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National Library of Ireland Now Twittering

resourceshelf — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:59:07 +0000

You can follow the feed or visit the the National Library of Ireland Twitter page at: @NLIreland.

The National Library of Ireland web site is at: http://www.nli.ie/en/homepage.aspx.

The William Butler Yeats Online Exhibition and theNLI Collection of Digital Photographs are two places you might want to visit.

Source: NLI

eBay Developing New Search Tools, Crowdsourcing Feedback on “Garden by eBay” Site

resourceshelf — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:34:37 +0000

From the NY Times Post:

When eBay makes changes big or small, a very vocal group of buyers and sellers react. Now, eBay is trying to involve its users earlier in the process by getting their input before new features are introduced.

The first change to be crowd sourced this way is a set of new tools to search eBay’s Web site. EBay has about 200 million items for sale at any given time, and sifting through that list can be burdensome.

Instead of rolling out the search features to all users, eBay will put them in a new place on the site Garden by eBay [sounds like a hotel site, not a "labs" area (-:]. People can choose to use the new tools, rate them and send critiques to the product team, which will continually tweak them. Some will fail and others will be incorporated into the main site.

[Snip]

For example, categories to narrow a search — such as choosing a style, color or brand of a handbag — used to be buried, but will now show up higher on the page. Right now, to narrow a search to, say, a never-opened Nikon point-and-shoot 10-megapixel digital camera, a shopper has to click on five separate pages. The new tools will let people hover over the categories, narrowing the search with a single click.

Direct to Garden by eBay Site

Access the Complete Article

Source: Bits Blog

Paper — Social Transmission and Viral Culture

ResourceShelf — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 14:45:02 +0000

Social Transmission and Viral Culture (PDF; 379 KB)

People often share news, opinions, and information, and social transmission shapes both individual behavior and collective outcomes. But why are certain things more viral than others? An analysis of over 7,500 New York Times articles published over six months suggests that individual-level psychological processes (e.g., emotion) act as a selection mechanism on culture, shaping what becomes viral. Even controlling for external drivers of attention (e.g., the time an article spent on the Times’ homepage), awe-inspiring articles are more likely to be among the newspaper’s most e-mailed stories on a given day. Practically useful, surprising, positive, and affect-laden articles are also more likely to be viral. The magnitudes of these relationships are considerable. These results underscore the importance of considering how individual-level psychological processes shape collective outcomes such as the transmission and prominence of culture.

Source: Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania (Berger/Milkman)

Canada — Building Supervisor’s Efforts Save Historical Footage from Fire at CTV Ottawa

ResourceShelf — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 14:37:45 +0000

Building supervisor’s efforts save historical footage from fire at CTV Ottawa

About 100 CTV Ottawa staff gathered Monday morning to assess the damage and give a standing ovation to the man who helped firefighters limit the destruction caused by a devastating fire early Sunday at the Merivale Road studios.

Building supervisor Mark Leighton received the tribute from staff gathered in the Ottawa Citizen’s conference room to discuss how to move forward after the fire destroyed their newsroom.

Leighton, who is in his 30th year at CTV Ottawa, said he arrived at the scene shortly after being called about the 4:14 a.m. Sunday blaze.

After speaking with police and the fire department, he waited to be let inside to shut down services to the building to make it safe for firefighters.

He told firefighters what was critical to save, and led them through the building, covering up important equipment as he went to protect it from the water pouring in.

He even picked up the master tapes that allowed CTV to broadcast Monday morning.
…
Stock news footage, some archival footage, personal items, cameras and other vital equipment were lost, but Douville said Monday that thousands of historical broadcasts are safe. The station will now begin the process of rebuilding as much of its news archive as possible.

Source: Ottawa Citizen
Hat tip: Poynter Online

Publishers Win a Bout in E-Book Price Fight

resourceshelf — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 04:03:43 +0000

Motoko Rich writes:

Google has been talking about entering the direct e-book market, through a program it calls Google Editions, for nearly a year. But in early discussions with publishers, Google had proposed giving them a 63 percent cut of the suggested retail price, and allowing consumers to print copies of the digital books and cut and paste segments. After Apple unveiled the iPad last month, publishers indicated that Apple would give them 70 percent of the consumer price, which publishers would set.

