Here are the Titles of the Sessions (Each Session Includes Presentations by One or More Presenters):

+ New Models for Federal Depository Library Collections: Report on Findings from a Study Commissioned by ARL and COSLA

+ Potential Library Roles for Supporting Current and Future Public Access Initiatives

+ The Science, Technology, Innovation Agenda of the Obama Administration

+ Why Are Special Collections so Important? Exploring the Value Proposition of Special Collections

+ Building on Our Strengths: Opportunities for Special Collections in the Digital Age

+ The Federal Depository Library Program: A Focus on Strategies for Regional FDLs and Digitization Sponsored by the Public Policies Affecting Research Libraries Steering Committee

+ Options for Research Library Support of Small Publisher Operations

+ ARL Survey on E-Science and Data Support: Initial Findings

Who Was There? (PDF)

Source: ARL
Hat Tips: OATP (Open Access Tracking Project) and Peter Scott

Without further ado, the 2009 Word of the Year is: unfriend.

unfriend – verb – To remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook.

As in, “I decided to unfriend my roommate on Facebook after we had a fight.”

“It has both currency and potential longevity,” notes Christine Lindberg, Senior Lexicographer for Oxford’s US dictionary program. “In the online social networking context, its meaning is understood, so its adoption as a modern verb form makes this an interesting choice for Word of the Year. Most “un-” prefixed words are adjectives (unacceptable, unpleasant), and there are certainly some familiar “un-” verbs (uncap, unpack), but “unfriend” is different from the norm. It assumes a verb sense of “friend” that is really not used (at least not since maybe the 17th century!). Unfriend has real lex-appeal.”

What other words were on the shortlist?

In the Technology Category:

hashtag – a # [hash] sign added to a word or phrase that enables Twitter users to search for tweets (postings on the Twitter site) that contain similarly tagged items and view thematic sets

intexticated – distracted because texting on a cellphone while driving a vehicle

netbook – a small, very portable laptop computer with limited memory

paywall – a way of blocking access to a part of a website which is only available to paying subscribers

sexting – the sending of sexually explicit texts and pictures by cellphone

Other categories with terms that were discussed can be found here.

The post also contains “Notable Word Clusters for 2009.” One has to do with Twitter and the other with President Obama.

Here’s the Twitter cluster. Check the Blog post for the Obamaisms.

Tweeps
Tweetup
Twitt
Twitterati
Twitterature
Twitterverse/sphere
Retweet
Twibe
Sweeple
Tweepish
Tweetaholic
Twittermob
Twitterhea

From the Digital Download Blog:

There are 67 slots on Forbes’ first ranking of the World’s Most Powerful People –one for every 100 million people on the planet. Barack Obama tops the list, thanks to his control of the world’s largest economy, military, and nuclear arsenal. Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page have a combined net worth of $30 billion, and come in fifth. WalMart CEO Michael Duke runs the world’s largest retailer, with $401 billion in annual sales and 2 million employees — he comes in at number eight. And iconoclastic Apple CEO Steve Jobs ranks #57.

Direct to the List

Top 5
1) Barack Obama
2) Hu Jintao
3) Vladimir Putin
4) Ben S. Bernanke
5) Sergey Brin and Larry Page

You Can Sort the List By:
+ Rank
+ Name
+ Title
+ Organization
+ Age

When you click on any name, you’ll access a brief profile of the list member.

+ The World’s Most Powerful People home page also contains links to a set of lists where, “experts pick seven in their field who matter most” plus one list where reader’s selected the most powerful people. 21 lists in all. For example, Kevin Rose from digg, picked the seven members of the technology list.

+ The World’s Most Powerful People in Pictures (Slide Show)

Finally, this article provides background on .

See Also: The Time 100: The Most Influential People
The list is organized by category. The full list on a single page is here.

Ed. Note: We posted the following item last weekend. After using Newsy for another week, we believe it deserves to be a Resource of the Week and is also deserving of your attention.

Here’s an idea we haven’t seen before. We were a skeptical at first but after a short time we can say we like what Newsy is up to. The current version of the service has been available since April, 2009 when it was relaunched. The Newsy iPhone app launched a couple of weeks ago.

The idea is as simple and and fresh. We’ve not seen anything similar available for free. Basically, take stories in the news and then bring together multiple video (and sometimes text-based) news reports from a number of sources and place them all on a single location. It’s not only a great way to see how a news story is reported but viewing the same story from different news organizations can potentially turn up facts from one source that the other source does not report on. By the way, the company likes to think to think of themselves as “news analyzer” and not a news aggregator. We think both phrases can work together Whatever you call Newsy there is plenty of value here.

