Internet News

New way for exploring history

Back to the future: Yahoo’s Time Explorer is a search engine for the past and future by Chad Catacchio, The Next Web (Aug 27)

Time Explorer from Yahoo's lab "goes back AND forward in time to see what people have said and predicted will happen on a topic."

It uses New York Times collection back to 1987.

Requires Firefox browser.

Google Tools

Google For Teachers II, by Richard Bryne (July 2010) - free ebook guide to using Google tools in the classroom: Custom Search, Google Bookmarks, Google Groups, Google Sites, Google Alerts, Google Calendar

Legal Research Resources

Basic Legal Research on the Internet, Ken Strutin, LLRX (Jun 24)

"This article explores the corner of the Internet landscape that concentrates on legal research. For the most part, these databases and search tools are free, although some might require a library card. Essentially, this is a short list of "go to" sites that most researchers will find useful. Before delving in, it might be worthwhile to examine a few time tested research concepts for the Internet age."

Provides a general research process, and names key primary sources for US legal research. Under secondary resources, author lists Google Scholar, Wayback Machine, and WorldCat.

WorldCat description reminds us that WorldCat is a rich resource for everyone.

""WorldCat connects you to the collections and services of more than 10,000 libraries worldwide." What is WorldCat? "You can search for popular books, music CDs and videos—all of the physical items you're used to getting from libraries. You can also discover many new kinds of digital content, such as downloadable audiobooks. You may also find article citations with links to their full text; authoritative research materials, such as documents and photos of local or historic significance; and digital versions of rare items that aren't available to the public. Because WorldCat libraries serve diverse communities in dozens of countries, resources are available in many languages.""

Web Finance Dictionaries

New Dictionaries from WebFinance, Research Buzz (Jul 1)

WebFinance has that many dictionaries! This goes well beyond business related dictionaries - there is travel, sprots, food, cars, even cricket. Full list at http://www.businessdictionary.com/aboutus.php

Webbys 2010

The ceremonies have come and gone, but it's still worth our time to look over the list of Webby awards in 2010 whether our interest is web design or just finding interesting, useful sites.

14th Annual Webby Awards Nominees & Winners:

Big wins:

Best practices: Twitter and NPR
Social networking: Twitter
Copyrighting: New Yorker and NY Times
Business Blog: Mashable
Cultural Blog: Mashable
Community: Flickr
Events: Ted
Guides, ratings, reviews: Metacritic and CNet
Health: WebMD Consumer Health News
Lifestyle: All About Birds from Cornell and Epicurious. (I would choose the birds)

So much more.

Such as - Waterlife created by the National Film Board of Canada - The story of the last great supply of fresh drinking water on earth. This is the companion site for the documentary film by Kevin McMahon released in 2009. This site won the Webby Award for Documentary, Single Episode

Boardreader for discussions

Tapping Into Discussions, Bates Info (May 2010)

Reminder from Mary Ellen Bates to look at discussion boards for answers some times - and specifically Boardreader.com

Webinar Listings

Do you like webinars - video presentations on topics? WebinarListings.com has them - "This website is a central source for ALL upcoming Webinars, from business to health, from the U.S. to Europe." Has events such as this one from March - How to Monitor Your Social Media Presence in 10 Minutes a Day. Must register to view.

+ WebinarListings has a weekly email to notify readers of new webinars.
+ Use the Calendar to browse by week.
+ Use Find Webinar to search - has categories.

Webinar Listings could become the Slideshare of webinars.

Reviewed in Find Webinar Listings, ResearchBuzz (May 24) - has advice on how to use.

- usually with

Changes at Wikipedia

Wikipedia Gets A Revamp, Better Search And Navigation – And An Updated Logo, Robin Wauters, Tech Crunch (May 13)

You might notice some changes at Wikipedia. Changes are mainly for editors and content creators, however there is one, in particular, for readers - to create a book from selected Wikipedia pages.

How-To Tutorial Sites

5 Great Tutorial Websites To Learn How To Do Something, Jack Cola, Make Use Of (Apr 25)

There are many good “How To” tutorial websites as well as the how-to content at YouTube. Lots here.

PCWorld's List of Useful Sites

52 Incredibly Useful Sites: The Full List by Robert Strohmeyer , PCWorld (Apr 25)

"PCWorld's editors never stop scouring the Internet for the best and most creative new ideas we can find. Here are 52 phenomenally cool Web services that you may not have heard of, but definitely need to try."

Twitter archive

Lots of attention to the announcement that Library of Congress will archive Twitter posts - for researchers, not the general public.

Resource of the Week: The Twitter Archives from the Library of Congress & Google: The Facts As We Know Them, Gary Price, ResourceShelf (Apr 19)

Gary Price has pieced together from announcements that LC is the preservationist. Google may be the public search engine through its new Google Replay. For now that goes back to February 2010, but Google has said it will index the entire Twitter archive (going back to 2006.)

Searching Every Public Tweet Ever Twittered by Avi Rappoport, Information Today (Apr 22)

There is value to preserving this archive.

"Primary sources like Twitter are exactly what should be available for researchers. It's amazing what good historians can do with tattered bits of seemingly-unimportant information, such as medieval laundry lists. Records of who attended what parties may explain political alliances, which lead to important decisions; wills show the evolution of legal theories; deadly dull sermons may include the first use of a certain word. Historians are grateful for any and all these sources, because they are contemporary and unmediated-there is no opportunity for intermediate bias or misunderstanding. That doesn't mean that there is not a bias in what has been saved, or that historians are completely un-biased, but new eyes always see new things."

Eurostat - Statistics Explained

Resource of the Week: Eurostat — Statistics Explained By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor, ResourceShelf (Feb 15)

"Eurostat, for those who might be scratching their heads, “is the statistical office of the European Union (EU), based in Luxembourg (LU). It publishes official, harmonized statistics on the European Union (EU) and the euro area, offering a comparable, reliable and objective portrayal of Europe’s society and economy.”

There is a Statistics Explained portion to the site.

Using Craigslist

Top Craigslist scams and how not to be bamboozled By: Rachel Sadon, IT Business (Feb 10)

Describes some scam classics - how they work and how not to fall for it.

Links to Ten tips to get the most out of CraigsList, Brennon Slattery (Marc 2009)

First tip - use Google to get more information.

" One of the best ways to get the most out of Craigslist is to start outside of the site itself. Using Google Advanced Search can narrow down your browsing options in an effective, clean manner. Say you're looking for a couch in Boston, but you don't want to drive 25 miles to pick it up. Using Google Advanced Search, you can put your desired neighborhood in the 'this exact wording or phrase' field and keep "couch" in the generalized search.

You can also add other words you'd like to see in the posting, such as "good condition." Specify your city's Craigslist site (boston.craigslist.org, in this example) in the 'Search within a site or domain' field, and tell Google to do its work. You'll see your results, organized how you want them, in Google's easy-to-read format. "

Pandia's Meta-Directory to Search Tools

Pandia has updated its All-in-One list of search engines.

"There are separate categories for tools for web search, directories, local search, social search, microblogs, reference and dictionaries, online books, music, radios, rss and blogs, software, people, and much more."

Find it at http://www.pandia.com/powersearch/

Maintaining a collection like this is a lot of work. You will surely find some search tools you didn't know about it.

Government Online Catalogs to Public Data

Data.gov.uk versus Data.gov – Which wins?, Flowing Data (Feb 4)

Governments hold a tremendous amount of data. A few projects aim to make the data more aasessible to the public. This article compares the new Data.gov.uk from the UK government designed in part by Tim Berners Lee, to the initial project by the US government, data.gov, to provide public access to data sets. Toronto also adoped this to link to known sources.

Google Insights

Understanding Google Insights: You Can’t Estimate Traffic with It, Ann Smarty, Search Engine Journal (Feb 5)

Google Insights is a terrific tool for seeing trends, but it helps to know how the data is created. Ann Smarty explains - for one, the data is normalized across different sizes of area populations.

The tool is most used by people in the SEO/SEM business, but researchers can get value.

From Google Insights:

"Whether you’re an advertising agency, a small business owner, a multinational corporation, or an academic researcher, Insights for Search can help you gauge interest in pertinent search terms."

Google Insights has a few videos that show how to use Insights for evaluating brands, campaigns, or advertising messages.

How to find manuals

Lost that users manual? You can find it on the Web, Wendy Boswell, About.com (Feb 4)

Can't find a manual, or the product didn't come with one? Find it on the web using these tips from Wendy Boswell.

There are also some search engines that specialize in manuals such as Free Manuals and diplodocs from Safe Manuals where you can browse by manufacturer.

New at Wolfram Alpha

New Features in Wolfram|Alpha: Year-End Update, Wolfram Alpha (Dec 21)

Describes features and functionality added to Wolfram Alpha during the past half year in the following three areas. Some examples noted below.

+ mathematics, statistics and computation - advanced support for many mathematical functions
+ science, biology, health - physical exercise calculator, and carbon footprint data
+ socioeconomics and culture - FBI statistics on crime, international healthcare statistics, salary data in the US.

There's more to come in 2010.

"In 2010, we will continue to improve and update all of these domains, and to tackle entirely new areas of knowledge. Efforts are already underway to add data on an incredibly diverse array of subjects: automobiles, energy consumption and prices, fictional characters, wars and battles, and Academy Awards, to name just a small fraction."

2009 Web Obituaries

15 sites that went kaput in 2009 (images) Josh Lowensohn , CNet News (Dec 23)

Wonder where Yahoo Briefcase went or Yahoo 360 or GeoCities? They died in 2009. See 12 others in this slideshow. There could be surprises. Lost Microsoft Encarta this year too.

Template Galore

Template Chaser streamlines search for the right template. It brings from several providers over 43,000 templates. These are all for a price, but you can browse for ideas.

+ Website - hirher price range - often over $200.
+ Web CMS
+ Design - seems to be for web sites
+ Software - functions that can be added to a web page
+ Miscellaneous - examples look like letterhead and business cards

Memento and Web Archiving

The Memento Project aims to make it possible to go to a site (say CNN.com) and ask to see the front page as of a certain date. This is to be "seamless access to archived Web resources"

Mentions an archive for BBC News - people do work at things like this.

There are a few demos to try but they do take time to run. This is extremely rudimentary.

It lists support from Library of Congress and a couple of US universities. But will it really receive the funds to create a truly navigatable web archive? And can it be retroactive or is it to be from this time onward?

See The Internet Time Machine from the Momento Project, ResourceShelf (Nov 17)

US Govenment Resources

The Government Domain: A Handful of Classics by Peggy Garvin, LLRX (Oct 31)

Peggy Garvin is the author of e-Government and Web Directory: U.S. Federal Government Online, an annually updated directory to more than 2,000 Web site records, organized into 20 subject-themed chapters .

In this article for LLRX she describes seven important US government web resources that may not be universally known. In addition there is USA.gov as a specialty search tool for US federal, state, and local government sites.

She makes the point that these are resources in the "deep web". Google and others don't index them at all or not well. The searcher must know that they exist.

The State of DMOZ (or ODP)

DMOZ: A Solid Directory Or The Great Pumpkin Of Search? by Debra Mastaler, Search Engine Land (OCt 27)

If becoming a Great Pumpkin means fading away after Halloween, then ODP/dMOZ is already there, in my opinion. Debra Mastlaer takes on finding out how the Open Directory Project (aka dMoz) actually works - and how it continues with so many category without editors. ODP was once a fine directory, and it seems that SEO people still want their website listed there. They don't always submit to the right category (and not doing so means immediate discard), but they do persist. Google uses its copy of ODP in its ranking - this is alluded to - we don't know to what degree but it probably the reason people go to some effort to be added. But this operation is on a broken shoestring (say I from what I can see). It's all volunteer editors (how many people can sustain interest on a voluntee basis), except for a handful of staff and some premises they might be getting at AOL. Read it anyway - interviewer Debra Mastaler gets some information from Editor in Chief, Bob Keating. At least we learn why there are two names: DMOZ vs ODP. We don't learn what the plans are for the future - other than more of the same.

Intute Looses Thesaurus

Intute has removed its thesaurus for social science. This announcement - The Thesaurus Engine service has been withdrawn - suggests that it did not "align" with UK higher education courses. Odd - would be helpful for students to learn about and use thesauri.

Slideworld for Educational Presentations

SlideWorld – the Powerpoint search engine AltSearchEngines (Oct 19)

SlideWorld.org specializes in presentations done for or by medical professionals.

"SlideWorld is a web resource designed to facilitate educational process of medical professionals.

As you know slide presentations has become one of the key ways of facilitating education and a way of communicating the new scientific developments. Academic faculties and clinicians in practice from worldwide have contributed to the web portal."

There is also www.slideworld.com/slidecategories.aspx for presentations in other subject areas.

Reference Web Sites

Best Free Reference Web Sites 2009 Eleventh Annual List RUSA Machine-Assisted Reference Section (MARS)

This is a short list but varied, covering history, science, employment, health. education, and even local harvest. Emphasis is on US resources (eg LocalHarvest is for the US), but there are some from the UK (BBC Country Profiles) and some global interest (urbainrail.net).

State of Wikipedia

Where Wikipedia Ends By Farhad Manjoo, Time (Sept 28)

Time magazine is reporting that Wikipedia growth has flattened and may be declining. In March 2009 it reached its peak with 890.000 editors.

"Not only is Wikipedia slowing, but also new stats suggest that hard-core participants are a pretty homogeneous set — the opposite of the ecumenical wiki ideal."

It has adopted more controls to improve trustiworthiness. Would that be dampening growth? Or has nearly everything that people want to write about been done?

Wikipedia is important - at this point we wouldn't want to lose it. But, as this article concludes - "Still, Wikipedia's troubles suggest the limits of Web 2.0 — that when an idealized community gets too big, it starts becoming dysfunctional. Just like every other human organization."

Google Internet Stats - UK

Google Launches “Google Internet Stats” by Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Land (Sep 10)

Google is collecting statistics from the web and presenting them through Google Internet Stats. This is intended for the UK though some other statistics might sneak in. (No plans, it seems, to do this for other countries.)

Figures are organized into:

# Macro Economic Trends

* Rest of the World
* UK

# Technology

* Broadband
* Devices
* Mobile
* Speed

# Consumer Trends

* Community
* Entertainment
* Information
* eCommerce

# Media Consumption

* Changes in Media Usage
* Demographic Usage
* Media Consumption Stats
* Media Multi-tasking
* Personalised Media Experiences

# Media Landscape

Google Barometer wrote about it too - New! Internet Stats all in one place

Europeana Update

Europeana and Digitization: The Collaboration Is Only Beginning by Susanne Bjørner, Newsbreaks (Sept 10)

Europeana digitization project is a major undertaking involving many countries, languages, and copyright laws. This article tells us more about accomplishments to date and the many challenges ahead including partnerships with Google Books.

"Launched in November 2008 with 2 million digitized works from 27 member countries, Europeana now claims more than 4.6 million books, newspapers, film clips, maps, photographs, and documents from European libraries, archives, museums, and audiovisual repositories. More than 1,000 cultural institutions contribute content directly or indirectly through aggregators, and more than 150 institutions participate as partners in the network. The goal is to have 10 million objects accessible through the portal by the time Europeana 1.0 replaces the beta site in 2010."

Funding for Intute

JISC in the UK may be cutting back on funding and support for the excellent Intute directory to web resources.

A newsletter to supporters and users said,

"Following the JISC review of spending priorities for the academic year 2010-11, the decision was made to significantly reduce the current funding to Intute in the context of an expectation that JISC will be required to find real term funding savings. JISC will continue to support some aspects of Intute (to be confirmed in mid October 2009), and especially its Internet research skills activities, but they have recommended that we refocus as an organisation and look at our current business model. In the current economic climate we expect that this will just be one of many difficult public funding decisions."

Cut backs in funding for scholarly directories is a blight - like a virus spreading through the information kingdom.

Online Archives at McMaster

The unknown tomb of the soldier, found at last, SUSAN KRASHINSKY, Globe and Mail (Aug 11)

With help from the archivists at McMaster University and the university's Peace and War in the 20th Century website, Pipe Major John Spoore in England located the site of battle on Halloween, 1914 in Belgium

"Mr. Beck searched university archives for descriptions of the battle, and triangulated the location on his maps. After much searching, he happened upon it: a square topped with a tiny X, the sole indicator that a windmill once stood there."

"The site, pw20c.mcmaster.ca, is free and searchable. It's a way of making history accessible, said map specialist Gord Beck, instead of locking documents in a rare-archives room where they must be handled with special gloves."

New NPR website

NPR (National Public Radio) Unveils Website Redesign, ResourceShelf (July 26)

"Hot off the presses, word that a complete overhaul of the National Public Radio website at NPR.org is now live. The new site looks great (we viewed the video tour linked to below). Site search (which has been in beta for a while) should work better. It’s now powered by the Google Search Appliance."

Favourites Page

AllMyFaves - all-in-one page of hand selected resources in areas of education, entertainment, travel, games (those are the main tabs) - and with versions for Canada, UK, US, and India. But there is more - Weather, Finance, News, Sports, Magazines, Health, Recipes - selection depends on the tab you have open. Very good for browsing.

They call it the "ultimate home page"

"Our visual platform not only directs users to their sought-after information fast but also introduces them to new and exciting sites, both of the same and different categories. We achieve this through a strict selection process and a back-and-forth dialogue among the AllMyFaves team members. This way, AllMyFaves acts as a pioneering force of Internet browsing, searching and learning, thereby offering nothing but the absolute best of what the web has to offer. Today, when much of the searches we perform produce considerable numbers of spam, fraud and aggregation sites, we feel someone needs to step up and sift through the Internet so that Internet users' experience is a positive, to the point and no-nonsense one. AllMyfaves has a calling and we're dead set on doing it right. What a better way to do so than by the use of the human brain."

New at Intute

More kudos to Intute. The Intute consortium of seven universities in the UK, plus its partnerships with other educational institutions and libraries. continues to provide the world with splendid collections of web resources for faculty and students. Intute invests in reviewing and adding resources, adding self-study units, adding features such as MyIntute, and most recently improving the interface - again.

The new browse panel shows subject coverage much better through 19 subject headings from agriculture to veterinary medicine. These have been designed to "provide a simpler navigational structure and are aligned to university courses".

The Advanced Search makes selection of subject area, resource type, and country easier.

Search results now support some filtering: by resource type, and period. Intute invites ranking and comments of each result.

The main database consists of the catalogued and reviewed resources. But Intute can also be used to search the content of the resources it lists through a Google Custom Search (which it calls Harvester).

One of Intute's greatest strengths have been in the online tutorial guides in The Virtual Training Suite. Intute has added 31 new online tutorials to its collection of over 60 to orient students to the questions to ask and resources to use in a subject area. These go well beyond a tour of a few sites. A tutorial will alert a student to library materials, skills in study and research, variety of resources - journals, databases, communication, current awareness.

The Intute email about the Virtual Training Suite gave some background about changes to the content and style of the tutorials.

The feedback received indicated a growing recognition of the need to help students develop Internet research skills. It also suggested that helping students to understand peer-review was more important than ever in a Web 2.0 world of user-created content. We have re-written the tutorial content to reflect this, so the coverage of the four main sections of each tutorial is now as follows: 1) Tour – focuses on the academic information landscape on the Internet and aims to create a mental map for students of the key scholarly sources for their subject.

2) Discover – offers updated guidance on how to find scholarly information online; choosing the right search tool and looks at the importance of developing a search strategy.

3) Judge – discusses how critical thinking can improve the quality of online research and provides guidance on how to judge which Internet resources are appropriate for University work.

4) Success – provides practical examples of students using the Internet for research – successfully and unsuccessfully, so that students can learn from the mistakes of others, as well as by example.

Frequent users will also benefit from the MyIntute account:
* Save records and searches
* Email alerts of new records from your subject area
* Export records to your web pages

Intute is on Twitter too -- http://twitter.com/intute/

This is a remarkable achievement in a time of declining budgets and general neglect of scholarly centres. Intute not only maintains its collection but it stays in step with technology changes and social web practices.

Learning on the Web

How to Learn Anything on the Web by Yardena Arar, PC World (Jul 23)

"A tutorial or class for almost everything and anything is available online these days. Whether you're looking to beef up your résumé with some new skills, to get a degree while waiting for the job market to pick up, or simply to have a little fun learning something new, the Web has a wealth of educational resources--many of them free of charge."

Newspaper Digitization Project

British Newspapers 1800 - 1900 - The British Library in partnership with JISC and Gale Cengage Learning makes public 2 million pages from 49 newspapers in the 1800s in Britain.

JISC announced this in Read all about it.
"The British Library, in partnership with JISC and Gale, part of Cengage Learning, has today launched the public version of its 19th century British Library Newspaper website1.

Bathing machines, children as young as nine smoking and drinking, Vesta Tilley - London’s very own Pop Idol, the banking collapse of 1878 and zero percent income tax, are just a few of the fascinating items researchers can now look at online.

For the first time ever, users regardless of their location will be able to explore over two million pages of newspaper from 49 national and regional UK titles at the click of a button. With enhanced search capabilities and new imaging techniques, serious and amateur researchers now have access to vivid newspaper reports previously only available via hard copy in Reading Rooms.

Chosen by leading experts and academics to present a cross section of 19th century society, the website offers its users highly illustrated materials on topics as diverse as business and sport, politics and entertainment. The collection focuses on national newspapers such as the Daily News, English regional papers, for example the Manchester Times, home country newspapers from Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, weekly titles such as Penny Illustrated Paper and Graphic and specialist titles such that covered Victorian radicalism and Chartism such as Charter."

History of the Book in Canada

History of the Book in Canada, Library and Archives Canada.

From the introduction:

"Unique among national book history projects, the Web site contains comprehensive bibliographic, geographic, and biographic data about Canada's print culture from its beginnings in the sixteenth century to the twenty-first century. The databases will be of interest to scholars in many subject areas, as well as students, teachers, librarians, archivists, and anyone curious about Canadian history"

Sites and Tricks

Must-Bookmark Web Sites From Hassle-Free PC by Rick Broida, PCWorld (May 5)

Grab bag of stuff in this article

+ review of WikiHow
+ nifty use of iGoogle's Days Since gadget - shows how you really can customized iGoogle
+ 4 encyclopedia sources on the web to replace Encarta. To these I would add Answers.com as a quick source of facts.

Webby 2009

The Webby is the premier award for a web service, Categories as are diverse as Education, Events, Student, Travel. There are web celebrities as well. The 2009 awards have just been announced. See the winners and nominees at the page for 13th Annual Webby Awards

University Lecture Videos

YouTube Launches Higher Education Landing Page, CampusTechnology (Apr 1)

Lectures from mainly US universities at http://www.youtube.com/edu. Also see Directory - for list of participants. Two Canadian schools on the list are Carleton University and Concordia.

