Archive for the ‘Resource of the Week’ Category

« Older Entries

Resource of the Week – Designing Democracy

Monday, March 15th, 2010

Resource of the Week – Designing Democracy
By Adrian Janes, Contributing Editor

1989 was the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. This was but one of the most dramatic of a whole series of breakthroughs by political movements across Central and Eastern Europe which brought down the reigning totalitarian regimes. The Victoria and Albert Museum in London, a focus for design of all kinds, has placed online Designing Democracy, an excellent international collection of political posters produced by various opposition groups and organisations.

The posters come from several countries including Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia (as it was then), Poland and Romania; the period covered is from 1980 (when the trade union Solidarity was born in Poland) to the early 1990s, by which time Western-style elections had been held throughout the region. These changes can now also be seen as precursors to a more general reunion of Europe, not least in the shape of the European Union.

Each poster is carefully catalogued, noting the publishing organisation, artist, country and year of publication and media used. They are all complemented by a concise description which both places the poster in its political context and tries to convey something of the intended meaning. For even after a mere two decades, such commentary is vitally necessary to remind the older viewer, and teach the younger, of a state of affairs which already seems hard to imagine.

The posters on the initial page are only a taster of the whole collection. To see the rest, type “pro-democracy” into the search box here. There are three settings that can be chosen: All records; Only records with images; Best quality records including image and detailed description. The greatest quantity of images is generated by the first setting, and the least by the third. It appears that the main difference in quality between the two is the extent of the commentary given, as the standard of cataloguing is consistently high throughout. Incidentally, when the collection is accessed in this way it is usually necessary to click on the ‘Download PDF version” link to see the commentary.

One of the problems to which the Internet has arguably contributed is a tendency towards the ephemeral and a disregard for history. But collections such as Designing Democracy constitute a powerful response to such criticisms.

Posted in Archives and Special Collections, History, New Websites and Resources, Resource of the Week, Source File | No Comments »

Resource of the Week: Catalog of Nonprofit Literature

Monday, March 8th, 2010

Resource of the Week: Catalog of Nonprofit Literature
By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor

We are big supporters of nonprofits in general both here on ResourceShelf and over on DocuTicker, our sister site. Thus, we are huge fans of the Foundation Center. This is a venerable institution; in operation since 1956, it’s currently supported by roughly 550 foundations and is widely recognized as a pre-eminent authority on “organized philanthropy.”

There is an avalanche of useful information on the Foundation Center’s website, and most of it is free. We thought we’d give a little love to the Catalog of Nonprofit Literature — formerly known as Literature of the Nonprofit Sector (LNPS) — this week.

The Catalog of Nonprofit Literature is a searchable database of the literature of philanthropy. It incorporates the unique contents of the Foundation Center’s five libraries and contains approximately 28,000 full bibliographic citations, of which nearly 20,000 have descriptive abstracts. It is updated daily.

The basic search form offers a standard keyword search that allows for the use of standard boolean operators. Use the radio buttons to either search everything or restrict your search to full-text resources only. To the right are links to more information and/or help, including a guided tour, a bibliography of periodicals, and a quick look at recently added items.

The “standard search” is actually an advanced search form offerings several more options that facilitate a more precise query. If you click on the buttons labeled “Index,” a window pops up with a directory of relevant subject terms. Nicely done!

Though there are full-text resources in this database, many other items are not available online. They can be viewed at the Foundation Center’s headquarters in New York City, its national collection in Washington, D.C., or its field offices in Atlanta, Cleveland, and San Francisco. These libraries are freely open to the public; no appointment is necessary to use them. If none of these locations is convenient, you might want to try one of the center’s 400 “Cooperating Collections” — most located at public or academic libraries around the country, as well as in Australia, Brazil, Mexico, Nigeria, South Korea, and Thailand. (If your institution is interested in housing a cooperative collection, The Foundation Center is currently soliciting applications.)

By the way, don’t leave this website without a look at the wonderful collection of Links to Nonprofit Resources. The navigation links on the right make it easy for you to browse by subject category; major subject headings are:

Posted in Archives and Special Collections, Databases, Directories, and Guides, Portals, Reference Tools, Resource of the Week, Source File | No Comments »

Resources of the Week: International Telephone Directories

Monday, March 1st, 2010

Resources of the Week: International Telephone Directories
By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor

A major part of The Day Job is finding phone numbers — for people, companies, organizations, etc. Almost always easy when it’s a U.S. number. When it’s an international number…not so easy, even with our expensive subscription databases.

I have yet to find a collection of international phone directories online that really wows me. Many of them are riddled with dead links and/or pointers to questionable pay services. But if you click through enough of them, every once in awhile you find what you need. If you happen to have a source for these that you really, really like, please share.

In the meantime, here’s a list of fishing holes for international directories.

+ 10-10PhoneRates.com: Regional tables with yellow & white pages – At first, I thought this was just a directory of calling plans. But when you click on a link for a geographic location, you’ll get a table of calling rates with individual country links at the top. Click on a country name and you’ll get a selection of links to directories.

+ AT&T’s venerable AnyWho.com offers a collection of links to international directories.

+ EscapeArtist.com: All Nations International Telephone Calling Code Search Engine – This is kind of an odd one, from a site that appear to be aimed at expatriates. Scroll down to the search box at the lower left corner and use the dropdown menus to choose where you’re calling from and where you want to call. Click “Find the Number,” and you’ll get a page with links to directories (as well as embassies, unit converters and other odds-and-ends.

+ For EU business listings, try Europages, a directory of 1.5 million companies in 35 European countries.

+ Infobel, which has been around for a good while, has one of the better collections of international directory links.

+ International White and Yellow Pages – This one has a rather barebones look to it (to put it mildly), but it’s not bad. Provider is a Norway company called Wayp Internet Group.

+ Numberway offers a comprehensive collection of links. Note the “Recent Changes” section at the bottom — an indicator that the folks behind this one are making a solid effort to keep it current.

+ PhonebookoftheWorld.com – This one is rather oddly organized. You can use the dropdown menu to find the appropriate country or — somewhat more straightforward — click the Countries or Cities links at the very top of the page. OK, I’ll admit that I clicked on the Phonebook of the Moon link, but I’ll be darned if I could figure out what to do when I got to that page.

