Archive for the ‘Information Science’ Category

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New Keys for the Diffusion of Information in Social Networks

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

A brief but very interesting read!

From the Summary:

Information in social networks moves at an unexpectedly slow pace, with the exception of some mass events. This is one of the main conclusions of a study carried out by researchers at Carlos III University of Madrid (UC3M) and IBM, who analyze how the behaviour of internauts influences the spread of information through Internet.

The spread of information in social networks, something of crucial importance in awareness and marketing campaigns or the spreading of rumours and viruses, for example, is largely determined by the great heterogeneity of internauts in their response time, according to the researchers. Traditional models estimated that internauts respond in approximately one day and that, as such, it took one day for information to be transmitted. However, this study, based on an actual experiment by IBM to observe and quantify the spread of business information in social networks, points out that it occurs at two speeds due to user activity. “Those who respond very quickly to e-mails, technology addicts who are always connected, are the ones responsible for spreading certain rumours or campaigns quickly via Internet,” notes Esteban Moro, professor of Mathematics at the UC3M.

Source: Carlos III University of Madrid

Posted in Information Science, Social Media | No Comments »

Cataloging Distribution Service of the Library of Congress Releases Cataloger’s Desktop 3.0

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

Are you are a cataloger? (This might be of interest.) Do you know a cataloger? (Please share this post.)

From the Announcement:

Barbara Tillett, chief of the Library’s Policy and Standards Division, said “To help users make the most of the new product enhancements, the Library of Congress staff has been busy creating an array of helpful documentation.” A battery of learning aids and practical tips will be accessible shortly online, to help subscribers optimize their use of Cataloger’s Desktop 3.0. The aids include a series of webinars in both English and Spanish, free online training files, PowerPoint presentations and at-a-glance, how-to handouts.

Desktop 3.0 incorporates cutting-edge searching and navigation techniques, including fuzzy matching; finding/excluding similar resources; dynamic drill-downs; contextual analysis; search relevancy; remembering search histories; query federation; faceted search drill-downs; and a search engine that adapts to a user’s search behavior.

See Also: Learn More About Catalogers Desktop 3.0
You can also register for a 30 day free trial.

Source: Cataloging Distribution Service of the Library of Congress

Posted in Cataloging and Metadata | No Comments »

Internet Archive Founder Brewster Kahle Profiled in Forbes

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

Brewster Kahle has many titles. These days he’s best known as founder of the Internet Archive (home of The Wayback Machine) and founding member of the Open Content Alliance.

From the Article:

“We have to have universal access to everything, just like a library,” he says. “Do we want that under a single corporation’s control? It is openness, not corporate control, that propels capitalism.”

[Snip]

Digital libraries will shape education, creativity and our shared intellectual heritage, Kahle declares. As founder and director of the Internet Archive, Kahle has posted online digital copies of 1.7 million books, 100,000 hours of television, 200,000 video clips, 70,000 concerts and 415,000 audio recordings. All that material can be downloaded for free from the Archive’s Web site.

[Snip]

Bookserver* uses a range of open source and proprietary electronic book standards, search algorithms, editing tools and libraries. The architecture, as Kahle calls it, potentially separates manufacturers of devices from control over much of the content inside them. It also preserves the idea of the lending library–if you “check out” a volume, others cannot access it in the time allowed to you. Publishers sell their books in the system using credit cards.

The article continues with more about Google Book Search and Kahle’s background.

We were surprised not to see The Wayback Machine mentioned in the stats about the Internet Archive listed above. At the moment (and we know of nothing coming), “Wayback” is probably the best chance a researcher has to access a page no longer on the Internet. Material in “Wayback” dates back to 1996 and as of today, contains more than 150 BILLION archived pages. The Internet Archive also offers a fee-based service that helps organizations organize and archive their web content. It’s called, Archive-It.

* See Also: We Have an In-Depth Post About Bookserver on ResourceShelf
It Includes an comprehensive press review the day after the Bookserver announcement.