World Digital Library soon to open

World Digital Library - opens on April 21, 2009 - see short video.

From announcement

"Examples of treasures that will be featured on the WDL include oracle bones and steles contributed by the National Library of China; Arabic scientific manuscripts from the National Library and Archives of Egypt; early photographs of Latin America from the National Library of Brazil; the Hyakumanto darani, a publication from the year 764 from the National Diet Library of Japan; the famous 13th century “Devil’s Bible” from the National Library of Sweden; and works of Arabic, Persian, and Turkish calligraphy from the collections of the Library of Congress. "

Encarta Goodbye

No - not an April Fool's joke. Microsoft is closing the online encyclopedia Encarta (product and web site) by the end of 2009.

For a time, a year or two ago, Microsoft had promoted Encarta through Live Search - could get partial entries - but that disappeared in one of the remakes. It is still in MSN - http://encarta.msn.com/ - although not easy to find from the home page.

The Microsoft statement is in Important Notice: MSN Encarta to be Discontinued. Here it explains reasons.

"Encarta has been a popular product around the world for many years. However, the category of traditional encyclopedias and reference material has changed. People today seek and consume information in considerably different ways than in years past. As part of Microsoft’s goal to deliver the most effective and engaging resources for today’s consumer, it has made the decision to exit the Encarta business."

That doesn't say specifically that Wikipedia is the reason but it seems clear that the changes on the Web have made Encarta less likely to attract paid subscribers.

Microsoft shuts Encarta, Wikipedia gives up on Wikia Search by Chris Keall, The National Business Review (Apr 1)

Academic Earth Lectures

Academic Earth has lectures on video from 6 top rated US universities in subject areas of science, history, economics, philosophy, religion and others. Could start by watching the top-rated lectures.

Almanacs and Information Please

Péter's Digital Reference Shelf is still availabe through Gale Centage Learning. In January, Peter Jasco looked at almanacs and reviewed Information Please Almanac .

On the whole - good content and good software - and it's free.

"There are blogs and other Web sites offering much of the above information, but Information Please Almanac offers an excellent one-stop shop — and the reliability of the data. The only price that you have to pay for this quality and convenience is ads that are more unrealistic or more unappalling than those in TV commercials, especially when they are animated. I wish that the producers and publishers of other almanacs would pick up and implement some of the ideas of the Information Please Almanac."

New Pew Internet Site

PEW Internet has redesigned its web site. http://pewinternet.org/From the announcement:

We are pleased to announce a new pewinternet.org; we've launched a new site and a new newsletter. Please take a moment to visit, www.pewinternet.org, we have several new features:

Topic-driven navigation
Page through reports online
Grab-and-go infographics
Searchable poll database

With the new site we are also launching a new newsletter and topic based alerts. Because you've signed up for our alerts you will automatically receive our new newsletter which will highlight our latest research. If you'd like to continue to receive alerts only when we release a new report, please visit, www.pewinternet.org to subscribe to our "All new reports" alert via the Subscribe box on our home page.

We are excited to also offer topic alerts for the following areas of research:
Teens
Health
Broadband
Web 2.0
Demographics
Libraries

Tip Jar through Google Moderator

While Microsoft gives cashback for searches (only in the US), Google Moderator hasa TipJar for ideas on ways to save money.

Some of these are very obvious - "don't grocery shop on an empty stomach", or "eat out less". Probably someone said "take your own lunch". However, if this is the way to get the point across, so be it.

It's a bit like the household-tips books of long ago in purpose, but very social and collaborative in execution.

Google Moderator is a way of setting up a QnA service - or series as it's called here. With registration you can ask, answer, comment, and vote on the items, or create your own series. It's been around for a while and was described in Google Operating System - Google Moderator in September 2008

Internet Literacy

Internet literacy for parents, teachers and young people Pandia (Mar 5)

The Council of Europe has created a handbook to help get teachers and parents familiar with technologies and issues surrounding use of the Web.

"The content is divided into 25 fact sheets on themes such as searching for information, spam, chat, games, creativity, privacy, security, social networking, Web 2.0 and becoming an active e-citizen. Each fact sheet contains a general introduction to the theme, ethical considerations, best practice examples and links to further information."

This version is the third edition

http://www.coe.int/t/dghl/standardsetting/internetliteracy/hbk_EN.asp

The Flash version is well crafted. It says "a guide for parents, teachers and young people", but it seems more directed to adults. It's reasonably up to date but there are remnants of older version such as usenet and newsgroups (although the resources the guide points to are good)

It is comprehensive touching on the range of tools, the uses, the dangers, and it refers to many excellent external resources. Teachers could easily use this as a base for developing a classroom Internet literacy course.

Good Tipples

Favourite Tipples at Freepint in March , were picked by Christine Hamilton-Pennell - an interesting mix of CI, data visualization, Pipl for people search, and business and trade sources.

Christine Hamilton-Pennell is President of Growing Local Economies , Inc. in Canada. She wrote Canadian Business Research Resources, published in November 2008 through FUMSI.

All about Weather

Turn to these sites if the weather is bad by Don Reisinger, Webware (Mar 3)

Here are several resources for checking the weather in the United States. However, some carry Canadian weather reports: AccuWeather and WeatherUnderground. For Canada also check the Weather Network ( http://www.theweathernetwork.com/ ) , and of course Environment Canada's Weather Office

European Library

The European Library Updates Site, Newbreaks (Feb 19)

European Library is available and has new materials.

"The European Library announced a new site release of www.theeuropeanlibrary.org, a free resource to discover learning and research materials, covering all subjects, from 38 national libraries across Europe. Originally developed as a central point of access to Europe’s library material, the website now combines multilingual search functionalities with several online exhibitions (www.theeuropeanlibrary.org/exhibition) and Web 2.0 tools."

View the first time user tutorial to get started.

How To Do Anything

How to find how-tos on the Web by Don Reisinger, Webware (Feb 13)

Here are a "a slew of sites across the Web that provide articles and videos that can help us complete any project."

+ 5min.com - short videos
+ ehow - over 300,000 articles and some videos
+ expert village - over 131,000 videos
+ howcast - videos and wiki guides - organizes the how-tos into categories
+ instructables - step-by-step instructions with images - good ones on creating a laptop stand.

Academic Earth - World Class Education

Academic Earth is home to 1000s of video lectures from professors in several top US universities. Some have been bundled by themes into playlists. Viewing is free - no registration required but if you do, you can save to favourites and "grade" them. Read the faq for more. If you have an hour or so and have been wanting to learn new approaches or a new subject area, this would be a good place to start.

Buddhist Digital Collection

Zen and the art of online data, Michael Rank, Guardian (Feb 5)

Major collection of Buddhist manuscripts and paintings are being brought online by The International Dunhuang Project (IDP), illustrating once again the wonders of the Web.

"The International Dunhuang Project (IDP), based at the British Library in London, is an ever-growing digital assemblage that makes it possible to study online around 160,000 images of 80,000 objects dug up in the deserts of Chinese central Asia and now in institutions across Europe, Asia and North America.:

Hot Web Spots 2009

10 Web Sites That Will Matter in 2009 Mark Sullivan, PC World (Jan 21)

2008 was the year of Twitter, Facebook, and Hulu. What will 2009 be? If Mark Sullivan is right it will be video, mobile, and networks - the same but different. A couple on his list that struck me:

+ "Power.com lets you log in once, then view (and post to) any of a long list of social networking sites that you sync the service up with--all from one place"

+ "Tripit's goal in life is to be your personal, full-service travel assistant"

+ "Boxee gathers video from all over the Web (Hulu, YouTube, CNN.com, and many others) and puts it in a very neat and easy-to-use interface that can be accessed on your PC or on the TV "

Kovacs' Reference Collection

Core Reference Tools - lists of resources by Diane Kovacs who is still collecting resources and teaching courses online for librarians and information professionals.

Mentioned in the Internet Resources Newsletter

Top 100 Sites for the Future

100 top sites for the year ahead, Guardian UK (Dec 18, 2008)

Here's a new list of 100 top sites from the staff at The Guardian. Looking at the past year, they noticed the largest changes in collaboration in which many can work on a project from different locations, and they can create much better presentation using software on the web.

The other great growth area has been in location-based services and, of course, the mobile web.

There are several interesting picks on this list and some, such as those on visualization, really do look forward.
Two years after we last picked the web's cream of the crop, our latest selection finds that location-based services, work-anywhere collaboration and video are prominent

XooxleAnswers - Research Resource

XooxleAnswers has an annotated directory (or link list) to free newspaper archives starting with a description of Google News Archives. This is an extensive list that covers the US, some international including Canada, college newspapers, and magazines. It received a strong recommendation from The Information Advisor's BestBizWeb's enewsletter.

XooxleAnswers (zooks-il answers) is the home website for David Sarokin, a researcher who offers for-fee services. He used to research for Google Answers, and also writes articles for eHow.com about research, computers, investing and much else.

He has created several useful guides to resources for legal and business, and links to articles he has written on a variety of topics.

For example, see David's article on Find Old Newspaper Articles and Archives Online for Free (Nov 2008)

In total, this is an excellent resource to help one go well beyond Google for specialty searches, and as a for-fee service to be helped on the really tough questions.

UBC Health Library Wiki

The University of British Columbia Health Library runs a wiki for health librarians to share their expertise on searching and resources. There are many topics and tools covered, and some entries on topics such as use of Web 2.0, social tagging. There are also profiles of several health librarians.

From the main page:

"Increasingly, health librarians are the acknowledged information retrieval experts in medicine in the digital age - but we need better ways to share this expertise with each other, which is the major reason why this wiki has come into being. Our objective is to build a health library wiki with an international perspective, but also to emphasize issues affecting our work and practice in Canada. "

Reference Resources on the Web

The library without walls: images, medical dictionaries, atlases, medical encyclopedias free on web,by E. Giglia, E=Prints in Library and Information Science (Oct 25 2008)

Abstract

"The aim of this article was to present the ''reference room'' of the Internet, a real library without walls. The reader will find medical encyclopedias, dictionaries, atlases, e-books, images, and will also learn something useful about the use and reuse of images in a text and in a web site, according to the copyright law."

Digital Natives

Digital Natives - "born into and raised in the digital world" - computers, iPods, wireless, Internet on cell phones.

This website comes from the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University and the Research Center for Information Law at the University of St Gallen.

+ Has a blog with good coverage of topics such as privacy, information overload, quality of information, social media. Unfortunately it does not have a list of the topics it covers.

+ Also a wiki - a good starting point for discussion and resources about digital natives. From the About - "This site is particularly for parents, teachers, researchers, and DNs themselves to talk about what it means to be born digital and the implications of generational shifts in how people use technology. "

+ There's a book too - Born Digital

Google Plots Flu Trends

Google now tracking flu trends via search by Josh Lowensohn, Webware (Nov 11)

Wonder if the flu is in your neighbourhood? Google might have the answer for people in the US. Google's FluTrends site tracks people's searches on flu.

"What makes the technology so fascinating is that its data set goes back to 2003, and has been cross-referenced with the last several years of survey data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Google says that because its own system is based on a constant flow of searches as opposed to surveying techniques it's able to provide results one to two weeks faster than the CDC."

Activity this fall (October and November) has been low.

Postscript: The Scout Report has an extended entry about Google Flu Trends - Google makes a new foray into the world of public health with articles about Google Flu Trends and other resources such as the Mayo Clinic Flu Page.

DeepDyve for Deep Web

DeepDyve.com - a tool for digging into the deep web, aka invisible web. Must register. Full access to services has a fee of about $45 / month.

Deep-Web search specialist expands, renames by Stephen Shankland, Webware (Nov 11)

"A search start-up called Infovell has renamed itself DeepDyve, begun offering a free "deep Web" search tool, and expanded its search technology to the domains of computing, clean tech, and energy. "

Reviewed by Chris Sherman in DeepDyve Explores The Invisible Web, Searchengineland (Nov 11)

"DeepDyve’s approach is like no other I’ve seen. Its chief scientists come from a background in genomics research, rather than computer science or linguistics. Genomics researchers strive to decode the information contained in DNA to understand the very building-blocks of life. Unlike search engineers who focus on text and keywords, genomics researchers look at a billion three letter “words” spelled out in the four letter alphabet of DNA. These words are combined in “sequences” that determine everything from hair color to whether we’re predisposed to a particular disease. To crack these codes requires massive amounts of data and the ability to see—and understand—hidden patterns of immense complexity."

Interesting Web Sites

100 Incredibly Useful and Interesting Web Sites,
Mark Sullivan, PC World (Oct 1)

Something for everyone -- "Whether you need to find a home, share a huge file, or throw a wicked curve with a Wiffle ball, you'll find these sites indispensable."

Librarians and Wikipedia

Putting the Library in Wikipedia By Lauren Pressley and Carolyn J. McCallum. Online (Oct 2008)

"Through trial and error we have learned strategies for how librarians can effectively use Wikipedia to make their collections known on the web. We feel the dissemination of this information could be useful for the larger library and information management community."

Patents

Patents.com for free patent searches on the web, Hope Leman, AltSearchEngines (Sept 3)

Very favourable review of Patents.com - "All together, this is an impressive tool and should be a boon to inventors, entrepreneurs, educators and is a exemplar of the marriage of the Web, lively intellectual fora and the nobler aspects of capitalism at its finest." . Has examples of how a medical librarian might use it.

Patents

Patents.com lets you search through ideas (good and bad) by Josh Lowensohn, Webware (Aug 27)

Patents.com "has an index of more than 450 million patents in 15 different languages."

"Patents.com offers some great exploration, which is where I found the most value. The front page shows off some of the most recently approved and submitted patents, but the star of the show is the search tool, which goes from basic to "expert" mode with just one click"

Redesign at ERIC

ERIC Web Site Undergoes Redesign, Expands Coverage, ResourceShelf (Aug 7)

Website for ERIC - the Education Resource Information Center - has been redesigned.

Of particular interest:

+ "A completely new and expanded Help section that includes brief tutorials, a glossary, and a searchable index."

+ "more than 3,600 new records from newly acquired journals. Work is underway to increase coverage even further by seeking additional partnerships with publishers of both journal and non-journal literature."

Internet Resources - New

Mentioned in the excellent resource newsletter - Internet Resources (Issue 163 - July 2008)

Alltop - "we've got science covered" - feeds from science sources

Conchart - "An encyclopedic atlas of history and happenings that anyone can edit. " - I suspect this will mainly be battles - since they are easily mapped. But this increases interest. It's a kind of historical atlas wiki.

Google sites - now a group can have a website.

Help with File Extensions

Here are two sites to help in figuring out file extensions and what to do with them.

Sharpened. net - Help Center

http://www.sharpened.net/helpcenter/extensions.php

Sharpened says this about itself - "Sharpened.net, which has been around since 1999, serves to help people understand the sometimes intimidating world of computers. When you have a question, but are afraid to ask, Sharpened.net is here for you." Has resources and help for Mac and Windows.

The File Extensions Resources = "the definitive resource for information about file extensions and file types"

http://www.fileinfo.net/

Both look excellent.

Bravo Walrus

The Internet Scout report has added The Walrus, Canada's best magazine, to its collection.

From the Scout Report:

"15. The Walrus [Macromedia Flash Player]
http://www.walrusmagazine.com/

With its marine mammal style title, The Walrus magazine has been gracing
Canadian newsstands and the web since September 2003. Their mission is to
publish works by writers from Canada and elsewhere who are "curious about
the world." Their homepage is visually stimulating and easy to navigate,
and first-time visitors may wish to look over their various thematic
sections to get a sense of the magazine's general tone and perspective. Some
recently published pieces include "Grounded", which imagines a world without
air travel and "Tripping on the Trans-Can", which is a collection of quotes
and photos from journalists, policymakers and participants involved in the
"youthful invasion" of the early 1970s when some 50,000 Canadian youths
"bummed" across the country. The "Web Extras" is also worth a look as it
features photo essays on Vanuatu, growing up Canadian in the 1970s, and the
world of Canadian sports. After that, visitors may wish to dip into their
online archive. [KMG]"

Web 2.0 Britannica

Britannica follows in Wikipedia’s footsteps (sort of…) Pandia (June 8)

Britannica is throwing its hat into the Web 2.0 ring by revamping its site so that it can elicit contributions from readers as well as its experts.

"Can it really be? Encyclopaedia Britannica will soon be launching a new initiative to promote greater participation by both expert contributors and readers."

Pandia questions whether it can work - especially since Britannica is keeping much of its encylopedia behind for fee access.

Tech Sites to Watch

Seven Wonders of the World (Wide Web) by Ivor Tossell, Globe and Mail (May 1)

Identifies 7 tech sites that are worth following.

- GigaOM - web 2.0, wireless, broadband - business interests.
- The Register - in UK - hardware
- Infoworld - enterprise IT
- Rough Type - futurism - reality check on claims
- Techmeme - web 2.0 - crawls "tech blogsphere and media circuit"
- Mashable - social networks

Commenters added

- Readwriteweb - web 2.0

To which I would add Webware.com for Web 2.0 (largely consumer) applications

If your interest is in the management of all this technology in an enterprise - then KMWorld.com.

Using USA.gov

USA.gov Tutorials – Help Finding Government Information Online at USA.gov -- nine flash tutorials including

-- Overview: Finding Government Information and Services – Learn how to find government information and services on the Internet, starting at USA.gov.

-- Especially for Visitors to the United States – Learn more about the U.S., do business with the U.S., or come to the U.S. for work, study, or travel.

Best Web2.0 sites

174 Web 2.0 Sites in 41 Categories - awards from SEOMoz by these 41 categories give us lots to consider and try. A sampling of categories: bookmarking, books, guides and reviews, news and blogs, search ...

Digitization of Canada Gazette

A Nation's Chronicle: The Canada Gazette Library and Archives Canada

Pre 1998 issues of The Canada Gazette, dubbed "official newspaper of the Government of Canada" will be available back to 1841 through a digitization program that is now underway and expected to be completed by early 2009.

"The database comprises images taken from microfilm, microfiche and rare original copies of the Gazette held by LAC. The digitization of this material, which began in 2007, is still underway. By the end of 2008, visitors to this site will be able to access all issues of the Canada Gazette, from its beginning in 1841 until 1998. For those issues currently available on this site, please go to Search the Canada Gazette."

Post 1998 and current issues are at the Canada Gazette site.

Webware Winners

And the Webware 100 Winners are... By Rafe Needleman, Webware (

Winners of the 2008 Webware awards - 10 winners in 10 categories. Rafe Needleman picked his top 10 from the list.

Guide to Competitive Intelligence

Competitive Intelligence - A Selective Resource Guide by Sabrina Pacifici, LLRX (Apr 4)

Complete revision of an excellent guide to wide variety of tools for searching and tracking. This was first published in Nov 2005.

The guide is one big page - scroll to see it all, or use the internal page links. The link for Selected RSS was broken when I used it. Either scroll down or use http://www.llrx.com/features/ciguide.htm#selectedrss

Guide to Legal Research in Canada

Doing Legal Research in Canada by Ted Tjaden, LLRX (Apr 4)

Ted Tjaden has updated his guide to doing legal research in Canada. Ted is lawyer/law librarian working as the Director of Knowledge Management at McMillan Binch Mendelsohn LLP in Toronto, Ontario. He also used to teach the Legal Research on the Web through the Professional Learning Centre of the Faculty of Information Studies.

Sections are.

1. Introduction: The Canadian Legal System
2. Canadian Primary Legal Resources
3. Canadian Secondary Legal Resources
4. Canadian Legal Organizations (law libraries, law schools, . . .)
5. Canadian Legal Publishers (including online vendors)
6. Canadian Legal Research: By Topic

Best of the Web Directory

Best of the Web Adds DMOZ Editors to Directory Team Loren Baker, Search Engine Journal (Apr 8)

Just when I had despaired of web subject directories, news comes of this boost to Best of the Web.

"Best of the Web (BOTW.org) has pulled off an Internet web site classification coup de etat, hiring over 30 of the top DMOZ editors which had built the foundations of the Netscape Open Directory Project during the ‘glory days’ of DMOZ."

It looks a lot like dmoz and has been around since 1994. It does accept advertising and it charges to evaluate and accept submissions. No mention of exemptions for non-profit.

WebWare for everything

Webware is inviting your vote on best web-based tools in several categories. This is a good way to see what is available in categories such as audio, productivity, communications in addition to browsing and searching. Voting closes on March 31 - hurry - Vote Here.

The About page describes three types of webware:

* Productivity applications. Microsoft may own the desktop, but not the Web. Online, Google has solid productivity apps. And there are dozens of upstarts in this market too.
* Data-driven applications. Many new online services rely on real-time data that simply could not be encapsulated into software. Examples include Google Maps, Zillow and Farecast.
* Community services. Webware enables people to network, share their lives, and work together. Examples are MySpace, LinkedIn, YouTube, and SmartSheet.

QnA at WikiAnswers

Answers.com presents WikiAnswers What is it? altsearchengines (Mar 25)

"In short: WikiAnswers is the user-generated component of Answers.com where visitors contribute what they know and ask about what they don’t."

Another QnA - WikiAnswers looks serious (in spite of all the ads), and seems well organized. The questions and answers I looked seemed to have some quality control. Categories do have a supervisor, but the questions and answers are not signed.

WikiAnswers does have this disclaimer:

"While Answers makes every effort to present accurate and reliable information in its Services, Answers does not endorse, approve, or certify such information, nor does it guarantee the accuracy, completeness, efficacy, timeliness, or correct sequencing of such information."

Bass's search bag

Super-Useful Web Services by Steve Bass, PC World (Mar 18)

"Get names and addresses from the Web, research practically anything, and learn about a new input device."

People search, real estate, city populations, and some web research sites.

The CIA World Fact Book

CIA World Fact Book reviewed by Péter Jacsó -[f the University of Hawaii, for Gale (March 2008)

It's really an issue of geographic literacy, which is sorely lacking.

"Geographic literacy and information has many layers, ranging from physical geography to human geography, to economic and political geography. In the open access arena, the CIA Word Factbook has a good position, only the country profile database of the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the ones of the Foreign Affairs and International Trade Office of Canada are similarly comprehensive, and current."

This is the CIA - I would be suspicious of there being some bias. However Peter Jacso, who is thorough and accomplished in doing this kind of evaluation, finds that the CIA World Fact Book is, on the whole, a "good ready reference source".