OK, so you’ve tried all of the above sites and you struck out. Now what? Well, something that sometimes works for us is contacting a local library in the area. Librarians, as we all know well, are among the most helpful folks roaming the planet. A good place to start looking? Libweb, which “currently lists over 8000 pages from libraries in 146 countries.” The ALA website offers a list of library associations around the world. The University of Queensland (AU) has a list of national library websites.

Posted in Databases, Directories, and Guides, Geographic, Libraries and Librarianship, Reference Tools, Resource of the Week, Source File | No Comments »

Resource of the Week — Notable Names Database (beta)

Monday, February 22nd, 2010

Resource of the Week — Notable Names Database (beta)
By Adrian Janes, Contributing Editor

Sometimes a resource is worth bookmarking for its potential as much as its current usefulness. An example of this is the beta version of the Notable Names Database (NNDB). In part, this serves as a reference tool for some quick biographical fact-checking. It must be admitted that, at present, coverage can vary greatly. Some entries simply note the basics (e.g. Date of Birth, Birthplace, Occupation, Religion). Others also include fairly detailed biographical accounts, and bibliographies or filmographies of varying degrees of comprehensiveness. (Oddly, musicians don’t seem to have discographies included at all.)

The NNDB includes both living and dead people, although the criteria for inclusion are not specified beyond “people we have determined to be noteworthy”. The claimed 37,000+ subjects are largely American, but there are also entries on such notables as:

Apart from Living or Dead People, searching can be done through Band Names, Book Titles, Movie Titles or full text.

The NNDB states that it “mostly exists to document the connections between people”. However it also works well in linking people to their works. For example, a search in Book Titles for “The Great Gatsby” produces a list of books with ‘great’ in the title but headed by F. Scott Fitzgerald’s book and a link to his entry.

This concern with connections is best demonstrated by the site’s most intriguing feature, the NNDB Mapper. This not only includes personal connections (e.g. family, fellow actors or band members, etc.), but it works in the corporate and political fields as well. The connections thus revealed between the latter areas are likely to be much less well-known and yet potentially very significant.

A link to the map for an individual is indicated to the right of his or her entry. Once the subject is loaded at the centre of their map, his or her immediate connections (known as nodes) appear as well. Any of these can in turn be clicked on to indicate their connections, and so on. If the map appears to be getting too complicated, you can ‘isolate’ a subject (i.e making hr or she alone the centre of a map) or ‘prune’ it, which removes nodes that, in the present state of the database, have no further connections. There is also an option to select from a list of nodes when it is particularly long. All of these operations can be carried out simply and swiftly. User involvement is encouraged; from here, you can either create a new map or browse the library of maps created by other users.

Yet this facility also indicates one of the flaws of the NNDB; like the early days of Wikipedia, there is no apparent mechanism or authority in place for assuring the quality of the information. I feel some confidence in the site because personal knowledge of many of the subjects I checked chimes with what the NNDB yields; equally, there are some glaring errors and omissions (e.g., Samuel Beckett’s bibliography ends at least 20 years too soon). But again like Wikipedia, the site positively invites comments and corrections, which is creditable and reinforces my belief that an already valuable resource could grow into something of lasting worth.

Posted in Databases, Directories, and Guides, People Search, Resource of the Week, Source File | No Comments »

Resources of the Week: (We Love) Lists & Rankings

Sunday, January 31st, 2010

Resources of the Week: (We Love) Lists & Rankings
By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor

Sometimes even we find it hard to believe that ResourceShelf is entering the eighth year of its existence. (My, how time flies when you’re having fun.) Well, those of you who have been “around” as long as we have just might remember a venerable resource created and maintained by Gary, called Price’s List of Lists. Its longtime curator, Trip Wyckoff, explains:

Price’s List of Lists (LOL) was started around 1998 and maintained by Gary Price for many years. The LOL grew, and Gary’s commitment to other projects and speaking engagements made the upkeep of the LOL impossible. In late 2000, Gary approached Trip Wycoff of Specialissues.com, about taking over the upkeep and expansion of the LOL. By 2002 the online database and structure to maintain and organize the LOL was in place and in October 2002 the LOL was transferred to Specialissues.com.

The List of Lists is a database of ranked listings of companies, people and resources freely available on the Internet. Content comes from a number of sources including: Specialissues.com, Gary Price’s “ResourceShelf” and individual users of the LOL.

The LOL is organized by subject headings based on the two-digit 1997 U.S. NAICS Codes. There is hope to expand the subject headings to include more detail, but at this time these are only headings.

There is no formal “search function” for the LOL. However, one can search for content within each of the subject headings using your browser’s “Find” function. There is also a masterlist of all magazines available in the LOL. The masterlist entry pulls all of a magazine’s rankings from all of the different subject headings into one place.

So, thanks to Trip, Price’s List of Lists lives on as a valuable resource. And we continue to post lists & rankings of interest both here on ResourceShelf and over on DocuTicker, our sister site. They just keep coming and people continue to find them useful. A few recent examples:

Posted in Lists and Rankings, Resource of the Week, Source File | No Comments »

Some Thoughts on “Controlled Serendipity”

Sunday, January 24th, 2010

Resource of the Week — Some Thoughts on “Controlled Serendipity”
By Gary Price and Shirl Kennedy, editors

‘Controlled Serendipity’ Liberates the Web (Nick Bilton, New York Times)

If someone approached me even five years ago and explained that one day in the near future I would be filtering, collecting and sharing content for thousands of perfect strangers to read — and doing it for free — I would have responded with a pretty perplexed look. Yet today I can’t imagine living in a world where I don’t filter, collect and share.

More important, I couldn’t conceive of a world of news and information without the aid of others helping me find the relevant links.

Comments From ResourceShelf

From Gary:
“(F)iltering, collecting and sharing content” are things that info pros and many information companies have been doing for a long time, both in print and electronically — particularly in the area of aggregation. Now, many of us — both information professionals and information industry vendors — have to find new ideas and methods to make our services valuable to users. Which by itself is not enough. We must also make sure people know about our services rather than just going to the web and bypassing us completely.

