The Librarian: Return to King Solomon’s Mines

What? You missed the sequel to The Librarian: The Quest for the Spear? Not to worry; one review says it was ghastly, as most sequels tend to be. Still, if you're looking for a little post-finals mindlessness, it will be re-broadcast several times on TNT, and will be available on DVD on December 19th.
(CinemaBlend.com, 7 December 2006)
http://www.cinemablend.com/dvdnews/The-Librarian-Books-a-DVD-Appearance-1933.html

What Is "Truthiness?"

According to Merriam-Webster, it's the word of the year. As defined by Stephen Colbert, it is “truth that comes from the gut, not books.”

“We’re at a point where what constitutes truth is a question on a lot of people’s minds, and truth has become up for grabs,” said the president of Merriam-Webster. “’Truthiness’ is a playful way for us to think about a very important issue.”
(ABC News, 8 December 2006)
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=2711832

Iraq Study Group (ISG) Report Available

The landmark final report of the Iraq Study Group (ISG) by James A. Baker and Lee H. Hamilton (co-chairs) is now available online.

http://purl.access.gpo.gov/GPO/LPS76748

Google offers PDF files for out-of-copyright classics

When you use Google Book Search http://books.google.com/ and select "Full View," you can find and download PDF files of out-of-copyright books to read. You many also read the book on the web if you prefer. Google has partnered with many libraries, including Harvard, University of Michigan, Stanford, University of California System and others, to digitize and offer PDF versions of out-of-copyright classics. This service is called The Free Library. For more information, please click the hyperlink below.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/08/download-classics.html

Zoho: Free word processing, spreadsheets & lots more!

Zoho.com

"If you’ve never checked out the many web-based tools that Zoho provides (all free) they are MORE than worth a look. From word processing (now with several new features) to spreadsheets to web-based presentation tools (Zoho Show) and that’s just the tip of the iceberg." (From ResourceShelf).

The have something like powerpoint, to do lists, website tracking and all kinds of good stuff for free.

The Information Literacy Game

From the University of North Carolina, Greensboro....check out the game and play!

http://library.uncg.edu/de/infolitgame.asp#

PureVideo & Blinkx: Video Search

PureVideo at http://www.purevideo.com/

PureVideo searches the internet for videos from YouTube, AOL Music Videos, Stupid Videos, CollegeHumor, CNN, ESPN and hundreds more all at once.

Pretty much the same thing from Blinkx Video at http://www.blinkx.com/

Zotero: Managing Citations

From the website:

Zotero [zoh-TAIR-oh] is a free, easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources. It lives right where you do your work — in the web browser itself. (beta version)

Automatic capture of citation information from web pages

Storage of PDFs, files, images, links, and whole web pages

Flexible notetaking with autosave

Fast, as-you-type search through your materials

Playlist-like library organization, including saved searches (smart collections) and tags

Platform for new forms of digital research that can be extended with other web tools and services

Runs right in your web browser

Formatted citation export (style list to grow rapidly)

Free and open source

Check it out at: http://www.zotero.org/ and download Firefox 2.0 here.

Google Your Library's Mission & Google's Ten Things

Library Journal article on using Google. Link to article: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=21072518&site=ehost-live

Also Google.com's view on how to maximize and simplify usability: http://www.google.com/corporate/tenthings.html

Happy 100,000,000!

CNN.com reports that the web now hosts over 100,000,000 web sites. There were only 18,000 sites in August of 1995. Need some help hunting down the information you really want? Stop by the reference desk. We'll be glad to assist you!

Read the complete article here:

(CNN, 1 November 2006)
http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/internet/11/01/100millionwebsites/index.html

In the Beginning Was the Word: 100 Best First Lines From Novels

100. The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, retiring -- Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage (1895)

99. They say that when trouble comes, close ranks, and so the white people did. -- Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea (1966)

98. High, high above the North Pole, on the first day of 1969, two professors of English Literature approached each other at a combined velocity of 1200 miles per hour. -- David Lodge, Changing Places (1975)

Intrigued? Read the complete list in the Jan-Feb 2006 issue of American Book Reivew (available in Academic Search Premier) or visit LitLine at http://www.litline.org/ABR/100bestfirstlines.html

Librarian Liaisons List

Have a question about library resources? Need biblipgraphic instruction? Want to recommend a book, DVD or database?
Who ya gonna call?
Find your librarian liaison below!

