Gapminder

Gapminder is "a non-profit venture for development and provision of free software that visualises human development. " The idea behind this Swedish initiative is to present health statistics and data in such a way as to enhance public understanding and awareness of world health and development challenges. See , for example, what Gapminder has done in its presentation of the UNDP's "Human Development Report 2005".

New foreign policy journal

And while on the subject of foreign policy, a new journal was launched recently.

The following summary comes from Bruce Gregory, directory of the Public Diplomacy Institute at George Washington University:

The American Interest, Vol. 1, No. 1, Autumn 2005. This new journal seeks "to analyze America's conduct on the global stage" and "examine what American policy should be." Edited by Adam Garfinkle, its editorial board is chaired by Francis Fukuyama and includes Anne Applebaum, Peter Berger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Eliot Cohen, Josef Joffe, and Walter Russell Mead. Articles of interest in this first issue include its defining statement, a collection of short articles on the sources of American conduct, and a conversation with Secretary of State Rice.

http://www.the-american-interest.com/cms/main.cfm

Here is an extract from its statement of purpose:

"The American Interest (AI) is a new and independent voice devoted to the broad theme of "America in the world." Our agenda is threefold. The first is to analyze America's conduct on the global stage and the forces that shape it--not just its strategic aspects, but also its economic, cultural and historical dimensions. American statecraft is not simply about power but also purpose. What is important to the world about America is therefore not just its politics, but the society from which those politics arise--including America's literature, music and art, as well as its values, public beliefs and its historical imagination.
The AI's second aim is to examine what American policy should be. It is our view that the challenges and opportunities of our time transcend the assumptions and vocabulary used by both the Left and Right in recent years, and that we need to move beyond the defense of obsolete positions. We therefore seek to invite the best minds from a variety of professions to engage in lively and open-ended debate founded on serious, sustained arguments and evidence. We wish to provoke and enlighten, not to plead or to please the guardians of any ideology. We take a pragmatic attitude toward policy problems, privileging creativity and effectiveness over contending orthodoxies.
Third, though its name is The American Interest, our pages are open to the world. The simple and inescapable defining fact of our era is that America is the foremost actor on the world stage. For good or ill, the United States affects the lives of billions because of its dominance in military, economic and, ever more so, cultural affairs. Hence, the AI invites citizens of all nations into the American national dialogue, convinced that Americans have much to learn from the experience and perspectives of others."

Posted by Tel Aviv IRC
# posted by Ralph Amelan : 1:13 PM

New CFR site

The Council on Foreign Relations launched an impressive new website last week which aims to be a "First-Stop Nonpartisan Resource on U.S. Foreign Policy and International Affairs"...according to their press release , “Cfr.org is Rapidly Becoming the Google for the Foreign Policy Set.”...no less! Features on the new site include:

• Nearly 200 Background on the News fact sheets on world events and
  critical issues.
• More than 300 exclusive expert interviews conducted by cfr.org consulting
  editor Bernard Gwertzman, former editor-in-chief of nytimes.com, and former
  foreign editor and diplomatic correspondent for the New York Times.
• A selection of Must Reads culled by the Council to point our audience to
  the most innovative thinking on U.S. foreign policy.
• Region and issue briefs by Council scholars.
• Essential source documents ranging from constitutions and speeches to
  international agreements and treaties.
• Articles and congressional testimony by Council fellows and other
  experts.
• Timely on-the-record transcripts, audio files, videos, and webcasts from
  CFR meetings in New York, Washington, DC, and around the country.
• A world events list with links to twenty-four global calendars.
• Nearly 100 links to national and international think tanks and their
  work.
• Independent Task Force Reports and Council Special Reports on today’s
  most urgent issues.
• Advance highlights and excerpts from Foreign Affairs, recently ranked the
  most influential media outlet in the United States, according to a study of
  U.S. opinion leaders.