According to several publishers who have been talking to Google, the book companies had balked at what they saw as Google’s less generous terms, and basically viewed printing and cut-and-paste as deal breakers.

Now that both Apple and Amazon have agreed to terms more to the book companies’ liking, several publishers said that their conversations with Google have taken on a more flexible tone.

These publishers, who requested anonymity because their discussions with Google are confidential, said Google had relaxed its plans to allow customers to print or cut and paste.

Source: NY Times

Van Gogh’s Letters: The Searchable Database from Van Gogh Museum Continues Online

resourceshelf — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 02:06:09 +0000

A column by Christopher Knight in today’s Los Angeles Times about Van Gogh’s letters (the exhibition is now in London) reminded us to remind you that the searchable web portion of the exhibit has been online since October, 2009.

Here’s our post from October 8, 2009 where we provide a bit of an overview and links to a few of the features. This is one impressive resource.

Direct to the Database
The database and related resources come from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

Sources: LA Times; ResourceShelf

British Library and Microsoft Announce Online Platform for Collaborative Research

resourceshelf — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 23:47:51 +0000

From the Announcement:

From 8 February 2010 the new open source ‘Research Information Centre’ (RIC) Framework v1.0 is available to download for free – http://ric.codeplex.com

The RIC represents an entirely new way of conducting research by providing an online environment in which to navigate the unprecedented collection of digital information available to 21st century researchers. The RIC aims to maximise web technology to improve both flexibility and knowledge sharing for researchers, wherever they are in the world.

The British Library and Microsoft Research have worked in partnership to design and develop a ‘virtual research environment’ that will provide a single easy-to-use interface enabling research teams to work collaboratively. The RIC will provide an environment in which users can create, share, discuss, manage, find and track articles, references, bookmarks, funding proposals, presentations and all the other digital information related to their research.

“The RIC has amazing potential,” said Richard Boulderstone, Director of E-Strategy & Information Systems at the British Library. “Together with Microsoft and a selection of researcher-focussed development partners, we are building on the RIC research lifecycle framework to create a unique environment for biomedical research collaboration in the 21st Century.”

Built using the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Platform, the binaries and source code are being made publicly available to encourage experimentation and use amongst the scientific community to develop the RIC’s foundation templates into an application that will offer support at every stage of the research life-cycle. The British Library is developing a RIC template that will incorporate a whole range of intuitive and customisable tools of relevance to biomedical research.

Access the Complete Announcement

Source: British Library

We’ve Heard it Before & We’ll Hear it Again: Jurors, “No Twittering Allowed”

resourceshelf — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 23:09:18 +0000

David Kravets writes:

A federal court policy making body is belatedly entering the internet age by proposing that judges clearly inform jurors they must not electronically discuss cases they are hearing.

It’s standard procedure to inform jurors to remain mum and not conduct any research about the case until a verdict. But recent gadget use by jurors has forced the hand of the Judicial Conference, the policy making body of the U.S. federal courts.

“You may not communicate with anyone about the case on your cell phone, through e-mail, Blackberry, iPhone, text messaging, or on Twitter, through any blog or website, through any internet chat room, or by way of any other social networking websites, including Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and YouTube,” (.pdf) according to the model jury instructions the Judicial Conference released days ago to the federal judiciary.

See: Juror Use of Electronic Technologies (3 pages; PDF)
Source: Judicial Conference Committee on Court Administration and Case Management (CACM)

Access the Complete Article

Source: Wired

Center for Research Libraries (CRL) Proposes Print Archiving Network

resourceshelf — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 21:14:59 +0000

From the Announcement:

At the American Library Association (ALA) Midwinter meeting, the Center for Research Libraries presented a proposal for cooperation among the existing regional and domain-based print archiving initiatives. CRL’s goal is to foster long-term preservation and accessibility of research materials important to the scholarly community, while significantly reducing the costs of legacy print collections. Attendees at the meeting expressed strong support for the CRL proposal and agreed to work together over the next several months to develop more detailed plans for implementation.

