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Archive for the ‘Source File’ Category

Another New Digitization Project from NARA and Footnote: The Native American Collection

Friday, November 20th, 2009

Working together with the National Archives and Allen County Library, Footnote.com has created a unique collection that will help people discover new details about Native American history.

The Footnote Interactive Native American Collection features original historical documents including:

+ Ratified Indian Treaties – dating back to 1722

+ Indian Census Rolls – featuring personal information including age, place of residence and degree of Indian blood

+ The Guion Miller Roll – perhaps the most important source of Cherokee genealogical research

+ Dawes Packets – containing original applications for tribal enrollments

+ And other documents relating to the Five Civilized Tribes

Footnote’s Native American microsite creates an interactive environment where members can search, annotate and add comments to the original documents. Additionally, visitors can view pages for many of the Native American tribes that include historical events on a timeline and map, a photo gallery, stories and comments added by the community.

Source: Footnote

Posted in Databases, Directories, and Guides, Genealogy, History, Information Industry, Resources | No Comments »

Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year Announced

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

This has been “Word of the Year” week. First, The New Oxford American Dictionary 2009 “Word of the Year” was announced. The winning word? Unfriend. Example: Steve unfriended Julie on Facebook. Our post also includes other words that Oxford University Press was considering.

Today, Merriam-Webster released their 2009 Word of the Year list. And the winner is…admonish (verb): to express warning or disapproval to especially in a gentle, earnest, or solicitous manner.

Here’s the Rest of the Top 10:
2. emaciated
3. empathy
4. furlough
5. inaugurate
6. nugatory
7. pandemic
8. philanderer
9. repose
10. rogue

Source: Merriam-Webster
Hat Tip: L.S.

Posted in Lists and Rankings | No Comments »

HathiTrust Offers Full-Text Search of Millions of Digitized Books and Journals

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

From the Announcement:

A year after its launch by 25 leading U.S. research libraries, HathiTrust Digital Library announces a service that will transform how researchers use the more than 1.6 billion pages (4.6 million volumes) in its collections.

The breakthrough allows for full-text searching capabilities across the entire library. Researchers can now search public domain and in-copyright works by keyword or phrase.

Based on open source Solr/Lucene technology, the service expands on an experimental search of public domain volumes introduced in November 2008. Full-text search will continue to be supported across the repository as it grows at a rate of hundreds of thousands of volumes every month.

“The HathiTrust partners are pleased to offer a search service that helps mine this growing body of authoritative library materials,” said John Wilkin, HathiTrust executive director and associate university librarian at the University of Michigan. “HathiTrust continues to distinguish itself with its reliability and with its efforts to broaden the availability of digitized library collections in the flow of scholarly discourse. We see this valuable discovery service as one in a series of major steps HathiTrust is taking to shed light on this vast body of material.”

In combination with the HathiTrust Digital Library’s carefully curated bibliographic data, the new functionality allows researchers to more efficiently locate items relevant to their research. It also lays the foundation for future services such as full-text search with faceted browsing, advanced search, “more like this” options, and tools that can be used in computational research.

The effort to provide full-text searching capabilities across the repository has yielded valuable benchmarking data, methods, and code to the broader large-scale search community, said Wilkin.

The HathiTrust partners are committed to developing the repository and its services to meet the long-term needs of their academic communities, and offer a unique resource on the Web for scholarship and research.

Source: HathiTrust / University of Michigan

Posted in Databases, Directories, and Guides, Digitization Projects, Resources, Search News | No Comments »

ALA Submits Testimony to Congress on Libraries Role in Improving Literacy Skills of Children and Young Adults

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

From the Release:

Emily Sheketoff, executive director of the American Library Association’s (ALA) Washington Office, today filed testimony for the official record of the House Committee on Education and Labor’s Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education’s hearing, “Improving Literacy Skills of Children and Young Adults.”

The comments highlighted the contributions of librarians and library programs in both public and school libraries in improving the literacy skills of children and young adults.

“Public librarians have embraced their responsibility to be the first literacy coach for parents and caregivers of all children, especially children in low-income families,” Sheketoff states in her comments. “Some services provided to these families include bookmobile and storytelling mobiles, story-time kits and early literacy classes for child-care providers, Head Start staff and parents.”

Sheketoff’s testimony underscored the impact of school libraries in both traditional and technology literacy through the role of school librarians who are the central teachers who know the school’s curriculum and effective techniques necessary to cross disciplines.

