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

Full text government documents

another tip from Resource Shelf: GPO allows you to limit searches of the catalog of USG publications to those that are available in full text. You can also browse the monthly list of new full-text accessible publications - excellent resource if you're doing a document alert service!

McCarthyism and Libraries

Stephen Francoeur's thesis on McCarthyism and Libraries includes an interesting discussion of the controversy that surrounded USIA's overseas libraries. McCarthyism and Libraries: Intellectual Freedom Under Fire, 1947-1954

Deep Quote

Deep quote is a useful tool that creates a link to a specific line of text on a remote webpage - in other words, it allows you to create in-document links (anchors) to pages on the web. For example, if you wanted to make an argument for the International Visitor's Program by quoting Karen Hughes, you could do it like this: "As Karen Hughes has remarked, it is important not only that other nations learn about the U.S., but also that Americans learn more about other nations." For Firefox users Deepquote also provides a bookmarklet that enables you to generate a deepquote-link with your right mousebutton.

Locating expertise

Jack Vinson's "Knowledge Jolt with Jack" blog had an informative and richly-linked posting last month on the important issue of how to locate expertise on a given topic. Includes referrals to several "find an expert guides," notes on the etiquette/ethics of getting people to share their information, and the growing importance of social communties of knowledge (e.g. de.licio.us) Knowing who is in the know can be useful for everything from really tough reference questions to identifying participants for speaker programs.

Interesting gov-pub site

Here's another useful tip form Marylaine Block's Neat New Stuff:
"Government Publications Library Blog http://cubgovpubs.blogspot.com/ : Gov docs librarians at the University of Colorado-Boulder help you follow current events through current and historical government documents, maps, and photos: Bush's veto of stem-cell research funding, the extreme heat, the crisis in the Middle East, the Geneva Convention, urban legends, etc."

Fallows on Web 2.0

James Fallows has an article in the July/August issue of Technology Review that nicely summarizes some of the collaborative tools - and underlying principles - that are commonly referred to as "Web 2.0". Curiously, an earlier ircworld posting that reviewed some of these same tools referred back to Fallows 1996 article "The Java Theory", which presented a scenario wherein computing applications would move from personal computers to the net - the article would have been even more foresighted had it been entitled "The Ajax Theory."

Latest PEW report

The latest report (06/16/2006)from the Pew Global Attitudes Project concludes: "America's global image has again slipped and support for the war on terrorism has declined even among close U.S. allies like Japan. The war in Iraq is a continuing drag on opinions of the United States, not only in predominantly Muslim countries but in Europe and Asia as well. And despite growing concern over Iran's nuclear ambitions, the U.S. presence in Iraq is cited at least as often as Iran - and in many countries much more often - as a danger to world peace."

Zoho

Zoho provides an attractive "office suite" of web-based collaborative tools, including a word processor Zoho Writer that appears to be a good competitor for Writely

More on where to get photos...

Here's a posting to print-pubs-l that Mary Ann alerted me to...thanks!
"Many tourist bureaus throughout the U.S., including the Washington
Convention and Visitor's Bureau, have Websites or CDs available with photos
of buildings and sites in their state. In the case of the Washington
Bureau, anyone can use the images as long as the Washington Convention and
Visitor's Bureau (WC&VB) is given credit. Among the listings for other free
sources: http://www.firstgov.gov/Topics/Graphics_State.shtml
links to many individual state and local government sources including DC, the Convention & Tourism Corporation pressroom page,
http://www.washington.org/index.cfm?blnNavView=True
where 300 dpi jpeg downloads may be accessed directly by post or clients
upon registration from any country in the world. . . . . "

Wex

Wex, according to Wex, is "an ambitious effort to construct a collaboratively-created, public-access law dictionary and encyclopedia. It is sponsored and hosted by the Legal Information Institute at the Cornell Law School (http://www.lawschool.cornell.edu/). Much of the material that appears in Wex was originally developed for the LII's "Law about..." pages, to which Wex is the successor."
Wex has a clean and attractive interface, and each article includes, on the right side of the page, a nicely ordered "menu of sources" for further reading. (See for example the menu accompanying the death penalty article).

World Almanac e-newsletter

The World Almanac Education Group provides a free monthly e-newsletter. A typical issue includes an overview of the previous months events, birthdays, obituaries, anniversaries, a special feature (this month it's on the death penalty: Thirty Years of Gregg v. Georgia), sports, quotes, and other factual and quick-reference information. To subscribe, send an e-mail to: newsletter@waegroup.com with the subject line reading "SUBSCRIBE." What's in this issue?