Newsy can be useful in many situations. One potential use is helping to teach critical information skills by reviewing what is and is not reported on in a news story and how it’s reported. For example, how much time does each source give to the story.

But wait, there’s more. In addition to aggregating news reports on the same story, Newsy produces their OWN original video content summarizing the material from each source into a single report. For those who don’t want to view each source video one at a time, here’s a way to learn what each one is reporting in just a minute or two.

You can keyword search Newsy (you’re searching metadata) or browse by one of seven categories:

+ World
+ Economy
+ U.S.
+ Politics
+ Tech/Sci
+ Environment
+ Culture

You can also sort results by:

+ Most Popular
+ Most Recent
+ Most Commented
+ Highest Rated
+ Editor’s Picks

Let’s review how Newsy works:

1] Find a story, search or browse
We searched for “Obama” and got back 10 results.

2] Select the story; We chose “Obama Gives Donors Access to White House” from October 29, 2009 with a video summary that runs about three minutes.

3] After clicking the play we were taken to this page.

5] Immediately, Newsy’s own video summary begins playing.

6] Above the video box (which can be embedded on any web page) notice the direct links to the various news sources used in the summary.

7] In this case the sources are:

+ Fox News
+ The Hill (Text-Based)
+ CNN
+ The Washington Times
+ CBS
+ The Washington Post

A good and well-balanced selection of sources. If you click on any of them, a new window opens and the “source” video (or text) begins playing. Text sources link directly to the article. No more going all over the web to find the content.

Quick Hits

+ Newsy does not offer its services for every news story. That’s minor when you sit back and review what we think is real value in what they offer. Hopefully, they’ll be able to cover more in the future.

+ An iPhone version of Newsy is also available. It’s a free app. Here’s a link to get Newsy iPhone (via the iTunes App Store).

+ If you register for the site you can comment on any story.

+ A text transcript of each Newsy original summary is available. You’ll find it below the summary video box.

+ You can share reports using direct links to many social networks or e-mail a link to the selected story.

+ An RSS feed of stories is available as well as the Newsy blog.1

We hope that Newsy continues to offer a wide variety sources and a well-balanced set of sources for each story it covers. One thing we would love to see is a source list (we’re guessing the Newsy uses more sources than listed on this page) and perhaps the expansion of this page about how news stories are selected. Another page about the news source selection process would be useful. Finally, we would be very happy if you could view stories by source. In other words, show me all of the stories that use video from MSNBC, BBC, CBS, etc.

You can learn more about the company this STLToday article. For example, they are based in Columbia, MO and have a staff (as of a few weeks ago) of 19.

Many Thanks to Charles Knight over at AltSearchEngines for letting us know about Newsy.
Yesterday, Charles ran a post about Newsy focusing on the success of their iPhone app.

Today, the United States Senate voted to confirm David Ferriero as the 10th Archivist of the United States. Mr. Ferriero was the Andrew W. Mellon Director of the New York Public Libraries and is a leader in the field of library science. Mr. Ferriero, who was nominated by President Obama on July 28, 2009, will succeed Professor Allen Weinstein who resigned as Archivist in December 2008 for health reasons. Deputy Archivist Adrienne Thomas is serving as the Acting Archivist until Mr. Ferriero assumes his duties.

As the Andrew W. Mellon Director of the New York Public Libraries (NYPL), Mr. Ferriero was part of the leadership team responsible for integrating the four research libraries and 87 branch libraries into one seamless service for users, creating the largest public library system in the United States and one of the largest research libraries in the world. Mr. Ferriero was in charge of collection strategy; conservation; digital experience; reference and research services; and education, programming, and exhibitions.

The announcement goes on to provide additional information about Mr. Ferriero’s as well as background about NARA.

Source: NARA
Hat Tip: Debra Bade

In a nutshell, OpenCalais uses semantic technology and natural language processing to analyze text and add metadata by drawing out entities from documents, blog posts, news stories, etc. In some cases, ths type of data can identify or help identify relationships between people, businesses, etc.

A visualization tool might make OpenCalais even more powerful. For example in might be interesting for visualization tools like Muckety or NNDB Mapper and to quickly “see” relationships that might go unnoticed without OpenCalais or other services.

Sure, it would be wonderful if all web content could be analyzed by a human and then have high quality metadata associated with it.

