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New: Browse Newspapers in the Google News Archive

Friday, March 12th, 2010

One of the best in the search engine industry, the eagle-eyed Barry Schwartz from Search Engine Roundtable, and Search Engine Land, has just posted an item about how to take advantage of a new Google feature that lets users virtually browse newspapers in the news archive. Directions and screen caps are included.

Barry’s post can be found here.

One Note: Browsing archived news apparently only works with newspapers that Google has digitized. We tried to find the browsing option with articles from the LA Times and NY Times and we were unable to find the browse option. Btw, both of those papers are fee-based via Google but often available for free from your library.

You can access the Google News Archive with this link.

Source: Search Engine Roundtable

Posted in Media, News Search, Search Tools, Web Search | No Comments »

Legal Databases: PACER Case Locator Now Available, Replaces U.S. Party/Case Index

Friday, March 12th, 2010

The PACER Case Locator is available here and allows you to search for court records in all district, bankruptcy, and appellate courts.

The Case Locator replaces the U.S. Party/Case Index.

A bit more about the PACER Case Locator on this PACER Service Center page.

The page mentions several new capabilities of the system. They include:

+ request lists of cases for a specified date range by court type;

+ conduct searches based on chapter, discharge date and dismissal date for bankruptcy cases;

+ access case information for the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation;

+ choose result formats, including HTML, delimited text, and XML which can be easily imported to other programs for analysis;

+ change the sort order of the results displayed; and

+ conduct refined searches within the results of a previous search.

The U.S. Party/Case Index will be available for the next few months to allow you time to become familiar with the capabilities of the new Case Locator. No specific timeframe is provided as to when Party/Case will be shutdown.

Finally, according to the service center both systems, the PACER Case Locator and the U.S. Party/Case Index, will provide the same results for identical searches.

Source: PACER Service Center

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

New: Searchable Database: The Firearms Research Digest from the Harvard School of Public Health

Friday, March 12th, 2010

This new database is produced by the Harvard School of Public Health.

From the Announcement:

A new firearms research database launched by the Harvard School of Public Health makes scholarly articles more accessible to reporters, law enforcement, public health officials, policymakers, and the general public. The Firearms Research Digest provides summaries [this is not a full text database*] of articles gathered from social science, criminology, medical and public health journals and is written in clear, accessible language for use by those outside academia.

* Complete bibliographic info is provided to make accessing the complete article (if needed) simple using one of many methods.

The website currently covers six years of research published between 2003 and 2008. The digest will be expanded over time to include articles from 1988 to the present.

“Despite the increased ease of accessing articles through search engines like Google Scholar or PubMed, the sheer volume of returned information in technical jargon can be daunting,” said David Hemenway, professor of health policy and director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center and the Youth Violence Prevention Center at HSPH. “The principal objective of this digest is to present research findings in clear, lay language so anyone can readily understand the study results.”

The database interface on the home page is searchable by keywords, title, topic, and author.

Below the advanced interface link (where you can include a date range in your query are links that help the searcher begin an advanced search with hyperlinked topics (this database uses a controlled vocabulary), year, and publication. Selecting these options will automatically drop the user into the advanced interface.

You can do much the same with the advanced interface (including the selection from a list of topics) and another list of publication names.

A results page includes the number of hits in each search category and related topics with the number of entries that specific topic has in the database.

Finally, an actual result has most of its metadata hyperlinked. For example, all authors names, topics, publications, etc.

The Firearms Research Digest will be a useful resource for many people (reporters, educators, students, etc.) since the database is easy to use the digests are written without using any technical jargon. The database does need documentation/explanation to explain how the database works, especially topics vs. keywords, why one interface over another, and what the numbers mean next to each search category on a results page. At the present time there is either no “help” content or we missed it (which is quite possible).

Access The Firearms Research Digest

Source: Harvard School of Public Health

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

Reference Shelf: New Web Site Shows Amtrak Connections to National Park Sites

Friday, March 12th, 2010

New Web Site Shows Amtrak Connections to National Park Sites (PDF; 28 KB)

Amtrak today introduced a new Web site designed to show travelers how convenient it is to travel by train to visit the country’s national parks. With the theme “Parks in Your Backyard,” Amtraktoparks.com allows users to see the nearest Amtrak route to featured national park sites, each of which can be reached using public transportation from an Amtrak station.