A number of major consortia are already developing shared print serial projects. By working together these organizations might be able to achieve synergies among the multiple regional initiatives. CRL proposed a 9-month planning process including the following activities:

+ Convene representatives of consortia, libraries and other apppropriate[sic] organizations to explore prospects for a formal, multi-regional cooperative print archiving effort beginning in fall 2010

+ Create mechanisms for making key program decisions and implement technologies for sharing practices, analytical and anecdotal information about costs, collections, and services

+ Aggregate information about print archiving projects. CRL is developing a project registry on its Web site, which currently includes a narrative description of known print archive projects (http://www.crl.edu/archiving-preservation/print-archives/)

+ Specify service agreements and commitments (selection criteria, archival conditions, promised retention period, access and delivery services, financial support)

+ Specify common requirements for systems and tools needed to support holdings disclosure and decision support, and encourage coordination of data definition.

This planning process will identify specific measures that U.S. and Canadian consortia might take in the next few years to align the various local and regional cooperative print collection management efforts.

Source: Center for Research Libraries

Online Database: Athletes of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games

resourceshelf — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:11:56 +0000

Access the Database

Search using up to three criteria:

+ Sport
+ Country
+ Keyword

Entries include:

+ Name (Clickable)
+ Sport
+ Height
+ Weight
+ Nationality
+ Date of Birth
+ Age

With a Java download, users can visualize total medal counts for all Winter Olympics.

Access the Database

Source: Vancouver 2010 (via Twitter)

Superpower Your Browser with LibX and Zotero: Open Source Tools for Research

resourceshelf — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:01:33 +0000

A Note from Gary: Zotero is one of the most useful web research tools I’ve ever used. It’s worth money (that I would be willing to pay) but it continues to be made available at no charge.

From the Article:
by Jason Puckett, Librarian for Communication and User Education Technologies, Georgia State University,

Most of our powerful research tools now exist on the Web, but libraries shouldn’t overlook the ability to add research features to the browser software itself. The extensible nature of the Firefox browser in particular makes it easy to install add-ons that help researchers at every stage of the research cycle, from search and discovery to writing and citation.

Two such add-ons are LibX, which enhances the search process, and Zotero, which eases saving, organizing, and citing sources. The LibX search toolbar can be customized to search your library’s catalog and databases, insert library links into sites like Amazon and Wikipedia, and more. Zotero is a citation manager and bibliography creator that is as easy to use as iTunes. They run on any operating system that will run Firefox, and LibX will also work with Internet Explorer for Windows. Both plug-ins are free open source tools developed by universities for academic researchers.

Source: C&RL News

For the Kindle: British Library Will Begin Providing Free Digital Access to 65,000 Rare First Editions of 19th Century Fiction

resourceshelf — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:01:46 +0000

From the Article:

Owners of the Amazon Kindle e-book device will be able to view the books, including their original typeface and illustrations, of famous works by Charles Dickens, Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy, as well as thousands of more obscure authors.

Printed paperback copies of the first editions, including Dickens’s Bleak House and Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, will also be available for the public to order from Amazon for around £15.

Original copies of works by Austen and Dickens typically cost at least £250.

Most of the books that are currently available to download on the Kindle are by contemporary authors because they are the most profitable for publishers.

While some other services, such as Google Books, offer out-of-copyright works for free download, the library’s e-book publishing project, which is funded by Microsoft, will make first-editions available for free download for the first time.

“Freeing historic books from the shelves has the potential to revolutionise access to the world’s greatest library resources,” said Lynne Brindley, chief executive of the British Library.

Access thee Complete Article

Source: The Telegraph

More from The Times of London

The library’s ebook publishing project, funded by Microsoft, the computer giant, is the latest move in the mounting online battle over the future of books.

While some other services, such as Google Books, offer out-of-copyright works to be downloaded for free, users of the British Library service will be able to read from pages in the original books in the library’s collection.

New Resource: Track the U.S. Budget Proposal for Global Health As It Moves Through Congress

resourceshelf — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 10:01:54 +0000

From the Announcement:

With the release of the Administration’s Fiscal Year 2011 budget plan this week, the Foundation launched a budget tracker, http://www.kff.org/globalhealth/8045.cfm, to provide current information on the status of U.S. funding for key global health programs throughout the Congressional budget and appropriations process.