Angela Ieli x3866
Art (2-Dimensional and 3-Dimensional)
Piano Pedagogy
Psychology
Vocal Studies

Becky Rathgeber x3852
Accounting
Computer Science
Hospitality and Tourism Management
Information Systems
International Business Management
Mathematics

Riley Moffat x3884
Biochemistry
Biology
Chemistry
Exercise and Sports Science
Physical Education
Political Science

Matt Kester x3869
History

Valerie Buck x3880
English

Marynelle Chew x3863
Social Work

Rose Ram x3882
Elementary Education
Hawaiian Studies
Interdisciplinary Studies**
International Cultural Studies (Anthropology, Communications, Humanities)
Pacific Island Studies
Secondary Education
Special Education
Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL)
TESOL Education

**All librarians assist with Interdisciplinary Studies

Grove Art Online Updated

This month, Grove Art Online was updated to enlarge the broad coverage of women in Grove Art Online by adding nearly 120 new articles and essays on women artists and designers, and over 120 new images of works by women, to include over 850 women artists. New entries include Kara Walker, Shahzia Sikander, Hildegard of Bingen, Valie Export, Guerrilla Girls, Destiny Deacon, Sheila de Bretteville, Paula Scher and more.

This month, we are also celebrating The Dictionary of Art's 10th anniversary. The Dictionary of Art (34 volumes, 1996), created with the participation of over 6,700 scholars, is the foundation of this remarkable online resource. Today nearly 1,000 art historians contribute to Grove Art Online's editorial program. We hope you will continue to find the growing diversity and depth of this resource valuable and enjoyable.

We'd also like to announce the landmark agreement with The Metropolitan Museum of Art for 2,000 images to be included in the Grove Art Online by Summer 2007.

RedLightGreen service ending

Message from the vendor:

RLG, RedLightGreen's parent not-for-profit company has combined forces with another organization that supports a similar service, WorldCat.org. We have decided to invest all of our efforts into developing and supporting a single product rather than continuing to support two.

We'd like to encourage you to update your RedLightGreen bookmarks to point to WorldCat.org, and to try out this new service that will help you find books and other research resources provided by nearly 12,000 libraries worldwide. Like RedLightGreen, WorldCat.org will help you get access to research materials at your local library. WorldCat.org is easy to use, and supports many of the same features as RedLightGreen; the one service that WorldCat.org does not currently support is citation formatting, but we are working on implementing this feature in WorldCat.org in the near future.

If you saved citations in RedLightGreen, you can retrieve your citation list from RedLightGreen until November 4th by following these steps:
- Connect to RedLightGreen Use the Sign In link (if you aren't automatically signed in)
- Click the Your List link in the upper right
- You can then select the E-Mail link to send your citations to your e-mail account, or get a printer-friendly view to print or download

If you have questions or comments, use the Feedback link on any page in RedLightGreen to let us know. We want to take this opportunity to thank you for using RedLightGreen. We wish you the best of luck in locating useful books and other research resources.

The RedLightGreen Team

Share the Love... Of Books!

BookMooch: New Life for Old Books. This is a brand new web site that offers a valuable service: it lets you give away books you no longer need in exchange for books you really want. “Every time you give someone a book, you earn a point and can get any book you want from anyone else at BookMooch. Once you’ve read a book, you can keep it forever or put it back into BookMooch for someone else, as you wish.” There is no cost to join or use the service, only the expense of mailing your books to others.
http://bookmooch.com/

Search the Collections of the Worlds Libraries

Web users can now search the catalogs of more than 10,000 libraries worldwide through WorldCat.org, a site that offers a downloadable search box to allow access to the world’s largest database and resource for discovery of materials held in libraries.

The Secret to Academic Success

A college professor in Australia thinks she may have found the secret to success in education. She says that when she was an undergraduate “a departmental librarian called Anne was doing something any psychologist would say was impossible. Every year, with near-perfect accuracy, she would predict which third-year undergraduates would be awarded first-class degrees.

