Archive for the ‘Search Tools’ Category
Monday, February 8th, 2010
Resource of the week: Guardian (UK) — Gateway to Government Data Around the World
We actually posted about this resource from The Guardian last month, but we figured it was worth highlighting here because it’s a work in progress that is bound to grow more and more useful over time.
From The Guardian:
Data, data, data. There’s loads of it out there and more coming your way as governments open their statistics vaults around the world.
First the US with data.gov, then Australia and New Zealand followed suit. Now it’s the UK’s turn with data.gov.uk.
And that’s in addition to the cities and US states that have made government data available too: London launched very recently – you can get the full set of links for government data sites around the world here.
Ever since the government appointed Sir Tim Berners-Lee as its open data Czar (working with Prof Nigel Shadbolt from Southampton University) it was obvious the issue was going to be big for the government, but what does it mean for you?
You now have tens of sites around the world providing you access, but how do you find them?
Well, this is now the place. To coincide with the launch of data.gov.uk, we have created the ultimate gateway to world government data.
At World Government Data you can:
- Search government data sites from the UK, USA, Australia, New Zealand and London (this comes under United Kingdom, if you want to browse) in one place and download the data (more sites to come)
- Help us find the best dataset by ranking them
- Collect similar datasets together from around the world
- Browse all datasets by each country
+ Direct to world government data
Source: guardian.co.uk
Hat tip: J. T. Johnson, Institute for Analytic Journalism
And here’s a related resource you might find useful, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:
Statistical Sites on the World Wide Web. Includes links to both U.S. and international statistics agencies and offices.
Posted in Government Documents and Political Information, Reference Tools, Search Tools, Source File, Statistics | No Comments »
Friday, February 5th, 2010
From the Announcement:
The National Library of Medicine (NLM), the world’s largest medical library and an arm of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), announces the release of the Haiti Earthquake People Locator (HEPL), a new system that can assist in the reunification of family members and loved ones during the ongoing relief efforts in Haiti. HEPL consists of an interactive Web site that provides information about people who have been found in Haiti or who are still missing after the devastating earthquake of January 12, 2010. The site allows members of the public to search for people who have been located by medical staff and other relief workers in Haiti as well as to voluntarily post information about people who are still missing. Medical and relief personnel in the region can submit photographs and descriptive information about located people via computer, cell phone, or a specialized “Found in Haiti” iPhone application that was developed by the NLM. Using data from this app, the site can even show the GPS coordinates of the spot where he was found.
The HEPL system also has a meta-search engine, allowing it to simultaneously search multiple sites set up by CNN, Google and the International Red Cross.
Access Haiti Earthquake People Locator
Source: NLM
Posted in Databases, Directories, and Guides, Meta & Federated Search, Resources, Search Tools | No Comments »
Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010
NRC Launches User-Friendly Web Tool for Searching Agency Documents
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has added a search interface to its online Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS) to improve the public’s ability to find and obtain NRC documents.
“This is another example of the efforts the agency has underway to be as open and transparent as possible,” said NRC Chairman Gregory B. Jaczko.
The Web-based “ADAMS PUBLIC” interface replaces access to the Publicly Available Records System (PARS) that required downloading additional software. The original Web-based PARS interface introduced in 2003 remains available.
ADAMS PUBLIC runs as an application in a user’s browser, using multiple search fields to identify and retrieve relevant information. The new interface also provides access to the Public Legacy Library, which holds 2 million bibliographic citations to microfiched documents dating from the late 1940s to 1999. The new interface includes a “user-friendly” search screen and content search capability for more exact searches, and it can generate reports from search results. The ADAMS PUBLIC Web page (http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams/adams-public.html) provides easily understandable instructions for searching, viewing and downloading documents.
Source: Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Posted in Access to Information, Government Documents and Political Information, Search Tools, Source File | No Comments »
Monday, February 1st, 2010
The Associated Press Strikes Deal with Yahoo (via Editor and Publisher, AP)
Michael Liedtke writes:
The Associated Press has signed a licensing deal with Yahoo Inc. that gives the news cooperative a steady stream of revenue at a time less money is flowing in from newspapers and broadcasters.
The announcement by both companies Monday did not disclose the financial terms of the agreement.
The AP says it is still negotiating to renew its online licensing agreements with two other companies with far deeper pockets, Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. Google stopped posting fresh AP content on its Web site in late December.
