Resource of the Week: Roundup of Recent Posts About eBooks…and Some Kindle Stuff
By Shirl Kennedy and Gary Price

Why eBooks? Why now? Because the Fourth Annual World eBook Fair got underway July 4…which means you have free access to more than two million eBooks through August 4. Also, the Kindle DX — with its larger screen format — just made its appearance…and apparently sold out quite rapidly.

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Word from Michael Hart, the Founder of Project Gutenberg, that once again this year the World e-Book Fair will take place from July 4th-August 4th. This is the 4th year of the annual book fair. It starts on July 4th to celebrate the 38th anniversary of Project Gutenberg which began on July 4th, 1971.

Once the event begins you’ll find FREE access to over 2.5 million full text eBooks that you can download to your computer. Some titles can also be downloaded and read on certain types mobile phones.

Book Sources include:

+ Project Gutenberg

+ Digital Pulp Publishing

+ Internet Archive

+ The World Public Library (normally a fee-based site)

+ E-Books About Everything

++ Direct to World eBook Fair Web Site and Database

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Meanwhile, over on the other side of the pond…

From the Announcement

JISC has funded an ‘e-books for Further Education (FE) project to make over 3000 e-books freely available to every college and sixth form in the UK.

Over the next five years, the project, which also received funding from the Learning Skills Council (LSC), will enable all students in FE in the UK to access online course texts to support their studies.

E-books will be made available from the start of the next academic year via the ebrary e-books platform E-books will be made available from the start of the next academic year via the ebrary e-books platform. Subjects will range from Fashion Design to Software Engineering, Health and Social Care to Automobile Electronics, and Beauty Therapy to Practical Lambing. Access will be available whether students are studying in the college, at home or in an internet café.

See Also: UK National e-Book Survey (May 2008) (14 pages; PDF)

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Want to learn a little bit more about eBooks?

A new primer by Jane Lee from the California Digital Library.

The article includes the following sections:

+ Content vs. Delivery

+ Reading as an Experience

+ Why e-books now?

+ Control of Content, Control of Distribution

+ Standards and Protocols

+ Will e-books make printed books obsolete?

+ Issues to Consider

Direct to Complete Article (7 pages; PDF)

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Do you use Google Book Search?

Seven new and updated features and tools from Google Books today. You can read about them here. Here are a few highlights:

Embeds and links - This new toolbar option allows you to embed a preview of a full view or partner book in any of your websites or blogs–all with a simple html snippet. It’s a lot like the embed tag that makes it so easy to share YouTube videos.

Better search within each book - You’ve always been able to search inside books you find on Google Book Search. Now, for public domain and partner books, we’ve made it easier to see exactly where your search term appears within the book by showing you more context around the term, including an image from the part of the page on which it appears.

Thumbnail view - Click on the thumbnail view button in the toolbar to see an overview of all the pages in a public domain book or in a magazine

Contents drop-down menu - Above the book itself, you’ll find a Contents drop-down that allows you to jump to chapters within the book–or articles within a magazine.

Page Turn Button and Animation - In addition to scrolling through the book, you can now also click the page turn button at the bottom of the screen, even if you haven’t yet finished the page.

Improved Book Overview Page On the Overview page you’ll find an assortment of useful data about the book, including reviews, ratings, summaries, related books, key words and phrases, references from the web, places mentioned in the book, publisher information, etc.

Source: Inside Google Book Search
Hat Tip: Barry S.

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And what about the hardware?

From the Blog Post:

The interest in e-readers, or e-books as they are called now, has reached a fever pitch. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos fields nothing but Kindle questions at the company’s shareholder meeting. Prime View picks up E Ink, the company that supplies the screen to Amazon’s Kindle, for $215 million. And companies ranging from Google to Interead are aiming to upset Amazon’s early advantage.

The complete post contains a chart from a new report from Forrester Research laying out how they believe the market will develop.

Source: ZDNet

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Do you use a Kindle? Are you thinking about buying one? Check out The Kindle Warehouse blog, which offers Kindle- and Kindle product-related news, tips, and reviews. Be sure not to miss the post about — Free Kindle eBooks. User comments contain links to even more resources. Who knew there was so much free stuff available for this popular — though proprietary — device?

More worthwhile Kindle stuff:
+KindleBoards
+ Kindle Tips
+ Kindle Wiki
+ KindleTips - Ultimate Kindle 2 Shortcuts and Tricks (GeekTonic)
+ KindleMag (e-bookvine)

Resource of the Week: Historical Aerials
By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor

Here’s another time-sink for you. How could you not love this site?

HistoricAerials.com provides free online access to historic and current aerial photography. You can view aerial photography from the 1930s through today. Use our multi-year comparison tools to detect changes in property.

If you just want to look at cool aerial pictures, scroll down to the bottom of the page, to Points of Interest. Click on the Show Categories link. Those who regularly follow us on ResourceShelf know that we kind of got lost looking at aerial pictures of sports stadiums old and new, such as:

• Shibe Park/Connie Mack Stadium, Philadelphia (1970)
• Polo Grounds, New York City (1964)
• Soldier Field, Chicago (2007)
• Candlestick Park, San Francisco (2005)

(We were, however, less than crazy about the fact that after choosing a category to browse and clicking on an image, we were basically bounced out of that category when the large-size image was displayed, and we had to go back and start all over again.)