“Anne didn’t know how their essays were rated, what A-level grades they had under their belts, or how they scored on IQ tests. . . . All she knew was how often she had seen students in the department library: reading course notes, photocopying journals, borrowing books. And the handful of students who Anne saw a lot — conspicuously more often than the other students in the same year — were going to get a first.

“Anne was working on the principle that in academic achievement it is self-discipline, not talent, that counts. Ten years on, a study published recently in Psychological Science has come to exactly the same conclusion.”

So don’t waste your willpower on trifling things. Get those petty annoyances out of the way so you can concentrate on the important stuff. “If you are about to embark on a big project you court disaster if at the same time your life is cluttered and demanding, or you also commit to draining attempts at self-enhancement. . . . Where are the students whose self-discipline is constantly worn away by other concerns? Not in the library reading course-notes, photocopying articles or borrowing books. And if they are relying on their smarts to get them to the top of the class then there will be disappointment ahead.

“But don’t just take my word for it. Ask a librarian.”

(The Australian, 14 June 2006)
For complete article, please click below.
http://theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19460829-12332,00.html

Students and Information Literacy

From a recent article:"Of 10,000 high school and college students asked to evaluate a set of Web sites last fall, nearly half could not correctly judge which was the most objective, reliable and timely, according to preliminary results of a digital-literacy assessment. The Information and Communication Technology Assessment was administered by Educational Testing Service, a New Jersey nonprofit organization."
Read the Whole Thing

A web Search Engine for Multimedia

From the information at the site "Singingfish is the premier audio/video search engine, and Singingfish.com is the place for consumers to find, explore, and experience the universe of free media. Unlike traditional search engines, Singingfish only indexes multimedia formats, including Windows Media, Real, QuickTime, and mp3s. Millions of people use the Singingfish service daily to search through categories spanning music, news, movies, sports, TV and radio, and finance. Audio/video search technology is fast becoming a must for today's digital lifestyle as more consumers gain access to high-speed Internet connections and consume more audio/video content that ever before. "

A Student's Assessment of Blackboard

A recent graduate describes his experiences with blackboard as intructional technology. The article appears in Capmpus Technology

I Love Books!

Do you ever wish your personal books were organized in an easily searchable catalog? Do you ever sneak a peek at other people's bookshelves when you go visiting? Do you wish you could discuss your favorite books with like-minded individuals? A website called The Library Thing http://www.librarything.com/ allows you to do all this and more. You may create your own personal library catalog of up to 200 books at no charge. To add more than 200 titles costs $10 per year or a $25 life-time fee. Cool features include a reader's advisory book recommendation section and the ability to interact with people who share the same tastes in reading as you.

Wicked. Evil. Foul. Bad.

Those words mean essentially the same thing, but we don't talk about "wicked weather," "foul witches" or the "forces of bad." Understanding such subtle differences in usage comes naturally because our brains remember the millions of words we have processed over our lifetimes and which ones go together. But people learning English don't have that repository. So, Mark Davies is volunteering to be their English brains. The View: Variation In English Words and Phrases may be accessed at http://view.byu.edu/

Complete text of article: http://byunews.byu.edu/archive06-Jun-davies.aspx

Explore Shakespeare with Google!

Google has created a new tool that allows users to find and search all of Shakespeare's plays.

"Search within Hamlet for "to be or not to be" to read the rest of his famous soliloquy. Find out who called the world his "oyster" and why. Browse through a familiar play – or follow your curiosity to discover a new one. And if you decide you want to buy a copy, "All editions" will show you every version in Google Book Search, many of which are available for purchase."

Note that some print editions of the plays may not have entered the public domain everywhere in the world. Where the copyright status is in question, the publication will not appear in "Full View."

To use: http://books.google.com/googlebooks/shakespeare/

New Tool For Genealogical Research from Google

Google Book Search has been surprisingly useful in identifying ancestors who might have contributed to a book or who might be mentioned in the text of a book. ... "Genealogical research can be complicated by the fact that some books are so rare, the likelihood that you'll find them in even a single library is fairly low. ... If you, your patrons or students are interested in researching your family history, I encourage you to give Google Book Search a try at http://books.google.com. Especially if you've got a fairly unusual name (sorry to the John Smiths out there), enter your name and see what happens."