Search Engine Land is reporting in, “AP & Google Reach A Deal – Sort Of,” that it’s unclear if the deal reached between AP and Google is a long-term deal. The post continues with a statement by Google along with analysis by Danny Sullivan.
Posted in Information Industry, News Search | No Comments »
Thursday, January 28th, 2010
Make Sure to Note the Update at the Bottom of this Post
From the Article:
Nearly half of the users of Google News skim the headlines at the news aggregator site without clicking through to newspaper websites, according to a survey released on Tuesday.
The findings by Outsell Inc. appear likely to provide further ammunition to publishers such as News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch who have criticized Google and other aggregators for linking to stories without sharing ad revenue.
Source: AFP
Before You Move on to the Next Post. Take a Look at the Update Below
UPDATE: Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land writes, “44% Of Google News Readers Only Scan Headlines? Maybe Not!”
Danny then goes through the report and shares not only his views but a large amount of very interesting statistics. For example, TV is the number one “first thing in the morning news resource, followed by print newspapers, and search engines. We learn that search engines win for “breaking news” but lose for local news. Finally, in the section, “Do They Really Just Read Headlines?” he breaks down the numbers and explains both the 44% number that was used came from a news release and respondents could only select one of four possible responses.
Again, it’s excellent work and writing from Danny (what else is new) and is completely worthy of your time.
Posted in News Search, Search Tools | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 26th, 2010
Much cleaner and easier to use. You’ll notice some of the differences from the first time you visit the site. For example, the right column makes it easier to refine your search using one of several criteria and also set up an RSS feed of the search.
Access USAJOBS.gov
From Federal News Radio:
Note: An audio version of this report is available at the top of the article.
OPM Deputy Director Christine Griffin, in one of her first public appearances since she was confirmed for her new job, explains why any fix for the long dysfunctional Federal hiring process has to include revamping the website.
“This is the gateway, the front gate to federal employment,” she told reporters during a briefing at OPM headquarters in Washington. “We receive 120 million hits per year, on this website alone.”
Griffin says that since summer of last year, OPM has been working with its contractor, Monster Government Solutions, to revamp USAjobs.gov.
“This was a top-to-bottom refresh, a total make over. It focused on the applicants, making it simple and easy to use.”
If you go to the new USAJobs.gov, what you will see bears a remarkable resemblance to the biggest search engine on the planet — Google. That’s by design, says Kim Bauhs, who helped lead the re-design of USAjobs.gov.
[Snip]
Bauhs says the new personalization features of USAjobs.gov will allow applicants to store documents related to their application within their personal portfolios on the site. And that includes resumes.
“You can either build a resume in USAjobs.gov, if you’re not certain what kind of format the federal government likes to see, or you can upload a resume.”
She goes on to say that using the resume-builder in the site allows an applicant’s resume to be scanned electronically by employers within the government seeking to fill vacancies in their departments.
Bauhs says the new site will also allow applicants to track the status of their applications, something previously not possible. She says this feature puts the burden on federal agencies to frequently update the status of those applications in order for this feature to work.
Hat Tip: P.W.
Posted in Databases, Directories, and Guides, Government Documents and Political Information, Job Search | No Comments »
Monday, January 25th, 2010
Matt MacGee writes:
Where other real-time search engines focus on hot tweets, popular links, and the like, Factery Labs skips all that and surfaces the facts behind the day’s trending news.
[Snip]
Factery Labs tracks the trending topics from the Twitter and Google Trends APIs to determine what’s hot right now. It identifies relevant tweets and URLs from Twitter, and also taps into Yahoo BOSS to identify additional URLs that may be relevant to the trending topics. Once it has this collection of URLs, it scans them for facts and applies its FactRank technology (a nod to Google’s PageRank) to build what users see on the site’s “Trends” tab.
“We drill past the links and get into the pages to see if there’s something valuable to the user’s request,” Pedersen said last week. “It’s not news; it’s news according to what the web says is news. We show what’s happening as defined by the web, not by an editor.”
Matt concludes:
What I like about Factery’s fact engine is that it does the grunt work for me. It not only shows me what’s hot in the news right now, but it also tells me why. Popular tweets and links are part of the real-time equation, but some of that is noise; I think there’s real value in Factery’s focus on the facts.
