http://www.resourceshelf.com A daily newsletter with resources of interest to information professionals, educators and journalists. Sun, 22 Nov 2009 06:01:52 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Eight minutes? Yes, eight minutes. All of the audiobooks are non-fiction and all contain original content. From the Announcement iMinds, which launched in September of this year, creates unique, short-form, eight-minute MP3 audio books on general knowledge topics, known as "MindTracks". Each MindTrack is heavily researched and features music and sound ... http://www.resourceshelf.com/2009/11/21/eight-minute-audiobooks-will-soon-be-available-to-overdrive-customers/ From the Article: The Judicial Branch is preparing to close six of the its 16 law libraries and has released specific dates for the closing of three courthouses, saying that budget cuts have forced the branch’s hand. Chief Court Administrator Judge Barbara Quinn testified before the General Assembly’s Appropriations Committee on Wednesday ... http://www.resourceshelf.com/2009/11/21/six-law-libraries-set-to-close-in-connecticut/ From the Article: A searchable map detailing 40 years of Israeli archaeological work in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, developed for the USC Digital Library, has won the 2009 Open Archaeology Prize from the American Schools of Oriental Research. [Snip] Project leaders Lynn Swartz Dodd of USC and Rafi Greenberg of Tel ... http://www.resourceshelf.com/2009/11/21/digital-mapdatabase-reveals-israeli-archaeology/ From the Web Site: Orphanet is a database of information on rare diseases and orphan drugs for all publics. Its aim is to contribute to the improvement of the diagnosis, care and treatment of patients with rare diseases. Orphanet includes a Professional Encyclopaedia, which is expert-authored and peer-reviewed, a Patient Encyclopaedia ... http://www.resourceshelf.com/2009/11/21/health-research-online-database-orphanet/ From the Post: From the Post: I'm on the board of CommonCrawl.Org, a nonprofit corporation that is attempting to provide a web crawl for use by all. An interesting report just got sent to us about the use of robots.txt files within the .Gov Top Level Domain, a standard known as the ... http://www.resourceshelf.com/2009/11/21/carl-malamud-on-robots-txt-and-the-gov-top-level-domain/ Wikipedia founder creates on-line source of help for Tampa Bay's homeless Between stops in his globe-trotting life as an Internet mogul, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales came to Ybor City Friday to launch a new Web site that offers a wide range of resources for the homeless in the Tampa Bay area. The ... http://www.resourceshelf.com/2009/11/21/wikipedia-founder-creates-on-line-source-of-help-for-tampa-bays-homeless/ From the Blog Post: The Nielsen Company today reported overall online video usage and top online brands ranked by video streams for October 2009. Year-over-year, unique viewers, total streams, streams per viewer and time per viewer were up, led by a 26 percent growth in total streams. What's most interesting is who ... http://www.resourceshelf.com/2009/11/21/online-video-keeps-streaming-along/ Crossing the digital divide to Grandma's house How do you get to grandma's house in the digital age? It's like asking five New Yorkers how to get to Brooklyn: Everyone's got a different answer and no one's necessarily wrong. Say you live in St. Petersburg and grandma lives in Palm Beach. Mapquest would ... http://www.resourceshelf.com/2009/11/20/crossing-the-digital-divide-to-grandmas-house/ A Never Ending "Virtual Stream" of Digitized Text by Gary Price, Senior Editior When Chris Sherman and I were writing and then giving book talks and presentations about The Invisible Web, we said John Mark Ockerbloom's Online Books Page was an essential resource for anyone interested in digitized, full text books. ... http://www.resourceshelf.com/2009/11/20/collection-development-want-a-non-stop-stream-of-recently-digitized-ebooks-to-choose-from-check-this-out/ From the Announcement: 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 ... http://www.resourceshelf.com/2009/11/20/another-new-digitization-project-from-nara-and-footnote-the-native-american-collection/ From the Article: The tunes may be a little avant-garde for most tastes. They're unlikely to give Britney Spears and Beyoncé a run for their money, but are impressive achievements all the same. Musical twitterers have found a way to condense entire compositions to fit in single, 140-character tweets. The trend started ... http://www.resourceshelf.com/2009/11/20/twitter-tunes-the-album-ready-for-download-free/ Citizen Media Law Project Launches Legal Assistance Network for Online Journalists Source: Citizen Media Law Project We are delighted to announce (PDF) the public launch of the Berkman Center's Online Media Legal Network (OMLN), a new pro bono (i.e., free!) initiative that connects lawyers and law school clinics from across the ... http://www.resourceshelf.com/2009/11/19/citizen-media-law-project-launches-legal-assistance-network-for-online-journalists/ 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 ... http://www.resourceshelf.com/2009/11/19/merriam-websters-word-of-the-year-announced/ 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 ... http://www.resourceshelf.com/2009/11/19/hathitrust-offers-full-text-search-of-millions-of-digitized-books-and-journals/ 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 ... http://www.resourceshelf.com/2009/11/19/some-courts-raise-bar-on-reading-employee-email/ 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 ... http://www.resourceshelf.com/2009/11/19/investing-research-pays-before-you-lay-money-down/ 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 ... http://www.resourceshelf.com/2009/11/19/digital-preservation-uk-government-to-launch-web-continuity-program/ 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 ... http://www.resourceshelf.com/2009/11/19/two-new-databases-from-ebsco-for-art-and-architecture-researchers/ 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, ... http://www.resourceshelf.com/2009/11/19/arl-e-science-survey-preliminary-results-and-resources-released/ 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 ... http://www.resourceshelf.com/2009/11/19/data-visualization-interactively-track-the-avian-flu-around-the-world-using-google-earth/