Scipionus

For people who are wondering about the state of homes/neighborhoods in New Orleans, Scipionus might be of some help....here is a description from wired.com
"Since Scipionus.com launched Wednesday, it has become a giant visual "wiki" page, attracting tens of thousands of visitors who are collaborating in creating a public document of astonishing detail."
Here's an example, one of hundreds of entries: "9/8/05 4800 Block of Loveland reported to have approx.18-24 inches in houses. Added 09/08 21:53." We are inching towards virtual reality!

Transatlantic Trends

The 2005 issue of Transatlantic Trends, an annual public opinion survey examining American and European attitudes toward the transatlantic relationship, was released today. Excerpt from the press release:

"DESPITE EFFORTS BY BUSH ADMINISTRATION, EUROPEAN OPINION ON UNITED STATES REMAINS UNMOVED
~More Europeans than Americans support democracy promotion as a foreign policy objective~

WASHINGTON, DC (September 7, 2005) — A new survey of Americans and Europeans released today finds that six months after George W. Bush’s ambitious outreach to Europe, European public opinion toward the United States remains unchanged. Both Americans and Europeans feel relations have stayed the same. The survey also reveals that Europeans desire a more independent approach from the United States on international security and diplomatic affairs...."

Library Clips

For current awareness blogs that follow neat new tools for librarians, Library Clips comes near the top of my list. And its RSS feed is at the top of the list on the left..

Ask not what your college can do for you....

but what your college can do for your country! Washington Monthly's College Guide rates U.S. colleges according to the following criteria: "Universities should be engines of social mobility, they should produce the academic minds and scientific research that advance knowledge and drive economic growth; and they should inculcate and encourage an ethic of service." Makes an interesting contrast to the better-known U.S. News and World Report rankings.

When Amazon.com Is Not Enough

For book reviews and a lot more about the book and publishing world, try some of these sites:

Allreaders.com is a spiffy array of book tools and includes a precision search engine to extract titles from a treasure chest that cross matches books by plot, era, character, and even mood.

Dead Trees Review is the work of a single reviewer who reads voraciously and writes solid, short reviews. www.geocities.com/SoHo/Coffeehouse/4587/mainpage.html.

The Book Report Network pulls together Bookreporter.com, AuthorsOntheWeb.com,ReadingGroupGuides.com and others -- all sites where there are reviews and other interesting book features.

BookPage.com adds author interviews to the mix of reviews.

BlackBookNetwork.com covers the territory for authors of African heritage.

And if you never have visited the sites of the New York Review of Books (www.nybooks.com) or the New York Times Book Review (www.nytimes.com/pages/books/index.html then skip your coffee break and go there today. The wonder pen-and-ink sketches of David Levine are there for the asking and the NY Times archive goes back to 1997.

School Matters

SchoolMatters, at www.schoolmatters.com, seeks to "give policymakers, educators, and parents the tools they need to make better-informed decisions that improve student performance." Provides detailed information for public schools down to the zip code level, as well as comparative statistics and data.

View 26,000 Operas at Once!

New York City's Metropolitan Opera, known to listeners worldwide for its radio broadcasts of live performances, has now created a free database that has entries on all performances since the Met opened in 1883. Find your favorite singer, find reviews, find cast lists, find photos - it's all there in a user-friendly fashion. Go to metopera.org. Select Met History from the toolbar and click on Launch Database.

Public Agenda Confidence in U.S. Foreign Policy Index: Americans Perplexed and Anxious About Relations with Muslim World

"The American public sees the web of issues surrounding relations with the Islamic world as the fundamental foreign policy problem facing the nation — but they have little idea what to do about it. The inaugural edition of the Public Agenda Confidence in U.S. Foreign Policy Index finds the public's concerns are dominated by issues that all lead back to the central theme of Islam and the West: the Iraq war, the global war on terrorism, and the public image of the United States abroad. To be issued regularly by Public Agenda, the Index is designed to explore the public's long-term judgments and beliefs about America's role in the world. Supported with funding from the Ford Foundation and produced as a joint project with Foreign Affairs magazine, the index covers more than 25 different issues through more than 80 different survey questions."