Of course you’ll want to click on the Oddities category, although right now, there are only four images available — Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch (2005), a blimp and its shadow (1957), Airliner in Flight (2002), and the ever-popular “Boneyard” of mothballed aircraft at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base (2004)

Other imagery categories include: airports, American cities, amusement parks, construction, landmarks, mansions, military, states, Texas, zoos. Some categories have only a few images. Others are stocked with more.

If this was just a collection of static aerial imagery, it wouldn’t be much different from other, similar sites like Bird’s Eye Tourist, for example. But Historical Aerials has a variety of tools that allow you to search for a geographic area, manipulate the images, extract more information from them, and look at images from the same location over a number of different years. A detailed FAQ describes how to do such things as pan, zoom, find latitude/longitude, measure distance, etc. You can choose to overlay roads, counties and cities.

Note from the U.S. map on the home page that historical imagery (back to 1930, in some cases) is available only from certain limited geographic areas — indicated in dark green. “Modern” imagery of the light green areas covers the years 2003-2008. When you initially display an image, labels on the right side indicate which years are available. You can use a slider tool to compare images from two different years.

Note also that the images have the Historical Aerials logo on them. You can purchase logo-free images, which may then be used for publications, etc.

Historical Aerials comes to you from Nationwide Environmental Title Research, LLC (NETR). You may already be familiar with their excellent directory of links to free online public records searches. (They also offer a variety of fee-based public records searches and information.)

Another quick ROTW for you this week, since we are just settling in from our return from SLA. This one is a find by Adrian Janes, our UK contributing editor.

Resource of the Week: The Internet at 40
Source: Open University (UK)

2009 is the 40th anniversary of the first computer network - the precursor of the internet - and the 20th anniversary of the brilliant idea that led to the creation of the world wide web. What exactly is the internet, and how does it differ from the world wide web? Who were its pioneers, and what technological surprises has it sprung? This album opens with a specially recorded interview with John Naughton, Professor of the Public Understanding of Technology at the Open University and author of ‘A brief history of the future - the origins of the internet’. He explores some of the key moments in the short but spectacular history of an extraordinary phenomenon, the people who made them happen, and some of the problems that have emerged. The album also features archive interviews with Tim Berners-Lee, Vint Cerf, Donald Davies and other pioneers of the internet age, recorded in the late 1990s. The album is completed by a newly recorded interview with Rodney Harrison, lecturer in Heritage Studies at the Open University, in which he talks about his research into Second Life: Cyber-Archaeologies, Heritage and Virtual Communities. The interviews are presented by radio journalist Penny Boreham.

Resource of the Week: Database — Significant Features of the Property Tax
By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor

Quick ROTW for you this week, since we are at SLA.

This online database presents data on the property tax in all 50 states. Because accurate data provide the critical foundation for sound governmental decision-making, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and the George Washington Institute of Public Policy joined in a partnership to provide information and support public policy concerning the property tax, probably the most controversial tax in the United States.

The term “Significant Features” pays tribute to the work of the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, which was established by Congress in 1959 to study the relationships among local, state, and national levels of government. Until its termination in 1996, ACIR provided a wealth of research on the functioning of the federal system, particularly through its flagship publication, Significant Features of Fiscal Federalism.

This new site provides data sets and links relating to the property tax and its role in state and local finance in all 50 states. The interface allows users to access property tax and data online in a variety of forms, including tables of the most frequently sought figures, a query system for creating new tables, and a downloadable database. This data will be of value to a wide variety of users, including journalists, public officials, and researchers.

+ User guide (PDF; 29 KB)
+ Tables
+ State summaries
+ Census of governments data
+ Glossary

Resource of the Week — Microsoft’s New and Enhanced Search Engine Named “Bing” Debuts
By Gary Price, Chief/Founding Editor

Microsoft’s new general-purpose search engine (think Yahoo and Google) named “Bing” has gone live on the web. If you were a user of the Live.com search, many of Bing’s features will be familiar to you.

Here are a few things we noticed when using the new search engine:

+ An advanced search interface is located next to the search box on any search results page.

+ The left rail offers the ability to find related search terms.

+ The left rail also keeps track of your most recent searches. To clear them, hit the “clear” button and/or turn off the feature.

+ Enter the names of two cities and at the top of the results page you’ll see airfare information. Here’s an example. The air fare and fare prediction data comes from Farecast, another Microsoft property that has been renamed Bing Travel.

+ Cached pages are available. Look for the link next to the URL on a web results page.

+ Previews: If you place your cursor on the right side of a results page next to each result, a box will appear with a preview of the content that’s on the full page. No clicking required.

+ Video Search Previews: Simply cursor over a video thumbnail and watch a preview of the clip. No clicking.

+ Enhanced views of Wikipedia content are accessible via a link next to a Wikipedia URL. The first two results on this page contain enhanced view links.

+ Sites NOT in English contain translate links next to the page title on the search results page. Here’s an example.

+ In some searches, local results appear at the top of the page. Here’s a search for “newspapers Chicago.” Note the local listings at the top of the page. In this example, the results don’t include Chicago’s two largest papers, the Sun-Times and the Tribune. Not good. Same thing when you run the same type of search for “newspapers New York City”.