Which means information professionals need to adjust, learn new skills, and develop new services to go along with those skills. That doesn’t mean we should be forgetting our “classic skills”. It means we should be adapting them to the times and circumstances in which we find ourselves. On example — metadata creation and management (what some might call “cataloging 2010?) is more important now than ever. And facilitating information literacy is an ongoing process.

Other new skills that come to mind are digital preservation, digital curation, organization of digital content, and working with/for the open access community.

Additionally, as more resources become available on the web (and that includes via mobile/portable devices), there will be more and more choices for consumers of information (including info pros who might be buying this stuff) on what to select and use. And that brings a whole host of issues front and center — assessing the credibility and currency of the information, knowing how and where to find archived content, determining the best ways to share information, being aware of intellectual property issues, and knowing how and where to find potentially useful related materials, regardless of format (digital, print, audio, video).

A well-trained information professional can provide all of the above skills (and MANY more). And we know this. We also know that the real challenge is teaching users and POTENTIAL users that research is more than just tossing two or three words into a search box.

Other increasingly important issues? Personal archiving. Keeping a copy for yourself. Why? Well, for example, if someone remembers a tweet from three weeks ago, unless he or she personally archived it, it might be a challenge to find it again. The web is, essentially, ephemeral. Which points up the value of “traditional” or “legacy” services. They have indices that go way back in time — more than a century in some cases.

Mobile or wireless access to information is becoming increasingly important. We know that many libraries and information vendors are offering mobile sites or apps these days, and we do our best to share some of them here on ResourceShelf. Relatively speaking, however, these are just the “early days” of the “mobile age” — which means info pros have a chance to be on the cutting edge here. Ideally for us, mobile users will come to realize that their local information professionals can help solve information access problems and/or save them precious time in locating what they need.

This web site, ResourceShelf, and our sister site, DocuTicker, are two examples of sites run by info pros who filter, collect and share a sizable (but still relatively small) amount of content each day. ResourceShelf is just now entering its eighth year of existence. And not a day goes by that we are not grateful for all of your suggestions and support.
—
From Shirl:
I could simply type “What Gary said,” and it would articulate my feelings pretty well. Both Gary and I have, as information professionals, been on the Internet since well before it hit the mainstream. So we have the advantage of perspective — of gradually integrating information technology into the way we’ve done our jobs.

15 years ago, I was just beginning to teach people about e-mail…and telnet…and gopher…and ftp. Then I taught HTML and website design…and on to blogging and RSS. These days, I’m teaching social media — Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter — mostly to non-librarians. Even with all the mainstream hoopla over these services, I still see a lot of resistance. Many people still regard them as frivolous or fear them as a monumental time-suck. And, of course, if not used judiciously and strategically, that is exactly what they can be.

When people ask me, “Why do I want to be on Facebook?” or “Why do I want to be on Twitter?”, I give them what I think are the two main reasons:

1. There’s a conversation going on “out there.” Continuously. You can either choose to be part of it or let it pass you by. If you’re a business person, chances are pretty good that somebody somewhere is discussing your industry — or your specific company — in the social media space. Right now. This very minute. What are you missing? More importantly, what could you be adding?

2. Information overload is a chronic condition suffered by all of us. As individuals, we can’t possibly ingest and digest everything we need to feel well-informed — both in the general “what’s going on in the world” sense and within our own communities, industries and/or professional circles. But when we harness the brains of savvy intermediaries, the odds are pretty good that we’re not going to miss something significant.

Which brings us full circle. We have — by definition, as information professionals — a virtual mandate here to filter and aggregate.

The NYT “Bits” blog post referenced at the top of this post contains a statistic that just floored me:

John Borthwick, chief executive of Betaworks and Bit.ly, the URL-shortening service, said each month more people were clicking on shortened links from social networks and e-mail. Last week, Mr. Borthwick said bit.ly processed 599,100,000 clicks, its highest number since starting in July 2008.

bit.ly processed 599,000,000 clicks — IN ONE WEEK. That, my friends, is A HECK of a lot of information sharing. Especially since bit.ly is only one of many URL shortening services.

Posted in Cataloging and Metadata, Digital Preservation, Info Management and Retrieval, Information Industry, Libraries and Librarianship, Resource of the Week | No Comments »

Resources of the Week: A Handful of Niche Search Engines

Monday, January 18th, 2010

Resources of the Week: A Handful of Niche Search Engines
By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor

It’s only common sense. When you’re looking for a needle in a haystack, it’s easier when the haystack is as small as possible. So why use a general web engine when what you’re looking for is very specific? Thus, our love for specialized search engines. Here are four.

+ SlideFinder allows you to search for PowerPoint slides in English and an assortment of other languages. There’s even a plug-in for PowerPoint 2007 that lets you search for slides from within PowerPoint. You can also add it to the collection of search engines in your brower’s search bar. According to its blog, SlideFinder is placing special emphasis on indexing presentations from university websites because these “will often contain high quality content.” The blog is worth following for its presentation advice and tips.

+ eCirc, from the Audit Bureau of Circulation, offers the latest summarized circulation figures for newspapers, consumer magazines, business publications and farm publications in the U.S., Canada, and for selected publications in other coutries.

+ AddALL Ebook Price Comparison allows you to “(m)eta-search 30+ ebook sites with one click”. The results screen allows you to sort by title, author, price, site, or format. Clicking a title takes you directly to the site where it’s available so you can buy/download the book. Incorporates free e-books.

+ National Climatic Data Center Storm Event Database, from NOAA, allows you to search for various types of storms in your state, down to the county level. It contains:

  • All Weather Events from 1993 – 1995, as entered into Storm Data. (Except 6/93 – 7/93, which is missing) (NO Latitude/Longitude)
  • All Weather Events from 1996 – Current, as entered into Storm Data. (Including Latitude/Longitude)
  • Plus additional data from the Storm Prediction Center; Including
    • Tornadoes 1950-1992
    • Thunderstorm Winds 1955-1992
    • Hail 1955-1992

Select a state (or “all”) from the dropdown menu, and you’re off and running. You can limit your search to a single event type (e.g., tornadoes), a particular time period, the $ amount of damages, number of injuries or deaths, and more.