However, that’s far from possible given the massive amount of content generated each minute of each day.

You can try OpenCalais yourself by typing or pasting text into the viewer box.

We entered the full text of last Saturday’s Weekly Presidential Address and got back lots of stats and commentary.

+ Topic (Labor) Worth noting that we did not put the title of the address in the viewer box. The title is, “President Obama Says Recovery Act Creating Jobs and Strengthening Economy”

+ Social Tags Labor, Unemployment, Presidency of Barack Obama, etc.

+ Entities including: Cities (Arcadia, FL) is mentioned in speech Holiday (He ends by wishing everyone a Happy Halloween

+ Continent America (well we’ll got it some slack, close but incorrect) +Industry Terms Clean energy, Less Energy (Good)

+ Province or State Florida, again accurate Finally, Events & Facts

+ Generic Relations (announce, Florida,United States, the largest set of) First we were puzzled. Then, by cursoring over the entry, we see that it’s Florida having the largest set of clean energy projects.

Btw, if you cursor over any of the entities you’ll find additional info.

For example, with Florida we find a relevance score and the lat/long for Arcardia, FL, the town mentioned in the address.

Although we did see it in our document, OC might also provide direct links to Wikipedia, CIA World Factbook, etc.

Overall, very good. But, it’s just one example and one example search does not make a service.

One question that we would we would like to get an answer to is why ThomsonReuters is providing free access to OpenCalais? Does it plan to charge for additional services in the future?

UPDATE: Krista Thomas from OpenCalais sent along the following goals in a Twitter message.
1) Better software faster.
2) Connect all the worlds’ business information.

For bloggers, OC offers a WordPress plug-in, a service for Drupal users and more. The WordPress tool analyzes blog postings, suggests, and even images from Flickr.

Other services have technology that draws out indexing terms, descriptors, etc. but OpenCalais appears to be much more sophisticated. Somewhat similar is Silobreaker news search Silobreaker’s algorithm draws out entities from stories and then make them clickable or searchable. It also offers a couple of cool visualization tools.

Krista Thomas from OpenCalais recently gave a presentation to the San Diego Software Industry Council. Krista’s slides are available online. The charts on pages 4 and 5 are difficult to read so we’re trying to get copies to share..

At the present time

+ 18,000 Developers
+ 20+ Publishers
+ 50 Apps and Services Created
+ 4 million docs processed daily

Again, you can try OpenCalais yourself by typing or pasting text into the viewer box.

Finally, here’s one more OC example using the content from this post.

Overall, it’s easy to see how this service could be of value to both the individual blogger but even more so to publishing companies with a non-stop stream of of content.

Congress’s law library is rebuffing calls from the chairmen of the House and Senate foreign relations committees to retract a report on the military-backed coup in Honduras that the lawmakers charge is flawed.

The request, by Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., has sparked cries of censorship from Republicans who say the Democrats don’t like what the August report said: that the government of Honduras had the authority to remove deposed President Manuel Zelaya from office.

A spokeswoman for the Law Library of Congress – one of six Library of Congress agencies – said Thursday that the research agency stands by the report and that Librarian of Congress James Billington is preparing a response to the lawmakers.

Zelaya has been holed up at the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, for several weeks, and high-ranking U.S. officials were working Thursday to try to broker a resolution.

Republicans amped up their criticism Thursday of the Obama administration’s Honduras policy, asking the Government Accountability Office to investigate the State Department’s role in the crisis in Honduras. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., said members of the Honduran congress told visiting members of Congress that the U.S. ambassador to Honduras was trying to put “Zelaya cronies” into government posts.

See previous story: Lawmakers ask Library of Congress to retract Honduras report

Source: Miami Herald

The idea is as simple and and fresh. We’ve not seen anything similar available for free. Basically, take stories in the news and then bring together multiple video (and sometimes text-based) news reports from a number of sources and place them all on a single location. It’s not only a great way to see how a news story is reported but viewing the same story from different news organizations can potentially turn up facts from one source that the other source does not report on. By the way, the company likes to think to think of themselves as “news analyzer” and not a news aggregator. We think both phrases can work together Whatever you call Newsy there is plenty of value here.

Newsy can be useful in many situations. One potential use is helping to teach critical information skills by reviewing what is and is not reported on in a news story and how it’s reported. For example, how much time does each source give to the story.

But wait, there’s more. In addition to aggregating news reports on the same story, Newsy produces their OWN original video content summarizing the material from each source into a single report. For those who don’t want to view each source video one at a time, here’s a way to learn what each one is reporting in just a minute or two.