+ Here’s a search for Paris France Airport and another search for Los Angeles Sports. Note how the options at the top of the left rail change depending on what content is available. For the Paris search you’ll see:

• Events
• Weather
• History (with content from Encarta at the top of the page)
• Airport
• Map
• Image
• Video

For the Los Angeles Sports search you’ll only find (in the same location):

• News
• Local In some cases, these left rail options will take you to images, video, etc., while in other cases they will take you to a more focused list of web pages that Bing believes will be useful.

  + The same “direct answers” that were available with Live Search are also available with Bing. Examples include:

  • Athletes
  • Calculator
  • Stock Quotes
  • Flight Tracking

  + When running an image search, you can focus by size, layout, color, style, people. Look for these options on the left rail on the search results page, as in this example. (These tools were available with Live.com search.) You can also find “related images” — based on the composition of an image — by hovering over an image with your cursor and selecting, “show related images.”

  + When running a video search, you can narrow by length, screen size, resolution, and source. Look for these options on the left rail, as in this example. Very cool!.

  + WARNING! If you turn off the safe search feature when searching for images and then toss in the correct terms, you’ll find a ton of adult material.

  + Microsoft’s wonderful Virtual Earth maps and imagery appear when you run a Map search. Bing also offers 1-click directions. Here’s an example. Note the directions to the Museum of Modern Art from from four compass locations (N, S, E, W) plus the option to add a specific location/address.

  + Boolean: Yes. Default is AND. OR is also available. More advanced search syntax here, here, and here. Note: These are the same options that were available with Live.com. No major changes seem to jump out at us.

  Update: We have tested several of the advanced search operators and they appear to work correctly.

  + All searches can turned into RSS feeds. Most browsers should be able to autodetect the presence of an RSS feed. No? Simply append your search with the following: &format=rs.

  + In some cases, pages will be marked as an official site. Example. In this example, take note of the customer service number readily available and a search box to directly search the site from the results page.

  Overall, while it’s good and important to have another unique database of web content out there, we are a bit saddened to see the lack of new feature and services with this first release of Bing as opposed to what was available with Live.com. Bing is worth knowing about and using, but getting the masses to switch to it as their default search tool will be a massive challenge. Time will tell. Expect to see a lot of advertising for Bing. Finally, Bing Maps (and imagery) continues to mesmerize, and the limiting functions for images and video are very useful.

  See Also: More Tips and Tricks (via Digital Inspirations)

  See Also: Bing411 is Now Live (via TechCrunch)
  This appears to be a simple rebranding and enhancement. Microsoft has had two interactive voice services (IVR) for several years. The first was Live411 (now Bing411). The service came from the Microsoft acquisition of long time player TellMe (1-800-555-Tell) which is still live. It appears that Bing411 adds several new features like movie times, movie ticket purchases and news headlines.

  Want More Interactive Voice Response Tools?
  + 1-800-Free-411 (business and residential listings)
  + 1-800-Flights (Flight Info)
  + 1-866-My-TRAFC (Traffic Info for Major U.S. Cities)

  Update: View the Bing TV Commercials (via SEL)

Resources of the Week: REALLY Special Libraries
By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor

In honor of the 2009 Special Libraries Association Annual Conference coming up June 14-17 in Washington, DC (at which you can see some of your friends from DocuTicker/ResourceShelf/FreePint), we offer for your online perusal the websites of a handful of X-tremely special libraries.

+ Federal Bureau of Prisons Library

The Federal Bureau of Prisons Library offers a wide variety of traditional and automated information services. There is a wealth of resources covering the field of corrections and related fields of study including, criminology, sociology, psychology, and business.
…
The BOP Library has nearly 5,000 books, Government documents, statistical and organizational publications covering all areas of corrections and other criminal justice topics.

You can search the OPAC directly from the home page. While you’re there, hop on over to the Federal Bureau of Prisons home page, where you can find a link to the Inmate Locator. This is useful if you’re doing a background check on someone; it contains (very) basic information on anyone who has been incarcerated in a federal prison from 1982 on.

+ International Maritime Organization Maritime Knowledge Center

To support the day-to-day activities of the Organization, the Centre maintains selective collections in the following subjects: maritime safety and protection of the marine environment and more specifically ship design and equipment, stability and load lines, fishing vessels safety, containers and cargoes, bulk chemicals, fire protection, life-saving, search and rescue, standards of training and watchkeeping, carriage of dangerous goods, marine pollution, preparedness and response, navigation and communications, facilitation and technical co-operation. There is a small collection on the commercial aspects of shipping and an audio-visual collection.

The OPAC is called SeaLibrary Online. Don’t overlook the Information Resources link , which will take you to a large collection of interesting and potentially useful content, including papers, reports, bibliographies, periodicals and free IMO texts. From the IMO home page, you can get to all sorts of other stuff. The site uses frames, which makes for an awkward navigation scheme (IMHO), but here’s a direct link to the section a lot of folks might find interesting — Piracy and armed robbery against ships.

+ Macauley Library at the Cornell University Laboratory of Ornithology

The Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology is the world’s largest natural sound and video archive of animal behavior. Its mission is to collect and preserve recordings of each species behavior and natural history and to make them available for research, education, conservation, zoos and aquaria, wildlife managers, publishers, the arts, and both public and commercial media. Since 1930, recordists of all backgrounds have contributed their recordings, which now number to several hundred thousand in total. A large percentage of the recordings can be searched and played online.