Posted in Access to Information, Archives and Special Collections, Databases, Directories, and Guides, Info Management and Retrieval, Reference Tools, Resource of the Week, Search Tools, Source File, Technology and Internet, Web Search | No Comments »

Resource of the Week: DocuTicker!

Monday, January 4th, 2010

Resource of the Week: DocuTicker!
By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor

You’re probably at least peripherally aware of our sister site, DocuTicker, which features “a hand-picked selection of resources, reports and publications from government agencies, NGOs, think tanks and other public interest organizations.” It’s an information junkie’s paradise (and believe me — we live the information junkie lifestyle here on ResourceShelf).

You’ll find no commentary or ideological slant over on DT; we post items from organizations in every corner of the socio-political spectrum. We know our readers are sharp enough to take a close look at the organizations behind some of these resources and weight the information therein accordingly. We think it’s important that you be aware of what is “out there” on contemporary issues in the public policy sphere. Mostly, though, we try and post items from reliable sources that you can safely cite — government and international agencies, scholarly journals, well-regarded “think tanks” like RAND and the Brookings Institution, academic research centers, etc. Adrian Janes, our contributing editor “across the pond,” finds interesting items from a variety of UK and EU sources. (And we always appreciate it when our readers e-mail us to let us know about new and interesting papers and reports.)

As with ResourceShelf, you’ll find a list a list of categories on DocuTicker down the right side of the page. Just click to browse items in the category of interest. It is also possible to subscribe to an RSS feed that contains just items from a specific category. Contributing editor Pete Weiss, our oracle of All Things Technical, offers simple instructions:

An an example, if you were interested in subscribing to the category Energy, you would click on it from the in the list on the righthand side and find this in your browser’s GOTO bar:

http://www.docuticker.com/?cat=19

You would then construct a new URL by appending

&feed=rss2

to the URL, resulting in

http://www.docuticker.com/?cat=19&feed=rss2

This is the URL for the Energy RSS feed that would then be added to your aggregator.

DocuTicker does, of course, have an “everything” feed that shows you every item posted, regardless of category — feed://www.docuticker.com/?feed=rss. If you’re social media-minded, you can follow DocuTicker on Facebook or Twitter.

Here’s a sampling of recently posted DocuTicker items

Posted in Best of DocuTicker, Papers, Presentations, Reports, Resource of the Week, Source File | No Comments »

Resources of the Week: A Never Ending “Virtual Stream” of Digitized Text

Monday, December 7th, 2009

Resources of the Week: A Never Ending “Virtual Stream” of Digitized Text
by Gary Price, Senior Editior

When Chris Sherman and I were writing and then giving book talks and presentations about The Invisible Web, we said John Mark Ockerbloom’s Online Books Page was an essential resource for anyone interested in digitized, full text books — now commonly called as eBooks. More than eight years later I feel the same way about this awesome and well organized collection.

Where do you begin with a site so full of content? For me, that’s easy. Monitoring the latest additions to the catalog/page. I am always blown away by the amount of new listings (when does Ockerbloom sleep?) and the number of organizations digitizing books. If you think it’s only Google digitizing books (of course they are a major player) but not they’re far from the only one doing this type of work. Just look for yourself. The page even has an RSS feed.

So, the Online Books Page is not only a “must have” searchable directory of ebooks but it can also be a great collection development resource to find and add digitized content to your local collection/OPAC.

But wait, we’ve got more.

The Online Books Page new listings only includes some of the digitized text output from the Internet Archive (IA).

If you want to be able to review (at your leisure) all of the new digitized content text content that the IA produces, it’s possible by subscribing to this RSS feed. Even if you’re not going to review the titles, just let it run for a few days to get some idead of the sheer quantity of text material being digitized in variety of formats. It’s an understatement to say that the scanners at the IA are cranking it out on all cylinders. So, collection development types and ebook enthusiasts, subscribe to both RSS feeds and have a large virtual bookshelf to choose from each day.

UPDATE: Not an RSS user? No problem. Just visit this Internet Archive page and refresh it a few times a day. The most recent addition is at the top.

Additional “latest additions” pages at the Internet Archive:

See also: Project Gutenberg’s Michael Hart on “Things I Like the Best and the Least About eBooks”.

Posted in Databases, Directories, and Guides, Digitization Projects, E-books, Resource of the Week, Resources | No Comments »

Resource of the Week: Search Engine Land

Monday, November 30th, 2009

Resource of the Week: Search Engine Land
By Adrian Janes, Contributing Editor, DocuTicker

Probably most information professionals have ‘gurus’ — figures they deeply admire for their knowledge and ability to communicate it. In my personal pantheon, the very first such figure was Danny Sullivan, who used to produce the excellent Search Engine Watch.

He went on from this to begin Search Engine Land, which follows many of the same principles as the earlier site and newsletter. Although more clearly a commercial offering than Search Engine Watch (with several areas of the site fully open only to paying subscribers), there remains a large amount of very useful and timely free material. And whereas Search Engine Watch relied largely on Sullivan and a few other contributors (including Resource Shelf’s Gary Price), for Search Engine Land he has assembled both a core of editors and a much bigger team of guest writers, and therefore draws upon that much bigger a range of insight.

See all of these contributors on this page, with links to a list of each one’s full text articles. This, along with their biographies, give a flavor of each writer’s expertise. (Another way to reach such a list is to click on the link “See more articles by” at the end of a piece.)

Apart from the possibility of subscribing to an RSS feed for their Search Engine Land contributions, most of these writers have further links to their own blogs or sites. Thus Search Engine Land can also be a pathway to experts in particular aspects of search.

This comprehensiveness in examining search is demonstrated by the Columns page. Each subject area here — nineteen in all
(e.g. Multinational Search, Paid Search, Strictly Business, etc), plus a daily update of search news — can be subscribed to via RSS. Coverage of such breadth and depth means that, although the search engine marketer is well catered to, there is equally much to interest librarians and other Internet searchers.

Apart from the Contributors page, the main area of the site which offers plenty of free content is News. News not only covers business dealings and controversies involving the world of search but also highlights new developments and tools, whether they are refinements to established search engines or newly-launched ones.

