The Library of Congress, Free Web Access to the LC Authority Files
At the beginning of July the Library of Congress began providing FREE “trial” public access to the LC Authority File via the LC Authorities site. For the cataloging community access to these files can serve many purposes. Four files (Subject, Name, Title, and Name/Title Authority Headings) are available for searching/browsing.
A Few Details
According to the faq, “authority records cannot be searched by keyword(s). are “left-anchored” — search words must be entered in order starting with the leftmost word (omitting initial articles and initial punctuation).” Records are available in a labelled display and MARC format. The only caveat, according to the faq, is that authority records may only be saved, printed or emailed one at a time.
Reference Use?
Although in NO way are these files primary ready-reference tools but they can assist in answering some “fast factual” questions. Here’s one example using the Names file. This file contains about 5.3 million entries including data on 3.8 million personal, 900,000 corporate, 120,000 meeting, and 90,000 geographic names. After running a few searches I found that you can learn “real names” and for birthdays for authors, entertainers, and other celebrity types I was also able to access some basic corporate name info. For example, info on company name changes. Most entries include a citation to the source of the information.
Sample Name File Searches To Try
Select Name Authority Headings and Enter Name
*Comedian Albert Brook’s name file. You’ll learn that his birth name is Albert Einstein
*Rock Music legend Pete Townshend’s Name File. Learn his full name, birth date, and birth location.
*Name file for Metra (the commuter railroad service in Chicago). Learn that Metra is a service name for the Northeast Illinois Regional Commuter Railroad Corporation.
*The often used example, because of the many spelling variations, of Muammar Qaddafi’s authority record.
Final Notes
For those of you out there who are not familiar with authority work, here are several definitions from ODLIS to assist. You probably already realize that these concepts have applications outside the traditional library database as more and more organizations build databases where control and uniformity of material in the database is necessary. The LC Authority file is one of many authority files that exist. OCLC, other libraries, and database providers all build and maintain their own files. Btw, the LC Authorities file is Invisible Web data. These records cannot be accessed from general web engines like Google and AltaVista.
CORRECTION
Anna Della Porta from LC informs me that the above statement about other authority files is incorrect as it relates to OCLC and other services. Anna writes, “In fact, the copy of the LC Authority File (or national authority file) that users view in OCLC or in RLIN is the same “file” that resides at LC. We maintain the master copy of the LC Authority File at LC. Each day we receive authority record contributions from NACO participants via OCLC, RLIN, and the British Library. Those three sites are known as the NACO “nodes” as they maintain copies of the LC Authority File. We then distribute these contributions on a daily basis back to the nodes, along with the records produced by LC catalogers. In this way, the three sites keep their copies of the LC Authority File synchronized with the master copy at LC.
Direct to LC Authorities
See Also: The LC Authorities FAQ

From a Brief Article:

Hours of TV news film recorded by a US news agency in the 1960s and 70s has been discovered in an empty London office. The material includes some famous names and some revealing glimpses of how we lived 40 years ago

Watch the Video News Report

Source: BBC News
Hat Tip: Amia Newsbriefs

The article includes the following sections:

+ Content vs. Delivery

+ Reading as an Experience

+ Why e-books now?

+ Control of Content, Control of Distribution

+ Standards and Protocols

+ Will e-books make printed books obsolete?

+ Issues to Consider

Direct to Complete Article (7 pages; PDF)

Source: California Digital Library

First, Bing is now including Twitter results from “more prominent and prolific Twitterers from a variety of spheres” for certain types of searches. Learn more via the Bing blog and Search Engine Land.

Second, word from Google Book Search that they’ve added tag clouds for some titles in their database.

From a Blog Post:

Starting today, you’ll find a cloud of “Common Terms and Phrases” on the Book Overview page for some of our books. This cloud represents the distribution of words in a book: big terms are more common in the book, while small terms are rarer.

Here’s an example.

See Also: Amazon’s “Look Inside the Book” program continues to provide a concordance/tag clouds for some titles. They’re found under the heading “concordance” on a book overview page. Here’s an example.

UPDATE: Want More Web Search News? We’ve got it!
++ Google Blog and News Search has added several new features (via Search Engine Roundtable.

++ Google Blog Search Sees Twitter Trends & Raises With Blog Search ‘Hot Queries’ (via Search Engine Land)

++ Bing gets a favorable review from USA Today.

See Also: On a related note, if you’re a Firefox user you can now create tag clouds from Twitter, Google, and Yahoo results via a tool named Search Cloudlet.

The chief executive gave his 131st press conference, but made little news. Then he held a cabinet meeting, met with a number of individual lawmakers, and left just before midnight for an overnight trip to New Haven, Connecticut, where the next day he would receive an honorary degree at Yale University.

Congress had adjourned the day before and left him with many bills to sign. One of them created the Federal Communications Commission. Another was an emergency appropriations bill. Yet another one dealt with how the Post Office should deal with letters with no or insufficient postage.

Sometime during the day, he also signed legislation creating the National Archives, whose massive headquarters in downtown Washington, DC, was already rising along Pennsylvania Avenue.