Religion Facts

This looks like a good site for facts/info about religions:
http://www.religionfacts.com/

Book tips from Teens Worldwide

While visiting "Youthink! Action=Results ", a site the World Bank runs for their youth audiences, I came across this link to Unicef where kids from all over the world make suggestions about books to read. The posts are pretty recent and the kids add interesting insights like "Don't read the hard classics". Try these out when serving possible audiences of secondary school age. The book site comes in English and French.

Youthink! http://youthink.worldbank.org

Unicef http://www.unicef.org/voy/discussions/showthread.php?p=18310

IRO Moscow

Smithsonian Wonderland of Global Sound

Smithsonian Global Sound is a part of Folkways Recordings where you can download world music at 99 cents per unit. While music inquiries are a rarity at most IRCs, you will probably be able to think of innovative uses for this extraordinary resource. A search of US resources revealed 1250 entries from the last 50 years or so. Give it a listen!
http://www.smithsonianglobalsound.org/

Posted by IRO Moscow

Guide to blogging software

If you're confused about blogging software and technology, Susannah Gardner's article "Time to check: Are you using the right blogging tool" is helpful. Includes a "blogging software comparision chart" and a glossary of common blogging terms.

Stateline.org

Stateline.org provides politics and policy news, state by state. The site was created by the Pew Institute in 1999 and was intended primarily for reporters covering state issues. Information can be sorted by state or by issue, and the site provides both email alerts and rss feeds.

TRADE AND BUSINESS INTERNET RESOURCES

WEBEC'S INTERNATIONAL TRADE PAGE
http://www.helsinki.fi/WebEc/framef.html
The Internet is a treasure trove of information for business research -- if you know where to look. You can spend hours surfing through meaningless Web sites, or pay subscription fees for information that's useless to you, and end up with nothing to show for your efforts. That's why I like this next site. WebEc's International Trade Page ( http://www.helsinki.fi/WebEc/framef.html ) has tons of links to some of the best international trade research on the Net. WebEc has been around for 11 years, and it's a site for economists, but don't let that scare you off. As I said, it's got some of the most useful, and cost-effective, research online, in all areas of economics. Scroll down the list of links to international trade, and you'll see a Who's Who of organizations, institutions, and publications, with research and reports you can download for free. In addition, there are plenty of other categories of economic research you can look at, simply by clicking on topics in the left column.

Redesigned NARA site (and soon a new Thomas?)

NARA launched its redesigned website on July 20. Lots of interesting stuff there, including much useful information for genealogists. A redesigned Thomas site was announced last fall, with rollout scheduled to coincide with the convening of the 109th Congress. It was supposed to look like this , but we're still waiting...

LOC New Site for Cataloging Training

Cataloger's Learning Workshop is a clearinghouse portal for cataloging and metadata training resources for information workers. The scope of Cataloger's Learning Workshop includes bibliographic information training in the context of formal library and information science degree programs, as well as continuing education for library practitioners. Cataloger's Learning Workshop is a cooperative project of the Library of Congress, the Program for Cooperative Cataloging, and the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services, a division of the American Library Association. View it at:

http://www.loc.gov/catworkshop/
Posted by IRO Moscow

CyberCemetery

This site, at http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/ is worth checking when looking for publications from defunct govt. agencies. I looked for OTA, for example, and found a great many publications in full text, dating as far back as to 1972. Excerpt from the site: "The University of North Texas Libraries and the U.S. Government Printing Office, as part of the Federal Depository Library Program, created a partnership to provide permanent public access to the Web sites and publications of defunct U.S. government agencies and commissions. This collection was named the "CyberCemetery" by early users of the site."

Some recent PD articles

Mark Lynch, Watching al-Jazeera. Wilson Quarterly, Summer 2005

The June 2005 issue of American Quarterly includes 3 articles about public diplomacy:

Liam Kennedy and Scott Lucas, Enduring Freedom: Public Diplomacy and U.S. Foreign Policy
Penny von Eschen, Enduring Public Diplomacy
Ron Theodore Robin, Requiem for Public Diplomacy?

Both American Quarterly and Wilson Quarterly are available to the IIP community through that wonderful resource, the Ralph Bunche Library.