"The CIA World Factbook is not the alpha and the omega for country information (and misses a few essential health indicators), but it keeps improving and being enhanced with new data elements, if not by new concepts, such as creating pre-defined subset groups for countries with certain common features, such as ASEAN countries, Francophone countries, orsub-Saharan countries. It is a good ready reference resource and could be quickly enhanced by links to data elements used in databases created by UN agencies and other non-profit international organizations which have unique and useful data, such as the human development index of UNDP. Links to other databases for corroborating values provided by the CIA also would be welcome."

Knowledge Discovery

Knowledge Discovery Resources 2008 by Marcus Zillman, LLRX (Feb 27, 2008)

New "Internet MiniGuide Annotated Link Compilation" of resources for "knowledge discovery". Some interesting picks and exposure to a wide variety of resources. Mostly knowledge management.

Country Search Engines

4,000 search engines you’ve never heard of… by Phil Bradley, AltSearchEngines (Feb 29)

Phil Bradley has been keeping a list of country-based search engines for several years. In this article he presents pros and cons with the balance being in favour of using these.

"A country search engine will provide an insight into a country and its culture in a way that other search engines cannot even dream of. The majority of these engines are index or directory based, so the headings and subheadings really will reflect the interests and concerns of that particular country."

He also comments on regional versions of the majors.

This is all well and good but many of the 137 engines listed for Canada are yellow-page-like directories to businesses and services. There are 14 engines listed for Listings.ca - one for each province, the territories, and Canada. A search engine for Parry Sound, Ontario can't really be called a Canadian search engine (and link was dead anyway). Hamiltonweb.com has a picture of palm trees (what - no steel mill smoke stacks?) and is not really about Hamilton - looks more like a link farm. If this is the case for the Canadian list, what might be in store for the others?

In doing research about a country, it is good to find sites in that country for its own people, whether it be a specialty search engine or directory. But with the current shabby state of directories today (Yahoo, DMOZ etc), you might have to run a search at one of the majors to find them.

Correction (Mar 3) - As it turns out, the ParrySound link is alive and redirects to (http://inparrysound.com/business/). inParrySound is a community site for Parry Sound people to find businesses, use the classifieds to buy and sell, write on the guest wall - stuff like that - very enterprising of them.

This example points to the near futility of creating and keeping lists. It's a herculean task to keep them fresh and good: the linked-to sites die, are abandoned, are taken over by ads, or change to something entirely different.

United Nations Data Access System

UNData Search Tool for Statistics ResearchBuzz (Feb 23)

Need statistics? Go to UNData http://data.un.org/ , a search tool for UN Statistics.

"It looks like a regular search engine, with different tabs for searching data and glossary. (A “more” tab has additional options: going to an advanced search, browsing available statistics, looking at information by country, and reviewing available sources.)"

This has the potential to becoming a major source of statistics. The About page states that , "Subsequent stages of the development of the UN data access system will extend to UN system data as well as to data of national statistical offices - providing the user with a simple single-entry point to global statistics."

New PLol.org for U.S. Law

Largest Legal Vertical Search Engine Launches: Public Library of Law Search Engine Watch blog (Feb 13)

"The PLol.org site indexes cases from the U.S. Supreme Court, Courts of Appeals and all 50 states (back to 1997); federal statutory law and codes from all 50 states; and regulations, court rules, and constitutions.

More than 2 million pages of cases previously available only by subscription make PLoL the largest free legal search engine online."

Merriam-Webster Visual Dictionary Online

Visual Dictionary Online reviewed on Péter's Digital Reference Shelf January 2008

PÉTER JACSÓ gives an overview of dictionaries that have illustrations and picks out the Merriam-Webster's Visual Dictionary Online for a closer look.

"What Merriam-Webster has done is very significant. It cut a deal to make available 6,000 illustrations [from Firefly] enhanced by definitions created by the lexicographers of Merriam-Webster as a free dictionary. This is a novel and laudable approach which brings out an exemplary synergy."

This is a largely glowing recommendation --

"This is a spectacularly good visual dictionary that needs to enhance the content in the sub-themes of the Society main theme and add a few illustrations for the state-of-the art gadgets in the Entertainment area. It is easy to live with the advertisements as they are on the top and right side of the screen, and they make it possible to have this outstanding ready reference source freely available. The book edition is also very attractive and reasonably priced at around $40, depending on where you shop and how you shop, but the convenience of the online version can't be beat."

Internet Resources

Internet Resources Newsletter for January 2008 - has many interesting picks. Browse for your needs.

+ Dumpr - http://www.dumpr.net/ - for doing clever things with digital photos.

+ File Extensions - http://www.file-extensions.org/ - essential reference.

+ Just Free Books - http://www.justfreebooks.info/ - "find public domain texts, open books, free audio books, ad-supported books and more."

Many other good recommendations.

Top Web Apps for 2007

Top Web Apps & Sites of 2007 by Richard MacManus, Read/Write Web (Dec 26)

There are some fine picks on this list. Richard MacManus covers blog readers (Google Reader), start pages (Pageflakes and Netvibes over any of the portals), online music (last.fm - works outside the United States), web office (Google Doc and Zoho). Web email (Gmail), social news (Digg - still, and Stumbleupon), and a few more.

Price's Year End Toolbox

SLA Update: 2007 Year-End Toolbox by Gary Price - Presentation to librarians highlighting trends and tools.

Visual Dictionary

Visual Dictionary Online from Merriam-Webster - this is fantastic and free - see the image with all the labelled parts in fields such as geology, geography, plants, arts and architecture. There are 15 themes, over 6,000 images, and 20,000 terms with contextual definitions.

Zillman's Deep Web

Deep Web Research 2008 by Marcus Zillman, LLRX (Nov 2007)

"This article and guide is designed to give you the resources you need to better understand the history of the deep web research, as well as various classified resources that allow you to search through the currently available web to find those key sources of information nuggets only found by understanding how to search the "deep web"."

Marcus Zillman is a collector of sites and articles that concern information retrieval in some way. This is a very long list of a mixed bag of resources. It would benefit greatly from more explanatory context and annotations on the entries. For example, it would be helpful to know that Agent Portal is in Hungarian (my best guess). Or that OAIster is a union catalog of digital resources, and not at all like One-Look Dictionary that is next on the list.

Some material is old. CompletePlanet is listed as a resource, and by my eye hasn't been updated since 2005. Beaucoup is even older and more out of date. INtute replaced RDN about two years ago.

Some of the sites are Zillman's subject tracers - such as Chatterbots - and these suffer from the same problem of no annotations. (These subject tracers usually have a url of www.bots.info; eg., http://www.ChatterBots.info.)

But in spite of all this, if you are patient and have time to poke around you'll find some good articles and resources. In its way it does relate to "invisible web" (or as Zillman prefers "deep web") for understanding the basics and finding some databases.

Researching Music on the Web

Music to Researchers’ Ears - Ten Top Sites for Researching Music - By Lindsay Hansen, Online (Dec)

"This article will highlight 10 sites, all of which are available for free and without user registration. I have evaluated each site for coverage, scope, and ease of use. They should help any researcher of music, as well as librarians who have not formally studied music."

Nice collection and coverage of classical, opera, world, blues, musical instruments, and music in Canada.

MSN goes Green

MSN “Goes Green” With New Web Channel, Several Environmental Calculators ResourceShelf (Nov 6)

There really is a MS Green Channel

For Music Lovers

Music to Researchers’ Ears - Ten Top Sites for Researching Music By Lindsay Hansen, Online (Nov/Dec 2007)

"Information professionals involved in music research understand the subject’s broad scope. From opera, classical, jazz, blues, hip-hop, soul, pop, and world music, the genres evolve and merge, creating fusions that result in new research opportunities. The Internet plays well with music research, offering sound and video that are lacking in older resources, both print and electronic. Free Web sites help even the tone-deaf appreciate the full range of music topics."

"This article will highlight 10 sites, all of which are available for free and without user registration. I have evaluated each site for coverage, scope, and ease of use. They should help any researcher of music, as well as librarians who have not formally studied music."

Veropedia - best of Wikipedia

Wikipedia Begets Veropedia Slashdot (Oct 29)

Veropedia - "a collaborative effort to collect the best of Wikipedia's content, clean it up, vet it, and save it in a quality stable version that cannot be edited. "

Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Dictionary of Canadian Biography an unusual example of research translation Licensing agreement with federal government renewed by Maria Saros Leung, News@UofT (Sep 24/07)

Some enhancements are in the works for the online Dictionary of Canadian Biography.

"Under the direction of new general editor Professor John English, the DCB team is looking to enhance project’s online presence by adding accompanying photos and continuing to update the biographies."

HowStuffWorks will have more video

Discovery Communications to Acquire Top Knowledge Website HowStuffWorks.com PRNewswire via Marketwatch (Oct 15)

Didn't know this -- "HowStuffWorks' 11 million global monthly unique visitors(1), which have grown 25% over the past year, have access to an extensive and rapidly growing library of deep and broad content designed to deliver the most relevant information possible. In addition to an editorial team that creates new content every day, HowStuffWorks leverages the exclusive digital rights to over 30,000 books, 800,000 images and more than 180,000 maps as it explains the world from brains to bats, from rocket engines to roller coasters, from hybrid cars to HDTV, and countless other topics."

Discovery Communications, the new owner, describes itself as "the leader in knowledge and curiosity on television".

Here's the plan - ""Contextually integrating engaging clips drawn from Discovery's vast video library of more than 100,000 hours of programming with the family-friendly and evergreen collection of expertly written articles on HowStuffWorks will ultimately deliver an accurate 'video wikipedia.' Information-seeking consumers will find a rich, multimedia experience to answer the world's questions, and our business partners will find new opportunities to reach targeted audiences of engaged consumers.""

Investor Education

Learning how to handle your money, Rob Carrick, Globe and Mail (Oct 8)

Rob Carrick recommended some investor-education sites for Canadians.

+ Investopedia - financial encyclopedia
+ Investorwords.com
+ investorED.ca - investing basics. Run by Investor Education Fund from Ontario Securities Commission
+ Canadian Business magazine website - canadianbusiness.com
+ Financial Webring Forum - financialwebring.org
+ Beginners Investing at About.com - beginnersinvest.about.com

Translation Resources

October 2007 InfoTip: In Other Words..., Barbara Verble, Bates Info (Oct 8) - five web sites that provide translating services including free text translation, dictionaries, and other translation resources.

Best Of from Business Week

Best of the Web - Readers Make Their Votes Count , Business Week (Sept 24)

Slide show of the top sites on the web picked by Business Week readers in 2007. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a text article to go with it but the slides list sites for each category - probably with the highest ranked first.

Mahalo Examined

Mahalo Launches Toolbar - Aims to Convert Google Users by Richard MacManus, Read / Write Web (Aug 10)

MacManus gives Mahalo a favourable review in this article, though he is not a fan of the toolbar that Mahalo has introduced to show Mahalo results in a left panel.

Mahalo is a "human powered" search service - humans pick the results and construct the collections - just like people do at directories but likely without the classification depth. Jason Calacanis, CEO of Mahalo, is quoted as saying he's gunning for Google and other big search engines. This is a stretch - and many others have said so too [Andrew Goodman for one] .

MacManus reports on his conversation with Calacanis and illustrates with a couple of searches (undemanding ones) and how he felt about the results.

If you have a "popular query", Mahalo just might help you out with well organized material. I liked what it did with the Toronto International Film Festival.

I expect that people will treat this as they do About.com. Check it if they think there might be a guide on their topic (eg antivirus software), or click through on a link if the guide turns up in search results or becomes so good that it is listed in a reputable directory.

Macmanus -- "I admire what Mahalo is trying to do ... . I'm all for quality control when it comes to Web content. So in that respect, I would use Mahalo for certain popular queries. However I also think the major search engines are improving in regards to quality ..."

The decline and fall of Dmoz

The DMOZ mob strikes again… by Joost de Valk.

Joost de Valk is a very unhappy ex-editor of Dmoz / Open Directory. He was banned from updating his categories on something that seems trivial. There may have been larger issues, but management of the matter was very poor. The comments attached to this posting are even more revealing of a malaise and paralysis. Everyone is waiting for Google to stop using it.

Product Reviews

So Many Reviews, So Little Time: Summize Product Review Search with Meta Aggregation, ResourceShelf (Aug 28)

Summize is a new product review service that summarizes reviews done by others. It has 19 million reviews on 2 million products. Resourceshelf lists some other sources to also use for product reviews.

See Review Search Engine Takes You To Best And Worst, ResearchBuzz (Aug 24) for a full description and examples. Calishain gives it a positive review.

Social Networking over Archaelogy

Archaeology and Palaeopathology - if you are interested in archaelogy this social networking site might be just the ticket - "A website where students, professionals and interested public can exchange information on all aspects of Funerary, Biological and Forensic Archaeology, Medical and Forensic Anthropology, Palaeopathology and related (sub)disciplines."

It was created by Anastasia Tsaliki through Ning. No further information on either.

Changes at Ontario's eLaws

Service Ontario has revamped the eLaws website that provides online access to a database of Ontario's statutes and regulations, both consolidated and source law.

See What Is New for a list of changes.

New urls are:

Splash: http://www.e-laws.gov.on.ca/
Home en: http://www.e-laws.gov.on.ca/navigation?file=home&lang=en
Home fr: http://www.e-laws.gov.on.ca/navigation?file=home&lang=fr
Search page en: http://www.e-laws.gov.on.ca/navigation?file=browseStatutes&lang=en
Search page fr: http://www.e-laws.gov.on.ca/navigation?file=browseStatutes&lang=fr

Archive-It

Of Permanent Value: Archiving The Web, Gary Price, Search Engine Land (Jul 23)

Gary Price has a new column at Search Engine Land on making content on the web more permanent. He begins with a review of Archive-It [http://www.archive-it.org/] from the Internet Archive.

Best of From SLA Toronto

Best of the Web: SLA Toronto Event Notes by Sandra Craig from a SLA Toronto event where several librarians shared their "best of " lists. There are some good picks for travel, Toronto, news, gardening, films, and advertising. Worth a browse.

Law.com Quest

Law.com launches vertical search engine, SEW Blog (June 19)

Law.com announced Law.com Quest, a vertical search engine for the searching of legal documents - for the US.

From Law.com - "Law.com connects legal professionals to more than 20 award-winning national and regional legal publications online, including The American Lawyer, The National Law Journal, New York Law Journal and Legal Times, and delivers top legal news electronically to a growing national and global audience of subscribers each day on The Newswire."

Mahalo Directory

Introduction to Mahalo, a new human-powered search directory, Pandia (June 3)

Mahalo is a new search directory maintained by editors. Learn how to get your site added.

Tool RoundUp

Spock.com for people search - it searches " through various social networking sites such as MySpace and Friendster, along with more-general Web sites, and reports on what it finds."

Clipmarks for saving, clipping, and sharing what you find on the Web. "Clipping something automatically archives it under your Clipmarks profile, though you can also save it directly to your blog or send it via e-mail. You can even share your clip collections, or look at archives that other users have assembled."

Squidoo where you can "build a "lens" (aka, a Web page) that includes information on any topic that's close to your heart, whether it's cats or Kafka."

Quintura for visual search - "Quintura returns an ordinary list of results on the right-hand side, while on the left it offers a visual map (or "cloud") of related terms."

Laundry List of Where to Find Answers

New Developments in Web Searching "If Google is the only search tool you use, you may be missing out" by Reid Goldsborough, LinkUp Digital (June 2007)

It's a habit of writers now to put Google in the title to attract your attention. This article mainly features resources that deal with mainly with factual information. or with access to journals. Wikipedia (which needs no introduction), Britannica Online, Answers.com, Highbeam (if Highbeam is listed where is Access My Library - which is free to use), RefDesk.

Also thrown in are DialogWeb and Lexis Nexis, both of which require registration and fees. These are tools for professional searchers to find articles and reports. Lexis Nexis is the friendlier of the two and offers ALaCarte for small businesses.

Or, in a completely different category, you could use Yahoo Answers or other answer centre where members ask and answer (except I wouldn't for anything other than a laundry question.)

More at Answers.com

Answers.com Continues Content Growth --
Both Answers.com and WikiAnswers Expand Topic Count -- PRNewswire via Marketwatch (May 21)

" Recent Answers.com content additions included:
- Handbooks for professional research, hobbies and general interest, such as architecture & construction, boating and genealogy
- Guides covering classical, French, German and Irish literature, as well as a general literary dictionary
- Religious reference, including a dictionary of saints, as well as works on Celtic, African and Asian mythology
- Recent major U.S. Supreme Court decisions "

See Answers.com What's New

Yahoo (Almost) Green

Going Green: Yahoo! banging the eco drum, SIlicon.com (May 14)

Yahoo is going green. It has launched " Yahoo! Green , an online education programme that will offer users the latest environmental news, consumer tips and ways to be personally and socially active in combating climate change". Initially available in the U.S., it will be expanded to other countries.

The tip on saving gas connects to the Green Center at Yahoo Autos. And can you believe that on the list of 10 tips, there was no mention of one of the best ways to save gas - don't idle the engine. Over 10 seconds of idling uses more gas than if you turn the engine off and turn it on again, not to mention the damage of emissions.

However, Yahoo gets credit for doing something to involve and educate people.

Encylopedia of Life

Researchers to list 1.8 million species in Net encyclopedia by SETH BORENSTEIN, AP via Globe and Mail (May 9)

"... the world's scientists plan to compile everything they know about all of Earth's 1.8 million known species and put it all on one Web site, open to everyone. The effort, called the Encyclopedia of Life , will include species descriptions, pictures, maps, videos, sound, sightings by amateurs, and links to entire genomes and scientific journal papers."

The encyclopedia will be built from web resources enhanced and extended by experts. "It will scan the Web for scientific information on the Internet and "mash up" all of the material into a file that then gets reviewed by expert curators ..."

From the front page of the site: "Comprehensive, collaborative, ever-growing, and personalized, the Encyclopedia of Life is an ecosystem of websites that makes all key information about life on Earth accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world. Our goal is to create a constantly evolving encyclopedia that lives on the Internet, with contributions from scientists and amateurs alike. To transform the science of biology, and inspire a new generation of scientists, by aggregating all known data about every living species. And ultimately, to increase our collective understanding of life on Earth, and safeguard the richest possible spectrum of biodiversity."

Hallelujah - good things do happen.

AccessMyLibrary in Canada

AccessMyLibrary www.accessmylibrary.com is another research resource from Thomson Gale. This gives free and fairly smooth access to articles in premium databases through the local library.

I had first thought that this applied only to libraries in the United States. A Thomson Gale representative has given me the good news that Canadians can also gain access.

AccessMyLibrary currently has 4,159 journals and over 28 million articles. A counter on the first page gives the latest tally.

Navigation is by Publication or Subject. There is also a grouping of Encyclopedias. My guess is that subject will be used the most. My route was through Hobbies to Home and Garden to see the publications available. Toronto Life was on that list. Next, select a publication and browse the titles of the articles. Note also the dates which can vary in currency with some up to the current month and others lagging.

Keyword search skips over the navigation and directly lists the articles. I suspect that the search is on the title and description and possibly author. Search seems to look for ALL the words. Keep the queries simple with 2 or 3 words.

Once you find what you want to read, you'll see some instructions.

How to access the full article: Free access to all articles is available courtesy of your local library. To access the full article click the "See the full article" button below. You will need your US library barcode or password.

1. Proceed anyway to click on See The Full Article.
2. Enter your postal code.
3. Select your library. I selected one of the branches of the Toronto Public Library.
4. Enter your Library ID or barcode.
5. If you don't have a library card, you might still be able to register and read it for free, or pay a small fee.

AccessMyLibrary also offers a link to more content from your library - depending, I presume, on their licenses with Thomson Gale. Toronto Public Library carries many of the databases and supports a federated search.

Thomson Gale explains that libraries that are using its Remote Patron Authentication System to give patrons access to premium information services will be accessible through AccessMyLibrary.

All in all, it is wonderful to have such an easy access to the databases and seems simpler than the one used at the library site. One quibble, it would be nice if AccessMyLibrary could recognize me so that it's not necessary to retrace the library selection and authentication steps with every visit.

WiseTo Social Issues An Excellent Resource

Thomson Gale Launches New Social Issues Site, Newsbreaks (May 7, 2007)

This Newsbreaks' article gives a fuller description of the WiseTo Social Issues website announced last month. This site is a reference resource for discussion and examination of over 100 controversial topics and issues.

"Consistent with Thomson Gale’s long-standing mission of advancing learning and libraries, WiseTo Social Issues features unbiased, academic-quality information that represents all sides of highly contested issues. The site offers library-quality reference content exclusively created by or licensed from third parties by Thomson Gale, which has produced trusted information for libraries, schools, and businesses worldwide for more than 50 years."

In an earlier posting about WiseTo Social Issues I had said that searching was free and access available at a low cost. In fact, overviews to topics and some articles are free.

To see this, search on a topic and use the drop-down sort-by box to select Free Content, as shown in the screenshot below on a seach for marijuana. The re-sort will show the free articles first.

The box for Social Issues Topics lists the topics where marijuana is discussed. See Legalization of Marijuana for another view of free content - the overview, and three points of view. There may also be some "fast facts" and statistical data. "Read More Articles" runs a search to find free and premium articles.

Access to the entire topic requires an Expert Pass costing $7.99 US for 30 days. Thomson Gale said in the announcement that it will be offering a pass to the entire site soon.

There are also Ads by Google, which, from what I saw, are fairly relevant. Bioethics came up on topics related to death and dying.

WiseTo Social Issues also has a Study Center with information on how to cite sources, and on thinking critically.

I think this service is going to be enormously valuable to students and wish I had known about it a couple of months ago when I was tutoring a university student in the analysis of a social issue. It would have simplified the research and given more time for thinking about the issue.

About.com Buying

About.com Buys ConsumerSearch.com, New York Times (May 7)

About.com , which is owned by The Times and has 400 or 500 guides to topics, now ConsumerSearch.com, a Web site that compiles reviews of consumer products.

It seems to also be acquiring in the health sector - "Within the last eight months, About.com has also made two other acquisitions. One was a Web site that provides access to information about hospitals, nursing homes, clinics and doctors, UCompareHealthCare.com. The other was a site that offers weight-loss tools and nutritional information, Calorie-Count.com."

Yahoo Music Lyrics

Yahoo expanding its online music section, Michael Liedtke, AP via Yahoo News

Yahoo Music is opening a licensed database with lyrics to 400,000 song - free. These are official versions. There will be ads and revenue will be shared with the copyright holders.