Source: Forbes

Posted in Archives and Special Collections, Digital Repositories, Digitization Projects, E-books, Information Industry | No Comments »

Bibliotheca Alexandrina: A Digital Revival

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009

The Bibliotheca Alexandrina is one busy place. If you want to learn more read on through our highlights but make sure to read the complete article. Our highlights is just a sample of what’s going on.

From the Article:

The International School of Information Science (ISIS) a research institute affiliated with the BA [Bibliotheca Alexandrina], aims at furthering the BA’s goals of being a leading institution in knowledge dissemination and, specifically, promoting research and development related to the digital libraries. Toward that goal, ISIS has embarked on an array of ambitious projects, in partnership with world-class institutions. These include hosting a mirror site for the Internet Archive, participating in the Million Book Project, organizing the digital archive of the Gamal Abdel Nasser collection, digitizing 113 years of Al-Hilal magazine, presenting the first-ever complete digital version of Description de l’Egypte, conducting advanced research such as the Arabic component of the UN-sponsored Universal Networking Language computerized multi-language translation program, and offering the most advanced 3D virtual imaging techniques in a virtual immersive environment for science and technology applications. Thus, despite being barely seven years in existence, the BA already has a substantial record of achievements.

Among the other projects you’ll read about are:

+ The Digital Assets Repository (DAR)

+ Memory of Modern Egypt Digital Repository

+ Archive documenting the history of the Suez Canal

+ SuperCourse

To empower science educators worldwide, the BA is working with a team of specialists, in partnership with the University of Pittsburgh, to launch the first science SuperCourse, comprising thousands of PowerPoint lectures made available for free to teachers and lecturers, who can use the lectures as they see fit in their teaching of science. The SuperCourse has been effectively implemented in the area of Public Health and Epidemiology, with a network of 65,000 scientists in 174 countries, providing more than 3,500 lectures in 31 languages. The BA maintains a mirror site of SuperCourse, which receives an average of one million hits per month, and is working on setting up a similar course in all fields of science.

Much More in the Complete Article

Source: EDUCAUSE Review
Hat Tip: OAN

Posted in Digital Preservation, Digital Repositories, Digitization Projects, Info Management and Retrieval, Libraries and Librarianship | No Comments »

More Digitization Underway: This Time Footnote.com is Digitizing the U.S. Census from 1790-1930

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009

Footnote.com is once again partnering the National Records and Administration Agency (NARA) to digitize massive amounts of content and then make that material available, often for a fee, available online. Footnote is becoming–and for some has already become–and important resource for historians, genealogists, students, and others.

This time around, Footnote.com, is digitizing all publicly available Census materials from 1790-1930. These dates represent the period when all materials (including names) from a given census have been made publicly available. Through its partnership with NARA, Footnote.com will add more than 9.5 million pages of content when the census database project is complete. We’ve learned that Footnote.com is digitizing all of this material on their own.

From a Footnote.com Blog Post:

With over 60 million historical records already online, Footnote.com will use the U.S. Census records to tie content together, creating a pathway to discover additional records that previously have been difficult to find.

The Interactive Census Project Home Page offers much more detail and examples. You can also create email alerts when new states are added to the census database. On the lower-left side of the page you can track the progress of each census has been digitized. As you’ll see, the 1860 census is complete and the 1930 census is just about done.

Searching is free, Footnote provides numerous options to refine your search (here’s an example). Accessing the complete record is fee-based either subscribing to the database for a annually or monthly. You can also by individual documents for $2.95. Btw, Footnote.com also sells institutional access to libraries through EBSCO.

Footnote looks at the census project as a “highway” to assist the researcher in finding more information in other databases.

If you’ve been reading ResourceShelf for a while you’ve seen an increasing number of mention their services. Here’s a list of a few of them,

+ In August of 2009. we posted on the release of a joint project with the National Archives (NARA) to digitize holocaust material.

+ In December of 2008, in a partnership with NARA, Footnote released the largest interactive World War II collection online.

+ In March, 2008 we posted about Footnote.com offering an interactive version of the Vietnam Wall.

Our first post about Footnote dates back to January, 2007.

If you run this search using the ResourceShelf database, you’ll be able to see and read all of our Footnote.com posts.