If you enjoy nature, this site is a serious time sink. There’s a search box on pretty much every page, or you can browse taxonomically or by common name. The library uses a free browser plugin called RavenViewer, which “enables you to see and visually analyze the sound as you play it.” Some sounds can be downloaded and used for personal or educational purposes.

+ The George Kelley Paperback and Pulp Fiction Collection, University of Buffalo Libraries

The George Kelley Paperback and Pulp Fiction Collection is comprised of over 25,000 pulp fiction books and magazines. Dr. George Kelley donated the collection to Lockwood Library in 1994. Currently the collection is housed in Special Collections at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

This special collection is an absolute must-see, even if you only browse the digitized lurid covers that are scrolling slowly across the home page. You can search the collection by author, title or keyword. Also available — the keyword searchable Gumshoes, Sleuths & Snoopers section, which provides “(a)n in-depth look at 185 detective and mystery novels.” (BTW, if you like looking at old paperbacks, be sure to check out one of my favorite Flickr groups — Old-Timey Paperback Book Covers.)

+ American Nudist Research Library

Welcome to the American Nudist Research Library® (ANRL). The Library was established in 1979 to preserve the history of the social nudist movement in North America and throughout the world. It is a repository of material rather than a circulating library. Visitors may read or view most of the collection as long as they are in the Library. The Library is enjoyed most by individuals and groups who treasure on-going nudist activities, and who wish to participate in a sincere effort to preserve the unique history of the movement.

Although there’s no OPAC here, you can read about the collection, which is apparently in the process of being converted to electronic archives. Note that the site does include photos of patrons using the library; you won’t see anything particularly shocking or “unsafe for work,” but we’re willing to bet that you don’t see folks like this in your library. You’ll also find a small listing of Links to Nudist Website of Interest. And, in case you were wondering, “The ANRL is located on the grounds of Cypress Cove Nudist Resort in Kissimmee, Florida, next to the the tropically landscaped pool area.”

Resources of the Week: People!
By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor

Pretty much everyone who’s ever worked as a librarian is familiar with the Marquis Who’s Who series of reference materials. Well, we recently stumbled across a great free resource from the Who’s Who folks, and you know how enthusiastic we are about free quality content here on ResourceShelf.

Take a look at the Who’s Who in America Experts Guide:

The launching of this Web site, WhosWhoInAmerica.com, marks an exciting time for us as we expand beyond the pages of our books to the digital world. Expect to see the same great biographical information coupled with recommendations and advice directly from the experts of Who’s Who. Find out which restaurants our chefs prefer, what vacation spots our travel specialists say are “must visits,” and which doctors are the best for what ails you—and that’s just the beginning. Check back soon for the latest in luxury lifestyle, fashion, beauty, real estate, art, business and more.

You’ll find advice from familiar names here — e.g., Peter Greenberg and Arthur Frommer providing travel tips. You’ll also find interviews with folks who are not necessarily household names, but who are notable in their own fields, such as medicine and real estate. The site is divided into several sections, according to content:

• Health
• Travel
• Food & Wine
• Real Estate
• Interviews
• In the News

You can sign up for e-mail updates about new content in any or all of these sections.

What’s cool…as you travel around the site, when you click on a highlighted name, you are taken to that person’s Who’s Who biography, which includes date and place of birth, career achievements and awards, family info, and more.
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Another venerable — and widely available through public libraries — people resource is Biography Resource Center, from Gale Cengage. We didn’t learn until recently that it has its own blog, with postings about people in the news, celebrities, historical figures, and new content added to the database. It offers an RSS feed, e-mail updates, and notes that, “Twitter is coming soon.”

Resource of the Week — Fast Facts Anyone? A Brief Users Guide to Wolfram|Alpha
By Gary Price, Chief/Founding Editor

As of 10:34 PM EDST on Friday, May 15, 2009 the site is live.

Since Wolfram|Alpha, (W|A) — a new fact/answer engine (the company calls it a “computational knowledge engine”) — was preparing to go live over the weekend of May 15-17, we decided to give it a try. Thanks to the Wolfram team for the the early access. Here’s our brief report and hopefully some other useful information for future W|A users.

The Question Everyone Is Asking
NO, W|A is not a Google or any other general-purpose web engine killer . W|A works differently than Google, Yahoo, Live.com, Ask.com and other engines. If anything, W|A helps make some invisible — i.e., “deep web” — data useful by getting it out of the silos that are often difficult to find and access.

Google and those other engines crawl the web and find unstructured pages/content to add to their databases. Think of Google as an encyclopedia — not the best analogy, I know, but it works here. It’s massive and has content on thousands and thousands of topics.

On the other hand, W|A searches organized data sets (time series, etc.), or creates them (using both electronic and print resources), and has curators (aka editors) massage and manage the structured data before it goes into the database. (Remember that most web engine databases are full of unstructured data.) Quality, currency, and accuracy are key. Not only do curators find new data sources, but they also watch for the data sets to be updated, at which point they update the content in the W|A database.

BTW, look for W|A to be adding new and updating old data on a regular basis. Hopefully, they’ll have a page that documents the changes as new data enters the database and older data is updated.

If Google is an encyclopedia, than W|A is a “must have” almanac. It’s also a “must have” resource for use at the busy reference desk. Even though the database covers many areas, W|A is going to be gold for science and engineering information professionals. And remember — it’s free.

This from a CNN article:

It’s not a new Google. It’s not supposed to be. It’s very complimentary, in a way, to what search engines do, said Theodore Gray, co-founder of Wolfram Research, the company behind W|A.