Amtraktoparks.com offers a trip wizard which allows users to customize their search based on geographic location and personal interests — Monuments/Memorials, Revolutionary History or Water Activities to name a few. Information on accommodations such camping sites and hotels is also provided. Once the user selects a national park, information on the park as well as which Amtrak route provides service to that park is shown. The site provides a direct link to Amtrak.com, allowing users to book rail travel.

Source: National Railroad Passenger Corporation

Posted in Geographic, New Websites and Resources, Source File | No Comments »

Germany: National License for Springer eBooks Signed, Largest eBook Deal Ever Signed in Germany

Thursday, March 11th, 2010

From the Announcement:

The German National Library of Science and Technology (TIB) and the German National Library of Medicine (ZB MED) have signed an extensive and ground-breaking agreement for access to Springer eBooks on SpringerLink. The agreement represents the largest eBook deal ever to have been signed in Germany, and is, in fact, a national license for all English-language chemistry, materials science and medicine titles of the copyright years 2005 – 2008. Concretely, this means that all researchers, students and staff at all publicly funded universities, technical colleges and research institutions will have access to the content included in the deal. The agreement was made possible by support from the German Research Foundation (DFG).

Source:Springer Science+Business Media

Posted in E-books, Information Industry | No Comments »

A New Interactive Map: Highway Projects and the Recovery Act

Thursday, March 11th, 2010

From a White House Blog Post:

…the web team at the Federal Highway Administration created an online map of the U.S. that shows over 12,000 Recovery Act road projects. Each of the dots represented on the map represents a project. The full, interactive version on the map allows you to click the dots in order to learn more about these projects.

Sources: Whitehouse.gov, Federal Highway Administration

Posted in Geographic, Government Documents and Political Information, Resources | No Comments »

National Library of Australia: Gifts: Book of Poetry Secretely Produced/Published in German POW Camp

Thursday, March 11th, 2010

From the Article:

A book secretely produced and published in a German POW camp is now being cared for by the National Library of Australia.

The book of poetry entitled Godziny Czekania is by Zbigniew Mystkowski, a Polish journalist then an officer who was captured by the Germans and spent most of the war in various camps.

[Snip]

Wanda Horky, who is Polish herself, works at the NLA and has been lovingly cataloguing this rare edition.

The book was donated to NLA by the author’s son.

Source: ABC

Posted in Arts and Humanities, Books, Libraries and Librarianship, Preservation/Conservation | No Comments »

Discussions About Using Twitter and Wikipedia Included in (New) Reuters Social-Media Guidelines

Thursday, March 11th, 2010

While this document is intended for journalists and others working at Reuters, we think info pros will find it interesting and potentially useful.

From WebNewser:

Reuters published its guidelines for reporting via the Internet and using social media, stressing transparency in using social media, including mentioning affiliation with Reuters and stating that opinions expressed are personal, as well as clearing the use of social-media sites with managers, and breaking news via the wire rather than via Twitter or other sites.

The WebNewser article goes on to provide a thorough overview of what the guidelines contain.

You Can Access the Reuters Document Here

Section 1.5 (it’s just a few sentences) Offers a Few Ideas to Determine if a Report is a Hoax.

Do a reality check. Does this information fit within the bounds of what was expected? Any wild divergences are a clue you may be viewing information in the wrong context. Do a reality check. Does this information fit within the bounds of what was expected? Any wild divergences are a clue you may be viewing information in the wrong context.

Sounds very similar to what an info pro would say.

Section 2.1 Basic Principles

The distinction between the private and the professional has largely broken down online and you should assume that your professional and personal social media activity will be treated as one no matter how hard you try to keep them separate. You should also be aware that even if you make use of privacy settings, anything you post on a social media site may be made public.

Section 2.3 Twitter Policy
The document spends a large chunk of time discussing Twitter. For example:

Section 2.3.6

Can I Break News via Twitter?