However it is also definitely worth looking at the more detailed discussions in:

In each case the full text of some recent sample articles are given (the Archives by Month part of the Members’ Library is especially fruitful), so checking back at these parts of the site on a regular basis can pay dividends. A consistent attention to making links to related stories adds to the value of any single piece.

Search Engine Land has something to offer for anyone who uses or works with Internet search engines — whether it be news or more technical considerations, and with writing of clarity and quality.

Posted in Resource of the Week, Search News, Source File, Web 2.0, Web Search | No Comments »

Resource of the Week: Sloan Work and Family Research Network

Monday, November 23rd, 2009

Resource of the Week: Sloan Work and Family Research Network
by Karen Corday, Information Services Specialist (corday@bc.edu)

The Sloan Network is the premier online destination for free work and family information. We serve a global community interested in work and family research by providing resources and building knowledge. Current, credible, and comprehensive, the Network targets the information needs of academics and researchers, workplace practitioners, state public policy makers, and interested individuals. It is the place to find high-quality research and reports, easy-to-read summary sheets and briefs, work-family topic pages, a work-family glossary, a work and family encyclopedia, and a literature database featuring over 10,000 bibliographic citations— all in one location. The Network is a project of the Graduate School of Social Work at Boston College and has been funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for the past 12 years.

We offer multidisciplinary, credible teaching resources and access to the world’s foremost work-family academics and researchers, evidence-based information on cutting-edge workforce issues, talent management, and the impact of work and family issues on business outcomes, and unbiased policy data about work and family trends, legislation, and statistics.

Topics featured on the site include:

We have a monthly award-winning newsletter, The Network News, featuring interviews with work-family experts as well as literature updates in the field and international work-family news. Subscribe for free. You can grab our RSS feed, and find us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. We update our Work and Family Blog at least three times a week; please get in touch if you have similar interests and would to guest blog.

Editor’s note: We think this is truly an outstanding website that provides continually updated information on topics of interest to almost everyone — researchers, policymakers, human resources professionals…and working parents. We are amazed — time and time again — by the high-quality resources created, maintained, curated, supervised, etc., by our readers. Do you work for an organization that offers high-quality, free content? We’re always looking for Resource of the Week contributors. Don’t hide your light under a bushel. Thousands and thousands of people read our content by blog, e-mail, Twitter, Facebook…

Posted in Business and Economics, Databases, Directories, and Guides, Glossaries, Government Documents and Political Information, Legal, Reference Tools, Resource of the Week, Resources for Educators, Source File, Statistics | No Comments »

Resource of the Week — Frequently Requested Statistics on Immigrants and Immigration in the United States

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

Resource of the Week: Frequently Requested Statistics on Immigrants and Immigration in the United States
By Kirin K. Kalia, Editor, Migration Information Source, Migration Policy Institute

Our just-published article, Frequently Requested Statistics on Immigrants and Immigration in the United States, covers everything from Mexican immigrants to health-care coverage to government budgets and backlogs. A few interesting numbers:

  • Of the 46.9 million people in 2008 who identified themselves as having Hispanic or Latino ancestry, nearly two-thirds (62.0 percent) were native-born US citizens. The remaining 38.0 percent were immigrants.
  • Immigrants, who in 2008 made up 12.5 percent of the US population, accounted for 29 percent of the 46.6 million working-age adults and children under 18 with no health insurance in 2008.
  • According to a Mexican survey, 14.2 percent of Mexican migrants who headed toward the United States in 2008 came from the state of Chiapas in southern Mexico.
  • Funding for the US Border Patrol increased 519 percent between 1986 and 2002, from $268 million to $1.6 billion. The Border Patrol budget was more than $3.5 billion in 2008, according to the Office of Management and Budget.
  • In 2008, there were about 16.3 million children age 17 and under with at least one immigrant parent. They accounted for 23.2 percent of the 70 million children age 17 and under in the United States.

This article is available on the Migration Information Source, an online journal of the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C. that studies immigration issues, trends, and policies in the United States and around the world. The MPI Data Hub provides instant access to the latest immigration statistics, maps, and numbers for the United States and other countries. For US state-level immigration data, see the ACS and Census Data Tool.

Also, if this is a subject area of interest to you, be sure to sign up for the free twice-monthly Migration Information Source email newsletter, which offers interesting, smartly packaged articles and data on immigration-related developments in the United States and around the world.

Posted in Fast Facts, Reference Tools, Resource of the Week, Source File, Statistics | No Comments »

Resource of the Week: Mobile Access to Information

Monday, October 26th, 2009

Resource of the Week: Mobile Access to Information
By Gary Price, Senior Editor

Alas, the vast majority of us were not fortunate enough to attend Gary’s presentation on Mobile Access to Information at Web Search University last month in Washington, D.C. But since this is a topic of intense, growing interest — 56% of adult Americans have accessed the internet by wireless means, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project — we thought we’d link to Gary’s presentation as our Resource of the Week.

In his presentation, Gary covers mobile terms and jargon, how scholarly publishers are joining the mobile revolution, mobile search, podcasts/phonecasts, television on mobile devices, location-based services, “m-commerce,” fast/free directory assistance, traffic reports and other real-time information…and much more. You’ll also find links to information about such cutting-edge services as Google Voice.

Gary has been touting the virtues of mobile internet access for *years* now — keeping track of new services that come online, experimenting with new mobile technologies, etc. This presentation gives you the opportunity to take advantage of his expertise. (sdk)

Posted in Papers, Presentations, Reports, Resource of the Week, Source File, Web 2.0, Wireless Web and Search | No Comments »

Resource of the Week: Lost Docs Blog

Monday, October 12th, 2009

Resource of the Week: Lost Docs Blog
By Daniel Cornwall, Head of Information Services – Alaska State Library

Forest Gump once said “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.” That is a good description of the current Resource of the Week, the Lost Docs Blog at
http://lostdocs.freegovinfo.info.

The Lost Docs Blog was created by Free Government Information to be a public clearinghouse of federal documents reported to the Government Printing Office (GPO) as so-called fugitive documents. Fugitive documents are reports and other federal government documents that are eligible to be described in the Catalog of Government Publications but are missed by GPO.