But wait, there’s more. A quick review of the Footnote “press room” offers up even more projects. You can learn about them here.

Posted in Digitization Projects, Genealogy, Geographic, History, Information Industry, Resources, Search News | No Comments »

Life Scientists’ Information Use & One Size Does Not Fit All

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

From the Announcement and Summary

A report by the British Library and the Research Information Network (RIN) launched today provides unique insight into how information is used by researchers across life sciences.

[Snip]

The report, Patterns of Information Use and Exchange: Case Studies of Researchers in Life Sciences was developed using an innovative approach to capture the day-to-day patterns of information use in seven research teams from a wide range of disciplines, from botany to clinical neuroscience. The study undertaken over 11 months and involving 56 participants found that there is a significant gap between how researchers behave and the policies and strategies of funders and service providers. This suggests that the attempts to implement such strategies have had only a limited impact. Key findings from the report include:

+ Researchers use informal and trusted sources of advice from colleagues, rather than institutional service teams, to help identify information sources and resources

+ The use of social networking tools for scientific research purposes is far more limited than expected

+ Data and information sharing activities are mainly driven by needs and benefits perceived as most important by life scientists rather than ‘top-down’ policies and strategies

+ There are marked differences in the patterns of information use and exchange between research groups active in different areas of the life sciences, reinforcing the need to avoid standardised policy approaches

Access the Full Text Report (56 pages; PDF) ||| Access the Report Annex (227 pages; PDF)

Source: British Library / Research Information Network

Posted in Information Seeking, Social Media | No Comments »

Survey of Higher Education Faculty: Use of Print & Electronic Library Collections of Scholarly Journals

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

This new report was released today by Primary Research. The full text is fee-based but a few highlights from the report are available online.

The report is based on a representative survey of more than 550 higher education faculty in the United States and Canada. Faculty present their opinions on preferences for print or paper journal formats, degree of problems with archival access, use of url-catalog links to journals, extent to which their college library journal collection satisfies their scholarly needs, and frequency of database access and library visits. Data is broken out by 12 criteria including age, academic field or specialty, type of college, size of college, frequency of library use, and many other factors.

Here are Just a Few Findings From the Report:

+ Canadian faculty were more likely than American faculty to think of the paper copies as a waste of time – nearly 45% thought so.

+ In general, age was highly inversely correlated with the tendency to think of paper copies as wasteful and redundant when online versions were available.

+ Only 13.86% of faculty at research universities prefer paper to online journal formats.

+ Only a third of community college faculty express support for increased spending on academic journals while about 64.3% of faculty in MA/Ph.D. granting colleges expressed such support.

See Also: The Survey of Academic & Research Library Journal Purchasing Practices

Here’s another related fee-based report from a related Primary Research report.

Some Findings:

+ The libraries in the sample acquired a mean of more than 46% of their journal subscriptions in bundles of more then 50 titles.

+ The libraries in sample canceled a mean of 53 journal titles in the past year.

+ Mean spending on print edition only subscriptions was $130,721, less than a sixth of total spending.

+ About a quarter of the libraries in the sample believe that open access has already slowed the increase in journal prices.

+ 15.56% of the libraries in the sample have paid a publication fee on behalf of an author from their institution.

+ For 42.22% of the libraries in the sample, all new subscriptions to journals include electronic access.

+ More than 64% of the libraries in the sample keep track of their various journal subscriptions through use of a commercial software product.

+ In general, subscription agents seem to enjoy a relatively high level of customer satisfaction. On the issue of timeliness of service, none of the libraries in the sample said that they were highly dissatisfied with their subscription agent and only 2.22% said that they were dissatisfied.

+ Non-academic research libraries have done more than their academic counterparts to make sure that contracts renew at the same time. Smaller institutions, those with journal budgets of less than $100,000 per year, were less likely to make such efforts than libraries with higher budgets.