Complete text of article may be accessed here: http://www.google.com/librariancenter/articles/0606_02.html

The Fair Use Network

"How much can you borrow, quote or copy from someone else's work? What happens if you get a 'cease and desist' letter from a copyright owner? These and many other questions make 'intellectual property,' or 'IP,' law, a mass of confusion for artists, scholars, journalists, bloggers, and everyone else who contributes to culture and political debate."

"The Fair Use Network was created because of the many questions that artists, writers, and others have about "IP" issues. Whether you are trying to understand your own copyright or trademark rights, or are a "user" of materials created by others, the information here will help you understand the system — and especially its free-expression safeguards."

http://fairusenetwork.org/

JFK Presidential Library to Launch Digital Initiative

On June 9, 2006, Senator Edward M. Kennedy announced that the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is to build a new library – a digital one - consisting of the entire collection of papers, documents, photographs and audio recordings of President John F. Kennedy, eventually making them accessible to citizens throughout the world via the Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum’s website. Some content is already available for your use. http://www.jfklibrary.org/

What if they gagged Gutenberg?

What if they gagged Gutenberg? Big telecom is trying to throttle free access to democratic Internet

Five-hundred years ago, we had Johann Gutenberg, a German metalworker and inventor who pioneered the precursor to the Internet. His printing press became the first practical mass communications medium utilizing what was then an advanced memory technology -- paper....

Read the entire article from the San Francisco Chronical at:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/06/11/INGT6J4PVB25.DTL

From Business Week Online

The Library: Next Best Thing to an MBA: Across the country, public libraries are giving would-be entrepreneurs a helping hand with resources and expert guidance.

Market Research Library

From the Resource Shelf blog "Source: U.S. Foreign and Commercial Service and U.S. Department of State. Every year the U.S. Foreign and Commercial Service and the U.S. Department of State publish Country Commercial Guides (CCG) about doing business in a specific nation (from a U.S. perspective, of course). These reports contain info on the basic business situation in that country, investment climate, import issues, business travel and much more.

Enhancing the Use of Library Group Study Rooms.

Enhancing the Use of Library Group Study Rooms.

The Library has purchased projectors, laptops, and interactive whiteboard software for use in library group study rooms. The software allows users to digitally capture information written on the white boards and manipulate the data. After patrons have signed up for a group study room they can check out an equipment cart at the circulation desk for use in the group study room. For information contact Reference at 3878 or Circulation at 3876

Academic Use of Digital Resources

From Stephens Lighthouse comes the following :

"Darlene Fichter has a good post summarizing some of the results in "An Indepth Look at the Actual Academic Use of Digital Resources in the Social Sciences and Humanities"

The final report of the University of California at Berkeley's study on the Use and Users of Digital Resources: A Focus on Undergraduate Education in the Humanities and Social Science by Diane Harley et all was released April 5, 2006."

HT Stephen Abram

Best Places For Business And Careers

From Forbes magazine comes an article about the best places for business and careers.

New Archives Collection

The Joseph F. Smith Library Archives and Special Collections is now the official repository for the records of Malama Ohana Ko'olauloa Community Association. Malama Ohana is a community advocacy group representing the interests of Ko'olauloa communities from Ka'a'awa to Waimea, and has been active in bringing a wide range of community development programs to the families of windward O'ahu and the North Shore. The Archives is pleased to have been selected as a repository for these records. Our partnership with Malama Ohana furthers our institutional goal of preserving the history of the Ko'olauloa moku.

Archives hours

The Archives will be changing hours during Spring and Summer terms: our new hours are M-F, 8:30am-4:30pm, closed Saturdays and Sundays. We will go back to incorporating evening hours for Fall 2006.

What Some Students Have Said About Library Research

From the ACRLog a report on a "program featuring five of their students answering a variety of questions about using the library, their research behavior, and their use of technology".

HT Stephen Abram at Stephens Lighthouse

How to Handle All of Your Money

From the U.S. Financial Literacy and Education Commission comes a resource called mymoney.gov. This site has resources "from across the spectrum of federal agencies that deal with financial issues and markets."

