News Dump

For a newsdump, try newsdump!

Simply Headlines

With Simply Headlines you can create a tailor-made email newspaper consisting of rss feeds of your choice. Above is an example of an html email newspaper drawing on rss feeds from usinfo.state.gov, www.state.gov, www.whitehouse.gov, and defenselink.mil. The email arrives in your emailbox at whatever hour you specify, and then you can send it on to your grateful contacts to enjoy with their morning coffee. You could easily use this service to generate rss-based newspapers in different subject areas - foreign policy, library issues, business news, etc.

United Nations Treaty Database

The United Nations Treaty Database is (presumably) the definitive source for UN treaty information. Government offices, such as IRCs, can get a userid/password for free access by contacting treaty@un.org

MyBloglog

If you have a blog and would like to know what outgoing links your visitors are clicking on, try www.mybloglog.com

Buttonator

Buttonator is a nifty little tool that enables you to create buttons (like the NOTIFY ME! button in the email subscription form on the upper left) quickly and easily.

Top Ten Sources

Top Ten Sources is worth a visit. Here's what they say about themselves...
"Yes, there are over a billion blogs, but don’t you really want to know about the best ones? Top 10 Sources publishes lists of the best ten blogs (or RSS feeds) on a variety of subjects. We show you the best blogs on sports, entertainment, science, people, finance … you name it. And our pages are dynamic, always full of new, fresh content, thanks to RSS technology."

Virtual Chase

The Virtual Chase website has a "database of sources" that provides, among other things, a nice overview of internet resources for researching companies and people. From the Virtual Chase blurb:
"Ballard announces the completion of the Database of Sources on The Virtual Chase. Released in beta during April of this year, the database contains abstracts and links to Web-based sources of information for conducting research on companies or people and for finding legal or factual information. You may browse the database by subject or search it by keyword."

New research about how the Arab world sees United States policies

Here is a link to some counter-intuitive research findings about the Arab world's perceptions of US policies.
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy published at the end of July a paper entitled "
Assessing What Arabs Do, Not What They Say: A New Approach to Understanding Arab Anti-Americanism."
The authors examine protests in the Arab world against American policies over recent years and, according to the introduction, "show how regional animosity toward the United States and its policies is episodic and event-driven, with little evidence of a continually rising tide of popular hatred. Supported by detailed graphs, tables, and timelines, the paper urges policymakers to pay at least as much attention to Arab behavior as they do to potentially distorted and easily manipulated perceptions of Arab public opinion."
The research was of course conducted before the recent round of fighting between Israel and the Hezbollah, but looks to be of interest. The link below takes you to a summary, from which you can access the full paper.
http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC04.php?CID=244

Lexis/Nexis source directory

Here's an interesting tip from Virtual Library Cat:
"LexisNexis has provided a new online tool to search its directory for a source before you even sign on to their service. "Source Locator" is a "powerful new tool for retrieving targeted information about the more than 36,000 LexisNexis sources". After your search you not only get a list of all sources that meet your criteria, but detailed information about each source."

Power and Interest News Report (PINR)

Power and Interest News Report appears to be a useful international relations resource - here's the "about this site" blurb
"The Power and Interest News Report (PINR) is an independent organization that utilizes open source intelligence to provide conflict analysis services in the context of international relations. PINR approaches a subject based upon the powers and interests involved, leaving the moral judgments to the reader."

You can subscribe to new reports via email, and monitor the site via rss.

2 from Neat New Stuff

Marylaine Block's Neat New Stuff always contains some interesting nuggets...here are a couple of recent ones

Library Tourguide to Technology
http://www.librarytourguide.blogspot.com/
A blog from Sandra Stewart, a branch manager at San Jose Public Library, who says "I keep up with about a dozen technology and library blogs daily. You, gentle readers, get the condensed, cream of the crop, what I think applies info."

SchoolMatters: a Service of Standard and Poors http://www.schoolmatters.com/ "A place for parents, educators and leaders to research information about public schools." Type in the school or district name to get performance, finance, and relevant demographic data.

World Cat

The worldcat database of library holdings is now freely available, and offers some useful search toolbars and plugins at http://worldcat.org/toolbars/default.htm If you're using Firefox, you can add Worldcat to your dropdown search window. Very handy!

Fuzzy Gazetteer

Language problems and illegible records can result in inaccuracies that sometimes lead librarians off on wild goosechases for places that don't exist...that's when the Fuzzy Gazetteer comes in handy: in its own words, "The Fuzzy Gazetteer enables you to find geographic features even when you do not know their exact names. A list of similar names is returned, web-linked to the JRC Digital Map Archive of the European Commission. Searching 7,205,433 place names world-wide."

Urban Dictionary

Although it has none of the scholarly heft of J.E. Lighter's "Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang" www.urbandictionary.com might be a useful supplement for identifying obscure slang and neologisms. Incidentally, Lighter's monumental work was dropped by Random House after volume 2 (H-O). The good news is that in 2003, the project was taken over by Oxford University Press, which intends to release volume 3 (P-S) this year and the remainder as volume 4 in 2008 (see http://www.oup.com/us/collections/slang/history/?view=usa) Nicholson Baker's review of the first volume ("Leading with the Grumper" New York Review of Books, August 11, 1994) is a classic and hilarious read. Although not on the internet, it's worth seeking out at your local library (or embassy IRC!), and is also republished in the Baker compilation "The Size of Thoughts: Essays and Other Lumber"

World's largest E book fair upto 4th August

URL link : http://www.worldebookfair.com/

World's largest Ebook fair has started. You can download e-books freely from acollection of 330,000. This Fair is only till August 4, 2006. Topics rangingfrom Fiction to Religion is available at free of cost. Make use of it and please inform librarian to make use of this opportunity and have a collection ofe-books at library. Religious institutions, Information centres, callers canalso use this opportunity to the much extent since WAMY's book collection is also available there.

YOU ARE INVITED!
You are encouraged to participate in The World eBook Fair, either to download any or all of the 1/3 million eBooks provided here or to add your own eBooks. The World eBook fair is currently scheduled for the next few July and August periods as follows:
-2007 1/2 Million eBooks
-2008 3/4 Million eBooks
-2009 One Million eBooks

The World eBook Fair, Project Gutenberg, and World eBook Library, along with our other participants, join together to encourage you to assist in bringing many entire libraries to the general public and to encourage ever increasing levels of literacy and reading.

We hope the invention of eBooks will advance the world as much as did the invention of The Gutenberg Press, and look forward to the Neo-Industrial Revolution following the advent of eBooks, just as the invention of The Gutenberg Press undoubtedly led to the first Industrial Revolution, and your participation can help bring this new revolution in reading and libraries to the world.

Regards,

IRC Jakarta