Source: Primary Research

Posted in Info Management and Retrieval, Information Industry, Scholarly Publishing | No Comments »

Semantic Search: The European Research Project Named MESH (Part 1)

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

From the Report:

But while there is a phenomenal amount of content, most of it is not that easy to find. Sure, text content can be skimmed or glanced, but audiovisual content has to be viewed in linear time. We cannot easily search inside a film or audio recording for relevant information.

That is changing, and one European project has created the first integrated platform for semantic search that can return results based on the content and context of film and audio files, as well as text.

But European researchers in the MESH project have developed an integrated platform which they say, for the first time, can combine semantic search – or search by the meaning of the words – and a host of associated tools to deliver more relevant information, from a wide variety of sources that can be accessed from an individual user.

[Snip]

These technologies are becoming common in particular knowledge domains, and more are emerging every day, but most relate to the concepts behind text-based documents. The MESH platform sought to use semantic search for every type of media.

On the way, it created some cutting-edge technology. “Our automatic annotation for video, for example, is state of the art,” explains Pedro Concejero, coordinator of the MESH project.

“The annotation system is capable of identifying the general scene setting, such as whether a video is a studio shot or a shot recorded on location. With adequate training, it can also detect (within some error margins) the general topic of the video, such as a scene about an earthquake or a flood. It can also find a number of salient objects within the scene, such as persons or fire, but cannot yet identify consistently objects with great variations in shape or aspect.”

One of the major challenges of the project was a product of its own success: It annotated too much information!

Much More fiin the Complete Report.

We will post Part II as soon as it become available.

See Also: MESH Project Home Page
Several videos are available.

Source: ICT Results

Posted in Info Management and Retrieval, Multimedia Search, Search News, Semantic Search, Technology and Internet | No Comments »

The Complete Archive of National Geographic Magazine on Six DVD’s

Sunday, November 1st, 2009

Every now and then a fee-based product comes around that we believe deserves your attention. The following is one of them.

Chris Pendleton on the Bing Blog reminds us that a major digitization project, every issue ever published of National Geographic from 1887-2008, is now available (it was officially released yesterday according to this media announcement) on 6 DVD’s or an external hard drive. That’s right, all of the writing, the legendary imagery, the supplement , even the advertisements are included. For many topics, Nat Geo magazine is a resource that documents people, places, and events, on a global scale. In other words, for all of the reasons just mentioned and many others, makes the magazine an important part of the historical record.

By the way, the reason it was mentioned on the Bing Blog is because Bing is providing some the technology that powers the digitized version this recently released collection.

From the Blog Post

Nat Geo uses Bing Maps in their Geobrowse functionality which allows you to browse a map anywhere in the world to find locations where relevant articles are referenced using geographic metadata.

Yes, we still love paper and those massive collections of past issues of the print version of National Geographic Magazine many people own (where are yours)? They’re also important.

That said, we also hear and read that for today’s student, it’s all about digital access. Yes, of course, that’s rather sad. However, a digitized archive of this size and scope can truly demonstrate the power of digital info technology for people of all ages and turn 120 years of content into important research and learning resources.

Another digitized archive of the magazine was released seven years abut this 120 year collection is the most complete version ever published with more content, more search options, saving/sharing tools, interactive maps, and more. One thing we noticed right of the bat is the that the new version is available for both PC and Mac. The “112 year version” was PC only.

Here are a few fast facts about the new collection. They were gleaned from Nat Geo site (including the video overview) and news release.

+ All Issues from October, 1888-December, 2008 are included

+ Six DVD’s include more than 200,000 pages; 300 wall map supplements, more than 8,400 articles; more than 250,000 photographs

+ All images scanned in high-resolution

+ Flip one page at a time, zoom, print

+ Geobrowse

A new Geobrowse function powered by Bing Maps that allows users with Internet access to search nearly 5,000 locations on a globe that are featured in the magazine’s archive of articles and maps.

+ Search by keyword, date, contributor, and topic; refine by date or content type

+ Browse by month or year

+ Create personalized reading lists; share these lists with other users in the Nat Geo community

+ Pre-loaded “favorite article lists” compiled by experts

National Geographic is selling the DVD’s for $69.95/US and the hard drive version for $199.95/US.