You can keyword search Newsy (you’re searching metadata) or browse by one of seven categories:

+ World
+ Economy
+ U.S.
+ Politics
+ Tech/Sci
+ Environment
+ Culture

You can also sort results by:

+ Most Popular
+ Most Recent
+ Most Commented
+ Highest Rated
+ Editor’s Picks

Let’s review how Newsy works:

1] Find a story, search or browse
We searched for “Obama” and got back 10 results.

2] Select the story; We chose “Obama Gives Donors Access to White House” from October 29, 2009 with a video summary that runs about three minutes.

3] After clicking the play we were taken to this page.

5] Immediately, Newsy’s own video summary begins playing.

6] Above the video box (which can be embedded on any web page) notice the direct links to the various news sources used in the summary.

7] In this case the sources are:

+ Fox News
+ The Hill (Text-Based)
+ CNN
+ The Washington Times
+ CBS
+ The Washington Post

A good and well-balanced selection of sources. If you click on any of them, a new window opens and the “source” video (or text) begins playing. Text sources link directly to the article. No more going all over the web to find the content.

Quick Hits

+ Newsy does not offer its services for every news story. That’s minor when you sit back and review what we think is real value in what they offer. Hopefully, they’ll be able to cover more in the future.

+ An iPhone version of Newsy is also available. It’s a free app. Here’s a link to get Newsy iPhone (via the iTunes App Store).

+ If you register for the site you can comment on any story.

+ A text transcript of each Newsy original summary is available. You’ll find it below the summary video box.

+ You can share reports using direct links to many social networks or e-mail a link to the selected story.

+ An RSS feed of stories is available as well as the Newsy blog.1

We hope that Newsy continues to offer a wide variety sources and a well-balanced set of sources for each story it covers. One thing we would love to see is a source list (we’re guessing the Newsy uses more sources than listed on this page) and perhaps the expansion of this page about how news stories are selected. Another page about the news source selection process would be useful. Finally, we would be very happy if you could view stories by source. In other words, show me all of the stories that use video from MSNBC, BBC, CBS, etc.

You can learn more about the company this STLToday article. For example, they are based in Columbia, MO and have a staff (as of a few weeks ago) of 19.

Many Thanks to Charles Knight over at AltSearchEngines for letting us know about Newsy.
Yesterday, Charles ran a post about Newsy focusing on the success of their iPhone app.

You’ll notice:
+ More Video
+ Personalization via CNN Profile Page Along with the Ability to “Follow” Stories Over Time
+ Play the CNN Challenge Game, See Who is the Biggest News Junkie

Another new feature is NewsPulse (Beta). Here you can quickly identify and then decide if you want to read and/or view the most popular stories on CNN.com.

You can select the most popular stories by time. From 15 minutes to 30 days. It’s also possible to limit by news category. Examples include entertainment, politics, travel, opinion, and money. Finally you can limit to only see stories or video.

Search continues to be powered by Google. You can sort results by date or relevance and only view stories or video. A separate search engine is available to access CNN iReport (content submitted by viewers) material.

Source: CNN

At the beginning of October we posted that it’s Information Literacy Month. Our post included some words about info literacy by President Obama. It includes a mention of libraries.

Today, a Q&A interview with Sharon Weiner, the W. Wayne Booker Endowed Chair in Information Literacy for Purdue Libraries and the vice president of the National Forum on Information Literacy.

Questions include:

+ What is Information Literacy?

+ What sector would you say lacks the most literacy, or is less publicized?

+ What can a reference librarian do that I can’t do on Google?

+ And Several Others

Source: BoilerStation.com (Part of the The Journal-Courier, Lafayette-West Lafayette, IN)

See Also: Direct Link to the National Forum on National Literacy

See Also: Sharon Weiner’s Bio ||| More About Her Position Here

From a Hulu Blog Post:

Designed for bloggers, site editors and webmasters, Hulu Publisher Tools makes it easy to browse and discover premium videos — from Hulu and other sites — to embed in articles and blog posts. In addition to content featured by the Hulu team, our publishing tool features a comprehensive directory that offers the opportunity to preview videos and copy embed codes from a single page. Editors can also create custom playlists for Video Panels that can embed multiple Hulu videos in a single unit.

