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Friday, April 30, 2004
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Search-UJIKO Kartoo Launches a New Search Product: UJIKO I haven't been a big fan of Kartoo's metasearch product but that's just me, I know many people who do like it. Today, the company launched crawled database product claiming four billion pages that offers many interesting customization features. After some quick searches UJIKO looks interesting and worth a look. Here's an overview to help with your testing of UJIKO. + You'll need to have FLASH installed + Implied "and" between terms + Company claims they are using patented technology to customize results + Search inteface: ++ single search box, uncluttered page + Result pages: ++ Sponsored links at top of serps (provided by Overture) ++ Right side of page includes terms to refine your query ++ When you click on one of the results, the page is stored by UJIKO and will instantly appear in the first results next time you search ++ Option to "File" results (either email results or print them) ++ Option to organize results into folders (Memory) ++ To do this, select the heart icon next to the result, then place in folder. You can also modify the link description by adding your own comments, removing others ++ You can also tweak the order of results by "grading" sites you've seen. Explanation here. ++ You can also remove results from the result set by clicking the garbage can icon ++ You can build customized filters Domain Filter It enables you to mark or prohibit sites from a specific domain. Word Description Filter It allows you to mark or prohibit sites which title or description includes some specific words. Enter for instance “free gratis” to filter all results containing those words. Page Filter It allows you to mark or prohibit some specific URL. Enter for example "www.kartoo.com www.kartoo.net/flash.php3" to filter those two pages. Site Filter It makes possible marking or prohibiting all pages from a site. For example, enter "www.kartoo www.ujiko" to filter all pages beginning with those letters, especially www.kartoo.com, www.kartoo.net, www.kartoo.org/info, www.ujiko.com, etc. Word URL Filter It allows you to mark or prohibit all pages which address includes specific sign chains. I.e., enter “kartoo ujiko” to filter pages such as www.kartoo.com, kartoo.com, www.ujiko.com, www.ujiko.com/kartoo.html, etc. + Privacy? This from the news release, "As opposed to other customization systems, all data are therefore stored on users' computer." + The company has plans to offer this technology to the enterprise market. + French and UK versions available + Questions I'm awaiting answers for- ++ Have they built their own database or are they buying the database from Google, Jeeves, Yahoo? ++ Do they offer any search syntax? Professional
Reading Shelf Scholarly Publishing Source: The Wellcome Trust New report reveals open access could reduce cost of scientific publishing by up to 30 per cent From the announcement, "A report out today shows that making scientific research available free on the Internet could wipe as much as 30 per cent off publishing costs. The Wellcome Trust report shows for the first time that the open access model of scientific publishing - where the author of a research paper pays for peer reviewed research to be made available on the web free to all who wish to use it - is economically viable, guarantees high quality research and is a sustainable option which could revolutionise the world of traditional scientific publishing." -- Federal Librarians Source: Federal Library and Information Center Committee (FLICC) Handbook of Federal Librarianship (PDF; 724 KB) "The Federal Librarians Handbook is written for professional librarians and is therefore not intended as a manual to instruct you on how to be a librarian. Instead it focuses on the federal angle of otherwise standard practices and procedures of good librarianship. A topic was omitted if it was determined not to have anything uniquely federal about it. An exception was made for the chapter on copyright because it remains a challenging and continuously developing topic for all librarians.... We have made a concerted effort not to reinvent the wheel by duplicating what is already available elsewhere.... Therefore, this handbook provides only brief treatment of the main points of a topic with many hypertext links to Web sites for detail coverage and references to print publications.... An additional comprehensive listing with even more hypertext links and complete bibliographic citations to print publications is provided in the Resources chapter at the end of the handbook." Text
Mining Source: JISC First Publicly Funded Text Mining Center in the World Will Be Established in the UK From the announcement, The JISC, BBSRC AND EPSRC announced today funding of some £1m to establish a National Centre for Text Mining. The remit of the Centre, the first publicly funded centre in the world, is to contribute to the associated national and international research agenda, to establish a service for the wider academic community, and to make connections with industry. Text mining attempts to discover new, previously unknown information by applying techniques from natural language processing, data mining, and information retrieval: + To identify and gather relevant textual sources + To analyse these to extract facts involving key entities and their properties + To combine the extracted facts to form new facts or to gain valuable insights Industry
Briefs + U.S. Air Force Licenses MetaCarta Software (via GCN) See Also: More About MetaCarta Here and Here -- + Infotrieve Launches Redesigned Web Site Resources,
Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text
Documents Terrorism Source: U.S. Department of State Just Released, Patterns of Global Terrorism 2003 -- Military--Bibliographies Three New Bibliographies from Air University Library + Conflict Termination in the Iraqi War 2003 + Military Transformation + Posse Comitatus These bibliographies include Internet resources, books, documents and periodicals. Air University Library offers more than 200 bibliographies on defense-related topics. -- Computer Fonts Fonts in Cyberspace Source: SIL International "A guide to finding language fonts on the Internet. Containing more than 400 sources for 123 languages." -- Prescription Drugs--United States New Database, Prescription Drug and Other Assistance Programs Source: Medicare.gov "The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the federal agency responsible for administering the Medicare program, gathered the data contained in the Prescription Drug and Other Assistance Programs database from various sources. The respective drug card program sponsors submit data for the Medicare-approved drug discount drug card programs directly to CMS. Other data contained in this database is collected from public sources and supplemented with telephone calls to states, disease-specific organizations, and pharmaceutical companies. Drug pricing data is updated on a weekly basis. All other information is updated monthly." Quick Search Download the data in MS Access format. See Also: Previously on ResourceShelf: Medicare Web Site to Shine Light on Drug Prices -- Health Care Funding--United States--Statistics Source: Kaiser Family Foundation Just Released, Trends and Indicators in the Changing Health Care Marketplace, 2004 Update -- Caregiving--United States--Statistics Source: AARP Recently Released Report, Caregiving in the U.S. "We estimate there are 44.4 million American caregivers (21% of the adult population) age 18 and older who provide unpaid care to an adult age 18 or older. These caregivers are present in an estimated 22.9 million households (21% of U.S. households)." Full Report (PDF; 476 KB) "Spotlight" reports are available for: California, Delaware, Illinois, Kansas, Ohio, Virginia, Washington. Web Search--Cool
