From an Article:

The number of adults who turn to the Internet for health information has nearly doubled in the past two years, from 31% to 60%, according to a study. That puts the Internet in a tie for third place (with books and print materials) as the source adults most often turn to for health information.

At the top, 86% of those surveyed say they most often consult a health care professional, and 68% say they consult their family or friends first.

Source: USA Today

See Also: Read the Complete Report (via Pew Internet and American Life Project)

The Web’s Most Dangerous Search Terms (PDF; 2.2 MB)

Unless you work for or own an online business, chances are you’ve never heard the terms “search engine optimization” (SEO) and “search engine marketing” (SEM). Yet these two phrases—SEO (the effort by site owners to get their website ranked higher by search engines) and SEM (the use of paid advertising to gain prominent placement on search engines) are increasingly important vocabulary for businesses that seek to prosper on the web. Unfortunately, legitimate businesses are not the only ones gaining fluency with this new language.

The scammers—from solo operators to organized criminals—have quickly realized that the same search engines that enable legitimate businesses to reach more consumers can also be used by criminals to separate more victims from more of their money.

This paper examines a new phenomenon—the use of search engines as a conduit for profit-driven hackers—by analyzing the risk of searching for more than 2,000 of the most popular words and phrases (“keywords”) used in search engines in 2008. From “Jonas Brothers tickets” to “game cheats” to “Viva la Vida lyrics,” these keywords represent a broad slice of what search expert John Battelle calls our “database of intentions.”

Along with our “intentions,” this database also reveals how much risk we expose ourselves to each and every time we put our favorite search engines to use. How much risk? For some keywords like “popular screensavers” and “descargar google” and certain of their resulting pages, the risk can be pervasive— 75% or more results (three out of four) can lead to increased web security risk. This should not be surprising to observers of security trends. Since hacking for fame has given way to hacking for profit, malicious players have grown increasingly sophisticated in their ability to find large pools of potential victims. By measuring the relative risk of popular search terms, this study confirms that scammers continue to target the largest pools of victims.

But this study also found some interesting evidence to the contrary. Previous McAfee® studies of web safety have shown about 4% of sites to be risky. This is a broad measure of the overall risk we face when we use the web. By contrast, the average risk level of all results pages we studied was just 1.7%. This study is broad and directional. New tools and research methods need to be deployed to allow us to better understand the mechanics of how search is being misused. We hope this study helps pave the way for other studies that take on these important questions.

Source: McAfee

Hat tip: DG

Direct to Full Table of Contents

Articles Include:

+ e-Framework Implements New Workplan
Ian Dolphin and Phil Nicholls describe recent and forthcoming developments from the e-Framework Partnership for Education and Research.

+ A Support Framework for Remote Workers
Marieke Guy follows up on her two previous articles for Ariadne with an overview of an evolving structure to provide consistent support to UKOLN colleagues who work remotely.

+ To VRE or Not to VRE?: Do South African Malaria Researchers Need a Virtual Research Environment?
Heila Pienaar and Martie van Deventer identify the requirements of a Virtual Research Environment (VRE) for malaria researchers in South Africa.

+ Spinning a Semantic Web for Metadata: Developments in the IEMSR
Emma Tonkin and Alexey Strelnikov reflect on the experience of developing components for the Information Environment Metadata Schema Registry.

+ Three Perspectives on the Evolving Infrastructure of Institutional Research Repositories in Europe
Marjan Vernooy-Gerritsen, Gera Pronk and Maurits van der Graaf report on the most significant results from two surveys conducted to provide an overview of repositories with research output in the European Union.

+ Making Digital Cultures: Access, Interactivity, and Authenticity
Lina Coelho finds this study of the cultural terrain of modern institutions, where digital and analogue objects co-exist, both challenging and thought-provoking.

+ Book Review: Managing Electronic Government Information in Libraries: Issues and Practices
Sylvie Lafortune reviews a book which addresses the following question: From e-government to t-government. How will libraries keep up?

+ Reader Development in Practice: bringing literature to readers
Abigail Luthmann examines a varied collection of approaches to the topic of reader development.