"The database and licensing deals were cobbled together over the past two years by Gracenote, a digital media management specialist. The Emeryville-based company, formerly known as CDDB, is best known for developing technology that automatically recognizes the tracks on compact discs — a feature that is included in Apple Inc.'s widely used iTunes software.

The 400,000 song lyrics included in Yahoo's database span about 9,000 different artists, ranging from old standbys such as The Beatles and Bob Dylan to more recent stars like Radiohead and Beyonce.

Nearly 100 music publishers are contributing song lyrics, including industry heavyweights BMG Music Publishing, EMI Music Publishing, Sony/ATV Music Publishing, Universal Music Publishing Group and Warner/Chappell Music."

Lycrics should show up at Yahoo Music today (Tuesday).

Thomson Gale Public Sites

Thomson Gale has two very interesting Web resources: the new Social Issues site (with a small price tag) and AccessMyLibrary (only in the U.S.)

Thomson Gale Launches New Reference Website, eContent (Apr 10)

"... WiseTo Social Issues provides a balanced look at all sides of social issues and current events, including professionally written information on more than 100 subjects. Everyone, including students of all levels, professionals, water cooler debaters, and the generally curious, have access to unbiased and authoritative information on the socially charged issues that divide us."

Browsing the topics and search are free, but full access to articles is not - although price for a pass seems modest at $7.99 US

"WiseTo Social Issues provides links to Thomson Gale's library advocacy website, AccessMyLibrary, through which consumers have full access to the entire suite of Thomson Gale databases their library has licensed on their behalf."

AccessMyLibrary has 4,100 journals and nearly 28 million articles. It's well organized by collection, subject, and publications. People in the United States can read the articles simply by entering the bar code of their library (though the library probably has to subscribe to Thomson Gale products). This is only available to libraries in the United States (annoying especially when you consider that Thomson is a Canadian company).

Guides from Intute

New “Best of the Web” Booklets From Intute, Intute (Mar 8)

Intute in the UK has published 9 "best of the Web" subject booklets. "The booklets provide a selection of some of the most useful Internet resources for students, lecturers and researchers working in the subject field. For those interested in exploring the wider Web, they point to the free Internet search and training services offered by Intute."

Will tend to be aimed at users in the UK but will cover international resources.

Canpages takes on YPG for Phone Directories

Take on an elephant without getting trampled by Grant Robertson, Globe and Mail (Mar 19)

Canadians who use phone directories and yellow pages have a new service to use - Canpages. The Yellow Pages Group (YPG), which seemed to hold a monopoly after buying SuperPages 2 years ago, finally has some competition.

"Though Canpages owns 70 directories in five provinces and territories, the company is focusing most of its expansion efforts this year on YPG's biggest markets, where the margins are biggest, Mr. Vincent says.

Yellow Canpages books are hitting doorsteps in Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton and will be published in Toronto starting in the fall. After that, Ottawa and Montreal "are on the map," Mr. Vincent said. By the end of 2007, the company expects to have 5.5 million of its own books in the market."

But who uses books? "Starting last summer, Montreal-based YPG undertook a major revamp of its website, adding search tools and bolstered maps. Canpages has done the same, with each company touting different bells and whistles to find a local bakery or drycleaner."

Canpages added a service for mobile users. "Canpages has started a mobile search tool for cellphones in the Vancouver area. Callers can text a shortened version of a company's name, followed by a period and a few letters of the city, to phone number 604411."

Canpages uses Google Maps - the display is excellent, but it doesn't have the distance search - a shortcoming. And it's not possible to browse the categories - another lack.

YPG does show the categories and has "by proximity" search.

MetaGlossary for Meaning

Metaglossary.com "harvests definitions from the Web". This is as good or better as Google's define: command and certainly better than searching for the meaning of a term through a keyword search at a search engine. MetaGlossary also has a small box for looking up non-English words through Babylon.

From the about page:

"MetaGlossary is able to precisely extract the meanings of terms and phrases from the often frustratingly unmanageable mass of information on the web. ...
What's more, MetaGlossary organizes these meanings based on topic and usage, so you'll find the one you're looking for quickly and easily. "

Virtual Library of Parliament of Canada

Library of Parliament Research Publications - research on legal, economic, scientific, or social science topics done by the Library of Parliament.

Resources for Librarians

LawPro Links - An A to Z Directory of Web Resources compiled by Sabriana Pacifici, LLRX.com (Feb 2007) - these are resources for researchers - "Highlighted topics include: a new search engine for legal blogs, one for free federal district court filings, and one for Wikipedia; an updated legal research guide from M.G. Gallagher Law Library, government sponsored e-waste and recycling services, a filmology of librarians in the movies, the 10 best corporate intranets of 2007, the launch of the Anglo-American Legal Tradition Project Website, and much more."

Pew Research Center (US studies)

Pew Research has announced a makeover for its main web site. I look the Internet and American Life often, but the main Pew Research Center has wealth of public views on key issues. I am dismayed by "Public Views Unchanged by Unusual Weather" - global warming is not "top tier" with Americans.

The announcement about changes at the web site mentioned:

The site features new studies and nonpartisan analysis on politics, media, religion, and more.

It offers original content and serves as a portal to the latest findings
from our seven projects:

* Pew Research Center for the People & the Press
* Project for Excellence in Journalism
* Stateline.org
* Pew Internet & American Life Project
* Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life
* Pew Hispanic Center
* Pew Global Attitudes Project

Reference on the Web

Best Free Reference Web Sites 2006 - Eighth Annual List -- "This is an annual series initiated under the auspices of the Machine-Assisted Reference Section (MARS) of the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) of ALA to recognize outstanding reference sites on the World Wide Web"

+ The only news site to get on this list was BBC.com.

+ Merriam-Webster Online is the dictionary of choice.

+ Metacritic is the movie entry - excellent source of review.

+ WebMD Health and National Institutes of Health were selected for health (quite the endorsement for WebMD)

+ E-How will explain how to do anything.

Otherwise selections were reference on US-specific topics.

UK Government Web and Statute Law

U.K. streamlines e-gov access bY Brian Robinson, FCW.com (Jan 12)

British government is rationalizing and consolidating its web sites.

"Of the 951 Web sites, hosted by 16 departments, reviewed so far, U.K. officials have decided to close 551 and to keep only 26. They will decide the future of the remaining 374 by June."

Most will be concentrated in DirectGov and Business Link.

Also - Free To Access UK Statute Law Database Launched, Managing Information News (Jan 16)

Department for Constitutional Affairs (DCA) announced the availability of The Statute Law Database to provide "an authoritative and easy-to-use historical database of UK statute law".

"The database offers users a range of advanced search and navigation functions across over 30,000 items of UK primary and secondary legislation. The database contains primary legislation that was in force at 1 February 1991 and primary and secondary legislation that has been produced since that date."

Metaglossary

Metaglossary is a new resource to use to get definitions from the Web - somewhat like define: at Google. It claims 2 million terms, phrases, and acronyms.

Reviewed in MetaGlossary - Two Million Terms, Phrases And Acronyms, Search Engine Land (Jan 16)

New THOMAS from LOC

Library of Congress Unveils Beta of New THOMAS Newsbreaks (Jan 15)

"The Library of Congress has released a new beta version of THOMAS, its Web site that provides access to federal legislation and related documents ( http://thomas.loc.gov/beta )."

Aviva Directory

The Aviva Web Directory, Pandia (Jan 1)

Aviva is yet another place to add your website and be listed. Of course, it costs money.

"Three types of listings are offered - featured, regular and reciprocal. For regular listings, you receive an additional three links to your website. If you purchase a featured listing, you receive premium placement in the directory, the ability to be more flexible with the title used for your website, and an additional five links to your website."

CHIRP for Bird Lovers

Library of Bird and Animal Sounds Available, ResearchBuzz (Jan 3)

"CHIRP! The Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Macaulay Library’s Web site is now making available over 65,000 sound clips and about 18,000 video clips of birds and animals. You can get your squawk on at http://www.animalbehaviorarchive.org ."

Open Directory Project Failing

DMOZ had 9 lives. Used up yet? by Rick Skrenta, Skrentablog (Dec 19) -- Alarming and tragic news about the Open Directory Project - DMOZ.org - computer failures and poor backups have damaged the database and Skrenta thinks it unlikely that AOL will do much to revive it. People have been proclaiming the end of subject directories for the year or two as tagging and social bookmarking became so popular. But DMOZ has been an important resource, whatever its failings in bias or timeliness, for presenting the big picture of a topic. The taxonomy was excellent. Hopefully, someone will salvage it and use dmoz as the base for a new service.

Hurisearch - vertical for human rights

HuriSearch: The Human Rights Search Engine, Searchengineland (Dec 11)

"HuriSearch, which is a human rights search engine was officially launched on December 10th, Human Rights Day. The search engine is designed to provide searchers with data specific to the area of human rights, and has indexed over 3,000 websites and 2,300,000 pages concentrating in this area. Its crawler refreshes between every 24 hours and 8 days, depending on type of site."

85 Billion Pages

The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine Now Home to 85 Million Archived Web Pages, ResourceShelf (Dec 7)

Imagine - the Wayback Machine has nearly 86 Billion pages.

"A snapshot of the World Wide Web is taken every 2 months and donated to the Internet Archive by Alexa Internet. Further, librarians all over the world have helped curate deep and frequent crawls of sites that could be especially important to future researchers historians and scholars. " From Internet Archive Forum

NationMaster Data Source

Data-Mining With NationMaster by Mary Ellen Bates (December 2006)

Mary Ellen Bates, like thousands of others, has had "fun" at NationMaster , a superior site for world statistics and country information.

"So I have been having fun playing around with NationMaster, a cool site developed by Luke Metcalfe, an Australian and fellow stat-geek who was frustrated at his inability to mine the data within the CIA World Factbook. NationMaster now includes data from the World Bank, various United Nations entities, OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), World Trade Organization, and so on."

Wikipedia Vindicated Again

Experts rate Wikipedia's accuracy higher than non-experts by Nate Anderson, Ars Technica (Nov 27)

"Thomas Chesney, a Lecturer in Information Systems at the Nottingham University Business School, published the results of his own Wikipedia study in the most recent edition of the online journal First Monday , and he came up with a surprising conclusion: experts rate the articles more highly than do non-experts."

Answers.com gets answers from Yahoo?

Briefs #3: Answers.com Adds Content from Yahoo Answers, ResourceShelf (Nov 20) -- This can't be good in my view. Yahoo has started to show results from Yahoo Answers in its search results, and Answers.com is also taking some. Gary Price says "caveat emptor". Indeed!

Also mentioned are several other sources that Answers.com says it is using.

Notice from Answers.com -- Answers.com Adds Human Insight From Yahoo! - Answers - they explain the change as -- ""The phenomenon of the 'wisdom of crowds' has taken on extraordinary momentum, as evidenced by the meteoric growth of Yahoo! Answers..."" Calling it wisdom is a huge stretch.

Vandalism at Wikipedia

An earnest target of digital vandals by Ivor Tossell, Globe and Mail (Nov 17)

Some get their kicks out of vandalizing Wikipedia - tampering with the entries. Wikipedia editors have names for the types of vandalism that take place -- "The list includes "attention-seeking vandalism," "silly vandalism," "childish vandalism," and "sneaky vandalism," which includes the more devious ways of sneaking misinformation past vigilant Wikipedians, like changing dates, or adding plausible-sounding misinformation." Tossell says that the earnestness at Wikipedia is a magnet for these pranks.

"People accuse Wikipedia editors of being humourless; I've made the same mistake myself. But it seems clear that it's not humourlessness that makes the encyclopedia such fun to kick around. It's Wikipedia's utter earnestness, its conviction of its own importance, that makes people bristle. Indeed, the fact that Wikipedia has become important in our day-to-day lives makes it such an irresistible target for purple nurples. And, as always, the smart kids who run it are learning how to cope."

Whatever the reason, it's not the "wisdom of crowds" at work, but the "stupidity of crowds" or maybe just a natural tendence to anarchy. Wikipedia will have to impose more controls if it wants to avoid becoming a Web pariah.

Some Authoritative Resources

Research Beyond Google: 119 Authoritative, Invisible, and Comprehensive Resources, Online Education Database (Oct 26)

Intention was good with this article, but the execution is a little off. In general the message is right - people need to know the authoritative sources. This paper lists recommends for art, books, health, finance, government (US), general research and more. There are a few for-fee.

What I find odd is that there is dead wood - Gary Price's direct search hasn't been updated since 2002. Also some odd classifications - Internet Public Library is more like LII.org than the Britannica. Nor would I describe LII.org as a tool for scouring the Invisible Web - it's a directory, not a search engine - librarians are recommending high quality sites, much like this article, not indexing them. And not to quibble too much, Google went way past 8 billion pages at least 2 years ago.

Bottom line - use with care.

Yahoo Autos goes Green

Yahoo! Unveils New Alternative Fuel Automotive Site Business WIre (Nov 1)

"Yahoo! Autos, one of the most comprehensive automotive resources on the Internet, today announced the launch of the new Yahoo! Autos Green Center http://autos.yahoo.com/green_center. The new Green Center provides consumers with the most comprehensive, unbiased source of information, resources and community about alternative fuel vehicles (AFVs), including hybrid, flex fuel/E85, bio-diesel, compressed natural gas and others. The Green Center brings together industry information from expert partners as well as consumer-generated content from Yahoo!'s leading social media properties, Yahoo! Answers, del.icio.us and Yahoo! Groups. "

Library Thing for Bibliophiles

Do That Library Thing by Mary Ellen Bates (Sept-Oct 2006)

Reviews Library Thing a web service for cataloguing your book collection.

"... LibraryThing, the love child of Melvyl Dewey and Web 2.0. At its most basic, it enables users to build their own web-based catalog, using information from Amazon.com, the Library of Congress and over 40 other major libraries."

10 Research Tools

Get Smart: Top 10 Research Tools, CNet (Oct 20)

CNet has selected 10 tools it thinks will best direct you to expert sources and help you keep track of research. "These digital tools can keep you on track--whether you're working on a middle-school science fair, wrapping up a graduate degree, or pursuing a hobby." Encyclopedia Britannica for $49 / year is the top tool followed by Wikipedia. I would have included Answers.com as well (or maybe instead of Wikipedia since Answers includes it). Google got 4 slots.

Zimbio - user portal

Zimbio — new guide to the web, Pandia (Oct ) -- Zimbio .. "Like About it presents topic sub-sites with articles, links to relevant sites and discussion forums. Hence these sub sites are more than plain web directories, but less than complete web sites. Their main function is to guide people to relevant information on the Net."

Review of Google's Office Software

Toy or Tool? Google Docs & Spreadsheets Reviewed "Google's new office suite is great for quick collaboration, but don't throw out Word and Excel just yet" by Richard Ericson, Computer World (Oct 12)

"Looking for a free word processor and spreadsheet? Google's newly released Docs & Spreadsheets suite that offers just that, but in this case you get what you pay for. While the number-crunching power of Spreadsheets is adequate for simple workbooks, the Docs program (formerly Writely, acquired by Google earlier this year) is so underpowered we wouldn't recommend it for even casual use."

Work.com Guides

Business.com Launches Work.com, at Traffic.com (Oct 9)

Work.com "... looks to be, unabashedly, a business-to-business version of About.com. At first glance the guides to various business topics are outstandingly helpful."

Google Software

Google pushes into Office space "Search giant Google is relaunching its online spreadsheet and word processor software, in another challenge to archrival Microsoft." BBC (Oct 11)

This is browser-based online software. "The new service will be free and give its current Writely and Spreadsheet packages a unified look and feel. "

Info Today People's Choice

2006 People’s Choice Awards - And the Winners Are By Barbara Brynko, Information Today (Oct 3)

Information Today ran People’s Choice Awards for 10 categories. Names are in this pdf document. digg.com, a "social content web site" won for top new technology. Answers.com was the top "information service".

The New LII.org

Librarians' Internet Index, a subject directory maintained by librarians in California and Washington States, has made the switch to a faceted organization of its collection. It is using Siderean's SeaMark Navigator.

There are 14 broad categories on the main page, each with sub-topics. Computers > Digital Divide has 7 sites. In the left panel, you'll see a list of topics and sub-topics according to how these 7 sites have been indexed. All relate to technology, and 2 to librarianship. The filters will help in selecting a resource that best fits your interest.

The new LII.org is reviewed in So Cool! New Faceted Search and Browsing Technology Debuts on Librarians’ Internet Index., ResourceShelf (Sep 27)

Business Online's Best

Best of the Web 2006 from readers of Business Week Online - no search engines on this list, but there are sites for news, blogs, health, social networking, trip planning, photo sharing and more. Click on Readers Choice Winners.

askSam Surf Report

The Surf Report from askSam this month recommends Infoplease People for biographies on 30,000 + people.

The Surf Report is a very useful newsletter that features ebooks and educational or reference sites. As well, of course, it is the home of askSam products for databases, web research (saving pages), web publishing, web site management.

Art Museums

Art Museums from ResourceShelf (July and August)

Time's Picks for Coolest WebSites

Time lists 50 'coolest websites', BBC News (Aug 15)

"Video website YouTube and social networking site MySpace are among the 50 "coolest websites" of the year as chosen by US magazine Time."

"Many of the websites chosen for 2006 are examples of so-called web 2.0 sites, which give users tools to create and share content online.

They are "next-generation sites offering dynamic new ways to inform and entertain, sites with cutting-edge tools to create, consume, share or discuss all manners of media, from blog posts to video clips," wrote Maryanne Murray-Buechner. "

Commenters to the post in the UK have added sites that they like.

See the complete list by Time of 50 Coolest Websites 2006. Go soon - this is likely archived after 1 week.

Categories include:

# Entertainment, Arts and Media
# Shopping, Lifestyles and Hobbies
# News and Information
# Staying Connected
# Time Wasters
# Travel and Real Estate
# Web Search and Services
# 25 Sites We Can't Live Without

StudyBuddy

blinkx to Enhance Search Technology on StudyBuddy.com, a New AOL K-12 Web Site Built for Homework "From Modern Science to Ancient History, blinkx's Unique Technology Will Help Students Explore the Web", PRNewswire via Marketwatch (Aug 12)

"blinkx's search technology will power AOL's new educational portal, giving students and their parents easy access to millions of relevant educational content. Visitors to StudyBuddy.com will enjoy "Search Enhanced by blinkx." In action, blinkx will allow students of all ages to quickly access all forms of educational content that bring history, science, art, math and literature to life, including short documentaries, special features and lectures -- making homework interactive and fun."

Back to School

Best sites for students By Julie Wildhaber, CNEt (Jul 28) -- 10 sites that CNet thinks will enhance a college student's experience. Sites are online tools and lifestyle choices rather reference resources (except for Bartleby).

Encyclopedias

NY Times Reports: Wikipedia Makes Some Revisions to its Own Editorial Policy; Free Full Text Access to Encarta Continues, ResourceShelf (June 17) - lots about encyclopedias: Wikipedia, Encarta, Britannica.

Internet Archive

Internet Archive's Brewster Kahle Profiled in a New Article, ResourceShelf (June 23) - about Kahle, Internet Archive and Archive-It.

Internet Resources Newsletter - July

Internet Resources Newsletter, July 2006 issue by Roddy MacLeod and others at Heriot-Watt University Library is online. This newsletter is always worth a few minutes of browsing time to find (or refind) new and notable sites and weblogs. It's aimed at "academics, students, engineers, scientists and social scientists" and is especially useful for librarians and information professionals.

Of interest:

The Book Cloud - make connections between books and genres

Create Change -- Get more from your academic research - site was developed by the Association of Research Libraries and SPARC

Digital Librarian: a librarian's choice of the best of the Web - Margaret Vail Anderson is still adding sites.

And this month, the editors listed WebSearchGuide.ca and the Internet News blog as resources. Thanks Roddy.

Classical Music Databases

Music to Soothe the Savage Searcher - "Classical Music Databases and Web Resources" - by David Mattison, Searcher (July/August

Another detailed and rich guide created by David Mattison at the Royal BC Museum in Victoria.

"The Web offers a wide variety of classical music resources, from audio files to downloadable music to encyclopedic Web sites, devoted to the European musical canon and its enduring influence, especially in North America. In selecting many of the sites, I focused more on composer rather than performer data. Because the sources are readily available through academic music libraries, I paid less attention to free and subscription-based bibliographic databases and print reference sources ..."

ResourceShelf provides some additional comments about Dave's selections and adds some of its own - Dave Mattison Offers a Look at Classical Music Resources on the Web

Review of Google's US Government Search

The Government Domain - Google's New U.S. Government Search, By Peggy Garvin, LLRX (June 2006) - reviews Google's new (but some would say modified) US Government Search. There are limitations to web search -- "As many librarians know, web search is just one tool needed to research government information. It is best for granular information—such as finding mentions of a specific federal program or a law with a distinct title—and less helpful with exploring, understanding the context of information, or helping when you don’t know what you don’t know (which is much of the time)."

Inside DocuTicker

"The Rise of DocuTicker: So Many Reports, So Little Time" By Shirl Kennedy, Freepint (June 22) Shirl Kennedy describes what she looks for when posting entries to Docuticker, "hand-picked selection of resources, reports and publications from government agencies, NGOs, think tanks and other public interest organizations."

New Look to Resourceshelf

Resourceshelf renewed, Pandia (June 14) - Comments about the new look to ResourceShelf , Gary Price's blog.

It does look better - colours are more current, and the font is more attractive - though this doesn't add up to being more readable. Also, as Pandia pointed outm it needs categories. Entries are being filed under uncategorized or military.

Also, I can't find a way to copy and paste the headline for each story - something that will make it much more time consuming to link to individual items.

The researcha advertisements, which weren't on the previous version, flash and move about in distracting ways.

The search facility is poor, as is often the case with blogs. Better to use Google site search.

Google US Government Search

Google launched Google U.S. Government Search for searching U.S. government Internet sites - http://usgov.google.com. It is an index of federal, state and local sites in the .gov or .mil domains along with selected sites from domains for us, edu and com. The announcement stated that this is meant "to help government workers who need to search for information from more than one agency".

ResourceShelf looked at it and found it very similar in content to the older Google Uncle Sam but richer in features such a personalization and documentation. Content on their searches of the two was identical.

In any event Google Uncle Sam is gone and Google U.S. Government Search is here.