Tools Source: SearchDay Exploring Search Engine Overlap Chris Sherman introduces us to Thumbshots, a very cool tool. He writes, "Search engine guru Greg Notess has long studied search engine overlap -- the number of pages found by more than one search engine. Greg's findings have consistently shown that there is very little overlap in the web page databases of the major search engines, meaning you'll likely get very different results depending on the engine....The results for most queries confirm Greg Notess' research: there is very little overlap in search engine results for most of the tests I ran. And in most cases, even the top ten results vary significantly from engine to engine." A perfect resource to use in demos when you need to show that results vary amongst major web engines. Thursday, April 29, 2004
Resources of
the Week 2 items. 1) Business Rankings--Lists & Rankings Trip's Lists Vol. I Note: Trip Wyckoff is the sole proprietor of SpecialIssues.com, a database containing information about salary surveys, industry outlooks, overviews, buyers guides, who's who registers, etc. that can be found in over 3200 publications. He is also the current compiler of Price's Lists of Lists, a resource I started about six years ago. It offers direct links to company rankings freely available on the open web. The LOL is available for free. Trip has accepted an invitation to share recent additions to the LOL along with lists that you might have missed with ResourceShelf on a regular basis. In his first compilation, Trip shares some of his favorite lists. Favorites Forbes The most useful site for "business rankings" + Layoff Tracker + Lists & Rankings Intelligent Enterprise + The Dozen 12 entities which are most influential in the creation of intelligent enterprises + Intelligent Enterprise Imperatives Editors have devised a list of "imperatives" that would typify an IT department that intends to truly enable business strategy Money + M&A (mergers & acquisitions) Databank QSR + QSR 50 Top restaurant chains ranked by various means Start Magazine + START 1,000 Top admired large, medium, and small manufacturers, with revenues less than 10 million to over a billion are listed Interesting Resources Pit & Quarry + Quarry Atlas Easy-to-use, maplike views of America's natural and sociocultural landscapes, includes natural resources and companies utilizing these resources RealScreen + Factual Price Guide Industry survey on cost of producing documentary programming by genre and platform -- -- 2) Online Maps National Geographic MapMachine We very much like maps and geographic resources at ResourceShelf. And here is yet another case of an already stellar site getting an overhaul that both adds new features and enhances usability. The National Geographic Society has partnered with ESRI, a preeminent GIS software developer. ESRI's ArcWeb Services -- which essentially deliver GIS and spatial data over the Internet -- are now powering the MapMachine. This is dynamic data, updated continually, so users of the relaunched site are getting the latest and the greatest. Special features include: + The addition of "aerial imagery provided by GlobeXplorer" essentially allows you to zoom right in and get a bird's eye view of your house. (One gripe -- National Geographic watermarks over the images are fairly obtrusive.) + "Informational layers on each map, showing roads, political boundaries, and place names, can be turned on and off" by using check boxes. A variety of "theme maps" incorporate such things as census and employment data, FEMA flood designations and weather events -- e.g., hurricanes paths, windstorms, tornado touch-downs. Definitions for the different types of maps are available. All types of maps are not available for all locales. + "A suite of tools allows users to measure distances, pan over the map, zoom in and out, and label key map features." These appear on the right side of the screen when you are looking at a map. Click on their icons to activate them. BTW, clicking anywhere on the map itself zooms in on that particular spot. Or use the standard "zoom in/zoom out" progression bar located on the right side of the map. + An improved "Quick Map Search" on the top right side of the page allows you to find maps for a place quickly by typing in a city, country, region, continent or U.S. zip code. + You can save maps that you've generated (the site uses cookies to do this), or e-mail a map to someone. Maps and aerial imagery may be printed out, or you can order a large-format version online. (Prices depend on such things as image, size desired, etc.) The MapMachine incorporates maps from an array of providers, including (naturally) the National Geographic Society and such agencies as the Army Corps of Engineers, NOAA, NASA, the World Wildlife Fund, and the Library of Congress. Annotation prepared by Shirl K. Web
Search--Google Google Files for Initial Public Offering Here you go search fans. What does this mean for the searcher? Not much. Here are some bullet points from a News.com story. It will not be difficult to find more than enough coverage elsewhere. + Shares will be auctioned off. + The company wants to raise 2.7 billion with the offering + "The registration filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission offers an estimate of what the company believes it may be able to raise with its initial public offering, although the filing does not disclose the number of shares that will be offered, nor the range in price for those shares." + "Google will create two classes of shares with different voting rights, a move that aims to guarantee founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin will maintain decision-making authority. Such structures have proven beneficial in media companies, such as The New York Times, the filing states." + When will Google go public? No time frame was provided in the filing. + Want to buy Google stock at the IPO price? According to News.com, "investors should be prepared to jump through a number of hoops to get there." These hoops include having an account with Morgan Stanley or Credit Suisse. See Also: A Great Review of the Filing (what else would you expect) from Danny S. See Also: More from John Markoff and the New York Times Industry
Briefs + Access Some LexisNexis Services via Your Blackberry -- + Wilson Expands Biography Reference Bank Resources,
Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text
Documents Teachers--United States--Fast Facts Source: U.S. Census Facts About Teachers in the United States All sorts of interesting stats and facts to celebrate Teacher Appreciation Week (May 2-8). -- Digitization Projects Source: Florida State Archives Florida Postcard Collection "This collection of picture postcards provides images of Florida statewide, including historic sites; tourist attractions and resorts; industries; schools, churches, and government buildings; roads, bridges, and railroads; urban and rural scenes; Seminole Indians; and Florida's wildlife and natural environments. The collection includes both color and black-and-white images." Contains 5,445 images spanning the period 1900-1999. (Note: This is part of the Florida Photographic Collection, which contains roughly 850,000 photographs, and approximately 2,500 movies and video tapes. About 100,000 of the photographs have been scanned and placed on the Internet.) -- Patents--Lists & Rankings Source: Technology Review 2004 Technology Review Patent Scorecard "Technology Review's annual Patent Scorecard ranks the U.S. patent portfolios of 150 top technology companies in eight sectors." See Also: The Complete Scorecard (.xls file) See Also: The Global Invention Map "A topography of nation-by-nation inventive prowess." Wednesday, April 28, 2004
Web Search
Engines--Legal Issues Source: Virginia Journal of Law and Technology Application of the DMCA Safe Harbor Provisions to Search Engines (PDF; 308 KB) "(A)pplying the DMCA safe harbor provisions to search engines is problematic. Key portions of the statute refer to “subscribers” and “account holders,” making their application to search engines unclear because search engines typically do not have subscribers or account holders. The lack of a subscription relationship also seems to make search engines more likely than other types of service providers to remove content overzealously after notification. Finally, the combination of the unique importance of search engines for most Internet users and the availability of other means for copyright owners to protect their interests suggests that the burden of complying with the safe harbor procedures should not be placed on search engines. A better alternative would be for Congress to grant search engines complete immunity from contributory liability for infringing activities by third parties." Battelle comments that, "in the near future, most search engines *will* have subscribers and account holders. A9 already does, as does Yahoo, indirectly. Hate to say it, but this paper is already out of date, even if I agree with its conclusion." Thanks to SDK and J.D. or the link and annotation. Web Search--Google