The lowest price we found as of Sunday November 1st was $42.78 from an Amazon.com Merchant. The DVD’s directly from Amazon.com are $44.99/US.

We’ve ordered a copy of the DVD’s and after spending some time with them we will report back.

Posted in Digitization Projects, Geographic, Information Industry, Print Publications | No Comments »

Cornell University Library Publishes New Digitization Manual

Friday, October 30th, 2009

Our friends at TeleRead.org let us know about a new digitization manual from Cornell University Library.

From the Announcement:

“Copyright and Cultural Institutions: Guidelines for Digitization for U.S. Libraries, Archives, and Museums,” a new book published today by Cornell University Library, can help professionals at these institutions answer that question.

Based on a well-received Australian manual written by Emily Hudson and Andrew T. Kenyon of the University of Melbourne, the book has been developed by Cornell University Library’s senior policy advisor Peter B. Hirtle, along with Hudson and Kenyon, to conform to American law and practice.

The development of new digital technologies has led to fundamental changes in the ways that cultural institutions fulfill their public missions of access, preservation, research, and education. Many institutions are developing publicly accessible Web sites that allow users to visit online exhibitions, search collection databases, access images of collection items, and in some cases create their own digital content. Digitization, however, also raises the possibility of copyright infringement. It is imperative that staff in libraries, archives, and museums understand fundamental copyright principles and how institutional procedures can be affected by the law.

“Copyright and Cultural Institutions” was written to assist understanding and compliance with copyright law. It addresses the basics of copyright law and the exclusive rights of the copyright owner, the major exemptions used by cultural heritage institutions, and stresses the importance of “risk assessment” when conducting any digitization project. Case studies on digitizing oral histories and student work are also included.

The rest of the news release provides background about each of the Peter Hirtle and Anne R. Kenney, the authors of the manual.

Access
The manual is available for purchase $39.95 from CreateSpace.

You can also download the entire book for free by visiting the Social Science Research Network and the eCommons@Cornell.

Source: Cornell University Libraries
Hat Tip: TeleRead

Posted in Digitization Projects | No Comments »

The Library of Congress Unveils API for Chronicling America Digitized Newspaper Database and Directory

Friday, October 30th, 2009

What follows is a post that might be of special interest to web developers, webmasters, site owners, or anyone who can work with an API (Application Programming Interface), It comes from a digitized collection of more than 1 million historic newspapers and a searchable directory of newspaper info. Even if you are don’t have the technical skills required, it’s possible you know someone who does and with their help you can partner to develop new resources, create mashups, etc. Btw, if you know of people who are able to work with an API, feel free to share this post with them.

First, some background.

We’ve posted about the CA program since the day it launched in March, 2007. The project is a joint effort between the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities to digitize historic American newspapers. In addition to the digitized newspaper database CA also provides Chronicling America directory. It’s both searchable with a powerful interface (a great example of what good metadata can do) and browsable. The directory contains information about most American newspapers published from 1690 to today.

On June 16, 2009, we ran a story about CA reaching a milestone. CA had just hit the one million digitized pages mark. It has grown a lot since then. About five weeks ago we posted an item about CA adding more than 192,000 pages to CA. The media release said the size of the database at that time contained 1,442,000 digitized pages from 171 titles, that were published between 1880 and 1922.

Thanks for the info but what about the API (Application Programming Interface) ?

The following from the “About the Chronicling America API” web page:

Chronicling America provides access to information about historic newspapers and select digitized newspaper pages. To encourage a wide range of potential uses, we designed several different views of the data we provide, all of which are publicly visible. Each uses common Web protocols, and access is not restricted in any way. You do not need to apply for a special key to use them. Together they make up an extensive application programming interface (API) which you can use to explore all of our data in many ways.

The rest of the web page offers technical details about the API.

Programmable Web has also posted about the new API.

Here are a couple of highlights:

Search results are available on the web site appear with terms highlighted. The API does not have access to highlight information, but it does contain thumbnails. Each page has a permalink back to the Library of Congress site, which displays the page in a zoomable, draggable viewer similar to Google Map.