As with blogging within Reuters News, you should make sure that if you have hard news content that it is broken first via the wire. Don’t scoop the wire. NB this does not apply if you are ‘retweeting’ (re-publishing) someone else’s scoop.

Section 3

Online Encyclopedias

Online information sources which rely on collaborative, voluntary and often anonymous contributions need to be handled with care. Wikipedia, the online “people’s encyclopedia”, can be a good starting point for research, but it should not be used as an attributable source. Do not quote from it or copy from it. The information it contains has not been validated and can change from second to second as contributors add or remove material. Move on to official websites or other sources that are worthy of attribution. Do not link to Wikipedia or similar collaborative encyclopedia sites as a source of background information on any topic. More suitable sites can almost always be found, and indeed are often flagged at the bottom of Wikipedia entries. It is only acceptable to link to an entry on Wikipedia or similar sites when the entry or website itself is the subject of a news story.

Access the Complete Set of Reuters Social Media Guidelines

Access the Complete Reuters Handbook of Journalism

Source: WebNewser; Reuters
Hat Tip: P.W.

Posted in Information Literacy, Resources for Educators | No Comments »

Searchable Database: Footnote’s U.S. Census–Interactive Version, Free for a Limited Time

Thursday, March 11th, 2010

We’ve mentioned several Footnote services in the past (ie. digitizing National Archives material and using it to build topical collections) and today news of free access (for a limited time) to their interactive version of the U.S. Census (where they are digitizing U.S. Census records for 5 census). You will need to register (requires only an email address and password) to view images of census pages.

From the Announcement:

…the Interactive Census Collection has the unique ability to connect people related to ancestors found on the historical documents. Simply by clicking the “I’m Related” button for a name on the document will identify you as a descendant and also list others that have done the same.

OCR is in use. You can search for words found in the actual images of pages.

Access Footnote’s Interactive Census
It is available for the 1860 (Complete), 1900 (5% Complete), 1910 (3% Complete), 1920 (3% Complete), 1930 (98% Complete) U.S. Census.

If nothing else this is a great way to test the service and yes, it’s even rather fun.

Source: Footnote

Posted in Databases, Directories, and Guides, Genealogy, Government Documents and Political Information, Resources | No Comments »

Queens Public Library Currently Digitizing Some of Its Oldest Holdings, Collection Will Go Online in Spring

Thursday, March 11th, 2010

From the Article:

The library has rebranded its Long Island Division at its Central Branch as the “The Archives at Queens Library.” The new name ushers in an online database, set to go live in a few months, which will include digital access to more than 4,000 photographs that date back to the late 19th century.

John Hyslop, the digital asset manager for the Queens Public Library, said although the task took many hours and much manpower, it was worth it because the materials will now reach millions of library patrons.

[Snip]

Photos are not the only items that will be getting the digital makeover. The library said it will also be posting documents online, including the papers of Wilson and Jane Rantus.

The black couple collected everything from receipts, bills and letters between 1834 and 1883 and those documents are the only existing records of a minority family living in Long Island at that time.

Those who worked on the digitizing process, such as Mary Grace DeSagun, the project’s imaging technician, said handling the archives helped to educate them about the legacy of the borough.

Access the Complete Article

Source: YourNabe.com

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

Trends and Rankings: The Most Searched for Destinations Using GPS, Several Other Categories Listed

Thursday, March 11th, 2010

This study was conducted by Telenav data only. The results are based on national GPS data usage.

All of the following lists can be accessed here.

Most Searched for Types of Food (10 are Listed; Dec. 2009 Data)
1. Pizza
2.Chinese
3. Burgers

Most Searched for Businesses Using GPS (Dec. 2009 Data)
1. WalMart
2. Starbucks
3. Target

What City Conducted the Most GPS Searches in 2009 (10 Listed)
1. Los Angeles
2. Dallas/FT. Worth
3. Chicago

Cities Most Likely to Reroute Using GPS Data
1. Los Angeles
2. Washington D.C.
3. New York City

Cities with Cost Conscious Drivers (Based on Gas Price; Dec, 2009)
1. Phoenix
2. San Antonio
3. Cleveland

States Most Frequently Using GPS Navigation
1. Maryland (Use it for twice as many trips as national average)
2) District of Columbia
3) Massachusetts

All of the lists can be accessed here.