‘
Access the Complete Article
Source: Search Engine Land
Posted in News Search, Search Tools | No Comments »
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 »
Wednesday, January 13th, 2010
Resources for Covering Haiti Earthquake Devastation
CNN reported Wednesday morning that the Haiti earthquake has killed hundreds of thousands of people, destroying most of Port-au-Prince, the capital city.
I know that you’re likely struggling to find voices from Haiti who can supply you with firsthand accounts of what is going on. Here are some of the sites I have found to be helpful and up-to-date.
Source: Al’s Morning Meeting (Poynter Online)
See also: Find Highly Rated Relief Agencies Seeking Help for Haiti Earthquake Recovery
Posted in Bibliographies, Webliographies, Fast Facts, Media, News Search, Reference Tools, Resources for Educators, Search News, Social Media, Source File, Web 2.0 | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 12th, 2010
Today, Bing announced several new features added to their health search resource. This blog post has the details, screen caps, etc.
Here’s one example for Hepatitis C.
First, the summary (data from different sources; links to info about related conditions and medications; links to medical centers “that are active in the field.” Clicking one of the blue links takes you to more specialty health info while selecting an orange link formulates a query for the Bing database. While having a query formulated for you or the user your working with can be useful, when we ran a few searches the results came back with material that was nowhere close to being as credible and/or current as other health info available via Bing.
Second, new instant answers for hospital information. Example. The data comes from the Medicare Hospital Info Database.
Third, medicines also have instant answers.
Note the brief summary directly below the drug’s name along with links to info about side effect, drug interactions, etc.
Finally, the blog post points out that Bing Health is now covering more areas with data from more providers. An example given in the blog post is “milk allergy in infants. However, to access the data you have to run the search, “baby milk allergies.” Looks like a bit of extra work is needed.
Source: Bing Search Blog
Posted in Search Tools, Web Search | No Comments »
Thursday, January 7th, 2010
US Department of Labor announces free test drive of nearly 500 job search and career sites
The U.S. Department of Labor today announced the “Explore and Recommend” phase of its “Tools for America’s Job Seekers Challenge.” A first of its kind effort, the challenge brings together a plethora of online resources for job seekers. It also allows them, and workforce professionals, to vote for their favorite job search and career sites.
From Jan. 4 to15, 2010, members of the public are invited to explore the resources at the participating sites, review them and provide feedback. All job search and career sites participating in the challenge have agreed to allow job seekers free access during this phase when they enter their sites through the http://www.dol.gov/challenge/ portal. Job seekers can then apply for jobs, learn more about careers and vote for their favorites from among nearly 500 job search and career Web sites.
Source: U.S. Department of Labor
Posted in Access to Information, Business and Economics, Job Search, Portals, Search News, Source File, Technology and Internet | No Comments »
Friday, January 1st, 2010
The year gets underway with this special day that is an initiative of COMMUNIA, the European thematic network on the digital public domain.
Every year on New Year’s Day, in fact, due to the expiration of copyright protection terms on works produced by authors who died several decades earlier, thousands of works enter the public domain – that is, their content is no longer owned or controlled by anyone, but it rather becomes a common treasure, available for anyone to freely use for any purpose.
Such works can also become a building block for new creations: people can transform a poem into song lyrics, or make a movie based on a public domain novel (check your local movie theaters to see how often that happens!). Literary works can be published on personal website and/or printed for friends or school distribution. Of course, you can also decide, for instance, to professionally print a beautiful hardcover leather-bound edition of a public domain book and sell it for a profit, while the book content will remain available for anyone to use freely. And the same goes for images, art works and other kinds of creative works entering the public domain under the same term expiration rule.
The website is full of resources that can be used today or any other day. Here are a few of them.
First, a link to Public Domain Works,
Public Domain Works is an open registry of artistic works that are in the public domain. You can find out more about the project here. There are currently 125318 persons, 12840 items and 299141 works in the database.
Second, Sprixi, a searchable database for public domain images.
Next, Public Domain Sherpa
Want to know if a specific work is in the public domain? (Or, if it’s not, when it will be?) Give the copyright term calculator a spin. You’ll need to provide some information about the work — for example, whether it’s published or unpublished. But the calculator keeps track of which US copyright act applies to the work in question, so you don’t have to.
Next, a summary of U.S. copyright law from the Copyright Information Center at Cornell University.