The Library of Congress is focused on making these public domain works widely available. As such, this is an API without any registration or key necessary. That’s pretty wide open.

Among the interesting technical details is that the API can return linked data via RDF. It’s good to see reference sites, especially government ones, support semantic web formats (there are now 20 APIs in our directory with RDF support.)

Sources: Library of Congress, Programmable Web
Hat Tip: Dan C.

Posted in Databases, Directories, and Guides, Digitization Projects, History, Info Management and Retrieval, Media | No Comments »

Just Released by Library of Congress: Reports on Bibliographic Record Production

Friday, October 30th, 2009

From the News Release:

The Library of Congress is releasing today the results of its analysis of the creation and distribution of bibliographic data in U.S. and Canadian libraries.

The Library commissioned R2 Consulting LLC of Contoocook, N.H., to search and describe the current marketplace for cataloging records in the MARC format, with primary focus on the economics of current practices, including existing incentives and barriers to both contribution and availability. Paired with the study online is a report of an internal working group indicating how recommendations from “On the Record: Report of the Library of Congress Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control” may be implemented at the Library. Both reports are available at www.loc.gov/bibliographic-future/.

R2 summarizes its 10 findings concerning Library of Congress cataloging and how it supports bibliographic-description needs across the U.S. and Canada. The report indicates there is adequate cataloging capacity in North America, but distribution channels and cooperative use of the records have not achieved their full potential. It also describes the market for cataloging records as “conflicted,” meaning that it faces demands to be commercially solvent as well as freely accessible and open.

See Also: New Report & Study Available

The Library commissioned R2 Consulting LLC to research and describe the current marketplace for cataloging records in the MARC format, with primary focus on the economics of current practices, including existing incentives and barriers to both contribution and availability. [Our emphasis] In addition, a new report from an internal working group indicates how recommendations from On the Record may be implemented at the Library.

Source: LC

Posted in Cataloging and Metadata, Libraries and Librarianship | No Comments »

New Report: Digitisation of special collections: Mapping, assessment, prioritisation

Friday, October 30th, 2009

From the Executive Summary:

Traditionally, digitisation has been led by supply rather than demand. While end users are seen as a priority they are not directly consulted about which collections they would like to have made available digitally or why. This can be seen in a wide range of policy documents throughout the cultural heritage sector, where users are positioned as central but where their preferences are assumed rather than solicited. Post-digitisation consultation with end users is equally rare. How are we to know that digitisation is serving the needs of the Higher Education community and is sustainable in the long-term?

[Snip]

Key Findings

+ The communities of both intermediary and end users are willing to express their view on prioritising digitisation of special collections; the participation in the project was a matter of good will and the good response (see p. 25) makes evident that there is definitely interest of the professional communities to express their opinion on the matter of digitisation needs. It should be noted here that the community of intermediaries sees collections on a finer level of granularity; end users often refer to super-collections such as the holdings of an institution

+ The top user-driven priority criteria that emerged from consultation with both intermediaries and end users are: Improve access; Enhance impact on research and/on studies; Enhance impact on teaching; Allow for collaboration; Improve access outside

+ The geographic and institutional boundaries of collections nominated for digitisation are wider – this study was aimed at the higher education institutions in the UK, but 14% of the nominated collections were from institutions outside of the higher education sector, and 6% were from overseas (see p. 27)

+ The complementarity of collections is strongly favoured by both users’ communities (see section 5)

+ The criteria for digitisation nominated by intermediary and end users include general criteria but also a number of criteria where metrics can be applied; thus allowing to establish a ranking mechanism (see p. 45

Access the Complete Report (62 pages; PDF)

Access the Final Report Appendices (94 pages; PDF)

Source: JISC, Research Information Network

Posted in Archives and Special Collections, Digitization Projects | No Comments »

Open Book Alliance Co-Founder Peter Brantley Visits Spain to Talk About the Alliance and Google Book Search

Friday, October 30th, 2009

Brantley is attending meetings in Spain and discussing the OBA and Google Book Search. He’s been interviewed by two newsapers, El Pais and Publico.es.