A search bar [the one with the magnifying glass] lets you type in any keyword — “obama,” for instance — and we’ll call up all the relevant videos pulled by our web crawler. You can select a few clips that look good to you, preview them if you like, and copy the embed codes. And if all the content is from Hulu, you can put together a Video Panel in seconds and embed it on your blog…

Access Hulu Publisher Tools

Source: Hulu Blog

At a meeting with reporters* in New York Monday, Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt acknowledged that the parties may have to exclude orphan works from the settlement to get it approved.

The parties are also contemplating other modifications, including changes to the structure of the registry, the groups of authors and publishers that are charged with overseeing the settlement, setting some prices, and sharing revenue with copyright owners, say people familiar with the matter.

*in this article. (via WSJ). You can find two more reviews of the meeting from AllThingsD. and Search Engine Land.
** Brewster Kahle from the Open Content Alliance responds to some of the comments made by Sergey Brin.

From the NY Times:

The federal judge who is responsible for reviewing the Google book settlement that would create a vast digital library has set Nov. 9 as the date by which Google and its partners must submit a revised settlement for the court’s preliminary approval.
[Snip]
At a short hearing Wednesday morning in Federal District Court in Manhattan, Judge Denny Chin confirmed that the current settlement was no longer on the table.
[Snip]
Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild, said in an interview that the changes would be minor. “We would not be able to do it by Nov. 9” if they were more substantial, he said. “The core agreement is going to stay the same. We are amending limited portions of the settlement agreement.”

From the IDG News Service

“We appreciate the Court’s guidance and look forward to moving ahead. As we’ve said in the past and in the hearing today, we are considering a limited number of amendments to the agreement,” a Google spokeswoman said via e-mail on Wednesday.

“If approved by the Court, the settlement stands to unlock access to millions of books in the U.S. while giving authors and publishers new ways to distribute their work,” she added.

From the AFP:

An attorney speaking for the US Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers said the revised deal was on track.

“The parties have worked on a daily basis, assiduously,” Michael Boni said, and were “working around the clock.”

“We have gone a lone [sic] way to identify and negotiate amendments to the settlement,” he said.

Boni said the November 9 target for a preliminary hearing on the settlement was realistic and that “in the best case scenario we would target late December, early January for the final fairness hearing.”

Daralyn Durie, representing Google, also said the deal was within reach. “The parties’ expectation is that we will be able to present an amended settlement agreement,” she said

From the Open Book Alliance:

“Based on the court hearing today, one thing is clear — whatever revised settlement Google and its partners unveil on November 9th must be subject to full review and scrutiny by the vast array of stakeholders – authors, academics, consumer advocates, privacy groups, libraries, and others – who have spoken out.
[Snip]
“It’s also clear that the settlement partners have zero interest in creating an open process that takes input from critical stakeholders. Instead, Google and its partners are serving their private business interests and ignoring the public interest. They came to the courtroom without a single concrete recommendation of how they would address any of the problems with the original settlement. Instead, they proposed more of the same — secret, back room negotiations – rather than an open, transparent and collaborative process.”

From Bloomberg:

Chin today endorsed a proposal that would limit the time for opponents of the new pact to file court papers opposing it. He said opponents of the accord should voice comments only about new terms, not provisions that remain the same.
[Snip]
“Otherwise, it will be many, many, many months” before the case is resolved, he said.

Chin, who was nominated yesterday by President Barack Obama for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals, said he wanted to create a system by which parties objecting to the settlement may electronically file court papers, rather than hand-delivering them as previously done.

“In this case, of all cases, there should be an electronic way of handling this,” he said to laughter in the packed lower Manhattan courtroom.

From The Laboratorium (Professor James Grimmelmann)

Judge Chin asked about ways to make the submission process easier. The court has a single scanner, and spent four straight days scanning the hard-copy submissions. The Clerk’s office, however, is concerned about asking non-lawyers to use the electronic filing system. Judge Chin asked about the possibility of an email address for electronic submission of comments and objections, possibly through the settlement administration site. Boni said that the settlement agreement requires that objections be served on the parties, so they would be happy to take on the scanning burden.

From the Associated Press:

William F. Cavanaugh, a deputy assistant attorney general, told the judge that the government has been in continuing discussions with the parties.

However, he said the government was not yet aware of what the final deal will look like.

He said he expected “meetings in the near term to go over whatever their proposal is.”

Cavanaugh asked that the judge give the government a week to 10 days after any deadline for objections to be submitted for the Justice Department to prepare its analysis of the new deal.

At one point, [Judge] Chin asked what will happen if negotiations break down and no deal is reached.

Google lawyer Daralyn Durie reassured the judge, saying: “The parties’ expectation is we will be able to reach agreement.”