Source: TeleNav
Hat Tip: All Points Blog

Posted in Business and Economics, Geographic, Lists and Rankings | No Comments »

Libraries Lead the E-Book Revolution

Thursday, March 11th, 2010

From an Article by Philip Harvey:

I haven’t read an e-book and when asked by borrowers if I feel that my profession of librarian is under threat, I ask them if they themselves have used an e-book . No, is the consistent reply. But they know chapter and verse about the developments, usually from what they have seen on the internet. The new slimline gadgets can display everything a text maniac wants to get their hands on. Or so it seems.

[Snip]

Digital is moving in, that’s for sure. But will readers get what they want? I don’t mean readers who ask for the latest blockbuster, but all of us who need those difficult-to-get books for study or personal interest, the ones Google says are not easily accessible. It is the same librarians who remind the digitising deliverers that inter-library loan can get the requested print version at next to no cost and in short time.

Far from sidelining academic and special collections, the digital libraries of the future make easy and free access to print-libraries even more of a priority: there is no way of predicting the price tag for that rare thesis or out-of-print title in its downloadable form. This is an issue that more academics and specialists need to be questioning now, especially as they are the ones often making the decisions about their libraries, and not the librarians.

[Snip]

Indeed, the fourth century shift from the scroll to the codex is being used as a comparison to the present transmogrification. I tend to believe that we are seeing the early technology of the e-book. In five years the e-book will look, feel, sound, smell and gesticulate in very different ways from its iPad and Kindle prototypes. iPad will look as cute as a cassette tape.

Access the Complete Article
An illustration is included.

Source: HomePAGE Daily
Note: This source for this items calls itself the first Global Student Newspaper.” It’s based in Australia.

Posted in Digitization Projects, E-books, Libraries and Librarianship | No Comments »

Google Street View Goes National in the UK, 95% of Roads Covered

Thursday, March 11th, 2010

From The Telegraph:

Google’s Street View service has been available in 25 cities since last March, but the increased coverage makes an additional 210,000 miles of detailed mapping public.

[Snip]

Despite featuring images visible only from public roads, Street View has attracted critics who believe the detailed street-level information could be exploited by criminals.

[Snip]

The launch means the UK will catch up with other European countries – such as Spain, France, and Italy – which already boast nationwide coverage.

Because Street View images look best in dry, overcast conditions, Google said its biggest challenge in the UK was the weather.

Campaigner Alex Deane, director of Big Brother Watch, is concerned about the privacy implications of Street View after a number of people contacted him with their concerns.

He said: “For many, Google’s Street View cameras are an upsetting invasion of privacy. People tend not to be asked whether they are comfortable with it coming to their town.

Via The Independent

Google’s street-level imaging service has been extended to cover more than 95 per cent of UK roads.

From Thursday, 360-degree pictures from Penzance to the Shetland islands will go online, encompassing nearly a quarter of a million miles of British roads.

Posted in Geographic, Technology and Internet | No Comments »

In the News: Proposal to Merge National Library of New Zealand & National Archives of New Zealand

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

A proposal to merge the National Library of NZ and the National Archives of NZ and merge them into the Department of Internal Affairs continues to have opinions published Here are a couple from the past few days:

+ Archives, Library merger turning back the clock (via NZ Labour Party)

“The Government is trying to wind back the clock by putting Archives and the National Library under the control of Internal Affairs, after extensive work was done to separate them only a decade ago,” Grant Robertson said.

“The Chief Archivist needs to be in the position to enforce the law that requires other government agencies to keep and deposit their records. That will be compromised with a re-merger into Internal Affairs.

“When the National Library was administered by Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Education it struggled to have a voice. The separation allowed protection for the iconic Alexander Turnbull Library, and a place for library users to have a role in its management. None of this can be guaranteed with a re-merger.