Here are links to both interviews in Spanish along with mechanically generated translations from two services.

1) “Google no ve libros, se limita a ver datos” (via El Pais)

+ Translation by Google: “Google does not see books, is limited to viewing data” (via El Pais)

+ Translation by Systran: “Google does not see books, is limited to see data” (via El Pais)

2) El bibliotecario que se enfrentó a Google (via Público.es)

+ Translation by Systran: “The Librarian Who Faced Google” (via Público.es)

+ Translation by Google: “The librarian who challenged Google” (via Público.es)

Posted in Digitization Projects, Information Industry, Intellectual Property | No Comments »

Custom Feeds: A New Prototype from The New York Times with Human Generated Metadata (No Kidding!)

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

It appears that we have another interesting/useful and yes, cool prototype from the NY Times.

We’ve blogged about Article Skimmer, an innovative, useful, and cool way to browse the NY Times several times since it first launched in February, 2009 and now we have a new service to try.

Earlier this month “Custom Times Feeds” went live via the First Look blog on NYTimes.com. It’s a free service.

Access Custom Times Feeds

From the Blog Post by Tom Jackson:

Our new custom RSS tool is intended for all Times readers — not just developers. It provides a simple way to query the Times Article Search API and a standard way to consume the results.

Jackson goes on to provide detailed instructions (read them!) on how to get the most out of “Custom Times Feeds” tool. Here are a few highlights:

To use it [Custom Times Feeds], simply start typing something into the text field at the top. As you type, the application will try to match your words to our normalized list of terms. You can then either add one or more of the normalized terms to your feed (which will result in more targeted results) or add your original search phrase. (To add a term, click the arrow next to it to move it to the list of Your Feed’s Terms. To remove a term from your list, click the X next to it.)

[Our emphasis] Alternatively, you can paste the URL of an NYTimes.com article into the field at the top. You’ll then see a list of the terms our indexers used to describe that article, so that you can create a feed of similar articles.

Once you add a term to your feed, you’ll see a preview of the results, along with a message indicating the feed’s “strength.” The feed strength is determined by the number of articles published about your topic(s) within the past 30 days.

You can continue to add terms and refine your feed until you’re happy with it. At that point, it’s simply a matter of naming the RSS feed and subscribing to it with your favorite reader.

[Snip]

[Our emphasis] The tool also incorporates the TimesTags API, which draws its power from a practice that is very rare nowadays: human meta-tagging. All New York Times articles are assigned keywords by real, live people, rather than by computers and search algorithms. And that means all the articles included in a custom feed are truly relevant to the topic specified.

Wow, what a great and practical mention of a skill that’s part of the info pro toolbelt. Lately, we’ve been hearing more and more about the power of human data curation and in the case of The Times, metadata generated by people not machines.

Another tool that comes to mind that uses both human data curators and a massive amount of computing power is Wolfram|Alpha. For a growing number of fast fact queries along the ability to compute just about anything quickly, this interactive and computable almanac is a welcomed resource and so is the “Custom Times Feeds” prototype.

Access Custom Times Feeds

Source: NY Times

Posted in Cataloging and Metadata, RSS | No Comments »

Univerisity of Illinois Press Signs Agreement With JSTOR

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

From the Announcement:

The University of Illinois Press, the not-for-profit publishing division of the University of Illinois, and JSTOR, the preservation archive and research platform that is part of the not-for-profit ITHAKA, announced an agreement today to make leading journals from the Press available worldwide as part of the Current Scholarship Program.

The Current Scholarship Program is a new collaboration initiated by University of California Press and JSTOR and first announced on August 13, 2009.

[Snip]

Current and historical content from at least ten University of Illinois Press-published journals will be available on a re-designed JSTOR in 2011. This will offer faculty and students around the world access to current issues alongside back issues and a growing set of primary source materials from libraries easily and seamlessly. JSTOR’s nearly 6,000 library participants worldwide will be able to license the Press’s current journals, either individually or as part of current issue collections, together with JSTOR back issue collections in a single transaction. University of Illinois Press-published journals available as part of the Program will include American Journal of Psychology, American Music, Journal of Aesthetic Education, and Journal of American Ethnic History among others. The journals will also be preserved in Portico, the digital preservation service that is also part of ITHAKA.