From Reuters:

“I like the target date of early November. Targeting the changes is the right way to do it,” Chin said during a 15-minute long conference in court with lawyers for the parties and the U.S. Department of Justice.
[Snip]
Google CEO Eric Schmidt has said the Justice Department criticisms seem reasonable and the search engine giant is amenable to a few minor changes.

From AllThingsD

Though it’s not yet clear what form the revised settlement might take or what adjusted terms are being discussed, Google and the authors and publishers it has allied with it have quite a few critics to appease, including academics, librarians, privacy advocates, would-be rivals and the French and German governments.

From CNET:

A hearing on whether to approve that settlement was originally scheduled for Wednesday, but last month the publisher and author groups asked for more time to work out a new deal that satisfies the Justice Department’s concerns.

The American Library Association (ALA) joins President Obama in highlighting the importance of ensuring all Americans have the skills necessary to effectively navigate the Information Age.

Yesterday, the president issued a statement proclaiming October 2009 as National Information Literacy Awareness Month and calling “upon the people of the United States to recognize the important role information plays in our daily lives, and appreciate the need for a greater understanding of its impact.”

The president’s statement also makes the key point that [our emphasis] “though we may know how to find the information we need, we must also know how to evaluate it.”

{Here’s the full text of the paragraph, note the mention of libraries.]

“Though we may know how to find the information we need, we must also know how to evaluate it. Over the past decade, we have seen a crisis of authenticity emerge. We now live in a world where anyone can publish an opinion or perspective, whether true or not, and have that opinion amplified within the information marketplace. At the same time, Americans have unprecedented access to the diverse and independent sources of information, as well as institutions such as libraries and universities, that can help separate truth from fiction and signal from noise.

“In libraries across the country, librarians are helping the public achieve this goal,” ALA President Camila Alire said. “During this month of awareness, ALA encourages more Americans to visit their local libraries to take full advantage of the services they provide to help the public develop strong information literacy skills.”

Alire also said robust broadband is the critical underlying infrastructure needed to effectively navigate the Information Age. ALA commends the president on the $7.2 billion for broadband included in the stimulus and specific inclusion of libraries (public computer centers) as key hubs for information literacy.

+ Read the Complete Statement from President Obama (via WhiteHouse.gov)

Source: ALA

Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land has the latest on some new search options from Google in this article. Like all of Danny’s articles, the new features are well illustrated with plenty of screenshots.

You can access these options/refinements (some of which went live in May, 2009) by clicking on the “Show Options” Plus Sign (+) at the top of a web search results list.* Once you click on the + link, you’ll see the options in the left margin. Note: If you’re not seeing any of these new options at the moment, relax, it’s because Google is rolling them out throughout the day. Remain calm. All is well.

* Refinements in the same format as those discussed above are available for video search, news search*, images search, and blog search*.

* News and blog search do note have a “Show Options” link but do offer refinements in the left margin.

So, what’s new from Google today?

Nine new search options/refinements:

Refining Your Search Results
1) Visited Pages (Refine your search results to show only pages in your Web History that you’ve visited before during past search sessions)

2) Not Yet Visited (Refine your search results list to remove from the results list any pages you’ve already looked in your Web History)
Note: #1 and #2 only work if you’re logged-in to your Google account and make use of the Web History feature.

3) Refine Results by Allowing More or Showing Fewer Shopping Results
Depending on your search query and the results you receive you can see more shopping sites or limit the amount number seen in a results list.

4) Time: You Can Now Limit Your Search Results To Added to the Google index in the Past Hour
This is in addition to several options to limit your search results to pages indexed in the past 24 hours, past week, past year, or a specific date range.

Note: If you want to limit your searches down even more to the last few minutes or even seconds, Barry Schwartz explains the correct syntax in this post.

5) Books, News & Blogs
Click to refine your results to any one of these content sources. They are in addition to reviews, forums, and videos.

Yesterday, Google released “Sitelinks” for web forums (online discussions) in the main search results that Danny Sullivan discusses and illustrates here.

See Also: For a More In-Depth Look at the Many Search Options Google Offers, See “Up Close with Google Search Options” from Search Engine Land.

See Also: Official Google Blog Post About the New Features: Refine your search results with new Search Options

In a recent Q&A session with elementary school children, President Obama discussed the power of social media: “Be careful what you post on Facebook,” he warned. “Whatever you do, it will be pulled up again later somewhere in your life.”