Access the Complete Testimony (3 pages; PDF)

Source: American Library Association

Posted in Education, Libraries and Librarianship | No Comments »

Some Courts Raise Bar on Reading Employee Email

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

Some Courts Raise Bar on Reading Employee Email

Big Brother is watching. That is the message corporations routinely send their employees about using email.

But recent cases have shown that employees sometimes have more privacy rights than they might expect when it comes to the corporate email server. Legal experts say that courts in some instances are showing more consideration for employees who feel their employer has violated their privacy electronically.

Driving the change in how these cases are treated is a growing national concern about privacy issues in the age of the Internet, where acquiring someone else’s personal and financial information is easier than ever.

Source: Wall Street Journal

Posted in Legal, Privacy, Search News | No Comments »

Investing — Research Pays Before You Lay Money Down (Databases and Resources)

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

Research pays before you lay money down

Most people put a lot of faith in their broker, and that often works out well. But in the age of Bernie Madoff, wary investors may be looking for some reassurance.

The truth is they are largely left to fend for themselves. With a bit of time and widely available tools, many legal experts say investors can improve their chances of choosing wisely when selecting a financial adviser or broker.

+ Resources for background on your broker

Source: Washington Post

Posted in Business and Economics, Reference Tools, Source File | No Comments »

Digital Preservation: UK Government to Launch Web Continuity Program

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

From an e-Mail Announcement

Broken links will soon be a thing of the past for UK Government websites, as The National Archives launches its Web Continuity project.

The first of its kind anywhere in the world, the project has already enabled millions of people using government websites to find information which would previously have been lost through broken web links.

Officially launching at the House of Lords next month, the initiative links seamlessly with The National Archives’ UK Government Web Archive, which regularly captures and preserves 1500 government websites for posterity.

If someone clicks on a link which is no longer live, redirection software being installed by government departments will automatically take them to where the information they need is held in the web archive. Currently, the service is leading to more than six million redirected hits a month.

Dr Amanda Spencer, Head of Web Continuity at The National Archives, said: “When it was first created, the internet was often regarded as ephemeral. Websites weren’t viewed as records which needed to be preserved.

“However, as the internet has developed to be the predominate source of government information for most people, this has changed. Today, some information only ever exists online and as the experts in preserving the future of history, we have had to adapt.

“Our web archive holds more than 340 million documents from government websites dating back to 1997, and we now archive all central government websites three times a year. The Web Continuity project is a natural progression of this.”

Much More After Clicking
(more…)

Posted in Government Documents and Political Information | No Comments »

Two New Databases from EBSCO for Art and Architecture Researchers

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

From the Announcement:

Art & Architecture Index and Art & Architecture Complete, EBSCO provides definitive research databases for the study of art and architecture. Designed for use by a diverse audience, Art & Architecture Index and Art & Architecture Complete will appeal to art scholars, artists, designers, college students and general researchers.

These new art & architecture resources include cover-to-cover indexing and abstracts for more than 620 academic journals, magazines and trade publications as well as over 140 books. Selective coverage is also provided for more than 135 additional publications.

Art & Architecture Complete also contains full-text coverage of more than 230 art & architecture-specific periodicals and more than 100 books. These databases are available via the EBSCOhost platform.

Source: EBSCO

Posted in Arts and Humanities, Databases, Directories, and Guides, Information Industry, Resources, Scholarly Publishing | No Comments »

ARL — E-Science Survey Preliminary Results and Resources Released

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

E-Science Survey Preliminary Results and Resources Released

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) E-Science Working Group surveyed ARL member libraries in the fall of 2009 to gather data on the state of engagement with e-science issues. An overview of initial survey findings was presented by E-Science Working Group Chair Wendy Lougee, University Librarian, McKnight Presidential Professor, University of Minnesota Libraries, at the October ARL Membership Meeting. Lougee’s briefing explored contrasting approaches among research institutions, particularly in regard to data management. The briefing also summarized survey findings on topics such as library services, organizational structures, staffing patterns and staff development, and involvement in research grants, along with perspectives on pressure points for service development. To better explicate the findings, Lougee reviewed specific cases of activities at six research institutions.

Audio of the briefing along with slides and a handout are available as part of the Proceedings of the 155th ARL Membership Meeting (see http://www.arl.org/resources/pubs/mmproceedings/155mm-proceedings/index.shtml#esci).

ARL has also compiled a set of resources provided by survey respondents. Examples of a range of campus and library documents, tools advancing e-science support, needs assessments, and position descriptions, among other items, are listed on ARL’s Web site at http://www.arl.org/rtl/eresearch/escien/esciensurvey/index.shtml.