By providing a public feed of reported fugitive documents, Free Government Information hopes to provide more accountability for GPO’s cataloging section and to draw community attention to documents that depository libraries might wish to acquire before GPO can determine whether a reported fugitive document belongs in the Federal Depository Library Program.

The blog is powered by e-mail receipts received from librarians and others who have submitted fugitive documents reports to GPO. Volunteers at Free Government Information post these receipts so that they appear once or twice a day, depending on volume of reports. This is where the “box of chocolates” metaphor comes in. The documents that appear on the blog can be from any federal agency. This makes the blog a sort of miscellaneous current awareness tool of what falls through the official cracks — and an excellent resource for highlighting the breadth of government information.
–
Read more about the Lost Docs Blog via Free Government Information.
–
Bonus Resource of the Week: Shirl’s Basic Government Docs Cheat Sheet

+ Catalog of U.S. Government Publications

The CGP is the finding tool for federal publications that includes descriptive records for historical and current publications and provides direct links to those that are available online. Those not available online are available from a federal depository library.

To keep up with newly released titles, click the New Titles link at the top (duh). Click the “Preferences” link above the search box for a variety of options. Among other things, you can choose to search only those publications available in full text on the Internet (Internet Publications). See the light blue “Catalogs to Search” section just below the title near the top of the page.

+ Congressional Budget Office
CBO’s mandate is to provide the Congress with:

  • Objective, nonpartisan, and timely analyses to aid in economic and budgetary decisions on the wide array of programs covered by the federal budget and
  • The information and estimates required for the Congressional budget process.

You’ll also find PowerPoints, testimonies, etc. Note the “Frequently Requested” items at the lower right for a selection of “hot” documents. The keyword search tool at the upper right corner works pretty well. Douglas W. Elmendorf, CBO director, maintains a weblog, which is a good way to keep up with what’s new on this site.

+ Congressional Research Service (via Open CRS)

American taxpayers spend over $100 million a year to fund the Congressional Research Service, a “think tank” that provides reports to members of Congress on a variety of topics relevant to current political events. Yet, these reports are not made available to the public in a way that they can be easily obtained. A project of the Center for Democracy & Technology through the cooperation of several organizations and collectors of CRS Reports, Open CRS provides citizens access to CRS Reports already in the public domain and encourages Congress to provide public access to all CRS Reports.

There are other collections of CRS reports on the Internet, but the vast majority of them end up absorbed here eventually. Alas, the search engine on this site is marginal at best. You’ll have better luck using Google’s advanced search form; after typing your search in the boxes at the top, go down to the box at the bottom — Search within a site or domain: — and type opencrs.com.

+ Government Accountability Office

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) is an independent, nonpartisan agency that works for Congress. Often called the “congressional watchdog,” GAO investigates how the federal government spends taxpayer dollars.
…
GAO’s best known products include reports, testimonies, correspondence, and legal decisions and opinions, which are available to the press and the public. We also produce special publications to assist Congress and executive branch agencies by recommending corrections to problems in government programs and operations, identifying long-term trends, and raising concerns about the nation’s fiscal imbalance.

The keyword search option at the upper right works pretty well; an advanced option is readily available if you need it. To keep up with new releases on a daily basis, check the GAO Daybook. You can browse collections of reports on hot/popular topics here.

See also: Pilot Phase Concluding: CIC & Google Partnership Digitizes Around 1.5 Million Volumes of U.S. Federal Documents

Posted in Government Documents and Political Information, Resource of the Week, Source File | No Comments »

Resource of the Week: 50 Free Ivy-League Lectures on the Economy

Monday, October 5th, 2009

Resource of the Week: 50 Free Ivy-League Lectures on the Economy
By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor

Another one of our serendipitous finds, this collection comes to you from Online Classes.org, which regularly features nice topical collections of lectures, tips, hacks, etc., via its blog.

The economy has taken central stage in world news for the past few years due to rapidly failing markets the world over. Even with so much attention focused on economic issues if you’re not familiar with the field, or simply want a more in-depth look at things, it can be hard to follow just what’s going on. These lectures, given by scholars from some of the most prestigious educational institutions in the United States and around the world can help give you that foundation of knowledge and help you better understand the financial crisis that’s been building over the past few years.

If you follow business and economic news, you will recognize the names of some professors here. The lectures, which also include panel discussions, are grouped by category:

+ General Economics — examples:

  • Beyond Freakonomics: New Musings on the Economics of Everyday Life: University of Chicago professor and economist Steven Levitt further explains his theory on everyday economics in this lecture. [Princeton]
  • Financial Markets: This lecture series from professor Robert Shiller will teach you about the basics of the economic system and how each part fits together. [Yale]

+ Understanding the Economic Crisis — examples:

  • Understanding the Crisis in the Markets: A Panel of Harvard Experts: Get an explanation of the financial crisis from some of the best and the brightest by watching this panel discussion at Harvard. [Harvard]
  • Jeremy Siegel: Snapshots of the U.S. and Other Markets: Get a handle on what events precipitated the market fall with this lecture that addresses the sub-prime market, the stock market and foreign markets. [UPenn]

+ Proposed Solutions to the Economic Crisis — examples:

  • Preventing the Next Financial Crisis: Pay close attention to this lecture series that brings together numerous scholars, researchers and experts to discuss how future financial disasters can be averted. [Columbia]
  • Will the Stimulus Actually Work?: Billions of dollars were pumped into failing U.S. businesses, but will it make any difference at all in the long run? This lecture from professor Steven Kyle discusses the issue. [Cornell]

+ Future of the Economy — examples:

  • Once the Market Has Fallen 50% Your Future Returns are Even Better: Here you can learn why now may be a good time to invest. [UPenn]
  • One War We Shouldn’t Avoid: A New Approach to Reducing the Cost of Future Catastrophes: In 2005, three major hurricanes battered the southern United States, costing billions in repairs and with thousands of lives lost. This lecture addresses how we can be better prepared both for the weather and the financial ramifications of it. [UPenn]

+ International — examples:

+ Business Focused — examples:

  • Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making: David Rothkopf discusses his book by the same name in this lecture and how a few powerful people are pulling the strings in worldwide business and economics–usually to their advantage. [Columbia]
  • Business, Knowledge and Global Growth: Learn how the MBA degree has changed the way business is done in the United States and the world over and the impact it has had on the economy as a result. [Columbia]

Depending on the individual lecture, the links will take you either to the university websites or iTunes U. A few open up as direct links to media (e.g., QuickTime).