A Bit of Google Search News We're IPO free today! (-: + Google Adds News Images to Google Images Here's an example. Images are culled from Google News database. Yahoo Images also offers this feature. The company announced it last week when they quietly relaunched the image database. + CrossRef Launches Pilot Program of CrossRef Search, Powered By Google Another specialized Google interface allows you to search abstracts from nine STM publishers via a single search box. Google has indexed the full text but with most of the searches I ran the full text is only accessible if you either have a subsciption to the database or purchase the individual article. I would imagine that many of the people who have access to the full text already use an interface designed for the specific content. This interface does not allow you to limit your search to a specific data field. You can limit to a specific publisher with site: search. In other words, you're simply doing a free-text search. From the news release, "CrossRef itself doesn't host any content or perform searches-CrossRef works behind the scenes with Google to facilitate the crawling of content on publishers' sites and sets the policies and guidelines governing publisher participation in the initiative." This means that the content has the potential to be found via the Google.com interface. However, as I've said many times (and Danny Sullivan said this week), if it's not in the first few results it's all but invisible to the average searcher. The news release also mentions that CrossRef is also working with other search engines. Yahoo announced their content aggregation program about two months ago. Some organizations are licensing technology from one of many companies and/or ILS vendors that allows the user to search multiple databases (web, fee-based, local) simultaneously with a single interface. Professional
Reading Shelf (3 Items) Children's Libraries Source: International Federation of Library Associations New, Guidelines for Children's Library Services -- Research Libraries Source: Association of Research Libraries Updated, ARL Statistics (Interactive Edition) 2002-03 ARL Statistics are now available from the interactive statistics site at the University of Virginia. -- Taxonomies Source: Transform Magazine Overcoming Information Overload From the article, "Taxonomies organize your information for more efficient retrieval and better topic insight. Here's how to choose the best approach to building a better taxonomy." Glad to see that the authors mention the skills of corporate librarians in the article. This pdf chart compares major players in the space. National
Archives--United Kingdom Library catalogue complete From the announcement, "The National Archives has a reference collection of 55,000 books, periodicals and directories on aspects of history (including local, family and military history), law, biography, genealogy and a wide range of reference material. Many publications relate to the documents held within the national archive itself. A growing number of electronic reference sources are also available...A project to recatalogue these works from paper catalogues to an online computer catalogue has been continuing for several years. The Library is pleased to announce that this project was completed at the end of March and for the first time all Library holdings can be found in a single, online catalogue. Library
Briefs UK...A minute's silence, please, for the late public library (via The Independent) "According to a new report on the future of the public lending library, it is a battle the librarians of south Manchester and the rest of Britain may not win. Libri, a new campaign group formed to save that most revered of national institutions, has warned there could be as little as 20 years left for Britain's public lending libraries." See Also: Full Text of the Report Mentioned in this Article Resources,
Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents (4
Items) Documents in the News National Security--Canada Source: Government of Canada Just Released, Securing An Open Society: Canada’s National Security Policy News Release ||| Direct to Full Text ||| Backgrounder -- Congressional Research Service New/Updated CRS Reports via the Federation of American Scientists + "The War Powers Resolution: After Thirty Years" by Richard F. Grimmett, March 11, 2004. + "War Powers Resolution: Presidential Compliance" updated March 16, 2004. + "Radiological Dispersal Devices: Select Issues in Consequence Management" by Dana A. Shea, March 10, 2004. CRS Reports via the FPC + NATO and the European Union + Disarming Libya: Weapons of Mass Destruction + Foreign Aid: An Introductory Overview of U.S. Programs and Policy + Globalizing Cooperative Threat Reduction: A Survey of Options + Policing in Peacekeeping and Related Stability Operations: Problems and Proposed Solutions -- Government Information--United States Security--United States Source: Information Security Oversight Office/National Archives and Records Administration New Report, ISOO 2003 Annual Report to the President "The Report profiles data about the government-wide security classification program during Fiscal Year 2003." A PDF version and reports back to 1993 are also available. -- Election 2004 Source: Factiva Factiva Media Visibility Index (SM) Tracks the Hot-Button Issues for 2004 Presidential Election During the Week Ending April 25 ,2004 Tuesday, April 27, 2004
Information
Retrieval On ResourceShelfPLUS: A New Compilation of Recently Awarded Search-Related Patents & Patent Apps (April 2004) The April compilation of selected search-related patents and patent apps is now available on ResourceShelfPLUS. Highlights: + Google Awarded patent (and has patent app published) + Xerox awarded metasearch patent (they also got a search-related patent last month) + MIT awarded patent for image engine Digitization
Projects Source: Bodleian Library (Oxford University) Indian Institute New, The Digital Shikshapatri From the site, "Digital Shikshapatri provides instant online access to a treasure of the British Hindu cultural heritage that is held in Oxford's Bodleian Library. This fragile Sanskrit manuscript, called the Shikshapatri, was written by Shree Swaminarayan, founder of Swaminarayan Hinduism, and outlines moral and spiritual codes for everyday life." This excellent overview from ManagingInformation.com provides more detail and includes more info about the technology being used. Alert
Services Google Alert Add New Services I will be the first to say that up to this point I haven't been a big fan of this service since it only looks at the first 50 results to find new material. That said, Gideon Greenspan and his team continue to add new features and services and I think it's about time for me to take another look.. We've also been told that a premium service is coming soon and will check more than the first 50 results for new material. Here's what's new today: + Sight Point Technology "The new SightPoint personalization technology automatically rates new search results based on their similarity to results the user has clicked on before. SightPoint uses Bayesian statistics, made popular by spam email filters, to identify useful information in a sea of background noise. The feature is now available on an opt-in basis to all users of the free Google Alert service." You can toggle this technology on/off via a box in the user settings. + Case Sensitive/Punctuation Senstive Searching "These features help users filter out unwanted noise by automatically removing any results that don't match the exact case or punctuation of a search term." + Coming Soon: Premium Service According to the announcement Google Alert has signed a deal with Google allowing them to offer a premium service. The new service (pricing info to come) will launch soon. I've heard that it will check the first 500 results for new material (that could be very useful). Resources,
Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents (4
Items) Critical Information Skills Source: Cornell University Critically Analyzing Information Sources See Also: The IQ Section of The Virtual Chase See Also: Evaluating Web Pages: Questions to Ask & Strategies for Getting the Answers (via UC Berkeley) See Also: Evaluating Information Found on the Internet (via John Hopkins University) -- Media Industry Source: The IBM Institute for Business Value New Report, Full Text, Media and entertainment 2010 From the paper, "This paper, a collaborative discussion by thought leaders from the IBM Media and Entertainment practice, will discuss why industry and market forces will propel media businesses to become more open to business partners, customers and consumers - opening content reserves and formatting, production processes, packaging and sales options - without opening the company to increased vulnerability. The paper begins with an executive summary, followed by a future scenario of the media and entertainment business as we envision it circa 2010. The next section discusses the direction of media and entertainment industry trends, followed by a section analyzing the implications of those trends. The paper concludes with our strategic recommendations for becoming the open media business of the future." (Spotted at E-Media Tidbits) -- Fast Facts Source: U.S. Census New, Cinco de Mayo A compilation of stats about the Mexican American population. -- Automobiles--United States--Statistics Source: U.S. Census New, 2002 Vehicle Inventory and Use Survey (VIUS) The reports for two states (Indiana and Rhode Island) along with DC are now available. More states to come. A summary is also available. Professional
Reading Shelf Government Information--United States Source: Harvard Business School Working Knowledge Mr. Info: Take the Money—It's Free! "(Matthew) Lesko has a unique writing process: plagiarism. It turns out, he says, that in the government, nothing is copyrighted. He simply cut and pasted text from government publications for his first New York Times bestseller, and has been 'writing' that way ever since. His description might be a little breezy, however. The real value Lesko adds is in his rigorous and tireless research efforts, as well as the extremely logical and helpful organization of the material. While it is true that anyone can find these resources on the Web or by calling government numbers or writing government agencies, not everyone has the time or inclination to do so." In other words, Lesko's work saves people time and effort. This is a skill/service that the library community should also stress in our marketing. Online
Documents Source: FCW Document security fears grow From the article, "Problems with maintaining the confidentiality of electronic documents and preventing document tampering are on the rise, according to a security manager at Adobe Systems Inc. Although he would not divulge details of any specific incident of document tampering in the federal government, John Landwehr, group manager for security solutions and strategy at Adobe, said cases of document spoofing represent a growing problem for both government and corporate offices." Monday, April 26, 2004
Professional
Reading Shelf Information Retrieval Presentations from the 2004 Search Engine Meeting Are Now Available Online Some really interesting and informative reading for your already full reading lists. The conference took place in The Hague, The Netherlands, 19-20 April 2004. Here's a selected list of the presentations. I STRONGLY urge you to review the entire list. The page also contains bio info for all speakers. All of the presentations are either pdf or ppt files. + Quantity versus quality? Karen Spärck Jones, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK + The Subtle Side of Retrieval Elizabeth Liddy, Syracuse University, New York, USA + Text and XML querying - Is There a Common Ground? Prabhakar Raghavan, Verity, California, USA + Product Intro: A Holistic Approach to Search Tuoc Luong, Ask Jeeves, California, USA + Information Retrieval: A Single Point of Access Susan Feldman, IDC, Connecticut, USA + Double the Value of Search Using User Behaviour Laust Sondergaard, Mondosoft, Denmark + Social Software and New Search Stephen E Arnold, AIT, Kentucky, USA + Human Intervention in the Search Process Martin Belam, BBCi Search, UK + Learning to Harvest Information for the Semantic Web Fabio Ciravegna, University of Sheffield, UK + Formalising the Concept of Serendipity in Web Searching Olivier Ertzscheid, University of Toulouse, and Gabriel Gallezot, University of Nice + Turbo10: The Mechanics of a Deep Net Metasearch Engine Nigel Hamilton, Turbo10.com, UK + A Relevance Model for Web Image Search Ethan V. Munson and Cheng Thao, University of Wisconsin, USA + Access to Archives of Digital Video Information Alan Smeaton, Dublin City University, Ireland + Organising personal pictures with content analysis technology Sebastein Gilles, LTU Technologies, France -- -- Weblogs RSS Source: Library + Information Update Weblogs and RSS in information work "How can weblogs be used in a library and information service? Ian Winship looks at some of the serious contenders." A big thanks to the author, Ian Winship, for mentioning ResourceShelf. Web
Search Source: Information Today Britannica Subsidiary Unveils English-Arabic Search Engine Paula Hane writes, "Melingo, Ltd. (http://www.melingo.com/), a company that has provided advanced search capabilities for complex languages, has just introduced Morfix CL, its English-Arabic-English Cross-Language Search with Embedded Translation. What that means is that English-speaking researchers can search through Arabic material without knowing any Arabic at all—and see a results page with a translation of each Arabic word or phrase. Melingo, a subsidiary of Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., is carefully positioning its Morfix technology as a complement to other search engines. The company is concentrating its efforts on aiding the search process and not on highlighting the process of machine translation, which it says is still very inaccurate. Melingo claims that Morfix CL represents a breakthrough in Arabic language analysis and a boon to intelligence agencies and businesses, which today process growing amounts of Arabic data with limited numbers of qualified human translators." A demo of the cross-language English-Arabic technology is available at Morfix.com. Information
Industry News + Elsevier...ScienceDirect Announces New Product Line From the announcement, "ScienceDirect (www.sciencedirect.com), announces that Elsevier Book Series titles are now available on the platform. Now multiple users throughout an institution can simultaneously access this important compliment to primary research, previously only available through print subscriptions." + Dialog... Company Names New CTO Web
Search--Google Google IPO Roundup + A Conversation With Sergey Brin (via eWeek) Topics include Gmail, RSS, and privacy. -- + A Quirky Brilliance vs. the Dreams of Venture Capitalists (via The New York Times) From the article, "There are many good reasons to avoid a public stock offering and the close scrutiny it brings. Indeed, this week the scrutiny will intensify as the company approaches a deadline to file financial disclosures. But in Google's case, its hesitancy up to this point has been a symptom of a long-running battle for control between its two brainy, headstrong founders and the powerful, strong-willed financiers who gave them the money to turn their graduate school project into one of the world's leading brands, according to several people in and outside Google... Attention is being focused this week on Google because Thursday is the deadline for it to file financial disclosure documents under Securities and Exchange Commission rules. It could meet those requirements by filing papers for a public stock offering - what the venture capitalists are said to favor. Or it could simply file the disclosure papers, perhaps along with a statement that it will begin eventually to move toward a public offering. A person close to the company said last week that it would proceed with this slower course." -- + Google float moves a step closer (via Reuters) Resources,
Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents (5
Items) Internet--Statistics Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project New Data, 14% of Internet users say they no longer download music files Summary ||| Direct to Full Text Thanks to PW for the tip. -- Business--United States--Lists & Rankings Source: Forbes Just Released, CEO Compensation Report 2004 -- Business-United States--Lists & Rankings Source: Washington Post New, The Washington Post 200 2004 The largest companies in the region. Browse by category or search. -- Science Museums Source: National Academies New, Marian Koshland Science Museum The museum, part of the National Academy of Science, opened in DC last week. Web site includes virtual exhibits. -- Higher Education--United States--Statistics Source: NSF New Report, Science and Engineering Degrees: 1966-2001 Sunday, April 25, 2004
Image
Databases Source: San Jose Mercury News digital library "By making more and more of its images digital, Corbis can keep greater control over them and lower its expenses. It can sell images directly over the Web, offer new tools to search through them, and use software to track where each image appears, cracking down on piracy." See Also: Image-Seek This demo from LTU Technologies allows you to keyword search 65,000 royalty-free images from the Corbis database. From the site, "Image-Seeker is an image analyzer that describes images according to their visual features. 'Because an image is worth a thousand words', using image similarity combined with text-based search dramatically improves search processes. This demo presents visual search on a large selection of over 65,000 Corbis Royalty-Free images. It is the most intuitive way to navigate while searching for images." Books Source: e-consultancy Pearson launches web-textbooks programme "Publishing giant Pearson is launching a project in the US to offer students digital textbooks at half the price of the printed versions...The group's education division is to launch the project, SafariX Textbooks Online, as a joint venture with another US publisher O'Reilly Media, which offers textbooks on technology, and already uses the Safari system. Rather than offering textbooks for digital download, Safari hosts books online with the ability to annotate and navigate through a web browser." See Also: A Bit More in this Reuters Article Library and
Info Briefs (4 Items) From Companion's Lost Diary, a Portrait of Einstein in Old Age (via The New York Times) The "companion" was Johanna Fantova, a librarian at Princeton University. She was a graduate of the library school at the University of North Carolina and was the first map curator at the Firestone Library. According to this AP story it was at Einstein's urging that Fantova attend library school. -- + An Interview with Kevin Starr (via Sacramento Bee) Starr just retired after ten years as California state librarian. -- + £7m library book finally revealed (via The Scotsman) -- + New Look for National Library of Medicine Web Site Coming Soon Saturday, April 24, 2004
Professional
Reading Shelf (2 Items) National Archives--United States Source: NARA Full Text, National Archives and Records Administration Annual Report 2003 -- Media Archives Source: FCW NASA to merge media archives From the article, "Space officials want proposals for a NASA archiving system that would create a one-stop multimedia source for the public." Bookmarklets Search Engine Showdown Offers Search-Related Bookmarklets Thanks Greg! A couple of days ago Jesse Ruderman announced he has also compiled a page of these useful tools. Web
Search--Google More on the Google/Anti-Semitic Site Story Important and interesting reads from Seth Finkelstein and Danny Sullivan. No need to comment on this specific issue again but a couple of comments about the issue of search engine manipulation. Last October, I commented that while most of the press coverage was focusing on paid inclusion (which Google doesn't offer) and paid placement and its potential effects on the web searcher, it was hard to find press coverage that organic search results can be manipulated (yes, even Google's results). This manipulation is the nature of the beast (we should learn to deal with it), and another reminder that general web engines are more than just "research tools" like a librarian might think of Dialog, LN, Factiva, and many others. Finkelstein correctly points out, "Google ranks popularity, not authority. And popularity is a measure which is vulnerable to many games. Any system of evaluation is subject to manipulation." While link analysis is similar in many ways to citation analysis, tools like ISI's Citation Indexes and ISI's Impact Factors are less susceptible to manipulation (NOT totally free of it) because it's a much smaller universe of material to control. Let's remember web engines are also advertising/marketing vehicles. As Danny points out, results appearing in the 20th position are all but invisible to the average searcher. Sullivan's comments remind me of what someone told me at a presentation for the book I co-authored with Chris Sherman. A member of the audience told me that Chris and I failed to mention a large portion of the Invisible Web in our book. After taking a deep breath, I asked her what we forgot. She told me that for many searchers if it's not in the first five or seven results it's all but invisible. She was right! The power searcher needs, first, to be aware of this issue and, second, to utilize advanced search syntax, term selection, specialized databases and other tools to assist in producing more precise result sets. This can help minimize problems. I also think that Teoma's method of determining relevance might be less susceptible to manipulation. See Also: Challenges in Web Search Engines This twelve-page paper was written by Dr. Monika Henzinger (Research Director, Google), Dr. Rajeev Motwani (Professor at Stanford) and Dr. Craig Silverstein (Director of Technology, Google). From the abstract, "...article presents a high-level discussion of some of the problems with information retrieval that are unique to web search engines. The goal is to raise awareness and stimulate research in these areas." Content quality, spam, cloaking, duplicate hosts and vaguely structured data are some of the topics discussed. -- See Also, Full Text, Just Released, Web Spam Taxonomy From the abstract, "Web spamming refers to actions intended to mislead search engines and give some pages higher ranking than they deserve. Recently, the amount of web spam has increased dramatically, leading to a degradation of search results. This paper presents a comprehensive taxonomy of current spamming techniques, which we believe can help in developing appropriate countermeasures." Resources,
Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents (2
Items) The following two items were culled from the Infomine What's New Newsletter Computers Classic Computer Magazine Archive The Classic Computer Magazine Archive presents the full text of early personal computing magazines, including images and advertisements. Contents indexes are offered along with columns, product reviews, software, and cover images. Site is searchable. The site has posted the fulltext of more than 150 individual issues from the following magazines: Antic (1982-1990) STart (1986-1991) Dedicated to the Atari ST computer Creative Computing (1974-1985) Creative Computing Video and Arcade Games (1983) Compute! (1979-1994) Tandy Computer Whiz Kids (1984-1991) -- Vietnam War Source: Texas Tech University The Virtual Vietnam Archive "The Virtual Vietnam Archive currently contains over 605,000 pages of scanned documents. This searchable archive allows the user to limit results to items available online. Documents, images, audio, finding aids, moving images, periodicals and computer media are available. The search page also has browse indexes of military terms and collection titles. An acronyms database (more than 500 terms) is available from the main archive page as an aid to research." An Operations Database and Acronym Database are also available. Friday, April 23, 2004