Center for Global Development

The Center for Global Development is " is dedicated to reducing global poverty and inequality through policy-oriented research and active engagement on development issues with the policy community and the public." The CGD's Ranking the Rich survey ranks the wealthy nations in 6 categories:

# Quality of foreign aid
# Openness to developing-country exports
# Policies that influence investment
# Migration policies
# Support for creation of new technologies
# Security policies
# Environmental policies

This provides a different and more nuanced picture of wealthy nations' commitments to international development than the standard comparisons of per capita aid volume.

John Brown's PD Press Review

John Brown, a former foreign service officer and now a faculty member at USC's Center on Public Diplomacy, provides an RSS feed of his public diplomacy press review. (excerpt from the website): John Brown aggregates all the most recent public diplomacy related news, including current issues in U.S. foreign policy, international broadcasting and media, propaganda, cultural diplomacy, educational exchanges, anti-Americanism, and the reception of American popular culture abroad.
This USC site has much information and many interesting projects regarding public diplomacy, including a public diplomacy wiki and a project on anti-Americanism

Strategy Targeting Organized Piracy (STOP!)

Protecting your intellectual property at home and abroad

Growing global trade in pirated and counterfeit goods threatens America's innovation economy, the competitiveness of our leading companies and small manufacturers, and the livelihoods of their workers. Bogus products - from CDs, DVDs, software and watches to electronic equipment, clothing, processed foods, consumer products, and auto parts - are estimated to account for up to seven percent of global trade and cost legitimate rights holders around the world billions of dollars annually.

Developed over the last year, the Strategy Targeting Organized Piracy (STOP!) is the most comprehensive initiative ever advanced to smash the criminal networks that traffic in fakes, stop trade in pirated and counterfeit goods at America's borders, block bogus goods around the world, and help small businesses secure and enforce their rights in overseas markets. STOP! underscores the Administration's continuing commitment to level the playing field for American businesses and workers. And it builds on the Administration's solid track record of real results in combating global piracy and counterfeiting.

www.stopfakes.gov

Supreme Court

For questions about the Supreme Court appointment the recent (July 6) CRS update on the SC Appointment Process will come in handy. The July 20 issue of Al's Morning Meeting also contains interesting tidbits for people whose focus is on the SC these days.

E-Podunk

e-Podunk is celebrating its 5th anniversary, a good occassion to revisit this useful site. From the "about us" section: "ePodunk provides in-depth information about more than 25,000 communities around the country, from Manhattan to Los Angeles, Pottstown to Podunk. Our listings also include geocoded information about thousands of parks, museums, historic sites, colleges, schools and other places across America."

Blog Software Comparison Chart

Software Comparison Chart may be found here:
http://www.ojr.org/ojr/images/blog_software_comparison.cfm

Free Legal Handouts from the American Association of Law Libraries Professional Meeting

A great variety of free quality legal handouts available here, from AALL.

http://programmaterials.aallnet.org/download_step1.asp

Posted by Stephen Perry, IRO, PAS Buenos Aires

How to Monitor Federal Legislation

From the LLRX Web Site:

http://www.llrx.com/congress/legislativemonitoring.htm

news.myway.com

news.myway.com draws on AP, Reuters, New York Times, CBS, MSNBC,USA TODAY, and FOX News to provide an attractive ad-free interface to current news. Stories can be displayed by source or by topic. It's a useful one-stop site for assembling news compilations for high level visits, etc.

2005 SLA POWERPOINT PRESENTATIONS FROM SLA CONFERENCE, TORONTO

URL for access to these POWERPOINTS is:

http://www.sla.org/content/Events/confpresentations/05confpresent.cfm

Powerpoints include Money Laundering, International Business, Best of the Web, etc.