However, not every answer and domain of knowledge is in the W|A database. Founder Stephen Wolfram says in a video that the project is really just getting started. So we’ll Just have to wait and see.

Wolfram says W|A consists of four pillars:

1. Curated data (Finding data, keeping it current, etc.)
2. Linguistical analysis (free form queries and the ability to process them)
3. Algorithmic processing of the data
4. Automatically presenting the results and making them useful

If W|A doesn’t have the answer, you’ll get a blank results page and/or perhaps some suggestions to retry your search.

This is why it’s important to spend some time with the W|A database to get an idea of what it can and can’t do. This is no different than learning a new print or electronic resource that you purchase from a book or database vendor. Trust us on this onem W|A is also fun to use — especially if you’re a fact junkie.

One interesting feature is that if you enter multiple search terms (e.g., surnames), the answer is returned in an easy-to-read comparison box.

Syntax
Since this a question-and-answer type of engine, natural language works best. For math-related queries, math symbols (+, -, %, etc.) work. The / sign works for dividing.

Why the Name Wolfram|Alpha?
Wolfram comes from the name of the company’s founder, Dr. Stephen Wolfram. Wolfram’s primary product, Mathematica, is used by tens of thousands of mathematicians and engineers.

Let’s Search
The search box — what you see on the W|A home page — is nothing new. It looks and behaves like any other familiar search box. This early in the game, it’s difficult to say what W|A’s strengths and weaknesses are. As we pointed out above, every domain of knowledge is not yet in the database.

Here are a few queries the company suggests that new users try:

+ enter any date (e.g. a birth date)
July 4, 1776

+ enter any town (e.g. a home town)
New York

+ enter any two stocks
IBM Apple

+ enter any calculation
$250 + 15%
or
x+5=y

+ A name

+ Two Surnames

+ Pi

+ Currency Conversion

+ Carbon

+ Swiss Cheese

+ Buffalo Weather November 12, 1978

Visit this page to access even more examples of the types of searches W|A can handle.

Results Page
Again, your results page is based on your query, but in many cases you’ll find lists, tables, graphs, and much more. Every results page is different, based on the content that’s been found in the W|A database.

This annotated results page does a good job of illustrating some of what you’ll find on a W|A results page.

Perhaps the MOST important part of the search results box is found near the bottom of the page. It’s labeled “source information.” Click the link and you’ll see the many sources W|A used to come up with the results. It will be interesting to see if/how major bibliographic citation styles handle W|A data.

Also, at the bottom of a results page, is a link that will turn the results page into a PDF file to print or download. Very useful.

If W|A doesn’t work for you or you want to see results from another engine, look for the “Search the Web” box in the right rail. There you can select from Google, Yahoo, and Live.com and get results.

W|A also does its best to handle disambiguation. If you type “Apple,” it will default to information about the computer company. But it also provide clickable links near the top of the page if what you really wanted was information about the fruit.

Remember
Researchers have different information needs, and they need the right tool at the right time to get the job done. Without the right tool, the end result will be frustration and aggravation. For many types of queries — not all — W|A will be a welcome addition. It’s not the solution, but it can be a valuable tool in the researcher’s toolbox. Remember — no research tool is perfect for all research questions, but W|A does a very good job of providing authoritative results to many type of queries.

But not all queries. For example, a search for The Beatles or Rolling Stones returns zilch. But other pop culture queries do generate results. A note says that the topic — music performers — like many other categories (including commercial products) are being reviewed. Stay tuned.

What’s Missing?
Well, plenty. No site is perfect. That said, two items come to mind every time I visit the site.

1. Spell-check (We’ve been told it’s coming soon.)
2. A mobile version. How great would it be to have a massive amount of factual information at your fingertips no matter where you are located?

Update: W|A looks o.k. on an iPhone. However, a native app would be even better.

Update 2: More Searches to Try:
+ Occupations: Actor

+ Find Words Matching a Pattern: Gol___

+ Word Definitions

+ Member Countries of an Organization: WHO

+ Movies: Gone with the Wind

+ People: Plato

+ Books: Gone With the Wind

+ Decipher Between 2 Dates: This Monday ||| Last Monday

+ Holidays: Pay Special Attention to How W|A Disamibugates the U.S. Holiday vs. other “Labor Days” Around the World.

+ Songs: Stairway to Heaven

+ Genealogical Tree: Great Uncle

+ Animals: Giraffe

+ Musical Notes
Note the “Listen To” Link

Resources of the Week: Just Plain Useful Stuff
By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor

This week, I figured I’d just a handful of really useful things that have crossed my radar screen recently. Know of others? Please share!

+ MyAwardMaker.com
Need a quick award/commedation/recognition certificate? Look here, where you can generate one online and print it out immediately. You’ll find six template categories:

Resource of the Week — OECD Economics Department
By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) — basically an international forum comprising 30 industrialized nations — has, for about 40 years, “been one of the world’s largest and most reliable sources of comparable statistics and economic and social data.” Because it exchanges information with more than 100 other countries, the information available here goes well beyond the borders of its membership.

Given that the current economic crisis is global in nature, it’s useful to know about sources of economic data and analysis, which brings us to OECD’s Economics Department. The main page features a “What’s New” section that shows you its latest reports and analysis. Not everything here is free; some materials are available for purchase or can be accessed only by subscribers. But there are usually associated executive summaries or policy briefs — such as this one, from a 2009 Economic Survey of France (PDF; 307 KB) — that are available to everyone. You can keep up with the newest offerings via an RSS feed.

