users do not return to the microblogging site the next month. And for the 12 months prior to Oprah Winfrey joining Twitter this month with great media fanfare, the site had a retention rate of less than 30%.

Source: Computerworld