Stephen Perry, IRO, BUENOS AIRES

FROM FREEPINT: EXPLANATION OF GOOGLE ANSWERS

TIPS ARTICLE http://www.freepint.com/issues/300605.htm#tips
"An Insider's View of Google Answers" By David Sarokin Somewhere in the world is a person who wants ... no, needs! ... some obscure piece of information. Perhaps it's the number of Cessna 152s registered in the US; a transcript from a WWII war crimes trial; or details about the annual wheat harvest in Iran. Information that they cannot find, but that I can. The challenge is, how can we find one another? Amazingly, it's not that hard. The questioner simply states the question, offers a fee for an answer, and -- if the fee is reasonable -- the deal is done.
Article at: http://www.freepint.com/issues/300605.htm#tips

Roubini Global Economics Monitor

The note below from Nouriel Roubini of Roubini Global Economics was forwarded to me - the RGE website, www.rgemonitor.com is impressive! (Roubini's note:)"Following the tragic terrorist attacks in London today RGE Monitor (www.rgemonitor.com) is providing continuous and extensive coverage of the Economic and Financial Implications of Terrorism with up to the minute news, research, commentary and analysis on the economic and financial implications of terrorism. Our coverage also includes related coverage such as the debate on the Causes and Preventive Strategies of Terrorism (http://www.rgemonitor.com/151) where we aggregate the best thinking on this crucial topic.

Google Maps and gCensus

Google maps is an amazing resource: double click on the area you're interested in to select it (ie. center it) and use the slide or the plus/minus icons to zoom to the desired level of detail. To look at adjacent areas, just drag the map the way you would a paper map across a table top! Jimmy Palmer's gcensus.com has taken the Google map technology a step further and added U.S. Census data, all the way down to the block level.

Hudson Institute on U.S. Aid

Carol Adelman et al. of the Hudson Institute recently released a white paper,
America's Total Economic Engagement with the Developing World , that addresses aspects of American generosity often overlooked by critics who measure aid solely in terms of Official Development Assistance(ODA)as a percentage of Gross National Income (GNI). From the Hudson Institute's June 29 announcement:

Hudson Institute released new private international giving numbers today in a white paper, "America's Total Economic Engagement with the Developing World," by Dr. Carol Adelman, Mr. Jeremiah Norris and Ms. Jeanne Weicher. Updating their research on American generosity, the authors found at least $62.1 billion in U.S. private donations to developing countries in 2003, the last year numbers are available. This philanthropy, from U.S. foundations, corporations, non-profits and volunteerism, universities and colleges, religious organizations and individuals is over three and one-half times U.S. Official Development Assistance (ODA) of $16.3 billion.

Watching America with RSS feed

Watching America, which was described here in March of this year, now also offers an RSS feed

GPO Access and Thomas

(excerpted from LLRX)"The Government Domain: GPO Access and THOMAS for Legislative Research
Peggy Garvin compares and contrasts the features and content of these two resources, to assist researchers in determining which to use for specific tasks."

Al's Morning Meeting

Al's Morning Meeting from thePoynter Institute is (excerpt):"a compendium of ideas, edited story excerpts and other materials from a variety of Web sites, as well as original concepts and analysis." Although intended for journalists, much of the information will be of interest to IRCs - including today's issue on Fourth of July resources. You can also subscribe to Al's Morning Meeting via email

USG RSS feeds

Firstgov's U.S. Government RSS Library provides an overview and links to USG feeds on a variety of subjects, including data and statistics, military, education and international relations.

Open CRS

Here's a new site devoted to collecting and making available CRS reports. It seems to have missed a couple of important collections - U.S. Embassy Rome and the Foreign Press Center - but perhaps those will be added as well. From the "about" information: "A project of the Center for Democracy & Technology through the cooperation of several organizations and collectors of CRS Reports, Open CRS provides citizens access to CRS Reports already in the public domain and encourages Congress to provide public access to all CRS Reports."

Latest report from Pew Global Attitudes Project

(headline from latest report of the Pew Global Attitudes Project):U.S. Image Up Slightly, But Still Negative: American Character Gets Mixed Reviews
The latest survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, released June 23, was conducted among nearly 17,000 people in the United States and 15 other countries from April 20-May 31. From the introduction: "Anti-Americanism in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, which surged as a result of the U.S. war in Iraq, shows modest signs of abating. But the United States remains broadly disliked in most countries surveyed, and the opinion of the American people is not as positive as it once was. The magnitude of America's image problem is such that even popular U.S. policies have done little to repair it. President George W. Bush's calls for greater democracy in the Middle East and U.S. aid for tsunami victims in Asia have been well-received in many countries, but only in Indonesia, India and Russia has there been significant improvement in overall opinions of the U.S.