+ If it’s not broken then don’t fix it (via New Zealand Society of Authors)

The New Zealand Society of Authors has strong reservations about the proposed merger of Archives New Zealand and the National Library into the Department of Internal Affairs.

[Snip]

Tony Simpson, President of the Society, comments “Research facilities are not only important to historians and writers of historical fiction, but also to the protection of New Zealand history. It is crucial that the integrity of New Zealand’s research facilities be maintained and we are concerned that through this merger Archives New Zealand will lose its autonomy which would jeopardise its objectives with serious consequences for freedom of speech.”

We will continue to monitor and post news and opinion from all sides.

Posted in Archives and Special Collections, Libraries and Librarianship | No Comments »

Digitized / Searchable Content: The Word on the Street: Broadsheet Collection (1650-1910) from the National Library of Scotland

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

With all of the newspaper digitization going on (with much more to come) we wanted to share this collection of “broadsides” that we learned about a few days ago. Its been online for several years.

From the Home Page:

In the centuries before there were newspapers and 24-hour news channels, the general public had to rely on street literature to find out what was going on. The most popular form of this for nearly 300 years was ‘broadsides’ – the tabloids of their day. Sometimes pinned up on walls in houses and ale-houses, these single sheets carried public notices, news, speeches and songs that could be read (or sung) aloud.

The National Library of Scotland’s online collection of nearly 1,800 broadsides lets you see for yourself what ‘the word on the street’ was in Scotland between 1650 and 1910. Crime, politics, romance, emigration, humour, tragedy, royalty and superstitions – all these and more are here.

Each broadside comes with a detailed commentary and most also have a full transcription of the text, plus a downloadable PDF facsimile {Impressive!]. You can search by keyword, browse by title or browse by subject

Source: National Library of Scotland

Posted in Digitization Projects, History, Libraries and Librarianship | No Comments »

What’s the Oldest Cultural Organization in NYC? The New York Society Library (Established 1754)

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

Christopher Gray Writes:

Even as a taxi-driving college dropout I was attracted to the library’s creaky, old-shoe character. I went in to join in the early 1970s wearing a ponytail and army pants. Behind the desk was Helen Ruskell, to me a bit scary, kind of a battle ax. She looked at me doubtfully, and with good reason: Since 1920 she had been a gatekeeper of an institution that predated the public library system by more than a century.

The library was first quartered in City Hall, at Wall and Broad Streets, and it often claims to have been the first library of Congress, as congressmen borrowed its books when New York was the nation’s capital, from 1789 to 1790. Although Columbia College was also founded in 1754, I have discovered no other library, museum or similar organization predating this peculiar institution.

By the mid-19th century the library flowered into a full-fledged literary organization, with lectures by Poe, Emerson and others, and in 1856 put up a new home on University Place, then a smart residential address.

[Snip]

Members began moving uptown and having their books delivered, and the library’s literary aspirations faded. In 1937 it relocated to its present 1917 town house on East 79th Street, after shelves were installed in the gutted shell of the back half. That was the institution guarded by Miss Ruskell when I arrived, a wonderful but musty book-lending operation for polite private school families, although anyone could come to the first-floor reference room and consult any book.

The NY Society Library is located on E. 79th St.

They have a Facebook page and Twitter feed. You can also learn more on their web page.

Access the Complete Article

Source: NY Times
Hat Tip: ALA

Posted in History, Libraries and Librarianship | No Comments »

Online Database: Index to American Botanical Literature (Searchable)

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

From the “About Page:

The Index to American Botanical Literature has provided a service to the American botanical community for over a century, published initially in the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club and subsequently in Brittonia. Beginning in 1886, when Elizabeth Britton of The New York Botanical Garden was editor, the Index has provided bibliographic data both on books and articles in periodicals. In 1999, the Index went to an entirely electronic format.

The Index contains entries dealing with various aspects of extant and fossil American plants and fungi, including systematics and floristics, morphology, and ecology, as well as economic botany and general botany (publications dealing with botanists, herbaria, etc.). “America” is defined in the broadest possible sense, encompassing land and marine plants and fungi from Greenland to Antarctica. American territory outside this area, e.g., Hawaii, is not included.