Posted in Business and Economics, Education, Online Education, Resource of the Week, Source File, Web 2.0, Webcasts and Podcasts | No Comments »

Resource of the Week — National Museum of the American Indian: Collections Search

Monday, September 28th, 2009

Resource of the Week — National Museum of the American Indian: Collections Search
By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor

The National Museum of the American Indian — the 16th Smithsonian Institution museum — which opened on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. in 2004, is the first U.S. national museum dedicated solely to Native Americans. And we think teachers, scholars, librarians and researchers everywhere will be interested in the excellent collection search tool available on the museum’s website.

Welcome to NMAI Collections Search, which includes a representative sample of NMAI’s object and historic photo collections. Each item is accompanied by basic, standardized information. To become familiar with the site, start with one of the Collection Highlight tours or search the website using this page or the tabs at the top.

Our goal is to include as many items as possible, but objects and photos will be added only when NMAI staff have reviewed the accuracy of accompanying information. Items identified as culturally sensitive or which are no longer part of NMAI’s collections will not appear on this website. Please contact NMAI about providing additional information or correcting any errors.

Records for many objects include their original catalog cards, which often date to the early 1900s. These cards may include tribal names and terminology considered unacceptable or offensive today but they have been included to illustrate the information that originally accompanied the objects.

Five different search options are available:

There are different functions available depending upon which search option you’re using, but under all of them are check boxes that allow you to restrict your search to any combination of the following: archaeological Items, ethnographic Items, modern and contemporary arts, photographic collections. Or you can just check “All of the above categories” if you want to cast the widest net possible. Search help is just a click away.

We enjoyed browsing the collection highlights area at the bottom right of the page, which included such categories of interest as beadwork and toys and games.

Bibliographers and catalogers will be interested in the thesaurus:

The following reference lists represent NMAI controlled terminologies in their respective hierarchies. Use these reference lists if you are in doubt about what terms are used or how they should be entered for searches. If you cannot quickly locate a term you may use your browser’s “Find” (”Ctrl” + “F”) option combination to see if a term is listed. When you click on a term in a Reference List, a search is automatically performed across all applicable collections categories.

Even if this is not a subject area of interest to you, the site as a whole is well worth browsing just because it’s so…elegantly done.

Posted in Archives and Special Collections, Databases, Directories, and Guides, History, Museums & Online Exhibits, Resource of the Week, Resources for Educators, Source File | No Comments »

Resource of the Week: International Sports Calendar

Monday, September 14th, 2009

Resource of the Week: International Sports Calendar
By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor

Gary found this jewel on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) website, and we thought it was deserving of a little love. Actually, down in the lower right corner, there’s a little info box that says, “The Sports calendar is provided by the General Association of International Sports Federations (GAISF).” But if it’s good enough for the International Olympic Committee, it’s good enough for us.

The dropdown menus make this calendar dead-simple to use. You can zero in on a particular time period, Olympic sport, and/or geographic location. It goes as far back as 2002 (if you’re interested in the recent past) and as far ahead as 2013. Nice bonus: The names of the individual sports are hyperlinked. Click on the link to get a brief description and history.

While you’re here, have a look at the IOC Library (”Reference centre for the publications of the Olympic Movement”). You’ll find an online catalog, bibliographies, and various reports and other publications.

Posted in Calendars and Special Events, Resource of the Week, Source File | No Comments »

Resources of the Week: Useful! 10 Tools I Love

Monday, August 17th, 2009

Resources of the Week: Useful! 10 Tools I Love
By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor

Everyone loves lists. Everyone loves useful stuff. You will surely find at least a couple things to love right here, right now.

+ Online conversion tools for Adobe PDF documents: Convert PDF files to text or html. If the file is online, you provide a URL. If the file is on your hard drive, you e-mail it. In the day job, I often run into situations where I have to send PDFs to someone who is on a mobile device that can’t accommodate these. Copy-and-paste is OK if you’re only dealing with a small amount of text, but can become a formatting nightmare if a large document is involved. So…here is an alternative.

+ CPI Inflation Calculator from the Bureau of Labor Statistics: There are plenty of these scattered around the internets, but this one is simple, elegant and “right from the horse’s mouth.” Goes back to 1913. (In 1913, $100 had the same buying power as $2,175.26 in 2009. Wow.)

+ Universal Currency Converter: This one, from XE, has been around forever. I still love it.

+ Sized Up: I’m not wild about brick-and-mortar shopping, and I have limited free time anyhow…so I do a lot of online shopping. It’s useful when the dimensions of a product are included in its online description, but it can be difficult to visualize its actual size, particularly if you are not spatially-oriented. Here, you enter the product dimensions and compare it to a list of “presets” — objects everyone is familiar with, such as a credit card, a soda can, a sheet of paper, a door… Since the site has been around awhile, it has accumulated a ginormous database of user-generated product size comparisons; for example, here is Macbook versus Asus.

+ Tweet Blocker:

Tweet Blocker is a free resource for Twitter users and application developers. Using highly advanced filtering, we catalog and rank the top spammers on Twitter, allowing users to quickly and easily find spammers.

Twitter does its own clean-ups periodically, but this is a dynamic effort “across the Twitterverse.” You can drag and drop a “Report Spammer” bookmarklet to your browser bar. It’s not perfect, but it’s definitely worthwhile if you are a heavy Twitter user. Read more about it on Mashable and ReadWriteWeb.

+ Home Energy Saver, from the Environmental Energy Technologies Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory:

The Home Energy Saver calculator quickly computes a home’s energy use on-line based on methods developed at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Users can estimate how much energy and money can be saved and how much emissions can be reduced by implementing energy-efficiency improvements. All end uses (heating, cooling, major appliances, lighting, and miscellaneous uses) are included. A detailed description of underlaying calculation methods and data is provided a comprehensive report (PDF 6.2 MB). Documentation of how the site handles electricity tariffs is provided here (PDF; 974 KB).