Attitudes toward the U.S. remain quite negative in the Muslim world, though hostility toward America has eased in some countries. Many Muslims see the U.S. supporting democracy in their countries, and many of those who are optimists about the prospects for democracy in the Middle East give at least some credit to U.S. policies. But progress for America's image in these countries is measured in small steps; solid majorities in all five predominantly Muslim countries surveyed still express unfavorable views of the United States."

David Rumsey map collection

David Rumsey's map collection contains more than 150,000 maps and is one of the world's largest. Around 1998 Rumsey decided stopoed adding to the collection and turned his efforts to digitizing and making the collection available to others. The result is at www.davidrumsey.com - an amazing resource for history buffs and researchers. There is a short article about the collection in the July Issue of Technology Review.

UN Pulse

"UN Pulseis a service of the UN Dag Hammarskjöld library, and appears to be regularly updated. Also offers and RSS feed. From the "about" info: UN Pulse alerts you to selected just-released UN online information, major reports, publications and documents. Created and maintained by a team of reference librarians at the United Nations Dag Hammarskjöld Library in New York, UN Pulse is updated as new information is published and received."

Full-text book searching

Greg Notess's article Searching Books Between the Coversin the May/June issue of Online magazine review the state of full-text book searching, and includes a comparison of Amazon's Search Inside the Book and Google Print.

Lugar Report on WMD Threats and Responses

Following excerpted from Richard Lugar's website:
Lugar Releases New Report on WMD Threats and Responses
"During the next ten years the world faces a 29 percent chance of a nuclear attack and the prospect of four new nations being added to the nuclear weapons club, according to a new survey of non-proliferation and national security experts compiled by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Dick Lugar. Over the same period, the experts rated the risks of a major chemical or biological attack as both greater than 30 percent, while the prospects of a dirty bomb attack were pegged at 40 percent.

The unique survey of 85 top international scholars, policy makers, diplomats, and technicians probed the attitudes of experts on both proliferation threats and international responses. The Lugar Survey found that 79 percent believed that their own country was not spending enough money on non-proliferation objectives. None of the experts surveyed believed that their country was spending too much on these goals."
http://lugar.senate.gov/reports/NPSurvey.pdf

Guide to Internet Research for Lawyers

Glenn Bacal's impressive Guide to Internet Research for Lawyers is useful for anyone doing legal research. "Completely updated with an edge and now with many new features, including annotated guides to best IP blog and news sites; IP sites for beginners; amusing IP sites; politically oriented IP sites; most useful websites for law students, and more!"
http://www.ali-aba.org/aliaba/glenbacal_2002.htm

Language Map

The MLA Language Map displays the locations and numbers of speakers of the thirty languages most commonly spoken in the United States.

Del.icio.us

Social bookmarking through del.icio.us is a concept that is getting much attention these days. The idea of saving bookmarks to a server on the web, so that they can be used from any web connected computer, is not new - Furl, for example, has been around since 2003. What makes social bookmarking different is that you can see what other people have been bookmarking, and let others see what you have been bookmarking. De.licio.us also allows you to annotate and provide subject tags for bookmarks, which is a potentially powerful feature; by subject tagging and sharing bookmarks in this fashion, communities of social bookmarkers will be generating new subject collections of blogs and websites.

I was curious to see how many hundreds of thousands, or at least thousands, of del.icio.us users had bookmarked ircworld. To do that, I registered with the service, bookmarked ircworld (my small but growing collection of del.icio.us bookmarks are at http://del.icio.us/osloirc and clicked on the "1 other person" (?!) who had bookmarked ircworld. I was then able click through to that individual's subject collection of bookmarks.

Another useful feature; when you find del.icio.us bookmark collections that look especially relevant to your interests, you can subscribe to the rss feed that is generated by each del.icio.us page, and thus be alerted to new additions.