Click on the Statistics link on the light blue navigation bar near the top to see statistical reports and analyses; they are in reverse chronological order so the newest ones are at the top. Some are PDFs, some are .xls spreadsheets. Everything I looked at here was free to everyone, including usual data such as these Indicators of regulation in energy, transport and communications.

The Publication & Documents link takes you to a long menu of items that are available here, including:

• Country Surveys/Reviews/Guides
• Dictionaries/Glossaries
• Policy Briefs
• Projections, Forecasts and Outlooks
• Reports
• Working Papers

If you’re interested in information for a specific nation, it’s best to use the Information by Country link. You can browse alphabetically here, or use the link at the top to get to a directory of OECD’s new Country Websites. What’s nice here is that the same light blue navigation bar is at the top of each site for the member countries, the “Accession candidate countries,” (Chile, Estonia, Israel, Russia, Slovenia) and the “Enhanced engagement countries” (Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, South Africa).

In case you’re wondering about “Accession candidate countries” and “Enhanced engagement countries,” OECD’s Members and Partners page explains:

In May 2007, OECD countries agreed to invite Chile, Estonia, Israel, Russia and Slovenia to open discussions for membership of the Organisation and offered enhanced engagement, with a view to possible membership, to Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and South Africa. The approval of so-called “road maps” in last December marks the start of accession talks with Chile, Estonia, Israel, Russia and Slovenia.

In contrast to many other international organisations, becoming a member of OECD is not something that is automatically open to applicant countries. The member countries of the Organisation, meeting in its governing body (the Council), decide whether a country should be invited to join OECD and on what conditions. This decision is taken at the end of what might be called the accession process.

We’d be remiss here if we didn’t also remind you about one of our favorite sources of international business information — and that would be the amazing globalEDGE International Business Resource Desk, via Michigan State University.

Resources of the Week: Swine Flu
By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor

This past Sunday, U.S. public health officials declared a public health emergency, as diagnosed cases of swine flu continued to mount. As expected, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is keeping tabs on the disease, as is the World Health Organization (WHO).

We thought it might be a good time to round up some reliable resources about swine flu. Pete Weiss, our contributing editor, found a blog called Effect Measure, part of the ScienceBlogs network, which he identifies as “a good aggregator of news regarding this flu outbreak.” The About page explains the blog’s name and describes its authors:

In epidemiology an effect is the endpoint of a causal mechanism. An effect measure is an estimate of the influence of a particular factor on a population’s health. The Editors of Effect Measure are senior public health scientists and practitioners. Their names would be immediately recognizable to many in the public health community. They prefer to keep their online and public lives separate to allow maximum freedom of expression. Paul Revere was a member of the first local Board of Health in the United States (Boston, 1799). The Editors sign their posts “Revere” to recognize the public service of a professional forerunner better known for other things.

The CDC link above serves as the government’s main information hub, offering:

• General Information
• Summary Guidance
• Guidance Documents
• Travel Notices
• Transcripts
• Reports & Publications
• Related Links
• Past Updates

The CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report discusses Swine Influenza A (H1N1) Infection in Two Children — Southern California, March–April 2009.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services offers a “swine flu widget” that can be embedded n a blog, home page, whatever. It links to the swine flu info at the CDC. Click here and scroll down to the bottom of the page to get the code.

+ WHO has a swine influenza page up and running.

+ Swine flu is a zoonotic disease (Utah State Extension; PDF, 90 KB), meaning “an infectious disease transmissible under natural conditions between vertebrate animals and human beings.” This being the case, you would expect that the veterinary profession might have useful information…and you would be correct. The American Association of Swine Veterinarians offers some fact sheets right on its home page.

+ For a great general zoonoses resource, have a look at MedlinePlus: Animal Diseases and Your Health.

+ Also, MedlinePlus just put up a new page on Swine Flu.

+ The National Library of Medicine offers Enviro-Health Links - 2009 H1N1 (Swine) Flu. Includes pointers to information from government agencies — U.S. and international — as well as news feeds, maps, veterinary and scientific resources.

+ Meanwhile, Prof. Sree Sreenivasan, Dean of Student Affairs, Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, is compiling tips on using Twitter to understand the swine flu story. Worth a look.

+ Wall Street Journal: Swine Flu - Complete Coverage
+ New York Times Topics: Swine Flu
+ Veratect Corporation is a company that tracks global disease outbreaks (PDF; 96 KB). They offer a Twitter feed.

+ HealthMap: Latest Information on Swine Flu
+ HealthMap’s Twitter feed

+ Press Briefing on Swine Influenza with Department of Homeland Security, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and White House

+ Business Pandemic Influenza Planning Checklist (from the government’s PandemicFlu.gov website).

+ The last swine flu scare was in 1976.

+ Swine Influenze coverage from the Center for Infectious Disease Research & Policy, Academic Health Center, University of Minnesota

+ Public Health Agency of Canada: Human Swine Influenza

+ Health Protection Agency (UK) — Swine Influenza

Resource of the Week: Europeana
By Adrian Janes, UK Contributing Editor

Europeana is an ambitious collaborative project between European archives, libraries and museums. First launched in November 2008, the initial interest was so great that it overwhelmed the site. The current version is described as a prototype, with the full-scale launch now expected in 2010. But even at this stage, it is a most interesting resource, claiming currently to provide access to four million digital items but anticipating this to have grown to 10 million by next year.