More photo stuff

Here's a tip from Marylaine Block's Neat New Stuff: "everystockphoto.com is a search engine for creative commons photos, located in Vancouver, BC. We aim to be a community for designers, developers, photographers and other media publishers who want better, easier access to license-specific media on the web."

Once you've found a good photo, have some fun with Polaroidinizer - you just enter the url of the image, add a text, and Polaroid-o-nizer produces a signed snapshot like the one on the right. Polaroidonizer can also be used for more legitimate purposes, e.g. promotion of embassy/irc events, email invitations, or personalized photos for thank-you notes the Ambassador wishes to send to people he/she has met.

NativeWeb

NativeWeb is a portal to information about indigenous peoples and issues. Here's the annotation from the June 30 issue of the Scout Report :
"A number of websites are dedicated to providing information about various groups and organizations, and NativeWeb just happens to be one of the best known sites dedicated to disseminating information from and about indigenous nations, peoples, and organizations around the world for the past ten years, the site has grown tremendously, and it functions as a very nice clearinghouse for materials ranging from ongoing archaeological excavations to higher education grants for organizations that serve indigenous peoples. With its relatively clean design, the site is easy to navigate, and first-time visitors will appreciate the "In the News" section, which offers selected recent news items that relate to indigenous and native groups around the world. The real substance of the site can be found in the tremendous "resources" section, which contains thematically organized links to high-quality online materials. Finally, visitors can also sign up to receive updates when new resources are added to the site.

Abraham Lincoln: The Lincoln Institute provides support to scholars studying the life of Abraham Lincoln.

Abraham Lincoln: The Lincoln Institute provides support to scholars studying the life of Abraham Lincoln.

See America local

Thanks to a posting by Tara Calishain in the ResearchBuzz newsletter, I found the TurnHere site. It hosts a large number of viewable digital videos about three to five minutes long, each featuring a small town or city neighborhood. Nearly all are in the US, though there is a smattering of films from other countries. Many are frankly commercial, and boost local businesses. (One slightly too cute pet shop is called "Muttopolis.") But the sense of place you get from watching them is remarkable, and I find them far more effective at conveying a sense of America's variety than any number of big-screen travelogues concentrating on the usual tourist places.
The site should go down well with a young audience: many of the videos are aimed at the arts and urban chic crowd. It could be suggested to contacts being sent to the US for the first time as well, to help prepare them for what they will see. Or pass it on as a fun site, which it is.
Access it at:
http://www.turnhere.com/

Tel Aviv IRC

4th of July facts from Census Bureau

In the Census Bureau's series "Facts for Features," a compilation of quick facts for July 4th statistics/trivia buffs.

bibliography: Islam, the People, Culture, and Politics

Here's a new bibliography from the Muir S. Fairchild Research Information Center at Maxwell Airforce Base: Islam, the People, Culture, and Politics

Quikmaps

Quikmaps.com is an amazing tool that makes it easy to create those annotated google maps you see all over the web. Enables you to add markers, colored lines, scribbles and notes to your map, then save it and generate the code you need to paste it into your website . Below is an example of a stroll from the U.S. embassy to the Prime Minister's office in Oslo. To move the map within the frame, just depress the left mouse button while dragging the map. Click on markers for more info. Very useful for creating maps for offsite embassy events, for example. This application seems to work better in IE than in Firefox.

Snapshot USA

The latest ejournal from IIP, Snapshot USA is a very nice collection of essays and facts about aspects of the U.S. that pupils/teachers often ask about. As usual, the IIP reference team has compiled a useful and nicely annotated collection of internet resources for further reading.

Digital library cards

Kevin Kelly's article about accessing librry databases from home is a timely reminder than information doesn't really want to be free, and that even in the most wired societies, a public library is a wonderful service.

Genealogy resource

Although it is a fee-based service, Ancestry.com's digitization of the entire U.S. Federal Census from 1790-1930 might be useful to know about when turning away genealogists in a helpful manner. See also the Wall Street Journal article (06/22/06), "New Ways to Dig For Your Roots Online" Thanks to beSpacific for both of these tips.

Virtual Library Cat

Ernster the Virtual Library Cat at the Hofstra School of Law has a blog where s/he provides library related "News and Views from Ernster, the Deane Law Library Virtual Cat." See this cat's rss feed among the feeds in the left hand column.

Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations

Eigen's Political & Historical Quotations is, by its own account, "the world's largest collection of memorable quotes about and by historians, politicians and other public figures. The collection is designed for the use of students, journalists, teachers, historians, political scientists and the many other people who are interested in politics and political history."

and another....

When it rains it pours...Ralph just alerted me to another great source, this portal to "Free Images on the Web: Photos and Paintings", from the Merriam Library, California State University at Chico. Thanks Ralph!

Good source for free photos

The USDA's Online Photography Center is a wonderful source for U.S. photos that are in the public domain and may be used free of charge. Also includes a "DC landmarks" section, which is great for publishers, journalists, and others who are looking for images representing the U.S. government.

New Pew Report

A new report from the Pew Global Attitudes Project shows renewed decline of the American image abroad: "A year ago, anti-Americanism had shown some signs of abating, in part because of the positive feelings generated by U.S. aid for tsunami victims in Indonesia and elsewhere. But favorable opinions of the United States have fallen in most of the 15 countries surveyed."

Public Conversations

The Public Conversations Project asks "How can political or ideological adversaries engage in constructive conversations despite conflicting values and worldviews?" - a familiar challenge! The guide"Fostering Dialog Across Divides" offers advice to diplomats and others who seek an alternative to the "we're right, you're wrong" approach.

ESL resource, UsingEnglish.com

UsingEnglish.com is a handy site for teachers and others interested in English as a second language. Note also Stewart Clark's site, English Matters

State of the Union Concordance

http://stateoftheunion.onetwothree.net/ This site uses a "tag cloud" to show word frequencies in all State of the Union messages since 1790. A goldmine for anyone interested in the development of rhetoric and content in the SOU during the past 200 years.

NationMaster.com

Came across a review of this statistical web site in CHOICE (June 2006, p. 1808), and it does seem rather useful. CHOICE rates it as "essential": "What sets NationMaster apart from other statistical Web-based databases are its numerous reliable sources and its visual presentation of statistics." Sources include CIA's World Fact Book, the United Nations and the World Health Organization.

http://www.nationmaster.com/index.php

Stumpers-l and project wombat

The old stumpers-l list, for all conceivable reference questions, has been reborn as project wombat, with some useful new features.

Pew on PD

A new book from the Pew Institute, America Against the World, paints a bleak picture of the U.S. image around the world; interviews of more than 90,000 people in 50 countries over a four-year time span suggest that anti-American sentiment now extends beyond U.S. leadership and foreign policies to Americans themselves. Some reviews: Newhouse News, IHT, New America Foundation, CSM, Foreign Affairs See also co-author Kohut's testimony on this issue in the House last November.

Exotic library jobs

I think my job is fairly interesting and unusual as far as library jobs go, but it surely doesn't compete with the Camel Mobile Library of Kenya!

Another fun tool

The Newspaper Snippet Generator is a fun tool that bears some resemblance to the Einstein blackboard tool, reviewed here some months ago. Just type in a text, and the Newspaper Snippet Generator will produce an authentic-looking newspaper article containing your text. With the help of this little tool, it is truly amazing what you can find in ProQuest's Historical Newspapers database!

HTML2PDF

HTML2PDF is a neat tool for creating pdf files out of html pages. Very useful if you'd like to create hardcopy handouts of webpages for presentations, etc. Just enter the url of a webpage, and html2pdf creates a handsome pdf document.

Campaigning on the Blogs

For Washington pols and presidential candidates, a new staffer is becoming indispensable: the Internet specialist.

An article in TIME magazine about the importance of having internet specialists who have contact with bloggers.

Serious games

Wired News reported March 27 that DOS and the USC Annenberg School for Communication had co-sponsored a "Reinventing Public Diplomacy Through Games" competition. 4 finalists have been announced:

Exchanging Cultures: Exchanging Cultures, a diplomatic game built inside "Second Life," was created to facilitate the creating virtual communities and relationships based on the exchange of cultural items like: dances, art crafts, food receipts, architectural models, clothing, cultural routes and images of real original places for travelers and explorers. http://interactive.usc.edu/members/jmfernandez/2006/02/exchanging_cultures_ec_game.html.

Global Kids Island: Fostering Public Diplomacy Through Second Life Global Kids, Inc. envisioned a Public Diplomacy program within Second Life where the youth in the after-school program will spend the month learning about a global issue, experience an interactive and experiential workshop designed to educate about the issue. Their demonstration will be shown at the awards ceremony. For more information on the organization: http://www.globalkids.org/olp/index.jsp.