Heading Out Into the Sun?

Here is a collection of articles and information on suntan products, sunscreens, and tanning from the FDA.

Ever Wonder About the Accuracy of Health News?

Here is a source that reviews news about health. According to the information on the Website Health News Reviews is about:

• improving the accuracy of news stories about medical treatments, tests and procedures
• helping consumers evaluate the evidence for and against new ideas in health care.

Persuasive Presentations

From the FastCompany website:osh Gordon, author of the new book Presentations That Change Minds has identified 14 core practices used by persuasive speakers in conference and meeting settings. Additional research shows that the top five practices are used by only half of business leaders surveyed.

The top five persuasive strategies:

• Sharing facts: 73.5%
• Offering a solution: 62.1%
• Sharing a new idea: 52.8%
• Telling a story: 51.6%
• Changing a perception: 50.9%

The remaining practices include humor, creating excitement, audience involvement, building trust, inspiration, building a financial case, creating an emotional appeal, getting competitive, and overcoming hostility.

Changing Nature of the Library Catalog

From a recent Library of Congress Report: "The library catalog is such an asset. Today, a large and growing number of students and scholars routinely bypass library catalogs in favor of other discovery tools, and the catalog represents a shrinking proportion of the universe of scholarly information. The catalog is in decline, its processes and structures are unsustainable, and change needs to be swift. "

Website to Rate News Coverage of Health Issues

Starting Monday, a new Web site plans to rate the way top newspapers, magazines and other media outlets, including The Associated Press, cover health issues.

Access to the site and its findings, HealthNewsReview, http://www.healthnewsreview.org/ is free and open to consumers.

It was created by University of Minnesota journalism professor Gary Schwitzer, who said the hope is the site will help consumers "improve their critical thinking about claims in health care."

A team of 20 reviewers from universities and clinics across the country will rate articles on a scale of one to five stars and post comments.

While Schwitzer said he thinks the quality of health care journalism is improving, it still sometimes falls short. He said stories sometimes fail to spell out such things as the availability of a new treatment or the strength of the evidence behind a new study.

Web Based Applications

Web based applicatons such as spreadsheets and word processors are becoming more common. Typically the applications are free. One such group of applications is produced by Zoho. The word processing and spreadsheet programs are free and they are working on other applications.

US Food Consumption Trends

Several reports from different agencies and organizations prsented ont he website of the Agricultural Marketing Resource Center.

Information on Illegal Immigrants

"This March 2006 report (based on a March 2005 population survey) evaluates the number and origin of the illegal immigrant population in the U.S. Topics include gender and family composition, families with children, workforce gender, occupations, and industries. Also include data on topics such as trends for 1980-2005 and legal status of foreign-born individuals, and links to related reports. From the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center. "

HT Librarians Internet Index

International Economic Statistics

"The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Research Library's IES Database simplifies the search for world-wide economic indicators. Individual indicators (such as GDP and CPI) are linked, and each link has a description of the data. Included in each record is the title, corporate author, publisher, years covered in the data series, type of publication (text, table, chart), frequency with which the data is published, country of origin, a URL, available languages, subject headings, format (.pdf, .xls, etc.), a summary (where available), and any notes needed to clarify the data. The database is title, country, subject and keyword searchable. The links will be checked regularly to maintain accuracy. Indicators are continually being added. "

Newspaper Archives Available Online

From the Resourceshelf . A company which is part of Heritage Microfilm based in Cedar Rapids, Iowa has been making available a steady stream of FREE, full text, full image, searchable/browsable newspaper archives focused on a specific topic at NewspaperARCHIVES.com. This week the company has released two new archives each containing tens of thousands of newspaper articles from various newspapers. Each article is delivered as a pdf file ready for printing or saving. Some of the archives avialable include:

+ FBI Newspaper Archive
More than 50,000 full text articles about the FBI, criminals, etc.
--
+ September 11th Archive
More than 15,000 articles. Advanced interfaces are available for both databases.
--
+ MartinLutherKingJrArchive
+ Pro Baseball Archive
+ College Basketball Archive
+ Abraham Lincoln Archive
+ AsbestosArchive.com (Asbestos and Asbestos Related Lawsuits)
+ HMS Titanic Archive
+ Winter Games Archive