The types of items collected in Europeana are in the broad categories of Text, Images, Video, and Sound. Text, for instance, may include books, articles and music scores. However, although the site can be searched in a preferred language (26 in all), it is important to note that all items are presented as originally created (e.g., a Hungarian text will remain in Hungarian). From that point of view, the most international aspect of the site is the range of images, such as paintings, photographs and maps, and access to some music recordings. Similarly the site spans the centuries, with artists like Giotto, Watteau and Picasso, and composers like Mozart and Debussy among those represented.

All items are thoroughly catalogued, which helps make for productive searches. However some contributing organisations are more generous in the access they allow than others. The British Library’s images can be freely viewed at a good size, whereas those provided by Scran, a Scottish source, are only thumbnails: anything more requires a licence.

Basic searching can be refined by Language, Country, Date, Provider or Type, or a combination of these. There is also an Advanced Search facility which allows the site to be investigated in other modes, namely by Title, Creator, Date, or Subject. Again, the fields can be combined. But it would be a mistake to assume that searching by an artist’s country will necessarily produce the best results. The items provided by French sources tend to be the most relevant and plentiful, at least at the moment. Apart from the richness of their collections, this may be explained by the greater progress achieved in digitisation by some countries and their institutions compared to others.

By clicking on “View in original context” (displayed beneath any selected result), you are taken to the originating website — a way of opening up the possibilities of discovery beyond Europeana, although facilitated by it. Complimenting this, a very useful gateway page brings together links to all of the websites of Partners and Contributors of content.

There are also customisation possibilities available to registered users, such as the ability to save particular searches, add tags, or share items.

The subtitle to Europeana is “Think culture,” and its strength lies in its vast range of historical and artistic materials. As the project develops, this can only become even more the case. It is certainly a real collaborative achievement, but would be even more useful if the amount of access granted to items by the contributors was equalised. Nevertheless, this collaboration amongst such a diversity of institutions, languages, and countries is both heartening in itself, and also suggests exciting possibilities for parallel projects in other areas of European expertise, like science or medicine.

See also:
+ European Online Library Launches
+ EuropeanaLocal to expand participation in European Digital Library
+ New Portal from from the European Digital Library: Europeana Demo Goes Live

Resource of the Week — ICD-9-CM Diagnosis and Procedure Codes and Their Abbreviated Titles
By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor

I recently had one of those odd health insurance moments. You may be able to relate to this. I received a document from my health insurance provider questioning a claim for a diagnosis they contended was “a pre-existing condition.” I had no idea what they were talking about; the paper I was holding in my hand had very little in the way of an explanation, but it did list a “diagnosis code.” When I called the insurer’s “customer service” number, a claims representative told me she could not provide any information about the “diagnosis code” due to “health privacy regulations.”

Um…OK. Never mind that this was me calling about my own “diagnosis.” Apparently, I had to make a written request to find out what the insurance company assumed was wrong with me.

Feh.

There had to be a better way of obtaining this information. Now I have no background whatsoever in the health care/health insurance industry. But I do have a certain amount of common sense. And research skills. It occurred to me that an insurance-related diagnosis code was probably a pretty standard piece of data — e.g., a certain diagnosis number was equivalent to the same diagnosis regardless of the insurance company.

And so I started searching. Almost immediately, I hit the motherlode — at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which apparently releases a new tables of these codes at the start of each federal fiscal year, in October. I downloaded a zipped file of “Version 26,” which took effect last October, unzipped the file, and scanned the list until I spotted the “diagnosis code” in question.

It turned out to be a “condition” I did not recognize at all, which prompted another call to the insurance company “customer service” department. The woman on the phone conceded that yes, it could have been an error, and that she’d check into it and get back to me. And I was thinking…of course it could have been an error. Think of all the opportunities for something to go wrong here. The doctor’s handwriting could be illegible. (Yeah, this never happens.) A medical office worker could get the code completely wrong. A data entry person could transpose a number.

Somehow, a mistake enters the system and gets perpetuated, and the patient/consumer is left to deal with the fallout.

Feh.

But I repeat myself.

Now, at least, you have some way to check and make sure that your diagnosis code matches your diagnosis. And while this may not be a revelation to some of you out there who work with this information — or who have had a similar experience and had to resolve it via your own research — I’m sure I’m not the only one who never realized this data was out there.

Alas, a little more poking around clued me in to the fact that ICD-9 is due to be supplanted by ICD-10. The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) can help you out with ICD-10, as can the World Health Organization, which owns and publishes the classification.

ICD, by the way, is an acronym for International Classification of Diseases. It is, according to the NCHS, “designed to promote international comparability in the collection, processing, classification, and presentation of mortality statistics.” When CM (Clinical Modification) is appended — as in ICD-9-CM — what we have is “the official system of assigning codes to diagnoses and procedures associated with hospital utilization in the United States.”

Now you know.

If you are familiar with this data and can provide additional enlightenment (or a better explanation), please contact us. I’ll be more than happy to update or expand this post, since I think this is extremely important information for those of us in the U.S. who must deal with such a convoluted health care system.