Source: Association of Research Libraries

Posted in Info Management and Retrieval, Libraries and Librarianship, Online Education, Papers and Presentations, Science, Search News, Source File | No Comments »

Data Visualization: Interactively Track the Avian Flu Around the World Using Google Earth

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

From the Announcement:

New methods of studying avian influenza strains and visually mapping their movement around the world will help scientists more quickly learn the behavior of the pandemic H1N1 flu virus, Ohio State University researchers say.

The researchers linked many powerful computer systems together to analyze enormous amounts of genetic data collected from all publicly available isolated strains of the H5N1 virus – the cause of avian flu. They then developed a new Web-based application that will allow health officials and the public visualize how the virus moved across the globe using Google Earth.

The resulting visualizations, based on results of the data analysis, represent the most comprehensive map to date of how avian flu has been transmitted among sites in Asia, Africa and Europe.

[Snip]

“We are taking into account more data but at the same time, we’re making simpler visualizations, allowing users to choose what they want to see,” said Daniel Janies, associate professor of biomedical informatics at Ohio State and senior author of the study.

The visualizations and application are available online at “We are taking into account more data but at the same time, we’re making simpler visualizations, allowing users to choose what they want to see,” said Daniel Janies, associate professor of biomedical informatics at Ohio State and senior author of the study.

“We’ve created an environment where people can avail themselves of flu information specific to their region of the world or their area of interest. We waded through all of the complexities so people in the public health realm who want to determine how a flu virus got from point A to point B can find that out, and we’ll have better public health outcomes as a result.”

The visualizations and application are available online at http://routemap.osu.edu.

Source: Ohio State University

Posted in Geographic, Resources, Science | No Comments »

New Current Awareness Resource: Keyword Search Metadata and Abstracts From More than 4500 Tech Journals

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

Here are three current awareness services out of the UK. They are all free. One debuted yesterday while the others have been online for some time. These are the types of services that libraries and individuals used to have to pay for. No more.

The new service that debuted yesterday from techXtra Here’s the lowdown.

Name: TechJournalContents

Keyword search more than 4500 scholarly technology journals to find new/recent content. You can also save your searches as RSS feeds and use an aggregator, place the feeds on web pages, etc. to monitor for new articles on your search terms.

About 400 of the journals are open access and the content is available for free. Most articles offer direct links to full text but you’ll need a personal or institutional subscriptions to access the material.

From the Announcement:

TechJournalContents ingests Tables of Contents RSS feeds provided by numerous journal publishers such as Springer, Emerald, Inderscience, Wiley Interscience, Elsevier, Taylor & Francis, IEEE, Sage, AIP, IMechE, etc,

See Also: JournalTOCs

Search the latest Table of Contents (TOCs) of 12,535 journals collected from 422 publishers. More journals are added continuously.You can start by searching for TOCs by journal title or by keywords (searching 336,025 TOC articles). You also can browse TOCs by publisher or by subject. Then, if you click on a journal title, the latest Table of Contents will be displayed. Free

Developers might also be interested to learn that an API is available.

+ Find 12,715 scholarly journal Table of Contents (TOCs) from 448 publishers.
+ View the latest TOC for each journal.
+ Link to the full text of 410,197 articles (where institutional or personal subscription allows).
+ Export TOC feeds to popular feedreaders.

Sources:

1) TechXtra (Institute for Computer Based Learning, Heriot-Watt University, Roddy MacLeaod

2) Institute for Computer Based Learning, Heriot-Watt University

3) ticTOCs Consortium consists of: the University of Liverpool Library (lead), Heriot-Watt University, CrossRef, ProQuest, Emerald, RefWorks, MIMAS, Cranfield University, Institute of Physics, SAGE Publishers, Inderscience Publishers, DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals), Open J-Gate, and Intute.

Posted in Databases, Directories, and Guides, Resources | No Comments »

Government 2.0: New Book Details Challenges of Web 2.0 Usage Across the Globe

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

An Audio Report is Also Available at the Top of the Web Page.

From the Article

Starting Wednesday in Sweden, the European Union is holding a conference of ministers of technology from across Europe that will be looking at lessons learned throughout the EU.

In conjunction with that, a new book is out: State of the eUnion: Government 2.0 and Onwards. It’s available online for free, and will eventually come to a store near you.

It pulls from some of the Web 2.0 thought leaders, many of whom you have heard here on Federal News Radio, including Tim O’Reilly, Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig, and Mark Drapeau from George Washington University.