The tracker includes a detailed breakdown of each major account as presented in the President’s budget request and will be updated as needed as the appropriations bills proceed through Congress. The budget tracker is an element of the Foundation’s broader interactive U.S. global health policy tracker located online at: http://globalhealth.kff.org/Policy-Tracker.aspx.

Source: Kaiser Family Foundation

See Also: The Kaiser Family Foundation is Now Tweeting. You Can Follow Their Feed at: http://twitter.com/KaiserFamFound. Kaiser also has a news feed at: http://twitter.com/KHNews

Resource of the week: Guardian (UK) — Gateway to Government Data Around the World

ResourceShelf — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 08:39:20 +0000

Resource of the week: Guardian (UK) — Gateway to Government Data Around the World

We actually posted about this resource from The Guardian last month, but we figured it was worth highlighting here because it’s a work in progress that is bound to grow more and more useful over time.

From The Guardian:

Data, data, data. There’s loads of it out there and more coming your way as governments open their statistics vaults around the world.

First the US with data.gov, then Australia and New Zealand followed suit. Now it’s the UK’s turn with data.gov.uk.

And that’s in addition to the cities and US states that have made government data available too: London launched very recently – you can get the full set of links for government data sites around the world here.

Ever since the government appointed Sir Tim Berners-Lee as its open data Czar (working with Prof Nigel Shadbolt from Southampton University) it was obvious the issue was going to be big for the government, but what does it mean for you?

You now have tens of sites around the world providing you access, but how do you find them?

Well, this is now the place. To coincide with the launch of data.gov.uk, we have created the ultimate gateway to world government data.

At World Government Data you can:

Search government data sites from the UK, USA, Australia, New Zealand and London (this comes under United Kingdom, if you want to browse) in one place and download the data (more sites to come)
Help us find the best dataset by ranking them
Collect similar datasets together from around the world
Browse all datasets by each country

+ Direct to world government data

Source: guardian.co.uk

Hat tip: J. T. Johnson, Institute for Analytic Journalism

And here’s a related resource you might find useful, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:
Statistical Sites on the World Wide Web. Includes links to both U.S. and international statistics agencies and offices.

Beyond scientific publication: strategies for disseminating research findings

ResourceShelf — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 22:50:12 +0000

Beyond scientific publication : strategies for disseminating research findings (PDF; 1.5 MB)

A community research partnership is ideally part of a larger collaboration that includes the interests of each partner and spans a wide range of activities. Often a neglected afterthought in busy research schedules, the dissemination of key findings upon project completion is a crucial step in community-based research. In fact, we believe that researchers have an ethical obligation to ensure that research findings are disseminated to research participants, as well as other individuals and institutions in the communities in which we work. In an effort to increase ease and efficiency, this document provides key strategies for dissemination, including practical advice and specific templates you can adapt for your use. Through this strategic dissemination approach, CARE intends to distribute salient findings to affected communities, participant agencies, health departments, researchers, policy makers, and health advocacy groups. We hope this will help you to do the same.

Source: Yale Center for Clinical Investigation

Interesting! A Collection of Facts About Super Bowl XLIV

resourceshelf — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 19:56:58 +0000

Facts for Features: Super Bowl XLIV

Super Bowl XLIV will be played Feb. 7 at Sun Life Stadium in Miami Gardens, Fla., a Miami suburb. To commemorate this occasion, the Census Bureau has compiled a collection of facts examining the demographics of the host city, as well as the cities represented by the contenders, in this year’s edition of our nation’s most celebrated sporting event.

With the mail-out of 2010 Census questionnaires slightly more than a month away, the Census Bureau will run three ads promoting census awareness during the Super Bowl telecast — two during the pregame show and one during the third quarter.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

See Also: The Business of Professional Football (via Business & Economics Research Advisor, LC)

Digitizing U.S. History: The Railroads

resourceshelf — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 11:01:59 +0000

From the Article:

Led by UNL [University of Nebraska-Lincoln] history professor William Thomas, the team recently got a $100,000 boost for its efforts from a grant competition sponsored by four research agencies spread across the globe.