Resource of the Week: Energy Information Administration Country Analysis Briefs
By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor

You probably already know about the Energy Information Administration as the nation’s premier fishing hole for energy statistics of all types.

The mission of the Energy Information Administration (EIA) is to provide policy-neutral data, forecasts, and analyses to promote sound policy making, efficient markets, and public understanding regarding energy and its interaction with the economy and the environment. Created by the Congress in 1977, EIA is the statistical agency of the U.S. Department of Energy and as such is the Nation’s premier source of unbiased energy data, analysis and forecasting. By law, EIA’s products are prepared independently of Administration policy considerations. EIA neither formulates nor advocates any policy conclusions.

EIA provides a wide range of information and data products covering energy production, stocks, demand, imports, exports, and prices; and prepares analyses and special reports on topics of current interest. These products are derived from energy data that is collected by EIA staff. We design and send our statistical surveys to energy producers, users, transporters, and certain other businesses. Companies and households report directly to us. We also make use of data from other sources, such as trade associations and other government agencies.

You may never have explored the site’s International section, however. Thus you might not be familiar with the EIA’s Country Analysis Briefs. These are updated on an ongoing basis, and offer in-depth energy data for each individual country regarding oil, natural gas and electricity.

Does a nation have any oil reserves? How much does it import? How much electricity generating capacity does it have, and what fuels does it use to produce its power? A “quick facts” page for each country provides every relevant statistic in one location — such as this one, for the country of Mexico.

There’s also a page of links to each country’s relevant government and utility websites, and to the country’s profile in the CIA World Factbook and its U.S. Department of State Consular Information Sheet. Finally, for each country, there is a Sources page that lets you know where all the data came from.

You can access each complete report in HTML or PDF format. If you think these reports will be useful to you in the future, you can sign up to be notified by e-mail when a new one is posted. Just scroll down the e-mail subscriptions page till you get the the International section and select all reports or just those from regions of the world in which you’re interested.

Other aggregate sources of energy information for various countries include:

• Europe’s Energy Portal (EU)
• Eurostat: Environment and Energy
• International Energy Agency
• International Trade Administration: Electric Current Worldwide
• NationMaster: Energy Statistics
• OECD Statistics Portal: Energy
• United Nations Statistics Division: Energy Statistics
• World Bank — Energy: Regions
• World Resources Institute — EarthTrends: Energy and Resources: Country Profiles

Resource of the Week: More Niche Statistics
By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor

OK, it’s numbers round-up time again — something I’m prone to do when unearthed a bunch of new statistical resources. I collect these the way other people collect stamps, coins or baseball cards. Vetted sources of statistical information are always useful for The Day Job. And please…if you have a few favorites, please let us know so we can share widely.

+ A Collection of Social Network Stats for 2009 (Jeremiah Owyang, Forrester Research)

Numbers don’t tell us much without insight and interpretation, in fact, you’re going to see conflicting numbers of usage from many of the agencies and social networks themselves. The key is to look at trend movements, don’t focus on the specific numbers but the changes to them over time. I put more weight on active unique users in the last 30 days vs overall registered, in fact, the actual active conversion rate will often range from 10-40% of actual users sticking around and using the social network, so don’t be fooled by puffed numbers. No single metric is a good indicator, you have to evaluate the usage from multiple dimensions, so you also have to factor in what are users doing, time on site, interaction, and of course, did they end up buying, recommending products, or improving their lives.

Owyang, an analyst for Forrester, says he will be updating this information throughout the year.

+ State Economies at a Glance (Bureau of Labor Statistics)

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) produces Economy at a Glance pages at the national, regional, state, and metropolitan area levels. The data displayed in these pages are assembled from different surveys and programs conducted by BLS. The Economy at a Glance pages are refreshed with current data every time any of the source programs releases new statistics. This typically occurs 7-9 times per month.

+ Tax Statistics (Produced by the Statistics of Income Division and Other Areas of the Internal Revenue Service)

Categories include business tax statistics, individual tax statistics, IRS operations/budget/compliance, statistics of income, charitable and exempt organization statistics, products/publications/papers, statistics by tax form, and more. The What’s New page points to the most recent information added to the site and also to the most popular items. If you want to be alerted when new statistics are posted, you can subscribe to the Tax Stats Dispatch e-mail list.

+ Fire Statistics (U.S. Fire Administration)

This page contains statistics on fires that occur in the United States and analytical and topical reports that describe the national fire problem. Also included are statistics related to firefighters and fire departments.

The U.S. Fire Administration is part of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

+ Credit card industry facts, debt statistics 2006-2009

This page contains credit card-related statistics — including statistics on credit card debt, credit card delinquencies, credit scores, credit card interest rates, bankruptcies, average credit card debt and more — compiled by the CreditCards.com staff. Statistics on this page will be updated regularly as we receive new or updated credit card data. Some data may appear multiple times on the page because the information is applicable in multiple categories.

CreditCards.com is an established online credit card marketplace that partners with a number of reliable media outlets such as Forbes.com, bizjournals.com, and Forbes.com. Read more about the site here (PDF; 36 KB).

+ Insurance Related Data (Insurance Information Institute)

The Insurance Information Institute (I.I.I.) compiles the latest facts and statistics relating to the insurance industry.

You’ll find some numbers here that might otherwise be difficult to locate, such as data on annuities, the world’s deadliest catastrophes (including insurance loss data), worst terrorists attacks (with insured property losses), and more.