+ Sketching Tomorrow
Emma Tonkin takes a look at an ambitious work on the relationship of modern society to information and communication technologies and observes more sins of omission than commission.

+ More Content Available Including Conference Reports

Source: Ariadne / UKOLN

On the Street and On Facebook: The Homeless Stay Wired

Like most San Franciscans, Charles Pitts is wired. Mr. Pitts, who is 37 years old, has accounts on Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. He runs an Internet forum on Yahoo, reads news online and keeps in touch with friends via email. The tough part is managing this digital lifestyle from his residence under a highway bridge.

“You don’t need a TV. You don’t need a radio. You don’t even need a newspaper,” says Mr. Pitts, an aspiring poet in a purple cap and yellow fleece jacket, who says he has been homeless for two years. “But you need the Internet.”

Mr. Pitts’s experience shows how deeply computers and the Internet have permeated society. A few years ago, some people were worrying that a “digital divide” would separate technology haves and have-nots. The poorest lack the means to buy computers and Web access. Still, in America today, even people without street addresses feel compelled to have Internet addresses.

Source: Wall Street Journal

by Jamali, Hamid R. and Nicholas, David

From the Abstract:

The study examines two aspects of information seeking behaviour of physicists and astronomers including methods applied for keeping up-to-date and methods used for finding articles. The relationship between academic status and research field of users with their information seeking behaviour was investigated. Methodology/approach – Data were gathered using a questionnaire survey of PhD students and staff of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at University College London; 114 people (47.1 per cent response rate) participated in the survey. Findings – The study reveals differences among subfields of physics and astronomy in terms of information-seeking behaviour, highlights the need for and the value of looking at narrower subject communities within disciplines for a deeper understanding of the information behaviour of scientists. Originality/value – The study is the first study to deeply investigate intradisciplinary dissimilarities of information-seeking behaviour of scientists in a discipline. It is also an up-to-date account of information seeking behaviour of physicists and astronomers.

Direct to Article (PDF)

Source: Aslib Proceedings, 2008

From the Article:

Professionals in healthcare and public sector organisations are unable to quickly, easily and accurately locate the data they need because of IT directors’ fears over data security when providing staff access to necessary information, a survey reveals.

Information risk management software provider Recommind’s research shows that 94% of healthcare IT directors and a further 73% of public sector institutions cite data security fears as key concern when providing employees with the information required for their day to day jobs.

These concerns have led organisations to rely on inadequate legacy search systems which significantly fail to meet the sophisticated data requirements of the modern worker. This significantly hinders productivity and efficiency and can have serious implications for the service they provide to citizens, according to Recommind. Search solutions currently used by health and public sector organisations are outdated and ineffective.

Source: Information World Review

From the Abstract:

Communicating the subtleties of a craft technique, like putting a zipper into a garment or throwing a clay pot, can be challenging even when working side by side. Yet How- To content—including text, images, animations, and videos—is available online for a wide variety of crafts. We interviewed people engaged in various crafts to investigate how online resources contributed to their craft practice. We found that participants sought creative inspiration as well as technical clarification online. In this domain, keyword search can be difficult, so supplemental strategies are used. Participants sought information iteratively, because they often needed to enact their knowledge in order to evaluate it. Our description of people learning how allows us to elaborate on existing understandings of information-seeking behavior by considering how search originates and is evaluated in knowledge domains involving physical objects and physical processes.

Direct to Full Text Article (10 pages; PDF)

Source: Yahoo Research

Direct to Table of Contents (via Pubmed Central)

Articles include:

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

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

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

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

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

+ Web usability testing with a Hispanic medically underserved population

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

+ Medical librarians’ uses and perceptions of social tagging

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

and Much More.

Erica Naone writes in Technology Review:

Web browsers remember the sites that they have visited in the past, but few people seem to use this information. Jing Jin, a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University, has developed a new browser-history tool, which she and her colleagues developed after studying how people use their browser history. They demonstrated the prototype in a presentation this week at the Computer-Human Interaction (CHI 2009) Conference, in Boston.