Interesting Products from 37 Signals

37 Signals is a company the offers web based applications the "get things done in a simple way". Their products include Ta-da Lists which is an online space where you can create multiple to do lists that can be accessed from anywhere. They can also be shared with others. Also Writeboard which is an online wordprocessor that allows you to "access, read, edit, and save a document from any connected computer; keep track of edits over time and discuss the document through blog style comments" If you are interested in web based applications check out 37 Signals

HT Libary Journal netconnect

Interesting Information on How Things are Made

"Detailed explanations for "the manufacturing process of a wide variety of products, from daily household items to complicated electronic equipment and heavy machinery." Includes an illustrated overview of the assembly and the manufacturing process, a description of how the item works, a list of raw materials used, and related information. Products include air bags, artificial snow, popcorn, television, and much more. From Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation."

Reading a Key to College Success

According to a new study the ability of students to handle complex reading. Unfortunately most states don't have reading standards for high school.

Information Literacy Classroom

Elmhurst College has created in their library an information literacy classroom where librarians and faculty show students how to find and critique the many resources the Web offers on specific topics.

Blackboard Unveils Blackboard Beyond Initiative

From an article in Yahoo biz Blackboard exeutive Michael Chasen describes a new initiative for the blackboard company and product "The Blackboard Beyond Initiative calls for the creation of a series of Web properties that connect the institutions, faculty, and students who use Blackboard worldwide across education segments and disciplines. The sites will be shaped and run by Blackboard's client community of practice and developed by Blackboard."

Library Offering Video Down Loads

From the Rocky Mountain News "Next month, the Denver Public Library system will become the first in the nation to allow people to download movies and concert videos from home with a click of their computer mouse."

Housing Prices In Different Cities

"HousingTracker is an attempt to gain a more realtime understanding of the national housing market. For the most part, all we have to rely on the quarterly Realtor reports to get a sense of how the last quarter played out. HousingTracker data is compiled weekly from MLS listings which contains asking prices as opposed to the Realtor reported sale prices. HousingTracker gives you the 25th percentile, 50th percentile, and 75th percentile asking price for the metro areas covered. Additionally, the number of homes for sale (Inventory) for the metro area is reported."

New Development in Electronic Books

"HarperCollins has announced the first free Web-based, ad-supported, full-text business book. Go It Alone! The Secret to Building a Successful Business on Your Own by Bruce Judson is now available on the author’s Web site, where an affiliate link to Amazon, not the publisher, can also be found. Not only can the book be read at the site, but it can also be searched. HarperCollins Publishers is calling the project a test of a new business model. Some self-published authors also offer ad-supported books online, but HarperCollins’ move is the first by a major publisher."

Source: InfoToday

What's Shaking?

You can now keep up with earthquakes throughout the world by visiting the USGS Earthquake Hazards website. And if that is not timely enough they have a service that provides automated email notification for worldwide earthquakes. So you can always know what is shaking... or at least where is shaking.

Tables of Contents in Library Catalogs

"A new JISC project is developing an RSS news feed service that will automatically feed publisher and e-journal information into library catalogues. Led by the publisher Emerald, and supported by library supplier Talis, the project will finish in July 2006". This is worth monitoring as it develops to see if we can apply it to our catalog to add value for the patrons.

Digital Library Projects in the News

Libraries all of the country are working digital library projects. This article from Campus Technology takes a look at three different projects as examples of the types of things happening with digital libraries.

State Transportation Statistics (STS) 2005

This report presents a statistical profile of transportation in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. This is the third annual edition of the State Transportation Statistics, and a companion document to the National Transportation Statistics (NTS), which is updated quarterly on the BTS website.

Homeschooling in the United States

A new report from the National Center for Education Statistics presents the latest survey information on the prevalence of homeschooling in the United States. Homeschooling in the United States: 2003 uses the Parent and Family Involvement Survey of the 2003 National Household Education Surveys Program (NHES) to estimate the number and percentage of homeschooled students in the United States in 2003 and to describe the characteristics of these students and their families.