Source: ITHAKA

Posted in Digital Repositories, Information Industry, Scholarly Publishing | No Comments »

New Research Findings: Students and the Mobile Internet

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

Some new research from the U.K.

From the Summary:

The qualitative research with second year undergraduate students from a range of disciplines and universities, consisted of four focus groups and eight depth interviews, held in Manchester and London. The research was conducted by FDS International on behalf of Intute and the findings reinforce the motivation behind the work of the project, which is to provide a user friendly mobile site that is fast and inexpensive to load, providing the right content, presented in the right order and with an adapted layout.

[Snip]

The extent to which the mobile Internet was used varied greatly, with only a small number of students using their mobile Internet for academic work. Given the cost and generally slow access to the Internet from mobile devices, primarily determined by the type of contract and the handset, most students only ever occasionally accessed the Internet using their mobile phone for social purposes and for short durations of time. Consequently, those most likely regularly to access the internet on their mobile phones possessed new telephones with large screens, and had a contract which included free internet access. These represented only a small fraction of those interviewed.

Despite the fact that students rarely used the mobile Internet for their university course, many stated that they would if:

+ their phones had larger screens;
+ it was quick and easy to load and navigate websites; and
+ it was cheaper or free (included in their contract) to access the Internet.

Access the Complete Summary

See Also: Mobilising the Internet Detective (August 14, 2009)

Source: Intute

Posted in Information Literacy, Technology and Internet, Wireless Web and Search | No Comments »

Spammers Continue to Abuse the Names of Top Government Executives by Misusing the Name of the United States Attorney General

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

Spammers Continue to Abuse the Names of Top Government Executives by Misusing the Name of the United States Attorney General

As with previous spam attacks, which have included the names of high-ranking FBI executives and names of various government agencies, a new version misuses the name of the United States Attorney General, Eric Holder.

The current spam alleges that the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation were informed the e-mail recipient is allegedly involved in money laundering and terrorist-related activities. To avoid legal prosecution, the recipient must obtain a certificate from the Economic Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) Chairman at a cost of $370. The spam provides the name of the EFCC Chairman and an e-mail address from which the recipient can obtain the required certificate.

Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

Posted in Information Literacy, Search News, Technology and Internet | No Comments »

New Project Report: Newspaper Digitisation: British Newspapers 1620-1900

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

From the Summary:

This report describes all of the stages and issues that occurred during a second complex mass newspaper digitisation project. The project was an innovative and challenging example of a public/private partnership between Gale Cengage Learning, CCS and the British Library.

Access the Executive Summary

Access the Complete Report (57 pages; PDF)

Source: JISC

See Also: Newspaper Digitisation News from the British Library: £33m Saves the World’s Greatest Newspaper Collection for the Nation

See Also: Video and Slides Available from OCR for the Mass Digitisation of Textual Materials Workshop

Posted in Digitization Projects | No Comments »

The World Media Has Responsibility to Save Audio-Visual Archives + Library of Congress Research Project

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

October 27 is UNESCO Audio-visual Heritage Day.

From the Article:

Federation president Herbert Hayduck says that the world media community has a common responsibility to save audio-visual archives, many of which are on the verge of being lost.

Source: CCTV

See Also: UNESCO World Day for Audiovisual Heritage: Library of Congress Engaged in Cutting Edge Grooved Recording Imaging Research

In celebration of UNESCO’s World Day for Audiovisual Heritage, the Library of Congress Preservation Directorate is featuring information about an innovative project using imaging technology to recover ‘lost’ sound from grooved analog recordings.

+ Learn More about the IRENE Project

+ Webcast: Capturing Recorded Sound through Imaging: The I.R.E.N.E. Project and Future Prospects

See Also: UNESCO World Day for Audiovisual Heritage Day Web Page

See Also: Message from Director-General of UNESCO

Posted in Preservation/Conservation | No Comments »

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