Source: Federal News Radio
Hat Tip: Pete W.

Access the Full Text Book: State of the eUnion: Government 2.0 and Onwards (321 pages; PDF)

Posted in Government Documents and Political Information, Web 2.0 | No Comments »

Paper — Deep Secrecy (Government Secrecy)

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

Deep Secrecy

This Article offers a new way of thinking and talking about government secrecy. In the vast literature on the topic, little attention has been paid to the structure of government secrets, as distinct from their substance or function. Yet these secrets differ systematically depending on how many people know of their existence, what sorts of people know, how much they know, and how soon they know. When a small group of similarly situated officials conceals from outsiders the fact that it is concealing something, the result is a deep secret. When members of the general public understand they are being denied particular items of information, the result is a shallow secret. Every act of state secrecy can be located on a continuum ranging between these two poles.

Attending to the depth of state secrets, the Article shows, can make a variety of conceptual and practical contributions to the debate on their usage. The deep/shallow distinction provides a vocabulary and an analytic framework with which to describe, assess, and compare secrets, without having to judge what they conceal. It sheds light on how secrecy is employed and experienced, which types are likely to do the most damage, and where to focus reform efforts. And it gives more rigorous content to criticisms of Bush administration practices. Elaborating these claims, the Article also mines new constitutional territory – providing an original account of the role of state secrecy generally, as well as deep secrecy specifically, in our constitutional order.

Several options available for retrieval of full text.

Source: Stanford Law Review, Forthcoming (David Pozen)

Hat tip: Secrecy News

Posted in Access to Information, Government Documents and Political Information, Papers and Presentations, Source File | No Comments »

FDA and Everyday Health Collaborate to Expand Reach of Consumer Health Information

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

FDA and Everyday Health Collaborate to Expand Reach of Consumer Health Information

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Everyday Health today announced a collaboration that will expand the delivery of the agency’s vital consumer health information to the 30 million unique users who visit Everyday Health each month. This joint effort reflects FDA’s emphasis on using innovative, technology-based strategies to carry out its mission of protecting and promoting the public health.
…
The partnership will initially include:

A new online resource at www.EverydayHealth.com/FDA: The new co-branded Web site will feature a variety of health content from FDA. The latest information on food and medical product safety as well as prevention and wellness topics will be featured. In the event of breaking public health information, Everyday Health will also feature special “FDA Alert” modules in select locations throughout the site and network, and in e-mail newsletters.
A new FDA/Everyday Health co-branded weekly newsletter: The latest FDA consumer health information will be sent to subscribers in a weekly Everyday Health newsletter (www.EverydayHealth.com/FDA). The FDA/Everyday Health newsletter will contain “FDA Alerts” as well as up-to-date information on drug safety, cosmetics and skin care products and children’s health products, to name a few.

Source: U.S. Food and Drug Administration

Posted in Government Documents and Political Information, New Websites and Resources, Source File | No Comments »

Find Similar Images with GazoPa (Beta)

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

Here’s a beta image search engine named GazoPa.

It allows the user to upload an image, enter an image URL, draw a picture (cool!), or keyword search a database of the GazoPa database and then find SIMILAR images based on the image that was upload or keyword search. You can also combine an image (what they call a “key image”) with keyword(s). A Firefox addon, a bookmarklet, and an iPhone app are also available. GazoPa is not exactly new (their blog goes back to September, 2008) but it’s new to us. So, why not share. Their colorful logo might remind some of other search engines with colorful logos. (-:

The home page also claims the database is large, more that 60 million images. We need to confirm this but the way we read the final page of the FAQ is that the 60 million images were crawled by GazoPa. They also have a page for webmasters about their crawler, GazoPabot. In other words, they’re not buying their image collection by stringing together other image databases they’ve been given access to for free or a fee.

Results pages offer four types of results:

+ Images
+ Videos (it appears that most of the results come from YouTube)
+ News Images (it appears to be a GazoPa crawl)
+ Flickr (Is the Flickr database included in the 60 million images total?)

Worth mentioning, GozaPa is a venture project of the Hitachi Corporation (note the copyright info at the bottom of the home page).

So, go forward and demo. We’ll do the same and report back in a week or so.

See Also: GazoPa Blog

See Also: GazoPa Twitter Feed

See Also: A little over a week ago we posted about a reverse image search named Tin Eye. tool has users upload an image and then the Tin Eye technology goes out on the web to see if others are using your content.