RSS Feeds from the Government

FirstGov.gov is the official U.S. gateway to all government information, and is the catalyst for a growing electronic government. Now FirstGov.gov is offering a service that will allow people to stay on top of important government news and information with the FirstGov Updates - News and Features RSS feed

Educational Lectures on the Web

There are many sources on the web of free educational lectures from many different institutions of higher education. One example is the Research Channel. The website has the following description :


"ResearchChannel is a completely unique viewing experience, similar in nature to C-SPAN, but with a very different focus: research. Some of the world’s premier academic and research institutions invite viewers inside the lab to learn about the current, ongoing research that will impact their lives and shape
the future. And unlike other education-based channels, ResearchChannel is broadcast 24 hours-a-day, seven days-a-week, with no commercial nterruptions. In addition to conventional television broadcasts, on-line audiences worldwide have access to ResearchChannel’s continuous webcast and searchable on-demand video library of over 1700 fulllength
programs. These resources are available at Internet2, cable, DSL and modem speeds."

Library Branding

Library marketing sepcialist Chris Olsen has some ideas on library branding and what it might mean to our marketing efforts.

Rethinking Bibliographic Services

The University of California Libraries Bibliographic Services Task Force has released a report on the nature of bibiliographic services and how they should be provided in the future.

"On the Library front, our bibliographic systems have not kept pace with this changing environment. The continuing proliferation of formats, tools, services, and technologies has upended how we arrange, retrieve, and present our holdings. Our users expect simplicity and immediate reward and Amazon, Google, and iTunes are the standards against which we are judged. Our current systems pale beside them."

A New Service to help Open Access to Research Information

From a recent press release:

"OpenDOAR – the Directory of Open Access Repositories – is please to
announces the release of its primary listing of open access archives, available from www.opendoar.org.

This classifies archives holding research papers, conference papers,
theses and other academic materials that are available as “open access”. This means that anyone with an internet connection has access to this information without paying any charges."

State of the Union Addresses

State of the Union Addresses of the American Presidents: Free Searchable Version

Search and analyze the the full-text of all State of the Union Addresses from 1790-2005. The State of the Union Address is an annual event in which the President of the United States reports on the status of the country. The address is also used to outline the President's legislative proposals for the upcoming year. The text is extremely useful in a searchable eBook.

Two database trials

Routledge Religion Resource

Routledge Politics and International Relations Resource

These indexes provide access to the full text of reference works under the subjects of Religion and Politics and International relations. A wide breadth of subject matter that benefits students in a range of disciplines including philosophy, history, Asian studies, and sociology. Searches can be performed across articles and references at one time.
Trial links may be accessed from the library's home page or you may click here: http://www.reference.routledge.com/subscriber/uid=12405/?authstatuscode=202

Global Health Statistics

GlobalHealthFacts.org, a project of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, provides free, up-to-date and easy-to-access data by country on HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and other key health and socio-economic indicators. The data are displayed in tables, charts, and color-coded maps and can be downloaded for custom analyses.

No Surprise. Digital Music is Big Business

The IFPI has relased it's 2006 Digital Music Report. A couple of paragraphs from the press release:

Sales of music via the internet and mobile phones proliferated and spread across the world in 2005, generating sales of US$1.1 billion for record companies - up from US$380 million the previous year - and promising further significant growth in the coming year.

The findings are released today in IFPI's Digital Music Report 2006, a comprehensive review of the development of the digital music market internationally.

Study: College students lack literacy for complex tasks

A study funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts has found that college students lakc basic literacy in three areas. Key paragraphs from the article:

The results cut across three types of literacy: analyzing news stories and other prose, understanding documents and having math skills needed for checkbooks or restaurant tips.

Without "proficient" skills, or those needed to perform more complex tasks, students fall behind. They cannot interpret a table about exercise and blood pressure, understand the arguments of newspaper editorials, compare credit card offers with different interest rates and annual fees or summarize results of a survey about parental involvement in school.

Music Information on the Web

A column at the ACRL ( Association of College and Research Libraries) website surveys many quality websites related to music.

Will 2006 Be the Year of the E-book?

Sony is coming out with a new e-book reader in early 2006. Other companies are set to follow later in the year and in early 2007. Key issues are rights management and usability.