The presidential message, however, might do more good if it was targeted at adults. Grown-ups don’t seem to be using social media any more wisely than kids.

[Snip]

It also appears that adults may be suffering from “oversharing” and self promotion online. A study from Harris Interactive for CareerBuilder.com found that 45% of potential employers screen candidates via social media, up from 22% last year. Thirty-five percent of employers say they found reasons not to hire a person based on information they found on social network profiles.

[Snip]

Younger adults aged 18 to 22 are perhaps more cynical about social media, More than half of college students surveyed in a San Diego State University study said they view social networks as vehicles for self-promotion. This has prompted many young adults to become more prudent about the information they share online and how they share it.

The complete article has many more examples and statistics.

See Also: 20 Social Media Blunders Slideshow (Potentially Very Useful in Training Sessions)

Source: Forbes

Access the Complete Report: What to Withdraw: Print Collections Management in the Wake of Digitization (28 pages; PDF).

The report was written by Roger C. Schonfeld (Manager of Research) & Ross Housewright (Analyst).

Access the Summary Page With Links to Register for Report Updates

From the News Release:

[The report] analyzes which types of journals can be withdrawn responsibly today and how that set of materials can be expanded to allow libraries the maximum possible flexibility and savings in the future.

“Determining the value of retaining print after its digitization requires a system-wide analysis of the needs of all libraries and their users collectively, rather than focusing only on a region, a system, or a consortium,” stated Roger Schonfeld, Manager of Research at Ithaka S+R and co-author of this report. “Our analysis indicates that libraries today can safely de-accession certain print holdings that are adequately preserved in digital and print form elsewhere.”

Analyzing the rationales for retaining and preserving scholarly journals in print format, the report proposes minimum time periods for which some system-wide access to print versions is required. Then, based on a study commissioned by Ithaka S+R and conducted by Candace Yano, a professor of industrial engineering and operations research and in the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley, the report proposes the minimum number of print copies that are required today depending on their condition.

More After the Jump

Based on this analysis, the report concludes that certain print journal backfile sets are well enough digitized and contain few enough images that there is likely to be virtually no demand for them by users, and are sufficiently well preserved digitally and in print repositories that libraries can responsibly withdraw their own print holdings.

At the same time, the report warns that other print materials may not yet be ready for broad withdrawal without raising risks unduly. For these materials, a number of strategies are recommended for allowing libraries increased flexibility in the future. First, organizations responsible for digitization programs should provide more transparency on the quality of their digitization work and should participate in an ongoing effort to upgrade the quality of the scans. In addition, libraries should deepen existing collaborations around print preservation, perhaps bringing in publishers and other digitizers as partners in this effort.

“Libraries are right to push aggressively into the digital future but should do so with an awareness about risk and tradeoffs,” stated Ross Housewright, analyst and co-author. “There is an opportunity before us to make a system-wide impact on print collection management, but in order to do so libraries and digitizers need to commit to collaboration at a level unseen today.”

Other ITHAKA S+R Reports in this Space

The Nonsubscription Side of Periodicals: Changes in Library Operations and Costs between Print and Electronic Formats (Council on Library and Information Resources, 2004)

and coming soon:

Ithaka S+R is currently completing a project commissioned by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the Chief Officers of State Library Agencies (COSLA) to develop a future vision for the Federal Depository Libraries Program (FDLP), through which government publications are distributed to 1,300 libraries around the country and made accessible to the public. Ithaka S+R’s report will analyze how the FDLP can retain its relevance through the transition to an electronic environment, a critical concern today as the Obama Administration promotes a more open and transparent government.

Source: ITHAKA S+R

President Obama issued a directive to all Federal agencies calling for greater transparency, public participation, and collaboration. In response to this Directive, and in keeping with the work that has already been done by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to encourage public input and provide science-based health resources and science information to the public, NIH posts this Request for Information (RFI) to offer a new public input opportunity. [Our Emphasis] The RFI will provide insight and better understanding of the health information needs and information-seeking behaviors of NIH health consumer audiences. Information gathered will assist the agency in developing and disseminating health, medical, and scientific information to a broader variety of audiences. The agency anticipates using new outreach strategies and tools, from community level outlets to Internet-based social media. Members of the public as well as organizations are invited and encouraged to participate in this public input opportunity.