Finally, a list of authors moving into the public domain today including Sigmund Freud and William Butler Yeats. Make sure to read the disclaimer.
Hat Tip: TeleRead.org
Posted in Intellectual Property, Legal, Search Tools | No Comments »
Friday, December 25th, 2009
100 Job Search Tips from FORTUNE 500 Recruiters Along with Stories from the Recruiting Trenches (PDF; 726 KB)
For job seekers, gone are the days of creating a great resume and actively following job boards as a way to be sure you’ll find–and ultimately land–a job that meets your needs.
The world is just as different for recruiters.
This book contains 100 real-time tips and stories from FORTUNE 500 recruiters that will inspire and motivate you, provide insights, and identify traps. The recruiters come from diverse backgrounds and geographies, and they have experience recruiting at all levels. Don’t miss the last two pages. They are filled with links to the top career and job search resources and social media sites.
Talent search doesn’t have to be a mystery. In fact, it shouldn’t be. Putting people to work faster is good for you, good for families, good for the global economy, and good for business.
If you are looking for your next job, if you take note of just one piece of advice, this is it: Don’t give up. Don’t take it personally. Be persistent and be a master of the new rules of search.
Source: EMC Corporation
Posted in Business and Economics, E-books, Fast Facts, Job Search, Source File | No Comments »
Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009
We’ve mentioned this interesting image search engine several times on ResourceShelf in the past five weeks. This beta search tool from Hitachi is definitely worth a look.
Our original ResourceShelf post offers a look at GazoPa’s primary features.
[GazoPa] allows the user to upload an image, enter an image URL, draw a picture (cool!), or keyword search a database, and then find SIMILAR images based on the image that was uploaded or keyword searched. You can also combine an image (what they call a “key image”) with keyword(s). A Firefox addon, a bookmarklet, an iPhone app and [a Facebook tool], are available.
Today, the GazoPa Blog offers a few search tips for utilizing their database.
They’re both things you, as the searcher, can do (for example, a face search) as well as things the company can offer a better search (they are developing new search query limits).
Access GazoPa Search ||| Access GazoPa’s iPhone App ||| GazoPa Drawing Tool for Facebook! (cool)
Posted in Info Management and Retrieval, Multimedia Search, Search News, Search Tools | No Comments »
Monday, December 21st, 2009
We’ve written about GazoPa several times. It’s a new image search engine for Hitachi. This post has an overview of the service. One feature lets you draw a picture and then have their search technology go out a find “related” images. Again, more here.
Over the weekend, the GazoPa team posted an item on their blog re: the number of images on the web. By NO MEANS are the numbers complete. Hardly. But the post does a good job of aggregating numbers for a few sources.
From the Post:
How many images are there on the web? No one knows exact figure. I have some data from photo sharing service as follows. Not all images on photo sharing services can be searchable, because some images are not open to public. Considering other photo sharing service such as Picasa and TwitPic and other sites that have images related news, shopping and travel etc, it may be said that four or five billion images are newly added to the web at least.
Facebook 15 billion, 220 million new photo per week May, 2009
Flickr 4 billion, 100 million new photo per month Oct, 2009
Photobucket 7.5 billion June, 2009
Source: GazoPa Blog
Posted in Multimedia Search, Search Tools, Technology and Internet | No Comments »
Wednesday, December 9th, 2009
Something to look at…
1) You can now view a non-stop stream of images as they’re uploaded to the Flickr database. Yes, there is now always something to look at. Be careful, we couldn’t find any adult filter. (-: The site is called Flickr Spy.
2) One of our favorite tools for searching for and viewing images and video online is CoolIris and their “3D Wall.” They also have anIPhone version. This page has all the info you’ll need. The only issue for some is that it requires a small download.
Now, CoolIris now has an “express” version (entirely web-based) that lets users create “3D Walls” of images to post to their web site, blog, iGoogle page, or various social network sites.
Btw, all CoolIris services are free and if you’re able to download a small Firefox add-on, have a look at Cool Previews. It takes a bit of getting used to but it can be a real time saver. It’s also a great app to show during demos.
Posted in Search Tools, Software and Web-Based Applications | No Comments »
Thursday, December 3rd, 2009
Joe Esposito writes:
A few years ago I began to ponder the condition and fate of the university press world. This culminated in an article I wrote for the Journal of Electronic Publishing called “The Wisdom of Oz: The Role of the University Press in Scholarly Communications.” After I wrote that essay, I began to look around for some means of improving the fortunes of the press world and hit on the idea of creating a comprehensive online catalog for all university press titles, a catalog that could serve as a marketing tool, e-commerce site, and source of bibliographical data for other projects whose aims were not so plainly economic.