Google's New USGov.Google vs Google Uncle Sam, ResourceShelf (June 15)

Google to launch government search service -- report By Christopher Noble, Marketwatch (June 15)

Specialty Search Tools

[pdf] Beyond Google and Yahoo: Advanced Search - presentation by Sabrina Pacifici and Tom Mighell at the ABA Techshow (April 21, 2006) - run through of specialized search tools for articles (Findarticles, Highbeam), blogs (Technorati, Blogpulse, Feedster), business (Yahoo, Bizjournals) , discussion, international, US Government, health and science (Healthline, Scirus, PubMed), some metasearch, news (Topix, New Directory, News Search Portal, Inform, Newsvine), people finders (Zabasearch, Zoominfo), audio (Podzinger), US public records, cool search engines.

Webby 2006

MySpace.com founders among Webby recipients; Friedman named person of the year by ANICK JESDANUN, AP via MorningSun (May 10)

MySpace.com got a Webby award for being the "breakout of the year" as a social-networking site - 77 million members! ""Everyone is using it, from politicians to rock stars to students to people of all ages," said Tiffany Shlain, the founder of the Webby Awards ...".

The Webby Awards has 69 categories for "business, consumer and culture categories - from favorites like Community, Fashion, Film and Politics to new categories making their debut this year such as Podcasts, Best Visual Design, Business Blog and Best Use of Video or Moving Image." (From press release.)

Full list of winners and nominees for the 10th Annual Webby Awards 2006

These are alway a delight to read. They are considered the very best sites for content and/or design, and will take you into corners of the Web that will absorb you for hours. There are two awards - the Webby and the People's Choice.

Some examples:

+ The NewYorker got "best copy/writing" - I should say so. However the People chose Nerve.com (which describes itself as "smart, honest magazine on sex, with cliché-shattering prose").
+ Best navigation and best practices to Flickr.
+ Best Visual design - Function - Google Earth
+ Political Blog - Huntington Post
+ Community - BBC Cumbria, but TripAdvisor was the people's choice.
+ Food and Beverage - Epicurious
+ Health - people chose Healthline, Webby picked Invision Guide to a Healthy Heart.
+ Humour - the Onion
+ News - BBC for Webby and People. CBC wasn't even on the list as a nominee.
Services - Google Maps

RDN History

Retrospective on the RDN by Debra Hiom, Ariadne (April 2006)

"In the first of a two part series on the Resource Discovery Network (RDN) , Debra Hiom looks back at the development of the RDN and its activities to date. The second article will examine some of the changes taking place and set out a vision for the future of the service. "

Resource Discovery Network is the excellent entry point to the several subject gateways developed in the UK to academic and scholarly materials on the Web.

The Best in Specialty Search Engines

Beyond Google and Yahoo: New, Nifty Search Engines to Optimize Your Research http://www.llrx.com/features/supersearch.pdf, LLRX (April 2006)

Barbara Fullerton and Sabrina I. Pacifici at LLRX recommend several specialty sites and vertical search engines for more focused searches. This is a pdf file (21 pages) and seems comprised mainly of screenshots. There are many good sites for scientific materials (Scirus, SciSeek, Public Library of Science, and EEVL), Health (PubMed, Medscape, Omni), US Government, News (Topix, Newsdirectory) and some specialty search such as Blogpulse, Podzinger, and Blinkx. There is much more - browse and try.
have put up this presentation about specialty sites and search engines recommendations focus on subject area and issue-centric sites to facilitate obtaining search results that are better targeted to the scope of your requests. Whether you are looking for government data, blogs, RSS feeds, videos, podcasts, news or scientific papers, this guide will serve you well.

Virtual Chase Resource Guides

New Database on The Virtual Chase - Genie Tyburski has announced a new resource guides database that will replace the Company Information Guide. It will have information on web resources for researchers into companies, people or legal topics.

Webby Nominees 2006

See the nominees for the 10th annual Webby Awards . This is one of the best ways to see the truly creative web sites and services. Browse the 65 categories and consider registering and voting as part of the People's Choice. Winners will be announced on May 9.

See the press release about the categories and the process. (Apr 11)

DomainTools.com

-- DomainTools.com has a toolkit of lookup services for domain names that will give a profile on a domain, tell you your IP address, to a trace route and much else. There are Power Tools for members for monitoring a domain or doing reverse IP. Membership is free. This service used to be Whois.sc

Whois.sc was renamed DomainTools.com.

Digital Reference Shelf - April

The April 2006 Edition of Peter's Digital Reference Shelf (Peter Jacso) reviews Encyclopedia of Television and the Oxford Journals Collection.

19th Century America

New Online Search Tool, Perseus, Tech News (Mar 24)

"Tufts University's Perseus Digital Library has created a resource that will allow users to find specific people, places and dates in its updated 19th Century American collection, which now contains more than 55 million words."

ArchiveGrid Finding Tool

There is much to be happy about at the ArchiveGrid. Thousands of libraries, museums and archives have contributed their records to assist researchers in identifying archived materials and contacting the source to arrange to view them. ArchiveGrid is free to use until May 31. After that it depends on funding.

It is not easy to find out which organizations have contributed to this but running a few searches shows mainly US sources but also some Canadian and Australian. From Canada there are some records from Library and Archives Canada and the National Gallery of Canada and Trent University also shows up.

See ArchiveGrid—RLG’s Authoritative Archival Web Site, press release (Mar 6)

See review in Professional Reading Shelf, ResourceShelf (Mar 7)

People wishing to search only archives in Canada will want to use the excellent finding tools at Archives Canada.

Digital Reference Shelf - March

Digital Reference Shelf by Peter Jacso for March 2006 has reviews on NCJRS (Criminal Justice Database) and Taber’s Medical Encyclopedia.

RDN Changing

RDN Service Changes During 2006 -- Watch for these changes at the Resource Discovery Network in its organization of subject gateways. There is to be a name change too. RDN will be Intute.

Search Library and Archives Canada

Library and Archives Canada Federated Search for the library, archives, website -- http://search-recherche.collectionscanada.ca/fed/search.jsp?Language=eng

Answers.com Adds Titles

Answers.com Doubles Content Over Previous Six Months New Licensed and Original Content Fuels Satisfaction, Traffic, and Revenue Growth User, PRNewswire via Marketwatch (Feb 28)

Answers.com, by adding new sources, now covers three million topics. It has also begun to create its own content in "Resource Centers".

"Among the new titles that were recently added are a leading legal encyclopedia, and the Gale Encyclopedia of Cancer, both licensed from Thomson Gale, as well as several other titles covering such diverse topics as word origins, gardening, geology, pop performers' biographies, and ornithology. Answers Corporation has also extended its long-term agreements with some of its key content partners, such as Houghton Mifflin Company - the source of more than a dozen titles integrated into Answers.com - and the Computer Language Company, publisher of the Computer Desktop Encyclopedia."

Guide to Firstgov.gov

The Government Domain: FirstGov becomes First in Government Search By Peggy Garvin, LLRX.com (Feb 15, 2006) - Guide to searching FirstGov, the official portal for the U.S. Federal Government. FirstGov now uses the MSN Search engine and Vivisimo technology for grouping results.

Answers.com add legal

Answers.com has added to its resource collection a legal encyclopedia containing biographies and definitions. The biographies are mainly for US legal personages and some historical figures like Jean Jacques Rousseau (French) and Sir Francis Bacon (England). No Canadians that I can spot.

Mentioned in ResourceShelf.com

Gazetteers

Searching for a Sense of Place By Chris Sherman, SearchDay (Feb 1) - online gazetteers for finding information about places.

Answers.com Additions

Answers.com Adds More Research Tools to Database at SEW Blog (Jan 10)

US FirstGov Search

New Firstgov.gov Search Database Goes Live by Gary Price, SEW Blog (Jan 24) - Search of U.S. government services and resources just got a lot easier with the new and Vivisimo enhanced First Gov Search. Gary Price has the details.

Zillman's Deep Web Research

Revised guide from Marcus Zillman for Deep Web Research Research 2006 in LLRX (Jan 2006). Zillman organizes the resources into categories but doesn't provide full citation (no date or source) and never offers any comment about the resource. The categories are very loose too - for resources for deep web research he includes Mooter, a search engine, and Findarticles, a source of articles from journals, along with a jumble of others. Many of the resources he lists are his own Subject Tracer Information Blogs.

Craigslist

Craig's Competitors: No one is on his list by Shawn McCarthy, Globe Technology (Jan 12)

Craig Newmark, creator of Craigslist, the very popular service for online classifieds, seems unperturbed by the prospect of the big companies such as Google, Microsoft or News Corp taking away traffic. At a conference in New York, "He warned, however, that would-be corporate competitors will find it hard to match Craigslist.org's appeal because, for the most part, its service is free and its users have a feeling of community."

Craigslist operates now in 190 cities in 35 countries, and has 10 million users every month. In Canada these cities are Vancouver , Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Halifax, Saskatoon, Victoria and Quebec.

Yahoo UK Picks

Yahoo! shortlists top sites of 2005 at Net Imperative (Jan 10) -- Yahoo UK announced its list of innovative sites in 2005 in the categories of community, educational, entertainment, innovative, TV, travel, celebrity and a ‘weird and wonderful’.

Music on the Net

College and Research Libraries is still publishing a newsletter that guides readers to Internet resources. December 2005 issue is Music: A survey of some quality resources by Valerie King.

10 Best Sites

Ten websites you shouldn't miss By Jim Regan, Christian Science Monitor (Dec 28) - Other people's lists of 10 best sites often lead to good discoveries. This list is especially interesting with maps, travel with 3D tours, Amsterdam municipal archives, and a way to catalog your library of books. Wikipedia is on the list too.

Amazon and Simply Audiobooks

Digital Reference Shelf for December 2005 has reviews of Amazon and Simply Audiobooks.

Péter Jacsó 's review of Amazon describes Search Inside the Book and the new features for concordance, keyword in context, statistically most improbable terms, and ratings of readability. He also commends Amazon on its citations.

Review of Simply Audiobooks first takes a look at the alternatives - Audible.com, BooksFree, Jitterbug, but Jacso likes the rental arrangements and inventory of Simply Audiobooks.

Digital Universe

Wikipedia alternative aims to be 'PBS of the Web' by Daniel Terdiman, CNet News (Dec 19)

Wikipedia may be facing some competition from the new Digital Universe (http://www.digitaluniverse.net/) , intended to be the "PBS of the Web" where experts will contribute articles. Two tiers are planned - submitted articles not yet reviewed, and those reviewed and approved by the experts. Experts will receive some payment for their work.

"But Firmage, Sanger and Digital Universe President Bernard Haisch think their project can avoid the pitfalls of its predecessors. They've created a system built around the idea of portals--one for each major subject area, such as climate change, energy, education, the solar system and so on. Each portal will contain many different kinds of resources."

Torino 2006 Winter Olympics on CBC

CBC Puts Olympics Online, Globe and Mail (Dec 19) -- CBC will be carrying the Torino 2006 Winter Olympics at www.cbc.ca/olympics.

"By the time the Olympic torch is lit on Feb. 10, the site will include a suite of results, events and broadcast schedules, a photo gallery as well as a downloadable ticker showing up to date results on a user's personal desktop. Surfers will also be able to access additional CBC Olympic content through interactive services such as breaking news alerts, e-mail newsletters, Mobile/PDA downloads, podcasts and RSS newsfeeds."

Cite Wikipedia?

Wikipedia's Chief: Don't Quote Us - "Founder Jimmy Wales talks about the steps being taken to foil fraudulent online entries" by Burt Helm, BusinessWeek Online (Dec 14) Wikipedia gets more and more press over the Seigenthaler story where a person intentionally posted a malicious story about John Seigenthaler Sr, newspaper man. Burt Helm's interview with Jimmy Wales tells us more about how Wikipedia works and the new measures taken to reduce the likelihood of a repeat. There are about 1,850 active editors working in English, and 4,573 worldwide. Quality is somewhat controlled through a New Pages Patrol community.

But of most interest - this question - "Do you think students and researchers should cite Wikipedia?"

"No, I don't think people should cite it, and I don't think people should cite Britannica, either -- the error rate there isn't very good. People shouldn't be citing encyclopedias in the first place. Wikipedia and other encyclopedias should be solid enough to give good, solid background information to inform your studies for a deeper level. And really, it's more reliable to read Wikipedia for background than to read random Web pages on the Internet."

I think Wales has a point although I'd like to see some proof of errors in Britannica.

Science.gov 3.0 uses metadata

Science.gov 3.0 has improved its search facility with changes to query input and use of metadata to rank results.

Query input now ANDs terms, uses " " for phrases, and supports nesting of terms.

Metadata such as title, author, date, abstract and other keyword identifiers is used in ranking results.

Science.gov goes 3.0 By Joab Jackson, Government Computer News (Nov 21)

"Introduced in 2002, Science.gov offers the public a unified search service for governmental scientific information. It searches across 30 databases and 1,800 Web sites. "

ArchiveGrid from RLG

Archivegrid.org is a truly amazing new project by RLG to provide access to archives around the world for family histories, political papers, and historical records.

"Scholars searching ArchiveGrid can learn about the many items in each of these collections, contact archives to arrange a visit to examine materials, and order copies."

Doors aren't open yet. Early version for testing will be available in January 2006 and public use in March 2006. For now you can scan the topics. Many subject headings on the main page relate to the United States, and there is some English / United Kingdom. Canada shows up in some subjects in the second layer.

Get Ready for a New Free Database from RLG , ResourceShelf (Nov 24)

Great Tools

The I Want To list by Phil Bradley has suggestions on resources or tools to use to collaborate, create networks, save research, use RSS and Wikis, and many other things that come up. Follow the I Want To blog.

Vertical Search for B2B

VerticalSearch.com Announces Vertical Search Engine EContent (Nov 23) "VerticalSearch.com LLC, has announced the launch of its beta B2B vertical search engine. This vertical search engine enables users to search for B2B information on a range of topics including health, transportation, agriculture, construction, telecommunications, and more."

Wikipedia examined by experts

Can you trust Wikipedia? Elvira van Noort | Johannesburg, South Africa - several subject experts looked at Wikipedia entries about South Africa for their areas of expertise and evaluated those entries on a scale of 1 to 10. Wikipedia did very well on sports, less so on government and history, and very poorly for "media in South Africa".

Internet Movie Database

INTERVIEW: Volunteers helped turn IMDb into big business by Paul Bond, Reuters via Yahoo (Nov 13) - interview with Col Needham, who in 1990 when he was 23, created the Internet Movie Database. In 1998 Amazon bought it - and the volunteers who had helped build the IMDb benefited.

Needham described the extent of the database today -- "... 470,000 titles -- films, made-for-TV movies, TV series, made-for-video movies. And we now have a section for video games. But the vast number of the titles are feature films from every country in the world and as far back as 1888 -- very early experimental films from the birth of cinema. In terms of people, we're honing in on 2 million."

Abebooks

Berkeley's BookFinder.com sold to Canadian company San Francisco Business Times (Nov 7) Victoria's Abebooks bought the metasearch book store finder, Bookfinder. Both are excellent - perhaps this will make Abebooks even better.

Engineering Vertical

GlobalSpec, the engineering hum, was featured as Resource Shelf's Resource of the Week Oct 6. Talk about a vertical or a specialty site! "It now indexess roughly 200 million pages of technical information, including 15,500 online product catalogs and 199 million engineering & technical Web pages."

Pretrieve for US Public Records

Pretrieve is a metasearcher for public records in the United States. It will retrieve records about a person from public web sources starting with phone number and address but including civil and criminal records (or so it seems from the choices). Related searches will show the address on Google Maps from which one can get a satellite view - not enough to see the backyard furniture, but good enough to get a sense of location. Perhaps, more interesting is the search by address and access to information about elected officials for the area, real estate sales, political contributions, pollution, and more. Pretrieve organizes access to these many databases under tabs for Property Information, Financial, Local, Criminal, Court, Professional, Research (searching Highbeam) and Miscellaneous. However, as is usually the case with these services, you need to know a fair amount about a person before doing the search to be sure you have the right person; and the records may be incomplete - for example, not all political contributions will be on record.

See earlier review by Genie Tyburski.

For Freelance Writers

Have ideas and want to write? Or are you looking for articles? Associated Content might have the article or be your publishing venue. This is a publishing platform that supports text, video, image, voice. It is looking for writers who can provide "marketable content". Associated Content will be the judge of that - then if it makes some money, so does the writer. Browse a bit - there are some nice articles under travel, lifestyles, and technology.

FirstGov.gov goes with Vivisimo

Vivisimo and MSN to Power FirstGov by Gary Price, SearchDay (Sep 26) In redesigning the Firstgov.gov portal, General Services Administration has contracted with Vivisimo and MSN Search to improve the search capabilities.

"Vivisimo plans to use its own crawling technology to develop focused/targeted crawls of some government (federal and local) material and then combine and cluster these with MSN results."

New service will be available February or later 2006.

Best Picks from Business Week

A Plethora of Web Picks "Our Best of The Web survey drew a huge response from readers. Compare their picks to those of BW editors" Business Week Online (Sept 26)

Business Week asked its readers what were their favourite Web sites. The results are surprising and offer many new useful sources for blogs, shopping, and participation.

"Judging from the results, BusinessWeek Online readers love to watch and share video and photos, blog, and shop more than anything else. But they also use the Web to get things done: To find and sell stuff on the classified-ad site Craigslist, look for jobs on HotJobs and SimplyHired.com, research investment information on Yahoo! Finance (YHOO ), and find and socialize with friends on the social-networking services MySpace and Rabble. "

Digital Reference Shelf - September

September issue of the Digital Reference Shelf by Péter Jacsó reviews two resources on terrorism: Terrorism Knowledge Base, and Terrorism Q and A.

Gale has reorganized Digital Reference Shelf and it is much improved. Reference Reviews is the top level with links to reviews by several authors. These are now archived by subject, by month, and by author. It is much easier to find Jacso's work. Unfortunately the archives include only the last three months (at this time). To read earlier reviews by Jacso, you can still access the search page, http://www.gale.com/servlet/ReferenceReviewSearchPageServlet. Search for Peter Jacso as the author, and a keyterm in the title (eg google). Must have a search term to get results.

International Educational Resources

"Navigating Through the Maze of International Education Resources on the Internet" By Cynthia Padilla, Freepint (Aug 25)

"There is a plethora of international education resources on the internet, including data and statistics, publications, news, curriculum and policy reports, and research organizations. The challenge is organizing your search so that you can find the most relevant material for your particular task."

Weather Resources

Whither the Weather Resources for the Week at ResourceShelf (Aug 18) Can there be any subject more talked about than the weather? Shirl Kennedy has compiled this short list of national weather/meteorological service sites for countries around the world.

LII.org getting facelift

Librarians' Internet Index is being redesigned - "websites you can trust". Take a peak at http://lii2.wested.org/cs/lii/print/htdocs/home.htm

Websearch About.com

Wendy Boswell is the new guide for websearch.about.com. She has prepared an A to Z list of search engines and directories.

Met Opera Database

How to View 26,000 Operas at Once by Anthony Tommassini, New York Times (July 31) - Metropolitan Opera makes its database about operas at the Met available for free. Go to metopera.org, select Met History from the toolbar and click on Launch Database.

From the Metropolitan Opera: "Search through this up-to-date chronicle of every Metropolitan Opera performance since 1883 for complete information on all performers, operas and ballets at the Met. The Database also includes photos, designs, reviews, statistics, and chapters on great events in Met history."

Zenome Directory

A new directory has come on stream, created by two professors at Concordia in Montreal, John Connolly and Zsolt Szigetvari. Zenome seems to be somewhat inspired by the Open Directory Project and others like it where people are invited to apply to be an editor. However, Zenome promises to pay commissions to the editors. It has set up a subject hierarchy and there are a few sites. Looks promising but needs editors and sites quickly.

Zenome - a human touch to searching the Internet by Mathew Ingram, Globe Technology (Jul 14)

"What led to the idea behind Zenome, he [Connolly] says, was the frustration that both professors felt when they assigned research projects to students. "They would go to a search engine like Yahoo or Google and say okay, I did my research. And I would say: 'No, you didn't; all you got were a bunch of results that were based on popularity, not substance.' "

Louvre Website Reno

The Louvre's New Masterpiece by Chris Sherman, SearchDay (June 21) - Chris says that the revamped website for Musée du Louvre is "nothing short of stunning in both design and scope".

For the virtual visitor there are thematic trails, a few virtual tours (Quicktime 5), and a resource centre (especially the Kaleidoscope for viewing visual themes) to use for learning and enjoyment. Otherwise, the website will mainly help people plan their real-world trip to the museum. Have to wonder how well this site would serve as an online guide to people equipped with mobile devices with large viewing windows could use this site as their guide - especially for the interactive floor plans!

New Web Tools - SLA 2005

In New Web Tools at the SLA Conference 2005, Genie Tyburski and Gary Price presented their picks for software utilities and Web-based resources for doing research.

Genie Tyburski's Web Tools 2005 reviewed the researcher tools Onfolio.com and NetSnippets, had tools for searching RSS feeds, and looked at sources of information about criminal activity. Also showed how hacking at Google can turn up sensitive information.

Gary Price's Cool Tools had online resources for finding documents (Docuticker.com from ResourceShelf), e-book full text, MelissaData.com for lookups in the United States and the Argali phonebooks. Also showcased Yahoo! Next. Lots more.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia: An Encyclopedia of the People, by the People, for the People by Reid Goldsborough, LinkUp Digital (June 15) - Largely balanced review of Wikipedia - the people's encyclopedia - that advises users to check facts they find at this very popular online reference source. Quotes Karen Schneider who said of Wikipedia that it was “all so very Lord of the Flies".

Hand Picked Sites

Always fun to see other people's picks of useful sites especially if they are about travel or amusement or tips for using the Internet. Here is Sree Sreenivasan's list at Poynter Online - New to Me, Tracking useful sites. He keeps a blog with new items too at SreeTips.

Best of his list for me were:

30 Things You Didn't Know You Could Do on the Internet - The Web is learning new tricks every day. These surprising sites and services will help you solve problems and save time--and one might even make you a star. PCWorld (May 2005)

FlightArrivals.com with arrival and departure information for all commercial airline flights in Canada and the United States. For U.S. airports there is also airport status for weather and traffic management reports.

60 Sites Presentation at SLA 2005

Genie Tyburski and Jenny Kanji delivered their popular 60 Sites in 60 Minutes as one of the last sessions at the SLA Conference 2005. Presentation was sponsored by the Legal Division. Traditionally this presentation is a mix of serious sites for research and may be somewhat related to legal interests, and the funny and zanny. Tyburski mainly plays the straight man, and Kanji digs up the weird.