A home energy “librarian” link takes you to a a comprehensive collection of related links.

+ Website Grader:

Website Grader is a free seo tool that measures the marketing effectiveness of a website. It provides a score that incorporates things like website traffic, SEO, social popularity and other technical factors. It also provides some basic advice on how the website can be improved from a marketing perspective.

ResourceShelf, we were pleased to learn, received a grade of 99/100 — which means our site scored higher (in terms of marketing effectiveness) — than 99 percent of the 1,221,867 sites that had previously been “graded” here at the time we ran our evaluation. The site report includes such interesting data as readability level (we are “graduate school”), Google page rank, number of Google pages indexed, last Google crawl date, traffic rank, number of inbound links, blog ranking (via Technorati), and number of pages saved as del.icio.us bookmarks.

+ How to Embed Almost Anything in your Website: This is not a “tool,” per se, but it’s Useful! It’s a comprehensive collection of instructions, with appropriate links, on how to embed RSS feeds, videos, mp3s, slideshows, Google Calendar events, MS Office files…and much more into web pages, including blogs. You’ll want to bookmark this one.

+ allofcraigs.com: For most people, Craigslist is at its most useful on a local level. You want to sell a couch or are looking for a house to rent. But what if you’re a serious collector of…say, Matchbox cars. Location doesn’t really matter. You can easily buy something small like this from someone across the country, who can ship it to you without a great deal of difficulty. But who the heck wants to hop from one local Craigslist to another, running the same search repeatedly? Come here instead, and search all craigslists at the same time. A dropdown menu allows you to pinpoint a category to search, and you can also limit by dollar amount and how long ago ads were posted.

+ Open Car Price: What are people really paying? Shopping for a new car? Here you can see “1000s of actual transaction prices and real quotes that people have received from dealers,” — and geographic location is noted — which helps you come up with a reasonable target price. You can register, submit quotes you’ve gotten from dealers, and get buying advice from the “community.” I spotted some quotes for late model used cars as well, so it’s worth checking here even if you’re buying pre-owned.

Posted in Reference Tools, Resource of the Week, Software and Web-Based Applications, Source File | No Comments »

Resource of the Week: State Highway Safety Laws

Monday, August 10th, 2009

Resource of the Week: State Highway Safety Laws
By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor

You’ve probably been seeing a lot of news stories lately about the inherent danger of “texting while driving.” This seems to be the latest variation on the overall issue of cell phone use by drivers, which continues to be hotly debated. Many states have already passed laws against it. While some permit the use of hands-free devices, others have banned any cell phone use whatsoever by drivers. Some states forbid any text messaging whatsoever by drivers, while others specifically target only novice drivers.

While you may be familiar with what’s legal in your own state, it’s a different story when you’re planning a road trip that will take you through several states. Will you need a Bluetooth headset? What’s the story if your 18-year old kid and his friends are taking to the open road — with their cell phones? Well, you can always rummage around the Net in search of different state driving laws — or you could call AAA.

Or you could take the recommended ResourceShelf route and seek out a reliable one-stop shopping site — in this case, the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA), which maintains a collection of various highway safety laws in every state, updated monthly. Topics covered:

Click on any of these and you can see a neat matrix of laws on a state-by-state basis, with comments, notations and additional information, including links to related issue briefs. If it’s more useful for you to browse all the laws at once for a particular state, you can access the information that way.

There are other treasures on the GHSA website, notably this outstanding collection of links and resources, from which you can get to all state highway safety office websites, related federal websites, and a nicely annotated page of links on various highway safety topics.

For a look at traffic safety beyond the U.S., check out this page of Global Road Safety Websites.

Posted in Legal, Resource of the Week, Resources, Source File | No Comments »

Resources of the Week: Internet and Social Networking Stats

Monday, August 3rd, 2009

Resources of the Week: Internet and Social Networking Stats
By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor

How many people use the Internet — in China?  How many people are using Twitter?  What are the demographics of Facebook users?  What percentage of folks have high speed Internet access at home? Find the answers to all of these questions and many, many more at the following websites:

+ ClickZ Stats (”News and expert advice for the digital marketer”)

“Trends & statistics: the Web’s richest source”

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

Stats on social networks are important, but I’m going to need your help in creating a community archive, can you submit stats as you find them? I’m often asked, “What are the usage numbers for X social network” and I’ve received considerable traffic on my very old post (way back in Jan 08) of MySpace and Facebook stats, even months later. Decision makers, press, media, and users are hungry for numbers, so I’ll start to aggregate them as I see them.

+ comScore press releases

comScore is a global leader in measuring the digital world and the preferred source of digital marketing intelligence.

The company also publishes a blog that is statistics-rich.

+ Domain Counts & Internet Statistics (DomainTools)

Welcome to Domain Tools’s daily domain statistics page. Our stats show how many domains are currently registered and how many domains used to be registered but are now deleted.

+ E-Stats – Measuring the Electronic Economy (U.S. Census Bureau)

The U.S. Census Bureau’s Internet site devoted exclusively to ‘Measuring the Electronic Economy.’ This site features recent and upcoming releases, information on methodology, and background papers.

+ Facebook Press Room: Statistics
Facebook publishes its own set of frequently updated statistics about growth, “user engagement,” etc.

+ How big is the internet? (News.com Australia)

The internet has permeated everything from buying to banking to bonking. So how big is it?

+ Information and Communication Technology Statistics (International Telecommunications Union)

As a United Nations agency, the ITU has an obligation to identify, define, and produce statistics covering its sector – the telecommunication/ICT sector.

+ Nielsen Wire: Online and Mobile
Weblog that alerts you to the results of current Nielsen surveys and reports.

+ Pew Internet and American Life Project: Get the Latest Statistics

Browse a list of our latest reports, look through out infographic highlights, and check out our freqently updated trend data.

Posted in Fast Facts, Resource of the Week, Social Media, Source File, Statistics, Technology and Internet, Web 2.0 | No Comments »

« Older Entries