Web
Search--Google Source: News.com Google's SafeSearch Filtering Draws Some Fire From the article, "Google's SafeSearch flaws are more than academic--they can have serious consequences for innocent Web site operators blocked out by them. Google is the most widely used search engine on the Web, and failure to appear in its listings can have a direct impact on sales for some companies, particularly smaller enterprises with limited marketing budgets...Google claims SafeSearch "uses advanced proprietary technology that checks keywords and phrases" and filters out only Web pages containing pornography and explicit sexual content.' 'That's not very bright,' said Karen Schneider, a librarian who runs the Librarians' Index to the Internet and has made a study of filtering software. SafeSearch is 'certainly evocative of the very primitive CyberSitter-type tools of the mid-1990s--not a tool of fairly sophisticated development.'" Some of you might remember that in August, ResourceShelf reported that SafeSearch was blocking pages from the WhiteHouse.Gov site and other non-offensive sites. Some of the problems I highlighted in August have been corrected but, as this new article documents, MANY others still exist. See Also: Empirical Analysis of Google SafeSearch (Benjamin Edelman, Harvard University) more Google... Google and Akamai: Cult of Secrecy vs. Kingdom of Openness (via TechReview) Simson Garfinkle writes, "The king of search is tapping into what may be the largest grid of computers on the planet. And it remains extraordinarily secretive about its core technologies—perhaps because it senses a potential competitor in dotcom era flameout Akamai." The Library of
Congress More Digitized Content Added to the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC) from The Library of Congress More digitized content from LC hits the web! The Prints and Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC) is closing in on the one million image mark. Here are a couple recently added collections: + National Child Labor Committee Collection (NCLC) PPOC now offers expanded and enhanced access to approximately 5,100 NCLC photographs [ca.1908-1924] which were primarily taken by the photographer Lewis Hine. These photographs are useful for their examination of labor, reform movements, working class families, education, public health, urban and rural housing conditions, industrial and agricultural sites, and other aspects of urban and rural life in America in the early twentieth century. The collection's catalog records include a wealth of information, including the locations and names of individuals and businesses featured in the photographs, transcribed from the collection's original caption cards. + U.S. News and World Report Magazine Photograph Collection Selected photographs from this extensive collection are now available in the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog. In preparation for the magazine's 70th anniversary, U.S. News staff selected more than 100 photos taken between 1952 and 1983 of newsworthy subjects, including the struggle for African American civil rights, presidential campaigns, and the visits to the United States of foreign dignitaries, as well as life in Vietnam, the Middle East and Russia. Many of the photos were taken by staff photographers and have no known publication restrictions. See Also: Learn More About the PPOC Enterprise
Search (2 Items) + FAST Search and Transfer Continues to Add Customers, This Time It's Ziff-Davis It seems that every week they're announcing big time clients. Several recent announcements involve publishing companies. In addition to today's Z-D announcement, we've seen agreements from Knight-Ridder and Reuters. -- + IBM expands search push with Masala (via News.com) From the article, "The computing giant, based in Armonk, N.Y., is gearing up to release Masala, a new version of its DB2 Information Integrator software that will let corporate employees retrieve information from databases, applications and the Web at the same time." Btw, a quick review of ResourceShelfPLUS will show that IBM has been building a large collection of search-related patents. Web
Browsers Cool! A New Version (Beta) of the Opera Web Browser is Online Say hello to Opera 7.50 for Windows Beta 1! I just learned of the release and still haven't had time to check it out but I thought those of you who use Opera (those of you who don't should) would like to know. Screenshot here. + Company supplied list of changes + Beta available for numerous operating systems (Windows, Mac, Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris) Resources,
Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents (5
Items) United States--Statistics Source: U.S. Census Statistical Abstracts: Historical "Statistical Abstract data present here ranges from our most recent edition to the historical abstracts compiled throughout the decades. Some of the data were scanned as an effort to make historical abstract information available to the public. The display of data will continue as historical records become available." Access Statistical Abstracts from 1878 - 2001 through this page. See Also: Mini Historical Statistics Files available in pdf or xls formats. -- European Union--Glossary European Union Glossary Source: European Union "The following glossary contains some 250 terms relating to European integration and the institutions and activities of the EU." See also: A Plain Language Guide to Eurojargon -- History Source: Managing Information News Library and Museum Material Help Captain Cook Website "A new virtual exhibition charting the life and voyages of one of the North East's most famous sons, Captain James Cook, has gone live (www.captcook-ne.co.uk).... The website is funded through the British Library's Reaching the Regions programme, in partnership with the North East Museums, Libraries and Archives Council and the Captain Cook Birthplace Museum." -- Hunger--United States--Statistics Source: Food Research and Action Center Just Released, State of the States 2004 Report (PDF; 307 KB)] "This FRAC report on the State of the States provides basic data describing the extent of hunger and the use of nutrition programs for the United States as a whole and for each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Through these data the State of the States gives a snapshot of how well or badly each state is doing in using available tools to meet the needs of hungry people and improve the health of low-income families." (Thanks, AT) Press release -- Tourism--United States--Lists & Rankings Source: U.S. Department of Commerce + Just Released, Market Share: Overseas Visitors To Select U.S. States And Territories + Just Released, Overseas Visitors To Select U.S. Cities/Hawaiian Islands Professional
Reading Shelf (2 Items) Digital Collections + A Framework of Guidance for Building Good Digital Collections (via NISO) -- Usability Source: InfoDesign Jared Spool: The InfoDesign Interview "Jared is one of the most important - and best-recognized - voices in the field of usability. User Interface Engineering, the firm that he founded in 1988, is the world's largest research, training and consulting firm specializing in website and product usability." (Thanks, LRK) Some insights from the interview: + "We discovered that there are basically 14 types of questions, no matter what the subject matter. We're hoping these 14 types, which we're calling topic perspectives, can guide designers to plan and implement an initial information resource that is complete and helpful and delights their users." + "Our goal at UIE really is quite simple: We want to eliminate any frustration that comes from the introduction of new technology." + "We've come a long way from our roots of being a usability testing service. We really don't do that anymore, primarily because our research has shown that the most successful design teams are those that do their own testing. Farming your testing out substantially reduces its effectiveness." + "Overly simplistic usability testing can produce too many issues, most of which will not have any desirable effect on the goals of the organization. As a result, teams can easily waste valuable resources fixing things that don't need fixing." + "Most users are failing on most websites and nobody knows why. We don't even have a good handle on how to find out why. So, we basically ignore the problem." + "What is the #1 contributor to the user having a good experience? Our research shows that users are most satisfied with a site when they complete their objectives. When they don't achieve their objectives, they become significantly dissatisfied with the site. Little else really matters beyond completing objectives." +"Information architects look at the world from structure and navigation. Designers look at the visual presentation and communication. Usability folks see the world from a user frustration perspective. These aren't separate branches of knowledge. They are different viewpoints by which you attack the same problem: creating a successful design." +"If designers can't have guidelines, how do they know what to design? Our philosophy is to use an iterative approach. Take a design - any design - it doesn't matter. Put it in front of users. Change anything that doesn't work. Repeat." Thursday, April 22, 2004