Hydro Hijinks: Hydro Hyjinks is a class project designed to promote discussion about international water issues and to educate players from around the world about sources of international conflict over water rights. Watch the video tour of the game at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS2JT9IV3CM .

Peacemaker: PeaceMaker is a cross-cultural political video game simulation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict which can be used to promote a peaceful resolution among Israelis, Palestinians and young adults worldwide. More information, please visit their website: http://www.etc.cmu.edu/projects/peacemaker/ .

GAO PD report

U.S. Public Diplomacy: State Department Efforts Lack Certain Communication Elements and Face Persistent Challenges, GAO-06-707T, May 3, 2006
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d06707t.pdf

(from intro...)
"Public opinion polls have shown continued negative sentiments toward the United States in the Muslim world. Public diplomacy activities--led by the State Department (State)--are designed to counter such sentiments by explaining U.S. foreign policy actions, countering misinformation, and advancing mutual understanding between nations. Since 2003, we have issued three reports on U.S. public diplomacy efforts that examined (1) changes in public diplomacy resources since September 11, 2001; (2) strategic planning and coordination of public diplomacy efforts; and (3) the challenges facing these efforts. We have made several recommendations in the last 3 years to the Secretary of State to address strategic planning issues, private sector engagement, and staffing challenges related to public diplomacy. For example, today's report recommends that the Secretary develop written guidance detailing how the department intends to implement its public diplomacy goals as they apply to the Muslim world. State has consistently concurred with our findings and recommendations for improving public diplomacy, and the department, in several cases, is taking appropriate actions. However, the department has not established a timetable for many of these actions."

Google Maps come to Europe

Google has finally added some European cities to its maps (satellite imagery of Europe has been available for some time, but not maps) For the adventuresome, it is possible to download the Google Maps API (ie. application programming interface) and embed Google Maps in your web pages using JavaScript. This will enable you to draw markers and add overlays, links and notes to the map, and to build more sophisticated map applications. Read more about this here.

Edsitement

Edsitement is a useful resource for educators, from the National Endowment for the Humanities in partnership with the National Trust for the Humanities, and the Verizon Foundation. "This educational partnership brings online humanities resources from some of the world's great museums, libraries, cultural institutions, and universities directly to your classroom."

Site for tracking the latest opinion polls

For those of you who monitor public opinion polls, a firm called Angus Reid publish on their web site the results of recent polls, both American and foreign, called Global Scan.

Angus Reid describe themselves as: "a partnership dedicated to understanding public opinion in North America and around the world. This commitment begins with our highly popular Global Scan service which provides a daily summary of published polling results from all over the globe. In 2005, there were over 1.2 million unique visits to Global Scan as journalists, scholars, students and members of the public sought to acquaint themselves on issues ranging from democratic processes to emerging attitudes in the Middle East."

The main poll site is:
http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm

Public Agenda Issue Briefs

Public Agenda Issue Guides are a useful reference resource for current topics. In Public Agenda's own words, "Issue Guides are used by journalists, policy makers, teachers, students and citizens who want to better understand controversial topics. Public Agenda Issue Guides provide facts and figures, different perspectives and analysis of public attitudes from surveys conducted by Public Agenda and by other respected polling and news organizations."

Think Tank Town blog at the Washington Post - update

On February 13 I posted details of the Think Tank Town blog hosted at the Washington Post. Earlier this month Ron Nessen, its author, left the blog, which has now reappeared in a different format. According to the Post, "Washingtonpost.com edits and publishes columns submitted by 10 prominent think tanks on a rotating basis every other weekday. Each think tank is free to choose its authors and the topics it believes are most important and timely." The think tanks featured include the obvious names, such as Brookings, the Rand, and the Council on Foreign Relations.
To access the column, use the drop-down menu headed "Today's Editorials, Opinions, Columns" and scroll down to "Think Tank Town." The changes make it a slightly more limited resource than before, but it is still useful.

About "Public Diplomacy"

The report "Public Diplomacy before Gullion: the Evolution of a Phrase" traces the history of the phrase and concept public diplomacy before Fletcher School of Diplomacy dean Edward Gullion officially "coined" it in 1965. The author, Nicholas Cull, is a professor at USC's Center on Public Diplomacy, and the author of the forthcoming "Selling America: US Information Overseas, a history of the U.S. Information Agency." (The report might be useful for PD speechwriters!

Google Services

Here's a very thorough overview of Google services and tools:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_services_and_tools
Thanks to Oli for this one!