Posted in Information Industry, Multimedia Search, Search News, Search Tools | No Comments »

NASA — New Education Robotics Site

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

NASA Education Robotics Web Site

Innovation, creativity, problem solving — the world of robotics at NASA is all of these things. Spend some time on this site to see if robotics might be in your future.

Things you can do on this site:
–Answer the question: What Is Robotics?
–Practice your programming skills with the interactive robotic activity.
–Watch and download video and multimedia features about robotics.
–Follow a timeline tracing the history of robotics.
–Check out lesson plans for your classroom.
–Stay up-to-date with information about NASA-supported robotics competitions.
–Visit the Robotics Image Gallery.
–Explore other worlds with NASA through robotic spacecraft discoveries.
–Read about scientists and engineers who design and test robots.
–Browse NASA Web sites for information about robotics.

Source: National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Posted in Education, Resources for Educators, Science, Source File | No Comments »

Australia: Historic Newspaper Digitisation: Early Editions of Sydney Morning Herald Now Available Online; What is Trove?

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

From an e-Mail:

The National Library’s Australian Newspapers service has recently made available https://mail.google.com/mail/?zx=1rjv366gqucji&shva=1#inbox/1250a7f37fa96144early editions of The Sydney Morning Herald.

The digitisation of The Sydney Morning Herald was made possible by a $1 million contribution from the Vincent Fairfax Family Foundation. Eventually, all out-of-copyright editions of the Herald will be available, from its inception in 1831 to 1954.

It is now just over a year since Australian Newspapers was released to the public and there are 8.5 million articles available from 33 newspaper titles. A community of volunteer ‘text correctors’ has now corrected 7 million lines of the electronically translated text in 318 000 articles, enabling more accurate search results.

Access the Collection (via Trove)

Btw, what is Trove?

“one search…a wealth of information”

Trove is our new free online service that gathers information about Australia and Australians in a single search.

Discover:
+ Digitised Australian newspapers, 1803 – 1954
+ Books, magazines and articles
+ Pictures and photographs
+ Music, oral histories and videos
+ Maps
+ Archived websites
+ Biographical information

Source: National Library of Australia

Posted in Archives and Special Collections, Digitization Projects, New Websites and Resources, Search News, Search Tools | No Comments »

Consumer Electronics: Five Technology Trends to Watch – 2010

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

5 Technology Trends to Watch – 2010 (PDF; 2.1 MB)

Welcome to the latest edition of Five Technology Trends to Watch. This annual Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) publication looks at the new technologies that will shape our future. I remain optimistic despite the challenges to the economy. The consumer technology industry continues to show promise with sales expected to reach $172 billion for 2009.

This year we look at the evolution of content, connected devices in the home, TV beyond HD, connected cars and the smart grid. The publication also takes a peek at the future of CE. For example, IBM is working to develop artificial DNA nanostructures as a framework to build the tiny microchips used in electronics devices. Although still many years out, this work could one day impact how we build, operate and interact with electronics. Learn also about advances in a holographic storage material capable of storing 500GB of data on a DVD-sized optical disc – ten times the amount that can be stored on a dual-layer Blu-ray disc. It’s not here yet but discs of this size could one day store 3D video.

Source: Consumer Electronics Association

Hat tip: AT

Posted in Papers and Presentations, Search News, Technology and Internet, Web 2.0 | No Comments »

Archive for the ‘Source File’ Category

Another New Digitization Project from NARA and Footnote: The Native American Collection

Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year Announced

HathiTrust Offers Full-Text Search of Millions of Digitized Books and Journals

ALA Submits Testimony to Congress on Libraries Role in Improving Literacy Skills of Children and Young Adults

Some Courts Raise Bar on Reading Employee Email

Investing — Research Pays Before You Lay Money Down (Databases and Resources)

Digital Preservation: UK Government to Launch Web Continuity Program

Two New Databases from EBSCO for Art and Architecture Researchers

ARL — E-Science Survey Preliminary Results and Resources Released

Data Visualization: Interactively Track the Avian Flu Around the World Using Google Earth

New Current Awareness Resource: Keyword Search Metadata and Abstracts From More than 4500 Tech Journals

Government 2.0: New Book Details Challenges of Web 2.0 Usage Across the Globe

Paper — Deep Secrecy (Government Secrecy)

FDA and Everyday Health Collaborate to Expand Reach of Consumer Health Information

Find Similar Images with GazoPa (Beta)

NASA — New Education Robotics Site

Australia: Historic Newspaper Digitisation: Early Editions of Sydney Morning Herald Now Available Online; What is Trove?

Consumer Electronics: Five Technology Trends to Watch – 2010

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