Happy International Special
Librarians Day! This special day was established by the Special Librarians Association in 1991. "ISLD recognizes the unique contributions made by information professionals around the world and the critical role they play in the changing global information community." Resources of
the Week 2 items. Atlas--Canada Source: Natural Resources Canada Redesigned Version Online, The Atlas of Canada This comprehensive resource has been given a new look, which includes improved navigation and enhanced accessibility for users of assistive technologies. The core of the site comprises more than 1,400 thematic, reference and archive maps. A Maps A-Z page allows you to browse these alphabetically. Alternately, you can use the advanced search page to search for the location of a place on a map or search for maps/text using keywords. For focused exploration, maps have been grouped into a number of topics: Environment, People & Society, Economy, History, Climate Change, Freshwater, Health, Reference Maps and Map Archives. You can mouse over this list of topics in the navigation panel on the left side of the home page and choose from a list of more specific subtopics under each. A collection of Learning Resources, aimed at students and teachers, includes curriculum guides, lesson plans, quizzes, printer-friendly maps, and an interactive glossary. A Gazetteer Map Service "generates a URL linking directly to a map showing the location of any of...47 000 place names and geographical features...." A Web Map Service allows developers to access "current and accurate base data for rendering customized maps." Note that the site is bilingual English/French. -- Real Estate--Online Resources PlainVanillaShell.com Portal for the retail real estate industry offers: + Industry news + Feature articles on legal issues + Market reports for the top 50 DMAs (PDFs) + Retail Tenant Directory database of over 5,400 retail companies -- Search by square footage, the areas they operate or plan to expand into, types of locations (enclosed mall, strip center, etc.) they prefer, and by any of more than 70 retail categories. + National Research Bureau database of shopping centers, featuring profiles of more than 40,000 shopping centers, from neighborhood strip centers to regional super-malls. Free registration required to access most content. This site is maintained by Trade Dimensions, a division of Spectra Marketing Systems and part of the ACNielsen business group in VNU Marketing Information Group. Editors Note: Both of the ROTW this time around were selected and compiled by ResourceShelf contributing editor, Shirl Kenndy. Health
Information Source: National Library of Medicine Internists to Write Patients Prescriptions for Information A new and innovative project from NLM. Great marketing, too! This is a win/win for all parties -- most importantly, patients. From the announcement, "ACP's [American College of Physicians] 115,000 internist members will be encouraged to 'prescribe' information for their patients from MedlinePlus using a special 'prescription pad' during office visits. 'Physicians have always known that an informed patient who takes an active role is a 'better' patient,' noted NLM Director Donald A.B. Lindberg, MD. 'We believe that both patients and their doctors will welcome this additional medical tool -- good medical information -- in their continuing efforts to provide good health care.' Traditionally, physicians have supplemented discussion of a diagnosis or condition in the office with brochures that are rarely tailored to each patient's special needs. Today, the majority of U.S. adults online -- 80 percent -- use the Internet to find health information, and most say it helps them get better health care, according to a study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Dr. Addington pointed out that health content on the Net ranges from clinical research to pharmaceutical product sales promotions, to endorsements of herbal and mineral supplements and everything in between. 'It's not easy to determine the credibility or validity of online health information,' he said." See Also: Learn About the Weekly MEDLINEPlus E-Mail Announcement List Resources,
Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text
Documents Africa--Internet Resources Source: Stanford University Libraries Africa South of the Sahara: Selected Internet Resources "Researchers can find information by topic or country...The directory has an extensive section on African history including a section for primary sources. There are also extensive sections for Education, South Africa, Journals (for African studies), libraries with African collections. All entries are annotated. If possible, the location of the domain owner is indicated." This resource is compiled and annotated by Karen Fung, Curator of the African Collection at the Stanford University Libraries. Another example of the great work being done by librarians to assist in organizing the Internet! -- Business Research--Internet Resources New/Updated Research Guides from the Baker Library, Harvard Business School + Advertising and Branding + Broadcasting + Demographics and Consumer Behavior + Economics + Marketing Strategies and Channels All Guides A-Z -- Baseball Source: American Memory Project/Library of Congress Just Added to American Memory, Spalding Base Ball Guides, 1889-1939 "Spalding Base Ball Guides, 1889-1939 comprises a historic selection of Spalding’s Official Base Ball Guide and the Official Indoor Base Ball Guide. The collection reproduces 35 of the guides, which were published by the Spalding Athletic Company in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Spalding’s Official Base Ball Guide was perhaps the premier publication of its day for the game of baseball. It featured editorials from baseball writers on the state of the game, statistics, photographs, and analysis of the previous season for all the Major League teams and for many of the so-called minor leagues across the nation." Professional
Reading Shelf Libraries Libraries Wired and Reborn Source: The New York Times From the article, "This bayou parish [Terrebonne, LA] is a showcase, an example of how a major institution like the American public library has been transformed by an Internet connection. (The impact on corporations, schools and government has been significant, too; for each of those institutions, the Internet has been a tool to further its main purpose - making money, educating people and delivering services.) For the library, supplying patrons with access to the Internet and the Web has become central to its mission, an updating of its long tradition of providing information free to the public." Thanks to B.Q. for the news tip. -- Book Reviews Searching Booklist Reviews Last week, we linked to a preprint of an article by Peter Jacso titled, "AW, Look What They've Done to the Booklist Reviews, Ma" where he writes about problems searching for Booklist reviews on the ALA web site. Since I posted the article, Dr. Jacso has created a tool to make it easier to find this material. Thanks, Peter! Btw, he has also informed me about a new PolySearch module that will focus on finding book reviews on the web. It should be available this summer. What's a PolySearch? Learn more here. Wednesday, April 21, 2004