[Snip]

The Request for Information (RFI) serves as a vehicle to obtain public comments on how NIH can best address communication challenges and requirements for the 21st century in the face of increased demands and shrinking resources. The purpose of the RFI is to obtain information aimed at helping the NIH strengthen short- and long-term communications strategies while identifying cost-effective, meritorious, innovative, and legally sanctioned methods and outlets for disseminating health information to the public. Specifically, the RFI seeks information on the following:
+ The current state and range of health information-seeking behaviors and trends;
+ The range of health information of interest to the public;
+ How the public accesses and uses health information; and
+ The barriers that might impede NIH’s ability to communicate with health consumers.

Responses will be accepted through December 30, 2009. Please limit responses to the maximum number of words indicated for each response.

The complete RFI with a complete set of directions will be posted here in the next few days.

Source: Federal Register / National Institutes of Health
Hat Tip: M.Z.

Google Sidewiki is a new feature being added today to the Google Toolbar that allows anyone to leave comments about pages as they surf the web. Love something you’re reading? Hate it? You can share your views with others who visit the page and who also have Sidewiki enabled. Share, that is, if Google thinks your comment is good enough.

The post continues with a detailed explanation and screen caps.

Danny continues:

What comments are shown, and in what order? Google secret sauce time. The official line is this:

Using multiple signals based on the quality of the entry, what we know about the author, and user-contributed signals such as voting and flagging, we work hard to ensure that only the highest quality, most relevant entries appear in the sidebar. Most of the engineering work for Sidewiki was dedicated to this ranking algorithm.

When I talking with Google about Sidewiki, they gave me a few other factors, such as:
+ Use of sophisticated language: “This page sucks” isn’t sophisticated; think complex sentences and ideas. Apparently, Google has a language sophistication detector now, and one that works in the 14 different languages that Sidewiki supports.
+ User’s reputation: Are your comments being voted up or flagged down?
+ User’s history: How long have you had a Google Profile? How long have you been commenting?

Danny says that you can also share comments with people who do or do not use the toolbar.

From the Conclusion:

Sidewiki feels like another swing at something Google seems to desperately desires — a community of experts offering high quality comments. Google says that’s something that its cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin wanted more than a system for ranking web pages. They really wanted a system to annotate pages across the web.

Certainly Google’s goal is to be something more than another commenting system.

“I think we would have failed if people were using it to say ‘Obama sucks’,” said Sundar Pichai, vice president of product management at Google.

That’s not to say the system is meant to promote pro-Obama comments! Rather, the hope is to produce more intelligent and thoughtful comments regardless of a particular position about Obama or any other topic.

“If those are the comments we’re surfacing, [Sidewiki] wouldn’t be that much different than much of the web. What we’re really trying to do is add value from people who really know what they’re talking about,” he said.

Again, much much more in the full post.

Source: Search Engine Land

One year after the Wall Street meltdown, Congress is considering a bill that would build a massive database to track bailout funds.

[Snip]

If the bill to create a centralized database makes it through Congress, President Obama may have no reason to reject it. The White House has been pushing for open government data and has built new services, such as Data.gov and Recovery.gov, which tracks stimulus spending.

U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) , who introduced the legislation (HR 1242), has not offered a cost estimate but is adamant about the need to track the funds. Maloney said she wants a technology that’s capable of monitoring spending in near real time.

At a House Committee on Financial Services subcommittee hearing today, Maloney said the TARP data isn’t usable. “You have to go to 25 different agencies to put it together,” she told the committee.

Source: Computerworld

See Also: Track the Bill, HR 1242 (via GovTrack.us)

If journalism is the first draft of history, what is a Wikipedia entry when it is updated within minutes of an event to reflect changes in a person’s biography?

This is the very live issue that cropped up in a heated argument on the discussion page that accompanies Wikipedia’s entry on Representative Joe Wilson Wednesday night, just 30 minutes after the Republican from South Carolina interrupted President Barack Obama’s speech by shouting “You lie!” As my colleague Carl Hulse reported in a blog post published about 10 minutes after the fight got going on Wikipedia, Mr. Wilson’s outburst came in response to the president’s statement that his proposed changes to health insurance laws would not give coverage to illegal immigrants.

Since Mr. Wilson’s shout was made during a live television broadcast — now archived on YouTube by The Associated Press — in front of all of his colleagues, the fact that it happened is not in dispute. After Wikipedia’s editors initially removed the first reference to the event from the entry on Mr. Wilson, citing concerns about sourcing and potential “vandalism,” the page was locked to prevent new or unregistered users from editing it.

That is when the argument among Wikipedians — which can be read in full on the discussion page starting here — really took off.

Much More Here.

Source: NY Times