The searchable database includes all those entries published in the Index since 1996, and thus includes botanical literature appearing since late 1995. We have made minimal progress in retrospective cataloging, and will continue to add older literature as time and manpower are available. If a bibliographic entry is not in the Index, it probably means either (1) the subject matter was considered inappropriate (e.g., physiology, genetics), or (2) the publication has not arrived at the LuEsther T. Mertz Library of The New York Botanical Garden.

Access and Search the Database

Search Using:
+ Category
+ Author
+ Title of Article or Chapter
+ Journal
+ Book Title
+ Keywords

Source: New York Botanical Garden (via Infomine)

Posted in Databases, Directories, and Guides, Media Guides, Factbooks, Fact Sheets, Press Kits, Resources, Science | No Comments »

Google Announces Digitization Project in Italy; Updates Maps With Biking Info (U.S.)

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

First, Mountain View has announced that they’ve made an agreement with the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and will work with the Rome and Florence National Libraries to digitize up to a million out-of-copyright works. The librarians at each library will decide what will be digitized.

The Google news release also contains a comment about Europeana, a European Commission project to digitize cultural materials from around Europe. For those interested, this page lists the organizations participating in the Europeana program. According to their web site, they have six million items (images, texts, books, sounds, videos) digitized so far.

In addition to Europeana there is also the European Library Material in this database comes from National Libraries throughout Europe.

On the topic of other digitization in Europe, the Google Blog notes:

Digitization of books is a tremendous undertaking, requiring the joint effort of a great number of public and private stakeholders. For this reason, we’re supportive of many other efforts at digitization, such as the European Commission’s Europeana. We want to see these books have the broadest reach possible — the books we scan are available for inclusion in Europeana, of which the Florence Library is a contributing member, and other digital libraries. The more of the world’s historical, cultural treasures we can bring online, the more we can unlock our shared heritage.

Stay tuned. It will also be interesting to see what other digital library projects ask for access to the scanned content.

See Also: Medieval Tomes Slated for Digitization (via AP)
This article reports that works by Galileo will be included in the digitization.

2) The other news from Google is about Google Maps. Beginning today, biking directions are available. The company says this has been a very frequent request of users. You’ll also find over 12,000 miles of bike trail info (from selected third parties including the Rails to Trails Conservancy that is also visible on maps. This second post is very interesting. It discusses many variables and other factors that go into creating a bike routing program.

The remainder of this post includes some very helpful screen caps. You can access the interface to get biking directions several ways including using maps.google.com/biking

Source: Official Google Blog

Notes:
1) Biking data for about 150 U.S. cities as of today. More to come.
2) Not yet available for mobile devices but that is on the way.

Posted in Databases, Directories, and Guides, Digitization Projects, Information Industry, Reference Tools, Resources, Technology and Internet | No Comments »

Academic Publishers Seeing Strong Growth From e-Book Sales

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

From the Article:

Nearly 90% of commmercial academic publishers have seen growth in e-book sales over the past two years, according to a cross-sector survey released today (10th March) by the Association of Learned Professional and Scholarly Publishers. Growth in some cases was more than 1,000%, with e-book sales now almost 10% of total book sales of the publishers surveyed.

[Snip]

In total 68.6% of publishers have seen an increase in e-book revenue over the last two years. For those publishers with e-book programmes growth had been extraordinary, with one publisher recording e-book growth of 44,000%. Even without this figure included, publishers recorded growth in e-book sales of more than 200%, with commercial publishers seeing a rise of 345% and non-profit publishers growth of 108%.

While e-book sales still account for a relatively small amount of total book sales, the survey found that for commercial academic publishers they now represented almost 8% of business, while for non-profit publishers it was more than 10%. For ‘very small’ publishers it was above 17%, while for ‘large’ publishers it was close to 13% of book sales. Overall digital accounted for 9.4% of total book revenue, a three-fold increase on previous estimates.

Access the Complete Article

Source: The Bookseller

These numbers come from the Association of American Publishers. The post includes a graph.

Posted in E-books, Scholarly Publishing | No Comments »