Web
Search--Yahoo New, More Yahoo Search Shortcuts Shortcuts continue to proliferate in the web search world. I just discovered this page that lists all of Yahoo's shortcuts and noticed a few new ones (at least they are new to me). Using the proper "shortcut" term (in some cases you don't even need to add any extra terms to your query) will place a potential answer and/or links to find more info at the top of the results page. It would be wonderful if the search companies would query busy reference librarians to help create new shortcuts. What's New + Encyclopedia Lookup Use the suffix "facts" (search terms). For example: Tasmania facts. Content comes from the Columbia Encyclopedia. -- + Synonym Finder Use the prefix synonym (search terms). For example: Synonym tired. Content from the Roget's II: The New Thesaurus. -- + Hotel Info Use the term Hotels after a location. For example: Seattle hotels -- Traffic Reports Use the term Traffic after a location. For example: Baltimore traffic -- After reviewing the shortcuts page you'll note that Yahoo now offers many of the same shortcuts that Google makes available. These include airport info, aircraft number registration info, package tracking, patent search, UPC Codes, and VIN (vehicle identification number) info. Yahoo also recognizes ISBN's and will produce a link allowing you to compare prices for the book via Yahoo Shopping database. Finally, for the search historians out there, search shortcuts were first introduced by AltaVista (now part of Yahoo) in February 2002. See Also: Ask Jeeves Launches Famous People Search Web
Search Search Engine Radar Update Here are a few new general web search tools to keep an eye on. These projects are NOT ready for prime time but still are worth a spot on your search engine radar. Each of these tools is building its own databases and not repackaging data from other sources. At the moment each index is very small. + FyberSearch This engine allows the user to tweak the keyword density portion of its relevancy algorithm. I haven't seen this option from a general web engine. I like it! You often find this functionality from databases like LexisNexis and Factiva where the searcher can specify how many times a word or phrase must be mentioned in a document to be considered relevant. Often, the syntax atleast(x) is used. An advanced interface and image searching are available. You'll also notice a link (on search results pages) to immediately reindex each page. Finally, options to limit your search to terms in the title, meta tags, and url by simply pointing and clicking. The default search finds your terms in page titles only. You'll need to select "content keywords" to search terms on the page. + Mozdex A beta built by Byron Miller using the Nutch open source search platfom. A bit more info from Search Engine Journal. + Sootle In alpha mode. Being built by a group of people located throughout the world. Comments from Tara and Battelle. Digitization
Projects--Australia Source: National Library of Australia One Million Images: PictureAustralia Database Reaches Milestone From the announcement, "The millionth PictureAustralia image, which comes from the Australian War Memorial's collection, is that of heroic Australian army nurse Vivian Bullwinkel, the sole survivor of the Banka (Sumatra) massacre of World War II. PictureAustralia, a collaborative Internet-based service hosted by the National Library, allows users to search the online pictorial collections of many cultural agencies from the one website. The service commenced in 1998 with five participating organisations and 470,000 images; it has grown to 34 organisations and one million images." See Also: Use the PictureAustralia Database Professional
Reading Shelf (2 Items) Library Organizations--ALA The 2002-2003 ALA Annual Report is Now Available Online Summary ||| Direct to Full Text -- Library Organizations--JISC Source: The Guardian "The hidden potential of the web" From the article, "...the ambitions of Common Information Environment (CIE), a new attempt to open up the growing treasure house of data held on publicly funded websites. The idea is to reveal the 'hidden web' - archives held by organisations available only via their own home pages - to non-specialist researchers." Resources,
Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full-Text Documents (5
Items) Source: InfoWorld Can E-Mail Be Saved? "Battered by junk and reeling under makeshift fixes, e-mail is ripe for reinvention. Here's how six of the industry's most provocative thinkers envision a brighter day.... Our six experts gave us six different answers. But all of them agreed that positive identification, rather than rejiggered economics, is the key to clearing the clutter from the e-mail channel in the enterprise." Ideas from Eric Allman (author of Sendmail); Bill Warner (developer of the Wildfire voice system); Eric Hahn (former Netscape CTO; now CEO of own startup, Proofpoint); Ray Ozzie (creator of Lotus Notes; founder/CEO of Groove Networks); Dave Winer (chairman/founder of Userland and uberblogger); Brewster Kahle (creator of WAIS, Alexa; now head of The Internet Archive). Download entire special report as PDF (5.92 MB) -- Documents in the News Environment Source: U.S. Commission on Oceans Full Text, Just Released, Preliminary Report of the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy Background in this Washington Post article. - Research Funding--United States Source: RAND Corporation New, Vital Assets: Federal Investment in Research and Development at the Nation's Universities and Colleges "The federal government's investment in research and development (R&D) at the nation's universities -- which is pivotal to the U.S. innovation system -- has grown considerably. This report assesses that investment and presents a detailed analysis of the federal funds received for the conduct of R&D by state and by individual universities and colleges." Among other findings, the study reports, "Medical schools received 45 percent of all federal research and development funds provided to U.S. colleges and universities in the 2002 fiscal year." Full document, including appendix of state-by-state information - (PDF; 2.2 MB) Summary only (PDF; 0.1 MB) State-by-state appendix only (PDF; 0.9 MB) Press release See Also: New, Federal Funds for Research and Development: Fiscal Years 2001, 2002, and 2003 (via NSF) -- International Relations Source: House of Commons Library New Research Paper: Kashmir "This Paper discusses the disagreements between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, the situation in Indian administered Kashmir and the current discussions between India and Pakistan, and between India and some Kashmiri separatists. It includes relevant UN resolutions and international agreements in Annexes, and a map." -- Construction--Glossary Source: National Contractor Referrals and License Bureau NCRS Glossary of Contractor Terms "The construction term glossary has over 12,000 entries.... The best way to search for a term is to use either single words or short phrases. Alternatively, you may choose to browse the glossary by using the alphabetical index located under the search term box." Awards 2004 Webby Award Nominees Announced I'm happy to read that a research tool we regularly mention on ResourceShelf, RocketNews, received a nomination in the news category. See Also: Rocket News Adds Advanced Search Options Tuesday, April 20, 2004
Web
Search--Google The #1 Result for the Word "Jew" on Google is No Longer Anti-Semitic Site The effort (it sure didn't take long) to create a Google Bomb and change the first result for the search "Jew" from an anti-Semitic site to the Wikipedia entry for the term appears to have been successful. I started noticing the Wikipedia entry in the first spot yesterday. Background in this NY Times article from Thursday. Searchblog's John Battelle also provides commentary. Image
Search--Yahoo Yahoo "Officially" Relaunches Image Search A couple of weeks ago, we linked to Search Engine Showdown's post containing the news that Yahoo Image Search was no longer using the Google image |