The idea of a national archives, a repository for the most important records of the nation, had been debated in and out of Congress for decades. Now, finally, legislation creating that entity had arrived at the President’s desk after the nation, already more than a century and a half old, had lost many of its early records to fires, mishandling, improper storage, and other natural and man-made events

2) Reflecting on the Archives’ growth into a world class archives
Adrienne Thomas, Acting Archivist of the United States, discusses the growth of the National Archives during the past 75 years.

Source: Prologue (Summer 2009)

It is the largest rare book collection in North America, housed in the largest library in the world, a “huge theme park of materials,” as he describes it. The division contains some 850,000 items—including Charles Dickens’ walking stick, the contents of Abraham Lincoln’s pockets on the night he was assassinated, and The Bay Psalm Book, published in 1640, the first book printed in what became the United States.

Source: Finebooks & Collections
Hat Tip: LC Blog

Do you want a quick and easy way to see the location of a street address?
Without having to leave the webpage you are on?

Bookmaplet is a free resource. Simply drag the “bookmarklet” to your bookmarks toolbar in your browser. Bookmaplet utilizes Google Maps.

Direct to Bookmaplet

Source: Bookmaplet.com

From the Article:

With Zotero, you can build up a collection of digital documents, cataloging and sorting it as you go. You can gloss the material so harvested, attaching your notes as you go. Zotero is particularly useful for gathering bibliographical data, and allows you to export it in a wide range of standard scholarly citation formats.

Source: Inside HigherEd

As far back as the mid-1600s, philanthropy was in play in Western society. Nancy K. Herther examines the growth of foundations and granting organizations and looks at the problems institutes of higher learning, powerhouses of research production within the U.S., are encountering using the evolving funding process.

Direct to Full Text Article

Source: Searcher

Once the event begins you’ll find FREE access to over 2.5 million full text eBooks that you can download to your computer. Some titles can also be downloaded and read on certain types mobile phones.

Book Sources include:

+ Project Gutenberg

+ Digital Pulp Publishing

+ Internet Archive

+ The World Public Library (normally a fee-based site)

+ E-Books About Everything

++ Direct to World eBook Fair Web Site and Database

Bibliometricians have introduced various scales of ranking journals; some based on publications, some based on usage as well, including the internet, using social networking analysis. Bollen et al. (1) recently concluded that no single indicator adequately measures impact and the IF is at the periphery of 39 scales analyzed. But there is a new parameter, the Eigenfactor™, which attempts to rate the influence of journals (www.eigenfactor.org). The Eigenfactor™ ranks journals in a manner similar to that used by Google for ranking the importance of Web sites in a search.

Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

The Office of Management and Budget launched a Web site today that uses colorful pie charts, bar charts and raw data to share information with the public about how federal agencies are spending money on information technology, White House officials announced.
[Snip]
The dashboard’s homepage displays the federal government’s entire IT portfolio organized by agency in a bar chart. Users can click on the individual agencies on the chart to get more detailed financial and performance information.

Web links are associated with elements on the new Web site so the public can embed charts and other information onto their own Web sites, according to OMB. Agencies will update cost, schedule and performance figures monthly on the dashboard, according to OMB.

Direct to Federal IT Dashboard

Source: FCW

The 2009 edition includes 60 articles and other submissions provided by more than 50 contributors from librarians in government agencies, courts, and the military, as well as from professional association leaders, LexisNexis Consultants, and more.

The document was compiled by Marie Kaddell from LN.

Direct to Full Text (181 pages; PDF)

Source: LexisNexis

From the Article:

Ecstatic space officials at NASA could be about to unveil one of their most stunning discoveries for 40 years — new and amazingly clear footage of the first moon landing.

The release of the new images next month could be one of the most talked about events of the summer.
[Snip]
The Sunday Express can now reveal that the missing tapes containing the original high quality images have been found.

If the visual data can be retrieved, NASA is set to reveal them to the world as a key plank of celebrations to mark the 40th anniversary of the landings next month.

The tapes show in much more detail than almost anyone has previously seen the surface of the moon beneath the patriotic symbol of the US flag.

Source: The Express (UK)

For centuries the archival community has understood and practiced the art of adding contextual information while preserving an artifact. The question now is how these practices can be transferred to the digital domain. With the growing expansion of production and consumption of digital objects (documents, audio, video, etc.) it has become essential to identify and study issues related to their representation. A cura­tor in the digital realm may be said to have the same responsibilities as one in a traditional archival domain. However, with the mass production and spread of digital objects, it may be difficult to do all the work manually. In the present article this problem is considered in the area of digital video preservation. We show how this problem can be formulated and propose a framework for capturing contextual infor­mation for ephemeral digital video preservation. This proposal is realized in a system called ContextMiner, which allows us to cater to a digital curator’s needs with its four components: digital video curation, collection visualization, browsing interfaces, and video harvesting and monitoring. While the issues and systems described here are geared toward digital videos, they can easily be applied to other kinds of digital objects.

Direct to Complete Article (18 pages; PDF)

Source: The International Journal of Digital Curation