In the past I've used bookmarks minimally, relying almost exclusively on search engines to find information. I find however that del.icio.us bookmarklets increase the convenience and utility of adding, organizing and using bookmarks, and the social aspect (along with the inclination every librarian has to build collections) makes it fun! You really need to try it to understand how it works and why it might be useful.

Debbie Weil's deliriously enthusiastic entry about Del.iciou.us at Blogwrite is admirably lucid and an good introduction. For an example of the trail an avid social bookmarker leaves behind, see Weil's collection of bookmarks at http://del.icio.us/wordbiz

Inevitably, there is similar service called de.lirio.us, but I haven't figured out what the difference is.

Peanut Butter Wiki

Wiki is a software technology that enables collaborative publishing/editing of documents on the web. The best known example is surely Wikipedia, but one could easily imagine other uses on a smaller scale ...f.ex. putting together a conference agenda, or creating some kind of online forum in which to interact with PD audiences. Peanut Butter wiki is a free webbased application that allows you to set up your own Wikis; to get a sense of how it works, see http://ircworldwiki.pbwiki.com You can get the userid/password by reading my posting about this on the eurirc listserv, or by sending me an email)
p.s. - please sign the guestbook!

WebJunction

Here is a web site I liked and wanted to share:

WebJunction is an online community of libraries and other agencies sharing knowledge and experience to provide the broadest public access to information technology.

http://www.webjunction.org/do/Home

In 2002, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation awarded the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) a three-year grant to build a portal for public libraries and other organizations that provide open access to information. Building on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's five-year-old U.S. Library Program, which has provided over 40,000 computers with Internet access to more than 10,000 libraries across the United States and Canada, WebJunction is the work of five organizations, led by OCLC.

National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP)

From the National Digital Newspaper Program website:

"The National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP), a partnership between the National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH) and the Library of Congress (LC), is a long-term effort to develop an Internet-based, searchable database of all U.S. newspapers with descriptive information and select digitization of historic pages. Supported by NEH, this rich digital resource will be developed and permanently maintained at the Library of Congress. An NEH grant program will fund the contribution of content from, eventually, all U.S. states and territories."

print.google.com

The beta of the controversial (for copyright reasons) print.google.com is available at print.google.com

National Hazards Support System

The USGS Natural Hazards Support System (NHSS) at http://nhss.cr.usgs.gov/is a web tool that helps monitor, respond to and analyze hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes, severe weather, floods, wildfires, and tsunamis.

Marcus Zillman's White Papers

Marcus Zillman's website www.whitepapers.us provides link collections and internet mini-guides on a great range of topics.

"Beyond Google" presentation

Since early 2004, Information Resource Officer Karen Hartman has delivered her “Beyond Google: What's New in Web Search, Weblogs and RSS Technology” over 12 times, to more than 600 librarians, teachers and legislative researchers in Southern Africa.

A text version (plus a link to a zipped copy of the .ppt file) of a recent update to her PowerPoint presentation, is now available at:
http://pretoria.usembassy.gov/wwwhit50.html

Journalist's Guide to the Federal Courts

A Journalist's Guide to the Federal Courts is intended to assist reporters assigned to court coverage. The section on the Federal district courts provides a walk-through of each stage of both a criminal and a civil case. It also describes the key players in the federal trial courts and identifies the types of court information a journalist might need, as well as possible sources for that information.

Feedburner

Feedburner is a service that provides free statistics on RSS feeds, including
feed circulation, which news aggregators people use to read your feed, and what feed items subscribers most often "clickthrough" to read on your site. There is aslo a "pro" option that provides greater detail for a fee. www.feedburner.com

Making of U.S. Foreign Policy

Another IRC Barcelona information product that may be of interest for educators and others is the infopack on "The Making of U.S. Foreign Policy"

Historical Timeline of U.S. Foreign Policy

IRC Barcelona has produced a handy "Historical Timeline of U.S. Foreign Policy"HistoryUSForeignPolicy.doc

Higher Education website

www.insidehighered.com appears to be a useful supplement to Chronicle of Higher Education. Read more about it at
http://www.insidehighered.com/about_us