The serious collection includes several that concern public records. Tyburski wondered about the flap over ChoicePoint's transgressions in not protecting records when so much personal information is easily available through government sites. She showed the Madison Wisconsin Accident Report (free); Legal Dockets Online for federal and state court case information included criminal information; and U.S. Party / Case Index (small access fee) that holds information about civil litigation on the Federal level concerning divorce, bankruptcy and other civil suits. As well there is the portal for Public Records Sources that lists professional services (for-fee subscription) and free. BRB Publications is on this list and it links to free government sites in the United States and Canada. Interestingly, Canada is listed on the same page as US Territories. Still on the public records theme, AnyBirthday.com has 135 million people in the US. Pretrieve is a kind of meta-directory / searcher to find sources of public records in the US.

Tyburski always has a few aids to help the individual deal with privacy and security. The Anti-phishing Working Group has information and utilities about phishing and offers good materials for instructors to use in Internet literacy classess. Also if you're wondering about encoded web address in an email, Hex URL Decoder will give the source. Whois.sc is an excellent site for getting information on a domain.

Computer Gripes might have the answer to your computer hardware or software problem.

Some selections illustrated the increased use of RSS for delivering updates. Edgar Index will deliver SEC filings on selected companies by RSS. HubMed can be used to deliver results from saved searches on PubMed. West Intraclip is for Westlaw account holders - use it to set up a search and get results via RSS. And of course there is Feedster, the RSS search engine.

In the world of bizarre, Reemco has some products that will astound your friends and neighbours at the next BBQ. Scrabble players will want Wordplays on their wireless mobile device for the next competition.

Useful for everyday - GasBuddy.com - check out the gas prices at stations in your area from your computer. Covers Canada and the United States.

Travel.about.com was recommended too for information about the United States. I have found it thin on content for Europe and Canada but adequate as an introduction.

The presentation site has more. Allow at least 60 minutes to browse.

ODP in Trouble

More on the woes and afflictions of the Open Project Directory by Harold Davis at O'Reilly.net. In Is the Open Directory Project in Trouble? he picks up some postings from blogs that don't augur well for ODP: categories without editors, huge delays, some editors possibly taking bribes. Comments to his posting are interesting -- one placing some blame on Google for its "anti-taxonomy textmining philosophy". Why is ODP so poorly supported? Why does there seem to be no support or leadership from AOL or Netscape? The ODP taxonomy is better than Yahoo's and is an important tool for searchers.

Turning Pages

British Library and the US National Library of Medicine are making ancient texts available online through an interactive program developed by the British Library. On the Web the pages are viewed through Macromedia Shockwave.

" Turning the Pages allows visitors to virtually 'turn' the pages of manuscripts in a realistic way, using touch-screen technology and interactive animation. They can zoom in on the high- quality digitised images and read or listen to notes explaining the beauty and significance of each page. There are other features specific to the individual manuscripts. In a Leonardo da Vinci notebook, for example, a button turns the text round so visitors can read his famous 'mirror' handwriting." (Armadillo Systems)

British Library has 12 books - Sketches by da Vinci, History of England by Jane Austen, Elizabeth Blackwell's Curious Herbal with botanical illustration, images of the renaissance from the Sforza Hours ...

National Library of Medicine has three books. Conrad Gesner’s Historiae Animalium is fascinating.

EEVL Extra

EEVL Xtra is the Resource of the Week at ResourceShelf. (Jun 2)

"EEVL Xtra is an easy-to-use federated search tool that focuses on engineering, mathematics and computing resources. It is a work in progress, with more resources being added over time." The review lists the sources and provides a guide on how to use.

Press Release -- EEVL Xtra - the Hidden Web at your fingertips, for engineering, mathematics and computing.

"EEVL Xtra is a brand new, free service which can help you find articles, books, the best websites, the latest industry news, job announcements, technical reports, technical data, full text eprints, the latest research, teaching and learning resources and more, in engineering, mathematics and computing."

Getting rave reviews.

Open Directory Project Woes

Trouble at the ODP By Jim Hedger, Search Engine Guide - May 26, 2005 - Open Directory Project used to be an excellent subject directory manned by volunteer editors. It still has volunteers but this article reports that there is a very large backlog of sites to be considered, some editors have been accuesed of taking money, some of favouritism. Article does not mention that ODP often does not respond to queries - servers are too busy. Meantime, there has been no word from "management". ODP should act soon before it becomes so out of date that no one wants to use it or be listed.

Tour Specialty Search

Gumshoe Librarian 2 - More Sites and Services From Around the Corner and Around the World [ppt] by Barbara Fullerton and Sabrina I. Pacifici, LLRX (April 2005) - "... virtual journey around the web to view a roster of reliable resources on finding people, corporate data, court rules, forms and dockets, open source journal content, international materials, government documents, health related publications, domain names, fact finders, security related content, and much more."

Searching US Government

The Government Domain - New Tools For Government Research - By Peggy Garvin, LLRX.com (May 21)

"This column covers two more sites entering the world of search: Elegus.com and Clusty’s Gov+. At the end of the column, I look at a few developments that go beyond search: FirstGov’s RSS directory and the human-powered Government Information Online project."

CIA World Factbook 2005

CIA World Factbook 2005 Now Available - MultiMedia and Internet Schools (May 13)

"The World Factbook 2005 is now available on the Central Intelligence Agency Web site; access it at http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html."

This edition has been updated to Jan 1, 2005 but there will be bi-weekly updates "about the background, geography, people, government, economy, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues for all included countries"

Translation Tools

Translation Tools by Jonathan Dube, Poynter Online (May 10) - some tools for translating pages - mentions Dictionary.com, and AltaVista's Babelfish (http://babelfish.altavista.com/), but Google also offers translation (http://www.google.com/language_tools). They all use Systran. Babelfish.org has a list of several translation sites.

Wikipedia's Traffic Up

Wikipedia's Popularity and Traffic Soar by Enid Burns, CLickz (May 10) Hitwise finds that Wikipedia is receiving the second highest traffic for a reference site. Dictionary.com comes first with 4.46 % market share, and Wikipedia at 3.84%.

"Wikipedia contains 536,246 ongoing articles spanning 1,540,695 pages, all maintained by the site's users. Hitwise found Wikipedia's audience evenly split between male and females. Young adults age 18 to 24 are 50 percent more likely to visit the site."

Webby Awards 2005

Get in touch with the weird and wonderful in web sites. Webby Awards are the expression of the critics and the public. This time Webby covers automative, banking (Ing Direct is the people's choice), best practices (Google - this is a category!), weblog (Boing Boing), employment (CIA - I kid you not), Financial services (Fortune), News (BBC News from the critics and the people). See all the others at http://www.webbyawards.com/webbys/current.php. CBC made it as a nominee for Broadband. I don't see RocketNews here either. Canadians either aren't nominating their sites or voting. Regardless, check the list - might be some winners that will make the difference for you.

New York Times Book Review Archive

Péter's Digital Reference Shelf for May reviews the New York Times Book Review Archive

Gives an overview of online publications that carry book reviews as the prelude to this examination of the New York Times Book Review Archive.

"There are more than 16,000 full-text reviews in the free subset of the NYBTR archive from 1996 onward. (It seems to be more like 1997 onward, but in the search pull-down menu the first year is 1996). The rich collection is very well complemented by sumptuous first chapters from hundreds of books, and these are also free."

Find that it isn't easy to search. Adding metadata and title indexes would "enhance" the product.

Q&A at Wondir

Wondir Launches Volunteer Virtual Reference Service by Barbara Quint, Newsbreaks (May 2) - About Wondir's live Q&A service -- "Using a combination of search engine, instant messaging, and other technologies, it aims to allow “answer-full” volunteers to provide personal responses to queries and to generate automatic links to appropriate Web sites and news articles."

Matthew Koll, the CEO and founder of Wondir does have credentials. He also founded Personal Library Software and was CTO at America Online.

MSN Encarta

Encarta lets everyone be an editor - CNN (April 20) -- Encarta is calling on readers to suggest edits and additions to the Encarta editors who will do the final vetting. This is different from the popular Wikipedia where any registered user can make changes to entries.

""The truth of the matter is, we have 42,000 articles in Encarta and somewhere around 60 million words, so even if I had a staff of 1,000 editors we wouldn't be able to look at all of the content all the time," [Gary] Alt [Encarta's editorial director] said."

You can search Encarta from MSN Search now.

I Wondir

Wondir has been a search place for people to help each other with answers. It also did a form of metasearch. That has changed. Wondir has had a makeover and it is much more a Q&A community.

+ Categories for topical groupings of questions.
+ Alerts to learn when someone has answered your question.
+ Registration - myWOndir (of course)
+ Best of Wondir - to recognize the contributions of members.
+ Question Board - current questions - click on ( responses) to see answers.
+ Can rate answers

John Battelle writes that Wondir is handling 6-7,000 questions a day; up from 2-3,000 in the Fall.

"If [Matt] Koll can manage to get a really useful community working on creating base pairs of questions and answers, he'll have quite a content play on his hand - and that means all sorts of possible business models."

Wondir Launches Revamped Site Searchblog (Apr 18)

Yahoo helps Wikipedia

Yahoo Donates Resources to Wikipedia By Matt Hicks, EWeek (April 7, 2005)

Wikipedia might have just got a boost in credibility thanks to Yahoo's no-strings-attached commitment to provide technical and financial backing. Yahoo will also be introducing search shortcuts to the content.

Jimmy Wales, President of Wikimedia Foundation, posted to the Yahoo Search Blog - Jimmy Wales on Wikipedia and Yahoo!. With Yahoo's help, Wikimedia is adding a datacentre in Asia.

Many interesting comments are attached to the Yahoo blog post in praise of Wikipedia and against it.

Dictionaries

Fascinating and thorough reviews of two major online dictionaries at Péter's Digital Reference Shelf, April 2005 issue. They were the Farlex Free Dictionary and Webster's Online Dictionary, Rosetta Edition

The Free Dictionary website says it has "English, Medical, Legal, and Computer Dictionaries, Thesaurus, Encyclopedia, a Literature Reference Library, and a Search Engine all in one!"

Whitepages.com

MSN Replaces InfoSpace With WhitePages.com by Shankar Gupta, Online Media Daily ( Apr 4, 2005 ) -- MSN.com switched from Infospace to Whitepages.com for phone and address listings. MSN.ca and AOL.ca were already using whitepages.

Forbes' Best of the Web

Forbes' editors keep a list of the tools and sites they think are the most interesting and useful at http://www.forbes.com/bow/b2c/main.jhtml. They cover topics like Collecting, Education, Health, Management, Travel. Get leads here you wouldn't get elsewhere.

ZoomInfo for People Search

Searching for People with ZoomInfo By Chris Sherman, SearchDay (Mar 31) -- Finds flaws with ZoomInfo, as anyone who searches on themself will, but grants that it can be a useful service. ZoomInfo (previously Eliyon) has compiled profiles on 25 million people from the Web.

NYPL Digital Gallery

Review of "new digital image repository from the New York Public Library" by Shirl Kennedy, ResourceShelf (Mar 10)

From NYPL: " NYPL Digital Gallery provides access to over 275,000 images digitized from primary sources and printed rarities in the collections of The New York Public Library, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints and photographs, illustrated books, printed ephemera, and more."

WikiWax for Wikipedia

Search the encyclopedia Wikipedia using WikiWax, a lookahead type of searching powered by Surfwax. It has indexed 800,000 Wikipedia terms and has 2,200,000 rotations. Rotations will switch index terms around: for example, you can find Lester B Pearson, or Pearson, Lester B - and other variants. Very useful.

See Wikipedia Plus Dynamic Search Term Suggestions = WikiWax SearchEngineWatch (Mar 21)

British Library Maps Online

British Library Puts 800 Historic Maps Online, Managing Information.com (Mar 24)

Digitised maps from the British Library’s maps collection are on view as The Unveiling of Britain at www.collectbritain.co.uk/collections/unveiling/. Ranges from Saxon times to the reign of James I.

Finding Facts

Just the Facts, Please By Mary Ellen Bates, SearchDay (March 22) -- Says nice things about Wikipedia, the encyclopedia written by subject enthusiasts, and Answers.com.

To her list I would add Factbites (http://www.factbites.com/) - it searches online encyclopedia and the Web in general. It does well on Mary Ellen Bates' query about tungsten.

About About.com

About.com CEO explains why NYT spent $410 million to buy site by Mark Glaser, Online Journalism Review (Mar 7) Glasner has extracted some interesting bits of information about About.com's operation from CEO Peter Horan.

+ about 500 guides - all are subject experts.
+ covers 57,000 topics.
+ 7 or 8 editors supervise and review 'channels'
+ About.com has been very successful in optimizing the content for search engine placement - keywords, meta tags.
+ adds 3000 pieces of new content a week
+ Guides might make as little as $500 / month or as much as $20,000.
+ Audience is 2/3 women, average age 37.
+ Food and education channels are strong. Tend to specialize in "consumer sites and information".
+ Gets about 40 million unique visitors a month. This makes About.com attractive to advertisers looking for market niches.
+ Site is personalized -- "For the past 18 months, we've been serving all the users cookies, and we build the page dynamically based on the cookie we see coming in."

What's the fit with the New York Times? "When you put the story together, if somebody reads a news article on the Times, we've got the evergreen content that's the drill-down. When you read an article about the tsunami in Southeast Asia, we've got a geology guide who already had great articles about tsunamis, the biggest tsunamis ever, what are the things that cause tsunamis, those were already on our servers. All that stuff is nice and compatible."

This is all fine and good, but the ads at About.com often overpower the content.

Institutional Access at Google Scholar

Google Scholar has added a page where you can ask it to show institutional access links for a university. There are about 22 universities in the United States listed. Google calls this a "small pilot project".

"Institutional access is usually restricted to students, faculty, and staff of the respective institutions. You may be required to login with your library password, use a campus computer, or configure your browser to use a library proxy. Please visit your library's website or ask a local librarian for assistance."

Go to Google Scholar and click on Scholar Preferences.

Advice for About.com

Andrew Goodman has some advice for the New York Times for improving its new purchase, About.com-- Great or Ho-Hum? A Wish List for NYT's About.com (Feb 19) To his excellent list (especially cutting back on the clutter), I would add better ways to search and browse - use the taxonomy to better effect for finding the guides that are about a subject.

NYT Gets About.com

N.Y. Times to buy About.com for $410 million Reuters via CNet (Feb 17) "The Times Co., whose newspapers include The New York Times and The Boston Globe, said it will expand About.com's content and visibility and use the site to market its products."

About.com For Sale

About.com, Primedia's Web Venture, Is for Sale by Katharine Seelye, New York Times (Feb 8) Primedia has put About.com on the block. About.com offers guides to the Internet - 475 of them. Bidders are Google, Yahoo, New York Times, AOL and Ask Jeeves. Thomas Rogers created About.com as the Mining Company in 1996. The vision was a grand one of involving subject experts as guides and sharing the revenue. Under Primedia it became burdened with advertisements and the plan to integrate it with other print products never worked out. Primedia bought it for $690 million in October 2002. Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company, the owner of Primedia, is selling it for $350 to $500 million.

Resource Discovery Network and other Academic Directories

Péter Jacso provides an overview of the state of scholarly directories in the Péter's Digital Reference Shelf - February 2005 and specifically reviews Resource Discovery Network (RDN) in the UK.

Notes that "The majority of resources [of RDN] have substantial and informative descriptions, as opposed to the too short and often erroneous entries in the widely adapted Open Directory Project (ODP), or in the ever-deteriorating Yahoo directory."

But "On the negative side, in spite of the richness of RDN, there are inexplicable omissions." - also duplicates, triplicates, and outdated records (always the bane of directories).

Conclusion -- "In spite of the deficiencies, RDN belongs to the few good Web directories and subject guides dedicated to scholarly resources that are not polluted by uninformative entries about mediocre or inferior sites."

Mentioned in ResourceShelf.

US Public Records

~ free public record databases are the future ~ in PI News Link by Tamara Thompson Investigations. (Feb 5) About Petrieve.com, a metasearch engine for public records in the United States.

Mentioned in TVC ALert

Consumer Reports Web Watch

Consumer Reports has redesigned WebWatch. Has reports for:

+ In Search of Disclosure: How Search Engines Alert Consumers to the Presence of Advertising in Search Results

+ A Cross-Border Examination: 20 Travel Web Sites Selling International Airline Tickets in the United States and Six Western European Countries

+ How Do People Evaluate a Web Site's Credibility? Results from a Large Study

Also news, special reports, guidelines.

People Search - Business.com

Business.com has added a people-search facility using databases from Eliyon of some 22 million names obtained by mining the Web. Enter first and last name. Eliyon extracts as best it can title, name of company, and date of information. I was pleased to see my name in second spot. Click on the name to see the 'full report' compiled from the Web. If you find yourself, you have the option to update your profile; or if you find somebody else and you know the profile is wrong, you can send a note to the person (assuming that the email address is available and correct.)

To view the records you need to use the IE browser - Eliyon's results won't be displayed in Firefox - possibly something to do with cookie settings.

HighBeam Research also has a people search - called Executive Research - also powered by Eliyon. It displays the same list and information as at Business.com. However, at HighBeam you can also search for the person's name and company. And, as a registered user at HighBeam, you can save the profile to your online file or export to Word.

Also see comments by Genie Tyburski Online People Searching Problems in TVC Alert (Feb 1) - She's right - "Trouble is, Eliyon data isn't reliable." You have to know the person fairly well to be able to recognize fact from confusion or incorrect interpretations. Be careful using Eliyon. Verify everything.

Zillman's Academic Guide

Marcus Zillman has prepared a guide to Academic and Scholar Search Engines and Sources. Zillman seems to have a limitless capacity to produce these annotated link collections. Academic and Scholar Search Engines and Sources is alphabetically ordered list, 32 pages long, pdf format.

These lists are always valuable as a starting point, but the annotation may be insufficient (for example, not mentioning that the service is for fee, such as with KeepMedia), and the selections aren't always a fit (Kartoo, the visual meta-search engine, doesn't tap into academic resources any better than any other meta-search engine). Also several of the selections will not be the freshest sites on the Web (Searchability.com, as an example, is only minimally maintained). Aside from these quibbles, people looking for academic sources will find some jewels.

Gerry McKiernan, a "Deep Librarian" at Iowa State University profiled Zillman and Awareness Watch newsletters in Z as in Zillman. Article includes urls for many of his articles and sites.

New Thomas

THOMAS: New Congress, A Few Changes by Peggy Garvin, LLRX (Jan 17) Reviews the changes to Thomas for finding US legislation.

HighBeam Research - Free Week

HighBeam Research is offering free access to its eLibrary of over 3,000 premium sources for magazines, news, and research tools from January 24 to 28, 2005. Try it out - www.highbeam.com. Register and then search the Library.

"HighBeam(tm) Research, Inc., operator of an online research engine for individuals (www.highbeam.com) that fills the gap between free search engines and high-end information services, today announced that it will celebrate its first anniversary by providing free access to its service from Monday, January 24 to Friday, January 28, 2005. The company also announced that is has reached several important milestones during its first year of operation." From Press Release. HighBeam Research Announces Anniversary Open House. (Jan 17)

Best of Business Lists

Montague Insititute Review keeps a page of The collected wisdom of the world's information experts - excerpts from discussion boards for information professionals including the Buslib listserv. Has topics for managing information, organizing information, tips and techniques, and where to find it - several business topics. Unfortunately page doesn't show the date of last revision. [Thanks to RC for the listing.]

Wikipedia's Growth and Future

Wikipedia Faces Growing Pains by Daniel Terdiman, Wired News (Jan 10) Wikipedia, the free (and free-for-all) online encyclopedia, has grown to 1.1 million entries. Anyone can add and edit entries. Some knowledgeable people do - and so do some cranks.

"But with that growth, questions about how credible Wikipedia is, whether it can be respected by the academic community and how it might change are more important than ever. And as Wikipedia continues to expand, at about 7 percent per month, many wonder if the project can stay true to its core principles of openness and co-creation."

Online Reference Sites

Best Free Reference Web Sites 2004 Sixth Annual List compiled by RUSA Machine-Assisted Reference Section (MARS) of the American Library Association.

Selections for other years are listed on the Mars Pub page.

See The Best Online Reference Sites by Chris Sherman, SearchDay (Jan 4) for a sampling of sites and additional recommendations.

Ready Reference Sources

Searching for Quick Answers To Odd Questions by Mary Ellen Bates, SearchDay (Dec 22) Recommends specialized search tools for finding ready reference information and quick facts.

Internet Archive Digitizes Book Collections

Internet Archive to build alternative to Google "Ten international libraries agree to add digitised book collections to not-for-profit Internet Archive's new Text Archive project" by Mark Chillingworth, Information World Review via PC Mag (Dec 21)

"In a statement, the Internet Archive describes the Text Archive as an Open Access archive that will "ensure permanent and public access to our published heritage". Over a million books have been committed to the Text Archive by the member institutes, with 50,000 available in the first quarter of 2005."

See also Tara Calishain Internet Archive, Universities Team Up For a Digitized Collection (Dec 27) for articles about the project and comments about ways to search the text archive.

Live Music Online

Searching for Live Music By Chris Sherman, Search Engine Watch (Dec 20) Recommends Live Music Archive for "thousands of hours of free, legal music, available on demand." Joint project of etree.org and The Internet Archive.

Google Groups

Google SNAFUs Usenet pages Inquirer (Dec 9) Google Groups has changed the format of its newsgroup postings. Some find that navigation of groups has been weakened.

LII adds Chat

Librarians' Index to the Internet service has added interactive chat using either AOL or Yahoo Messenger. Web Directories--Librarians' Index to the Internet Resource Shelf (Nov 24)

Art History Online

Looking for Good Art - Part 3: Glorious National Collections by David Mattison, Searcher Nov/Dec 2004 -- "free digital databases that document the art history of Western civilization from medieval times through the 19th century."

Wondir for answers

Grokking Wondir John Battelle (Nov 19) - About Wondir - a question-answering service created in 2002 by Matthew Koll.

"When you do ask a question (in plain english), Wondir does a number of clever things. First, it parses your question's text and categorizes it in any number of potential topic clusters. It then alerts registered users who have raised their hands as willing to answer questions in those topics, either through email, RSS (soon), or IM. It also posts the question right there on the service, in a scrolling ticker below the search box."

EEVL for Engineering

An Exceptionally "EEVL" Search Resource By Gary Price, SearchDay (Nov 22) -- About EEVL - Internet Guide to Engineering, Mathematics and Computing - "EEVL has now launched four new subject-focused databases that provide free access to a couple of hundred ejournals in several disciplines."