The funds will support UNL’s “Railroads and the Making of Modern America” digital history project, a project Thomas started four years ago.

The project already has gathered millions of pages of digital data related to railroad history – like time schedules, newspaper accounts, payrolls and maps. Now the project will work to integrate that data into other data, such as census information.

By doing so, the project will provide scholars of American history a valuable source of future research material, Thomas said.

“It’s not a matter of digitizing the content and putting it online, it’s about how we can create new tools to see how these data are related,” Thomas said. “This is about discovery.”

The project is both a cross-disciplinary and an international effort. At UNL, researchers in computer science will help analyze the data and integrate it into other data.

Source: Lincoln Journal Star

Online Database: New Comprehensive Land Conservation Database Launched

resourceshelf — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 20:13:23 +0000

From the Announcement:

The first comprehensive online database of land conservation in America was re-launched today by The Trust for Public Land (TPL), a national conservation organization.

The website, ConservationAlmanac.org, which has been the definitive source of information about land conservation policy at local, state, and federal levels, now offers new parcel-level data and mapping features to give users greater access to explore the results of land conservation. This week the new features launch for five states: Florida, Massachusetts, Missouri, Montana, and Oregon. In February data from five more states will be added: Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, and Wyoming.

TPL launched the Conservation Almanac in 2006 in response to numerous requests from policymakers, members of the media, and conservation practitioners about the growing funding sources for land conservation across America. TPL will continue updating the Almanac as new information becomes available and will add new state data each month.

Access The Conservation Almanac

Source: The Trust for Public Land

Lists & Rankings: America’s Most Promising Companies

resourceshelf — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 19:46:58 +0000

This Forbes list was released in December (holiday time) and we didn’t post. So, here it is.

1. Introductory Article
20 companies are listed.

2. Slides For Each of the 20 Companies
Includes directory info, what they do, the latest news.

3. A Complete List of Companies, Video with Head of Company, and Methodology. Most useful portion of article package.

4. Using the “buttons” on the right side of this page, you can create lists of companies that meet the following criteria:

+ Prior Entrepreneurial Experience
+ Companies with More than 10 Employees
+ Outside Investors
+ Patents
+ Revenue Greater than $0

Ireland: Government Policy on Archive is at Odds With its Own History

resourceshelf — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 19:21:41 +0000

From the Article:‘

Probably the single most successful cultural project in the last five years in Ireland has been the project by the National Archives to digitise and make available online the 1911 census. It began in 2007, when the Dublin records went online. Antrim, Kerry and Down followed in 2008 and all the other counties became available last August. The public response has been phenomenal. Up to last January, there had been 165 million hits on the site, with 5.5 million users logged on. About 60 per cent are from the Republic, 30 per cent from the UK (including, of course, Northern Ireland which is covered in the census) and the rest from North America and continental Europe. It is hard to think of any cultural project by a public institution that has had such an impact in such a short time.

[Snip]

This year, the annual release to the public of Government records under the 30-year rule had to be severely curtailed because there was simply no room for much of the new material. Some had to be retained by the Government departments in question and some was put into storage. More than 100,000 documents are now kept in a warehouse at the back of the cramped archives building in Bishop Street, Dublin. The warehouse has no proper environmental controls and the material is piled on wooden pallets, making it very difficult to access. [our emphasis].

[Snip]

As well as these immediate problems, there are major long-term issues that need to be addressed. What is Government policy on the digitisation of archival records? More urgently, what is the effect of the move, in public institutions, away from paper-based records and towards e-mail? What is being done to preserve the electronic record? In the Seanad recently, Feargal Quinn stated that “the registries, which used to organise centrally the files of each department, have collapsed in Belfast as well as Dublin. It appears that over the last decade and a half, the old central registry system has broken down in the various departments.” This contention seemed to be supported by Mansergh (who, as a trained historian, actually understands this issue). He noted that “the nature of documents produced by Government are such that we are betwixt and between paper and digital information. There is a considerable unease, given that we are in the digital age, that even more records will go missing than was the case in the paper age.”

Source: Irish Times