[Snip]
That study was submitted to MITE and Mellon several months ago. As it delved into the specific offerings of vendors and included some confidential information, it was not suitable for publication. Subsequently, I edited the document into a longish essay, which includes a summary of a survey of about 30 university presses. That abridged document is now available online at Scribd and at MITE’s own Web site .
The project is now moving forward. A prototype is being built (the URL will be published shortly), and several presses have already sent in data feeds for their titles. (Any not-for-profit academic publisher that wishes to participate in the project should contact me offline, and not just presses affiliated with universities. For-profit scholarly publishers may be invited to participate at a later time.)
Access the Complete Post
Source: The Scholarly Kitchen
Posted in Databases, Directories, and Guides, Information Industry, Search Tools | No Comments »
Saturday, November 28th, 2009
Our first post about GazoPa (Beta) was an overview that we placed on ResourceShelf a few weeks ago.
The company (their part of Hitachi) claims that their image database contains more than 60 million images and GazoPa has their own crawler.
What makes GazoPa different is that the primary way of searching for similar images is by uploading an image or drawing a picture. Then, that picture/drawing is used to find similar images. Again, our overview post has much more.
A GazoPa blog post from Thursday listed three other ways to begin your GazoPa search:
1) Plugin
You can search for images by using images on other websites. Right click on images and click ‘Search image on GazoPa’. Download the plugin here.
2) See Flickr and News Images
You can see latest flickr images that have creative commons or Flickr commons. Click ‘Flickr’ on the header of page. Set search option as ‘today’. Images that are uploaded to flickr within 24hours are displayed. You can see latest news images as well when you click ‘News’ and set a time filter. But a time filter may not work well and very few images might be shown. Try it later.
3) See Nice search results
Click ‘more’ on the top page of pickup photos. Lots of nice search results are listed. Click any of links and you can see nice search results
Posted in Search Tools, Technology and Internet, Web Search | No Comments »
Thursday, November 26th, 2009
From the Announcement:
Budding historians are set to benefit from a new online project which will revolutionise the way we search for historical sources on the internet, thanks to a £198,977 cash boost from JISC.
The ‘Connected Histories’ project, which is a partnership between the Universities of Sheffield and Hertfordshire, the Institute of Historical Research, and King’s College London, will create an innovative search engine for a wide range of electronic resources relating to early modern and nineteenth century British history.
This period of British history has one of the largest collections of digital sources available on the web, including not only digitised books, but also newspapers, manuscripts, genealogical records, and even maps and images. These sources, created by both academic and commercial organisations, are accessed by hundreds of thousands of individuals every day, across the world. Until now, there has been no single starting place to search through these sources.
Alastair Dunning, programme manager for online content at JISC, said: “JISC has been involved in the digitisation of many crucial primary resources for the study of history, helping create a wealth of digitised materials, such as newspapers, pamphlets and images. The next stage of work is to knit such resources together – identifying the people, places and events that surface in multiple historical resources and making the links between them.”
[Snip]
The website will be fully launched in 2011.
See Also: Learn More About the Project
Source: JISC
Posted in History, Resources, Search News, Search Tools | No Comments »
Sunday, November 22nd, 2009
This Search Engine Land Post by Greg Sterling alerts us to an enhanced “new shortcut” now containing real-time info. Shortcuts are found at the top of Yahoo Search results pages and contain everything from investor/business information to maps. You can find a complete list of shortcuts here. Again, shortcuts appear when a searcher uses the basic web search box.
So, what’s new?
Now when certain words, places, and names in the news are searched you’ll not only find direct links to news stories from the Yahoo News database but also:
+ News Photos (from a variety of sources)
+ News Video (from a variety of sources)
+ Recent Tweets
Here are Two Examples:
+ Barack Obama
+ U.S. Senate
Sterling reports that Yahoo is running their own algorithm to assist in filtering out Twitter “noise.”
That said, Yahoo really should show more Twitter results when possible. As of today, they only show two and then provide a link to run a search on the Twitter database.
Posted in Information Industry, News Search, Search Tools, Web Search | No Comments »