Eliyon Database of Business Profiles

Eliyon Reports Record Third Quarter 2004 Growth, Third Quarter Sales Nearly 210% of Same Period 2003, Adds More Than 130 New Enterprise License Customers Business Wire via CBS Marketwatch (Nov 19)

"As of November 2004, the Eliyon database included 23 million profiles of business people from executives to individual contributors at more than 1.5 million companies, with more than 25,000 new profiles added and 100,000 updated daily."

Wikipedia Warning

The Faith-Based Encyclopedia Robert McHenry, Techstation (Nov 15)

Former Editor in Chief, the Encyclopædia Britannica, Robert McHenry has damming words to say about Wikipedia, the grass-roots Internet Encyclopedia. There's a full description of its origins at Interpedia to a project that now has 30,000 contributors and 1.1 million articles. But the process for creating the articles is open to wild inaccuracies and bias. He gives the example of an article about Alexander Hamilton rife with grammatical errors and blurry on some of the facts.

Closing words -- "The user who visits Wikipedia to learn about some subject, to confirm some matter of fact, is rather in the position of a visitor to a public restroom. It may be obviously dirty, so that he knows to exercise great care, or it may seem fairly clean, so that he may be lulled into a false sense of security. What he certainly does not know is who has used the facilities before him."

Intellicast for Weather

INTELLICAST WEATHER http://www.intellicast.com has detailed weather reports and forecasts for the United States with radar maps and many alerts. Hurricane watchers will be interested in the 2004 Hurricane Track Summary. Can get satellite views of weather worldwide, with forecasts and travel forecasts for international cities. As well there are planners (golf, ski, garden, stargazing ...), services (forecast by email, desktop search ...), and educational material.

LookDirectory

There's a new directory -- LookDirectory. Claims to have 2 million sites and to use paid editors. Those editors likely spend their time reviewing submission for paid listings. The site is tied into Google - Sponsored Ads come from Google, and the Web search is of Google.

The directory and categories are well laid out and there are good local breakdowns for countries. But the commercial slant is clear. The Canada - Ontario category has a subcategory for Zorra Township (1) and Zurich Ontario (4). One wouldn't expect these to be hand-picked items.

The site also has tabs for Business and Shopping - listing services and online stores. Forums are a fifth part and would be useful for finding discussion groups on a huge range of topics. Visitors can write comments about a site or rate it. The one thing they can't do is search the directory.

On the whole - clearly commercial, probably most useful for the Forums and maybe the listings for Business and for Shopping.

Ziggs for Executive Profiles

Ziggs.com searches executive profiles - those it harvests from the web presumably and those you register. This is in beta still. It claims to have 1,000,000 profiles across nearly 16,000 companies. The search interface allows for searches in countries around the world but I expect that at the present time all the companies loaded with be in the United States. Microsoft and Ford Motor and CISCO are there, Nortel is not - not in Canada or the United States. Profiles seem to be taken from Investor Relation web pages. We should probably check back in 3 to 6 months.

See Search Engine for Executive Profiles ResearchBuzz (Nov 4)

Newspaper Index

Newspaperindex - best newspapers by country, from Afganistan to Zimbabwe. Created by Hans Henrik Lichtenberg, a journalist who needed this list for his own work. Available and English and three Scandinavian languages.

PCMAG Top 100

Top 101 Web Sites Fall 2004 in PC Magazine (Oct 2004) Always fun to check what's on PC Magazine's list for best tools. Categories include

- Search: Yahoo and Google of course but also About.com whose load of advertisements makes it a burden to use.
- Information: How Stuff Works is still going strong. Also lists ICRC humanitarian organization.
- Travel: Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz - where's Trip Advisor?
- News: BBC, CNN, NYT, and Wired. Really?

Lots more. Also see Sree Sreenivasan at Poynter Online for more comments and background -- 101 Useful Sites Tips from PC Magazine.
-

Obituaries and Records

Ancestry.com has extended its family history records with "more than 6 million pages from over 400 different newspapers across the US, U.K. and Canada dating back to the 1700's. " A subscription to the service also includes the new Obituary Collection with more than 2 million obituaries.

http://www.ancestry.com/search/rectype/periodicals/news/

Ancestry.com, itself, is a major center for genealogical research in the United States. Searching is free, access to records requires a subscription.

Mentioned in TVC Alert Oct 21

UK historical directories

Historical directories go online University of Leicester "Amateur historians can now trawl through information dating back to 1750 as local directories from England and Wales go online." Good for genealogy and researching old houses. Go to http://www.historicaldirectories.org/ - be patient - the site is very busy.

Canada411 better

Canada411 finally has reverse lookup for phone numbers. Find-a-person lookup will also handle partial names.

"The new searches are the result of a partnership between YPG and W3 Data Inc., a provider of on-line directory assistance services and operator of the WhitePages.com Network. W3 Data Inc. will also be hosting and providing operational support for the "Find a Person" look-up."

Yellow Pages improves search Globe and Mail Update (Oct 5)

Internet History Portal

Nethistory.info is a "resource centre for Internet history, including all the applications and platforms that came together to create the early Internet - protocols, personal computers, email, world wide web, networks, and much more!" Ian Peter is the historian. There's a monthly newsletter. The Net is 35 years old - time to collect the stories and the artifacts.

Tracking Documents

Gary Price, Steven Cohen, and Shirl Kennedy have created a new weblog for featuring important documents called Docuticker. Great idea and service but would be better with some categorization of documents.

Sree Sreenivasan reported this in Documents Galore (Sept 8)

Wikipedia v Britannica

Spreading Knowledge, The Wiki Way By Leslie Walker. Washington Post (Sept 9) [registration required] About Wikipedia, the free online encylopedia developed, maintained, and extended by volunteers. Many warn not to use it because content has not been fully verified and may contain bias. Others say that the community as a whole will find and correct the errors and offer contrasting views. Leslie Walker gives the background about the formation, operation and goals of Wikipedia. The free-wheeling spirit of Wikipedia contrasts with the quality and authority of the for-fee Britannica. But Wikipedia plans to add editorial controls soon. Walker notes that Wikipedia's success raises questions about whether "the Internet's free dissemination of knowledge will eventually decrease the economic value of information".

Hurricanes

Hurricane Resources By David Shedden. Poynter Institute (Sep 3) Anyone with property in the hurricane region of the United States will find this list of hurricane resources on the web useful. Page is organized into Weather Updates, Media Coverage, Additional REsources, and History.

Quick Facts

Quick Answers to Odd Questions - Mary Ellen Bates. in the August Tip of the Month, lists her favourite sites for answering "ready reference" types of questions - quick facts, numbers (in the US), how things work, movies, quotations.

CopyScape fights plagiarists

Copyscape can help identify pages on the web that are reusing your content. Done by Indigo Stream Technologies Ltd, the same people who do GoogleAlert. Copyscape is free - jsut enter URL. There will be a for-fee version that will constantly crawl and send alerts. Let's hope it includes the option to list many page, or better yet a portion of a web site.

Reviewed in Stopping Web Plagiarists from Stealing Your Content by Reid Goldsborough. Linkup Digital (Sept 2004)

Search Engine Directory

Search Engines 2 - is a directory to search engines. Engines are organized by country and by purpose -- book, car, career etc. There are 12,500 links in total. Done by Michael Wong.

PC Support

Reid Goldsborough has tips on helping friends with their computer problems in Empower Others to Solve Computer Problems (Aug 8) -- tips come from Anne Kandra, a columnist with PC World. Among other bits she recommends PC Support at About.com for free advice.

Now there are cityblogs

City blogs get on the map AP via Globe and Mail (Aug 13) -- "Locally focused group "metro" blogs — compilations of events, reflections, recommendations, news and complaints — are emerging to put a number of big cities in intimate, street-level relief." Mentions Metroblogging.com/ - for city blogs in the USA. If there is a blog for your city, it looks like a good way to stay in the know.

WHOIS.sc

Another Expanded Whois Service By Chris Sherman, SearchDay (Aug 12) Recommends WHois.sc for searching domain names.

GlobalSpec for Engineers

Another specialized search engine - GlobalSpec is the "Engineering Search Engine". Has information on products and companies.

Tools for Librarians

Lots in the July 26 issue of LLRX.com about web search, social software, marketing and technology.

Search Comparison Chart by Diana Botluk showing Alltheweb, Altavista, Google, Lycos, MSN, Teoma, Wisenut, and Yahoo. People looking for charts might also check WebSearchGuide Comparison Charts for Ask Jeeves, Gigablast, Google, Hotbot, MSN, Teoma and Yahoo.

Gumshoe Librarian: "Where in the World Is..." A Bibliography of Recommended Websites for Global Research Issues By Barbara Fullerton and Sabrina I. Pacifici - resources for finding people, places, news, public records and more.

Metaforix@Health Free Online Resources for Public Library Users: California By Lois C. Ambash

WHOIS lookup

Network Solutions Offers Enhanced Whois Lookup by Chris Sherman. Searchday (July 14) - Improved lookup service for information about domains at Network Solutions' WHOIS

Language Maps

MLA Language Map Modern Language Association offers an online mapping function to show concentrations of spoken languages in districts in the United States.

Reviewed by Jonathan Dube in Mapping Language Use Poynter Online (June 28)

HURISEARCH for human rights

HURISEARCH - specialized search engine for human rights by Lars Våge. Pandia (July 2004) HURISEARCH stands for HUman RIghts SEARCH engine. This is a specialty search engine to "provide one point access to all human rights information published by human rights organisations worldwide, and particularly human rights NGOs"

At Work

My ultimate office: tech I can't work without Rafe Needleman ZDNet Anchor Desk (June 14). Tips for being online from anywhere. Mentions a new department at CNet called At Work. - has products, buying guides, and video demos.

Internet Archive

Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive, spoke with Lisa Rein at Openp2p.com (Jan 22) Brewster Kahle on the Internet Archive and People's Technology Kahle has been working with the Library of Congress to archive web sites.

Source: Mentioned at ResourceShelf

Quotations

Michael Fagan of Faganfinder still finds time in a busy schedule for his web site. He has created a page of quotation finders -- http://www.faganfinder.com/quotes/ "This page attempts to collect the largest sources of quotations and related items (proverbs, sayings, maxims, amorphisms, slogans, clichés, etc.). "

Highbeam Executives

HighBeam Research Adds Ability to Locate, Organize and Deliver Information on 20 Million Business Executives, Managers and Employees Business Wire via CBS Marketwatch (June 2) Researchers can use Highbeam Executives to search for "information on more than 20 million business executives, managers and employees from more than one million organizations (public and private companies and non-profit organizations)." Paid registration is required to read the profiles. Service comes through Eliyon Technologies.

No to Learners Library

Learner's Library Dumbs Down By Mick O'Leary Information Today (June 2) Leary gives Learners Library the thumbs down as a database to journal articles for college students. It's not as good as products from EBSCO, Thomson Gale, ProQuest, and H.W. Wilson. In fact it is more like Questia -- "another ragtag collection of dubious content intended to lure shortcut seekers from the genuine riches of libraries while charging them for it."

Gimpsy - a directory on verbs

Gimpsy is a directory to sites that provide interactive online services. All the topical categories are action verbs -- adopt, buy, calculate, design, find, sell -- about 75 of them. "In Gimpsy the sites are examined and categorized only with respect to the service that they provide." The search facility responds fairly well to common "natural language" phrasing such as write javascript, learn photography. Preference settings let one exclude / include certain types of sites, and to localize results to a country.

Featured / sponsored sites will show first. These sites have paid to be listed in Gimpsy and to get higher placement. Other results are randomly ordered.

A Web Directory that Helps You Do, Not Find By David Wallace, SearchDay June 1, 2004 - Interview with Gimpsy's founder, Mordechai Chachamu.

Science.gov

Science.gov 2.0 Launches with New Relevance Ranking Technology by Paula J. Hane. Newsbreaks (May 24, 2004)

"Science.gov 2.0 lets users search across 30 databases from 12 government science agencies (up from 10 agencies in version 1.0), as well as across 1,700 Web sites—that’s 47 million pages, with results presented in relevancy ranked order. " It uses a metasearch capability developed by Deep Web Technologies for better relevance ranking.

Encyclopedias Online

Out-Googling The Top Search Engine Online encyclopedias yield more specialized results by Stephen H. Wildstrom. BusinessWeek Online. Wildstrom lists some of his favourites - Wikipedia, Britannica, Gurunet (a desktop utility).

Findability.org

Peter Morville, guru of Information Architecture, has a new web site devoted to problem of finding things - Findability.org . There's an email newsletter that will be issued several times a year about new resources related to findability.

FindLaw and Yahoo

FindLaw Extends Agreement with Yahoo! PRNewswire (May 19) FindLaw portal is the most visited legal Web site. Content includes West Legal Directory(R), the Internet's largest directory of lawyers and legal professionals. Through the renewed agreement with Yahoo Findlaw's directory will be fully available through the Yahoo network.

Eliyon - People in Business

Eliyon Technologies Surpasses 20 Million Profiles of U.S. Business People, 1.4 Million Companies Business Wire (May 19) Eliyon now has over 20 million people profiles and 1.4 million profiles of U.S. companies. "Eliyon is a revolutionary new search engine of business people, professionals and executives. This rich information source grows by nearly 25,000 business people profiles every day, and constantly refreshes information in existing profiles - having updated 8.4 million profiles over the past year".

Subscribers of Highbeam can also tap into Eliyon's executive database. Has Canadian content.

Péter's Digital Reference Shelf - May

Péter Jacso reviewed two totally different sites in his May 2004 issue of Digital Reference: Adherents.com about religion and affiliations; and Keep Media, a low-cost source of articles. Re KeepMedia, it has about 160 publications and costs $49.95 US a year. Competitors are Highbeam Research and XanEdu, both for fee, and of course the databases that your public library probably offers for free.

Webby Awards 2004

Winners of the 2004 Webbies were announced on May 12. There are two awards for each of the 30 categories. The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences selects the nominees for both. It selects the winner of the Webby Award, while the public chooses the winners of the The People's Voice Awards.

In the Education category, the BBC Human Body and the National Geographic sites won. The CBC Halifax Explosion was one of the 5 nominees.

HealthyOntario won for Government and Law.

BBC News received the Webby. But the people voted for the The Smoking Gun, a web site owned by Court TV cable channel and claiming to have "confidential documents" - mostly about celebrities. Rocketnews, a very useful news search engine with RSS newsreader capabilities, was passed over.

Music on the Web

All Music, All But Invisible By Chris Sherman. SearchDay (May 6) Recommends All Music Guide for its biographies and discographies. It's very well organized by genre and decade (at least for easy listening). It also invites user ratings. However, as Sherman says, it is invisible to search engines. Lots of information here and buying opportunities (mainly through Barnes and Noble) but no sound bytes.

Maporama does the world

Maporama International Chooses ADC Worldmap to Strengthen its Cartographic Coverage Worldwide. Press Release (May 6)

New partnership between Maporama and ADC Worldmap makes Maporama's global coverage even better. ADC Worldmap is the Desktop Mapping Division of American Digital Cartography, Inc. (ADCi). It specializes in GIS/Desktop Mapping.

"Thanks to this new partnership, Maporama International has integrated new cartographic data featuring 429,000 cities and 9.9 million kilometers of roads worldwide. Users of Maporama solutions will also be able to localize 13,445 airports, 19,713 cultural landmarks, 54,371 railway stations and 5,358 marine ports."

Top web sites

PC Magazine has published its list of top sites -- 2004 100 Top Websites You Didn't Know You Couldn't Live Without. You can download these and add to your favorites / bookmarks.

Image Search

Image control by Kristi Heim. Mercury News Seattle Bureau -- Bill Gates is transforming Corbis from an archive of photographs to a "broad provider of visual services in the digital age".

Image-Seek from LTU Technologies does visual searching - according to shapes and likenesses. The demo searches the 65,000 royalty-free images at Corbis.

Source: ResourceShelf

For gastronomes

Food sites to suit any appetite The Web offers food lovers endless opportunities for exciting new discoveries. Reuters via CNN Money (April 20)

Scirus about Science

Turning Search Into a Science By Kristen Philipkoski. WIred News (April 8) The large search engines don't do specialized content and searches well. People should turn to a specialized database. For science this is Scirus, owned by Elsevier and run on FAST technology. "Scirus is a search engine for scientists that allows them to dig through not just scientific journals, but also unpublished research, university websites, corporate Internet sites, conference agendas and minutes, discussion groups and mailing-list archives. "

Information Warfare Site

People who are in the business of ensuring security of information will want to follow IWS - The Information Warfare Site in the UK (http://www.iwar.org.uk/)

News Central offers news in many topics - online access, online banking, cyberattack, espionage etc - from feeds provided by Moreover.

For several topics such as computer and information security, terrorism, information operations ... there are background papers - many from the US Homeland Security - as well as links to country resources, and news headlines.

Current threat levels can be viewed as graphically on maps - as can the current state of virus plagues.

Several mailing lists are available for staying up to date on these matters.

(Source - mentioned in Covering the Info Wars Poynter Online.)

Digital Reference Shelf

Péter's Digital Reference Shelf - April 2004 - reviews A & E Biography - enhanced content and fulltext search; and MetaCritic - reviews of films and music albums.

Amazon Search

Amazon supports more powerful searching for books. Genie Tyburski at Virtual Chase gives details. Amazon Adds Power Search Syntax (April 1)

HighBeam Research for Quality

When It Pays to Pay for Research by Reid Goldsborough. LinkUp Digital (April 10) - recommends Highbeam Research for times when you must find quality information quickly.

"What’s best about HighBeam is the quality of the information you can find through it. Though the free Web can reveal useful, factual information you’d be hard-pressed to find elsewhere, it’s also rife with rumors, gossip, hoaxes, exaggerations, falsehoods, ruses, and scams."

FindLaw for the Public

FindLaw Launches New 'FindLaw for the Public' PRNewswire (March 29) via CBS Marketwatch. Thomson has released a new version of http://public.findlaw.com/ with new features. "The new features provide FindLaw users with the most comprehensive and intuitive Web site experience, making it easier for the millions of consumers who visit FindLaw each month to understand legal issues and connect with qualified attorneys. "

Yellow Pages

InfoSpace to buy rival Switchboard, creating largest online directory By Monica Soto Ouchi. Seattle Times (March 27)

"InfoSpace and Switchboard's combined networks account for 23 percent of all online Yellow-Page searches, making it slightly larger than Verizon's SuperPages.com, according to data from comScore Media Metrix. "

Search Engine for Engineers

GlobalSpec Develops ''The Engineering Search Engine'' Business Wire (March 25) "GlobalSpec, the leading specialized search engine and online resource for engineers and technical professionals, today announced the launch of its more powerful search functionality, deeper engineering content and "The Engineering Web." "

GlobalSpec supports searches of applications notes, patents, material properties, and standards, as well as of companies, products and services. Free Registration

Also see review by Paula Hane. GlobalSpec Introduces “The Engineering Web” IT Newsbreaks (March 29) Full description on merits and use. Also mentions other engineering resources -- Engineering Village 2, Engineering.com, and Scirus' engineering subject area.

The Web Library

The Web Library, a companion website to Nick Tomaiuolo's book of the same name, is featured at ResourceShelf. The Web Library: Building a World Class Personal Library with Free Web Resources

FindLaw.com

Thomson proudly announced that FindLaw.com, the legal portal, was the "385th most visited among all Web sites in February 2004". FindLaw.com: Number One on the Web for Information About the Law and Lawyers PRNewswire via CNS Marketwatch (March 23)

"""Most people use FindLaw because they know it's the best source for information about the law and about legal professionals," said FindLaw President and CEO, Debbie Monroe. "It's an incredibly valuable information tool, one that enables users to get smart about the law, and then connect with legal professionals for help if they need it." "

Genealogy Search Help

Genealogy Search Help will help you use Google to track down ancestry. It creates the searches based on what information you can provide about a person - parents, spouse, birth place. Very helpful.

Wikipedia for everyone

Wikipedia for Journalists Trusting a free resource. By Sree Sreenivasan. Poynder Online (March 9) - Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia built from contributions of volunteer writers worldwide. This article describes how this "open editing system" succeeds.

Mainly Directories

The March 2004 issue of the Internet Resources Newsletter has some directories of interest.

- All.info has resources for science, arts, social science, recreation, and reference. All.info claims to aim for higher "web credibility". Has promise. Descriptions for some sites, however, have been automatically generated from the web page.

- InternetAlerts.info - a blog from Marcus Zillman has alerts, advisories and warnings.

- Directory Resources is another Zillman blog that lists "single subject directories and portals".

- Study Guides and Strategies done by Joe Landsberger, web site developer at the University of St. Thomas (UST), St. Paul, Minnesota. Good one page digests on how to study, learn and participate.

The Weather

weather.com(R) Reigns as the Most Popular News and Information Site on the Web PR Newswire via CBS Marketwatch (Feb 26, 2004) -- The Weather Channel - weather.com in January was "the most visited news and information site on the Internet and ranked number 11 among all Web sites". Blurb says "The site helps users plan for everyday life by delivering current conditions and forecasts for 98,000 locations worldwide and providing relevant lifestyle content. weather.com averages more than 20 million unique users each month and is consistently ranked the most popular source of online weather information and among the Top 15 of all Web domains according to Nielsen//NetRatings." Weather.com is primarily for the United States. It does have international versions but Canada is not one of them

Canadians use The Weather Network.

Invisible Web Tools

Marcus Zillman prefers the term "deep web" rather than "invisible web" - that mass of pages and files the search engines don't index. In a new article for LLRX - Deep Web Research - he has put together a guide to "resources to better understand the history of the deep web research, as well as various classified resources that allow you to search through the currently available web to find those key sources of information nuggets only found by understanding how to search the "deep web". " It is a list of resources organized into 6 groups - no annotations on worth or recommended use.

Something free at Keepmedia

KeepMedia Launches RSS Feeds at John Battelle's SearchBlog (Feb 23) - KeepMedia is a for-fee service for articles from 160 publications - and growing. It has introduced an RSS feed with the titles of featured news stories picked by the editors. Articles will be free to view. Add it to your newsreader now Featured News RSS

ThomasNet.com

Thomas Register and Thomas Regional Launch ThomasNet.com to Provide One Premier Resource for Industry Business Wire via NewsAlert (Feb 23) -- "ThomasNet.com offers the Web's largest industrial resource, with over 650,000 distributors, manufacturers and service companies within more than 67,000 searchable categories." ThomasNet uses FAST search technology. It can be searched by product or company, and has and also offer CAD drawings.