The researchers tested users’ ability to recall Web pages and found that URLs and textual descriptions (by which most browsers organize their history) weren’t as easy to remember as colors or images collected from the Web pages themselves. So the researchers’ tool–currently a plug-in for the Firefox browser–lets users browse images of websites that they have visited in the past, or type in search queries that find previously visited pages.

The researchers also used the new history tool to improve Web search, by adding thumbnails from browser history at the top of Google search results. The thumbnails were selected according to the search terms that the user entered into the search engine.

Source: Technology Review (MIT)

This fee-based book is available from ALA’s Book Shop. A very interesting topic!

The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) announces the publication of a new title, “Library Rx: Measuring and Treating Library Anxiety” by Martina Malvasi, Catherine Rudowsky and Jesus M. Valencia.

“Library Rx” presents research findings on library anxiety in college and university students. There is strong evidence that library anxiety, the inadequate feeling students have when lost in overwhelming buildings that present mountains of information in all formats and professionals who may seem busy and unapproachable, has a negative impact on undergraduate student performance. The authors review existing research on student reactions to the library environment, describe the finding of a research project on library anxiety and present ideas for its treatment.

Malvasi, Rudowsky and Valencia compare and test various treatments for library anxiety, including traditional instruction, online tutorials and one-on-one teaching moments, as well as the effects of no library intervention or treatment at all. Using statistical analysis, the effectiveness of the various treatment methods is presented. In addition, anecdotal evidence of library initiatives and events used to reduce library anxiety is provided. “Library Rx” prescribes relevant solutions for library anxiety in all types of academic libraries.

Look for sales information at the bottom of the ALA/ACRL post here.

From the Post:

If you ever needed proof that Gen Yers and Boomers approach technology differently in the workplace, LexisNexis released its Technology Gap Survey on April 15th to prove the point - the press release with summary is at http://digbig.com/4yqas, and the full study is available at http://digbig.com/4yqat.

Source: VIP LiveWire

See Also: New Study Examines Technology Generation Gap in the Legal Workplace

From the Article:

In a bid to tackle ethical pitfalls in technology before they become a problem, a new research project will identify the Information and Communications technologies (ICTs) that are likely to emerge in the next 10 to 15 years.

The two-year study called Ethical Issues of Emerging ICT Applications (ETICA), coordinated by De Montfort University Leicester (DMU) aims to help researchers identify new technologies that could become as famous as Facebook and Twitter and enable them to devise a strategy for dealing with the unforeseen drawbacks that these emerging technologies bring along.

Source: IWR

From the Web Site:

At SDSU [San Diego State University], the Information Literacy and Instructional Services librarians are working in collaboration with several teaching and learning units on campus to strengthen student learning and effective teaching practices. This unique partnership allows us to leverage our resources and expertise for pedagogical design, explore new collaborative and social technologies, and move toward common goals for student learning and faculty development.

Source: EDUCAUSE

The Municipal Reference Radar
A current awareness blog for city staff by the Virginia Beach Public Library. Provides pointers to new reports and news and features of interest to city workers. Nicely integrated with Google News items about Virginia Beach, as well as relevant new books and a blogroll of other potentially useful sources.

From the Abstract:

The Internet has led to an explosion of users throughout the world. Low-cost computing options are now emerging for developing countries that are changing the world’s educational landscape. Given these conditions, there is a critical need to understand the obstacles and opportunities in designing and deploying technologies for children worldwide. This paper discusses seven years of strategies and methods learned in co-designing and deploying the International Children’s Digital Library (www.childrenslibrary.org) with children in multiple countries. Our experience with iterative international co-design, and developing world deployment shows that acquiring site-specific knowledge is critical to adapting methods needed to be successful. In the case of co-design, a combination of face-to-face and email collaboration is important to building on-going partnership relationships. With deployment activities, it is important to be prepared for the unexpected – managing complex technologies in rural settings is very difficult. Therefore, the more site-specific knowledge that can be acquired the more likely there will be a successful outcome.

Direct to Full Text Report (23 pages; PDF)

Source: Human-Computer Interaction Lab, University of Maryland