Yahoo adding finance guides

Suze Orman, the personal finance whiz, is a guide at Yahoo Finance with tips about income tax in the United States. Sometimes Just Trying to Save Money on Taxes Can End Up Costing You More More personal finance guides are planned - 24 in total.

Marketing Search Engine

Larry Chase's Search Engine for Marketers -- "This free service features short reviews and links to the top sites in 40 marketing categories, such as: Search Engine Optimization, Email Marketing, Increasing Site Traffic, Link Popularity, Direct Marketing, Web Analytics, Search Engine Marketing, Affiliate Programs, Pay-Per-Click Advertising, Media Buying, CRM, and more."

Time Magazine Archive

HP to create digital archive of all Time magazines Reuters (Feb 17) --Hewlett-Packard is to create a digital archive of all Time magazines dating back to 1923. Subscribers to Time will be able to access it. This might be a good reason to become a subscriber to Time.

Information Architecture

Resources for information architects by Martin White. Update (Feb 2004) - books, web resources, discussion lists, and conferences.

Uptodate with tech stuff

Mining for Tech Ideas "Sources for info on the Web, new gadgets, and more." by Sree Screenivasan. PoynterOnline (Feb 10)

Going to the Movies

Péter's Digital Reference Shelf - February reviews the Official Academy Awards Database (OAAD) and the New York Times Movie Reviews . Peter Jacso must be a true movie buff. These are very thorough examinations of the two services.

OAAD doesn't really past muster -- "There is minimal information about the 2,750 movies and 4,300 individuals who have been nominated and/or won an Academy Award in the past 75 years. " ... "It needs enhancement."

But the New York Times Movie Reviews is ... " free, well-organized and has more than 5,000 movie reviews and many other special movie lists". There are biographies, filmographies and other lists from the All Movie Guide. As well NYT includes the digital version of The New York Times Best 1,000 Films (1999)

HighBeam Research

Alacritude Re-launches as HighBeam Research Outsell E-Brief (Jan 30) - notes that HighBeam Research is targeting the middle market of users with its modestly priced service for access to 2600 journals. The CEO is Patrick Spain, once of Hoover's. Outsell thinks it's going to be a tough market.

Market Research on the Web

IRN Research Launches Marketresearchontheweb.com Newsbreaks (Feb 2)

Marketresearchontheweb.com is a new gateway service from IRN Research. It offers "direct links to market data, company/product lists and directories, statistics, and industry news on over 3,000 regularly evaluated U.K. and European sites. The sites include trade associations, professional bodies, research institutes, chambers of commerce, market research publishers, trade journals, and portals. "

Subscriptions are available for individuals and organizations. There is a free trial to the “Food, Drink, and Tobacco” sector.

From the site:
"Market Research on the Web (MROW) is a one-stop shop for information professionals and librarians, researchers, consultants, students, and business executives looking for European Web sites containing market and industry data and statistics. It has been developed by IRN Research, a market research and information consultancy company established in 1991."

Legal Research in Canada

Doing Legal Research in Canada By Ted Tjaden, LLRX.com (Jan 19) Ted Tjaden is a lawyer/law librarian working at the Bora Laskin Law Library at the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, where he teaches. He also teaches a web-based course - Legal Research on the Internet - for the Professional Learning Centre, Faculty of Information Studies, University of Toronto.

PC World Best of the Web

Web Stars: Best of the Web "Where should you go for news, research, shopping, and more? We compare Goliaths of the Web to lesser-known upstarts--and discover some surprising results." by Josh Taylor From the February 2004 issue of PC World magazine (December 31, 2003)

There are several categories. PC World like Google, DogPile and Alltheweb for search engines. Dogpile got top listing for toolbar too, then Altavista (for its Babel translator), and Google Deskbar.

Other categories: travel sites, drivers and patches, Internet utilities, and more.

Save yourself time - view the print version.

Watching Google

Watching Google Like a Hawk does exactly that, picking up articles and sites that have a lot to say about Google. Unfortunately, none of the entries is dated. My guess is that the archive goes back about three months. The ads from Google are also interesting and not at all related to search engines or Google - saving wildlife and wilderness, eco-friendly buying, volunteering.

Spotted in ResearchBuzz

Cookbooks

General Cookbooks, Cookbooks By Region, Cookbooks by Technique or Ingredient by Kathy Biehl. LLRX (Dec 22) - toss the print cooking reference and turn to this collection of cookbooks.

Canadian Law

Overview of Sources of Canadian Law on the Web, Revised By Louise Tsang. LLRX (Dec 22) New additions and changes are marked in green in this collection of Canadian Law sources.

URL Shortening

Web addresses get nip and tuck--and spam By Paul Festa CNET News.com (Dec 23) - There are several services that can be used to shorten a url. Three are discussed here -- TinyURL, Shorlify, and Make a Shorter Link. TinyURL is probably the best known and used. Article notes that abuse by spammers is becoming a problem. Also, volume of use is making TinyURLs longer.

ConsumerSearch

Péter's Digital Reference Shelf - December 2003 also reviews ConsumerSearch. Editors at ConsumerSearch (www.consumersearch.com) bring together product reviews and consumer reports from a variety of sources, picking the best and synthesizing.

His conclusion -- "While it does not have the breadth of coverage of Consumer Reports, Consumer Digest or Consumer Guide, ConsumerSearch offers an innovative solution, and saves consumers a lot of time and agony by synthesizing published reviews of products and services in a very appealing fashion free of charge. Users will be happy with this resource and reference librarians will be appreciated when they guide their patrons to it."

Directory of Open Access Journals

Directory of Open Access Journals offers access to nearly 600 full-text "open access" journals. Open access" means offering users the right "to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles". The collection is searchable by journal title, subject or keywords.

InfoToday BLog

Information Today is running a weblog -- http://www.infotodayblog.com/ -- InfoToday staff are posting entries from the Online Information 2003 Conference in London, England.

Internet Resources Newsletter - December

Always worth a browse, the December 2003 Internet Resources Newsletter is online.

There are a few new-ish search engines listed.

Mooter clusters results and shows them in a spray of lines. Accepts "" to marks words together. There is some information about the technology is at http://www.mooter.com/corp/.

NetNose Searchers can go through a process to rate a random page for quality, trashing the sites that don't seem to match or won't load, noting if the site uses popups, is adult, or costs money.

For general browsing there are options to Vote (and place in a category as for kids, or research etc), or to Trash.

It claims to offer the top sites and seems to have a small database. It defaults to searching for ANY of the words and does not appear to have phrase search.

Objects Search has a Web Search and a News and RSS Search. Very new, very small, very slow.

Wotbox (used to be Wotbot) identifies the country of a web site with its flag. Has grown to 6 million pages. Advanced Search supports filters on title, description, body, url and country.

Internet Librarian 2003

Some materials from the presentations at Internet Librarian 2003 are available online. See http://www.infotoday.com/il2003/presentations/ for complete list.

Current Awareness
Supplementary Reading for Tracking and Delivering Current Information:
What Are the Options? (Word doc) Gary Price and Genie Tyburski

Web Searching
A Google Gambol: Advanced Tricks and Techniques by Greg Notess (PPT file) - reviews syntax with extra attention to using * as a wildcard word. Covers definitions. Notes limitations of Google. Also had a section on bookmarklets.

Web Searching in 2004 by Greg Notess - consolidation of ownership (Yahoo) and likely of services (Alltheweb and Altavista), removable of documents from Web or inaccessible by search egnines, expansion of product search.

Weblogs
The Blogging Explosion Libraries and Weblogs by Darlene Fichter -(PPT file) - survey of blogs, tools and uses.

Harvesting Blogs for Emergent Information by Greg Notess (PPS) - where to search.

Beyond Blogging by Elizabeth Lane Lawley (HTML) - variety of publication modes. Looks at aggregation, annotation, collaboration, and emergence.

Information Visualization
New Age Navigation by Gerry McKierman (PPT - 1.3 MB) about Innovative E-Journal Interfaces.

people power on the web

Grassroots action in the UK is helped by the BBC site - iCan. Wired news called it a Web Antidote for Political Apathy (May 5) Guardian Unlimited says A portal for the people? (Nov 10). The intent is to connect people with local issues. Users can set up discussions and mini-sites about issues that concern them. Can the web be used for democratic good?

"Ultimately, the idea is that iCan could become part of the BBC's news gathering operation, getting closer to the things that local people are interested in." Let's hope CBC follows this closely.

SOSIG is the best

RDN Press Release - SOSIG Law Gateway wins international award rdn.ac.uk (Nov 2003) - The SOSIG Law Gateway won the best Website prize for 2003 awarded by the International Association of Law Libraries (IALL). (Mentioned in the ResourceShelf)

Amazon Search Inside the Book

"Search Inside the Book": Full-Text on Amazon by Barbara Quint. Information Today NewsBreaks (Nov 3) - Includes a list of publishers involved - and reasons why some have stayed out. Authors Guild has not been happy and in response to their protests, Amazon has disabled printing of excerpts from the full-text. Sales of searchable books are doing well - better than those without full-text searching.

Also see article in SearchDay -- Amazon Debuts New Book Search Tool by Gary Price (Oct 27) - Mentions other sources of books including NetLibrary, elibrary, and Online Books Page.

Drowning in Information

HOW MUCH INFORMATION 2003? is a study produced by faculty and students at the School of Information Management and Systems at the University of California at Berkeley. Senior researchers were Peter Lyman and Hal R. Varian.

"This study is an attempt to estimate how much new information is created each year. Newly created information is distributed in four storage media – print, film, magnetic, and optical – and seen or heard in four information flows – telephone, radio and TV, and the Internet. This study of information storage and flows analyzes the year 2002 in order to estimate the annual size of the stock of new information contained in storage media, and heard or seen each year in information flows. "

Some findings:

- amount of new information stored on paper, film, magnetic and optical media has doubled in 3 years.
- World Wide Web has about 170 terabytes of information "on its surface", 17 times the Library of Congress print.
- Americans get most information from the TV at 131 hours a month. Radio is 90 hours and the 53% of people who use the Internet, 25 hours a month.
- amount of information printed on paper is still increasing but this is mainly in documents and email printed in the office or at home.
- the United States produces about 40% of the world's new information.

Mentioned in The Virtual Chase TVC Alert.

Top 100 PCMag Sites

Top 101 Web Sites - October 2003 PC Magazine - 101 sites in 16 categories. For the category Search and Reference, PC Magazine editors chose Google and Yahoo, along with the for-fee Encyclopedia Britannica. Library of Congress made it to the list as well. There are more to browse and bookmark.

Search Engine Lowdown

Search Engine Lowdown is a weblog done by Andy Beal to report on Search Engine News, and provide SEO tips, commentary and analysis. It has recently launched a search engine news index in which it tracks how frequently the popular search engines are in mentioned in Google News. Google and Yahoo are well in the lead.

Amazon Search

Search Inside the Book at Amazon now. You can do a full-text search on 120,000 books at Amazon. 190 publishers are participating. Display shows title of the book with several excerpts containing your search terms. You can easily do more searches on an individual book. This will make it much easier to assess how well a book matches one's interest.

See Amazon's new search finds kudos By Matt Marshall and Charles Matthews
Mercury News (Oct 25) -- Says new Amazon search is getting rave reviews from librarians and researchers. There will be some limits - readers won't be able to scan more than 20% of a book. University of California Press is one of the 190 publishers. It has included 2000 of its 4000 books in this service but excluded most reference and all poetry.

Deep Web

Marcus P. Zillman has developed what he calls a Subject Tracer Information Blog on the Deep Web - or Invisible Web. "It is designed to bring together the latest resources and sources on an ongoing basis from the Internet for deep web research." http://www.deepwebresearch.info/ Mixed bag of articles, tools, and databases - some good, some poor and/or out of date.

Zillman has also written two articles with more resources -- "Using the Internet As a Dynamic Resource Tool for Knowledge Discovery" and "Business Intelligence on the Internet".

Clustered Hits

Clustered Hits will cluster results from searches on Open Directory Project. Enter one or two words. Clusters are on the left of the display, individual hits on the centre. Alfalfa, for example, occurs in 8 clusters including business, health science. Mouseovers will show the sub-clusters. Only works with Internet Explorer, or Opera pretending to be IE.

Mentioned in ResearchBuzz.com

Internet Public Library Fund Raising

Internet Public Library to Test Appeal to Donors Library Journal (Oct 22) - Internet Public Library, which is partially funded by the University of Michigan, is initiating a new fundraising approach. This is a public good and needs public support.

Acronym Finder

Expand Shorthand Meanings with the Acronym Finder by Chris Sherman. SearchDay (Oct 20) - Acronym Finder, developed and maintained by Mike Molloy, may be the largest collection of acronyms anywhere - it has 313,000 entries.

Use Usenet

Usenet an overlooked but rich branch of Internet By Dwight Silverman Houston Chronicle (Oct 18, 2003) - Not many write about usenet anymore - the discussion groups that are like an electronic bulletin board. However, the people who read and post can be very helpful. Article describes the structure of usenet groups, how and where to read them.

Public Library of Science

"The Public Library of Science (PLoS) is a non-profit organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature a freely available public resource."

This site was overwhelmed with visitors the moment it opened. Traffic overwhelms new online science journal by Alorie Gilbert. News.com (Oct 14)

WHOIS Lookup

Gary Price recommends CentralOps.net for WHOIS lookup. Gary Price Resources of the Week - WHois Lookups. (Oct 16)

GESource Hub

GEsource the RDN geography and environment hub officially launched on 4th September 2003 at The Royal Geographical Society. To view the launch presentation click here: http://www.gesource.ac.uk/gesource_launch.ppt .

GESource also has a timeline of significant dates and events that shaped the Earth. http://www.gesource.ac.uk/geography_timeline.html. Worth some browsing time.

Historical photographs from British Pathe

British Pathe Develops Huge Historic Picture Archive by Chris Sherman. SearchDay (Oct 13)

"British Pathe is offering free access to a digitized collection of more than 12 million historic photographs from its 20th century cinema newsreel archive. "

Also see Historic photo archive available on the Web Globe and Mail (OCt 14)

Detod legal portal

Watch developments of the Detod legal portal at the Detod blog. As of October 7 you can -- "You can search:
the web (powered by Gigablast) website directory (powered by ODP) blawgs (powered by Blawg Search) blogs (powered by Feedster) news & blogs (powered by Daypop) and caselaw (coming soon). Chad Williamson of Detod Communications is putting a lot of work into this site.

Internet Resource Newsletter - October

The October issue of the Internet Resource Newsletter is online.

Some sites to note --

1UpInfo.com Encyclopedia and Reference Resource portal. Also has a North American Gazetteer. (Though use with caution. Entry for Toronto, Ontario was taken from the Columbia Gazetteer with data from 1991.)

Canadian Architect and Builder Journal published between 1888 and 1908.

Corante - Tech news filtered daily

Also lists several Blog and RSS services.

Quality of health sites

Research Reports from Consumer Webwatch Analyze Problems Facing Consumers and Health Web Site Publishers. Business Wire (Sept 30)

Consumer WebWatch has published two studies about problems identifying quality health web sites. From one -- ""There are no user-friendly tools for consumers to use, and they cannot rely on existing seals of approval, to assess the credibility or reliability of health websites," said Goldschmidt, who authored the study. "Our findings to date validate the Institute's work and the need for programs such as Consumer WebWatch to draw attention to a significant problem and the lack of adequate solutions, and to work toward enabling consumers to evaluate Web sites and health information.""

Consumer WebWatch and the Health Improvement Institute will be developing independent ratings of health Web sites. They recommend that in the meantime we consider the following attributes of a site in assessing quality: sponsorship, purpose, audience, currency, sources and credentials.

Full reports are at http://www.consumerwebwatch.org/

Search and Current Awareness

RBA Information Services in the UK has a list of recommended web-page monitoring tools. This site is the creation of Karen Blackman who teaches how to use the Internet more effectively and find business information. (Home page)

Your Dictionary

Charles Bowen - Reporter's Digital How-To - says YourDictionary.com Has Words Covered (Sept 23)

YourDictionary.com - a portal for word lovers. Add a lookup button to your browser toolbar.

Artifact

Also from Resource Discovery Network comes Artifact - in development now and will officially launch in November. Covers architecture, art, communications and media, culture, design, fashion and beauty, and performing arts. It seems from the Advanced Search that it will have many resource types - audio visual, courseware, personal, journals etc. There is no syntax - use the options for Any word, Part of word, of Phrase.

BioEthics Web

Bioethics Web - new gateway under the UK-based Resource Discovery Network. Reviewed by Rita Vine in Sitelines. (Sept 10)

InfoSpace Makeover

Infospace has redesigned its web site to focus on finding businesses and people in the United States. This is a change from its old and now tired portal look. White and Yellow pages are powered by Superpages with data by Acxiom. Infospace for a search on person asks for the format lastname,firstname - a rather retro way for input.

Among other search options is the for-fee Public Records (US only). There is a web search that uses Infospace's metasearch engine, Metacrawler.

The Infospace Email address search continues. In a field of very poor email search services, Infospace's is possibly the best and is international in coverage. It seems to have a huge number of hotmail.com listings. One wonders if they were all self-registered or if Infospace has an arrangement with MSN.

World Directories links to Infospace's list for other countries. Infospace Canada still has the old design with directory and red banners.

InfoSpace relaunches as yellow pages by Bambi Francisco. CBS MarketWatch.com. (Requires registration)

"But InfoSpace's site revamp is yet another example that companies are increasingly focusing on how to attract a large enough local audience that will eventually bring in local advertising dollars that are spent by either small businesses or nationwide merchants."

Genie Tyburski comments on the public records search in Infospace Relaunch and Public Records Search at the Virtual Chase (Sep 10).

Research resources for librarians

The Researching Librarian Web resources helpful for librarians doing research -- web site by Beth Ashmore of University Library, Samford University, Birmingham, AL. Has listing of current awareness sources, databases, statistics, journals, funding.

Internet Resources Newsletter

September 2003 issue of Internet Resources Newsletter from Heriot Watt University Library. Always worth a browse. Has a Blogorama with news on blogs.

Argali Phone Directories

Argali is a Windows desktop application for searching phone numbers. It brings together White and Yellow directories including AnyWho, Infospace, Superpages, Whitepages.com and others. As well there are search features for area codes, zip codes, maps, and the weather. Mainly US. Reviewed by Gary Price - Resources for this week.

About Canada

All About Canada The Internet is a great source for facts and fun trivia about our Northern neighbor by Pauline Clark. LinkUP (Sept 1) - An American's view of Canadian sites. Opening paragraph suggests some unease at doing this at all -- "Canada has not been in complete favor with Americans recently due to various current events, such as the Northern neighbor’s decision not to participate in the Iraqi War and more recently its controversial plans to ease up on marijuana laws." Author might have suggested some news sites such as CBC where visitors might learn more about Canada and benefit from an alternate view on world affairs.

Digital Book Index

Digital Book Index provides access to more than 73,000 titles records of which 25,000 are from public archives. Has commercial and non-commercial eBooks from more than 1800 publishers and private publishing organizations.

Search Engine Glossary

I-Search Digest, a listserv for search engine marketers, has an extensive glossary of terms used by and about search engines.

http://www.cadenza.org/search_engine_terms/index.htm

BBC TV Archive

BBC to release its classics on Internet AP via The Star Online (Aug 25)

Travel - Hotels

For Surfers, a Wave of Hotel Bargains by Bob Tedeschi. New York Times (Aug 17) - Looks for bargains at the new TravelWeb and compares service to Expedia (who has virtual tours of rooms) and Hotels.com (where hotels can be found by the site they are near).

Travel sites

Hit The Web, Then Hit The Road CBS News.com (Aug 1) About useful travel sites - reading newspapers in advance, using Frommers, getting restaurant reviews (Zagat), checking festivals (Festivals.com), using maps, checking weather.

Lookup at Melissa Data

Bookmark this one page Lookup Directory from Melissa Data -- http://www.melissadata.com/Lookups/index.htm. Has US phone numbers, addresses, and demographic data as well as Canadian addresses and Worldwide Place Names.
Featured in Search Day -- A Hearty Buffet of Look-Up Databases (Aug 14)

Back to school

Articles are featuring back-to-school types of resources. New York Times' Online Diary - August 13 by Pamela LiCalzi O'Connell had some homework helpers:

National Geographic One-Stop Research - searches across all the National Geographic publications and productions. -- www.nationalgeographic.com/onestop -- good for big topics like rain forest, tigers, Egypt. Has the Arctic and Alaska, but not Nunavut or the Yukon.

Foreign Languages - - www.learninglanguages.net - "brings together the best online foreign language resources for English-speaking K-12 students and teachers". Has Spanish, French, and Japanese. This is an Internet Scout Project from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Virtual School Museums -- www.fno.org/museum/list.html - sites created by kids.

Expedition 2003 - expedition2003.org - Black Sea and Eastern Mediterranean.

E-Content - White Papers

E-Content has a "white paper series focusing exclusively on content and
content-related issues for executives and professionals".

http://www.econtentmag.com/WhitePapers/LeadershipSeries/ContentStrategies.html

Contributions by the Gale Group, ProQuest, OneSource Information Services, Javien Digital Payment Solutions.

Maps - National Geographic

National Geographic has a map machine -- "Its Map Machine lets you see the world in new ways, from the street maps of North America and Europe to historical maps of railroads and battles, as well as assorted physical, political, cultural, and panoramic maps. Shoot, there's even a terrain map of Mars."

National Geographic Site Maps the World by Charles Bowen. Editor and Publisher (Aug 5)

EEVL - Engineering, Mathematics, Computing

Gary Price at SearchDay features EEVL: The Internet Guide to Engineering, Mathematics, and Computing as a A Search Haven for Engineers (Aug 6). This is one of the "gateways" to resouces included in the Resource Discovery Network in the UK. EEVL is a directory to resources, a search engine to the full text of those resources, and has news, e-journals, and tutorials.

Subject Directory: Alllearn

Subject Directory: Alllearn, an Alliance for Lifelong Learning in the UK, makes its subject directory to academic website available to all. "Created by experts, AllLearn's Directories index leading academic websites that meet the highest intellectual standards." See http://www.allianceforlifelonglearning.org/er/directories.cgi

"AllLearn, a not-for-profit distance learning venture among Oxford, Stanford, and Yale Universities, was formed in September 2000 to provide the highest quality, college level online courses and educational offerings to alumni of these three great institutions as well as to other adult learners." Site is interesting as well for its offering of online courses in arts and humanities.

Internet Resources: July issue

Internet Resources: July issue of Internet Resources Newsletter from Heriot-Watt University Library is online. Excellent for new and notable sites.