SiteLines - Ideas About Web Searching

Recommended Resource: History News Network

Think of HNN as news with a historical bent. HNN features articles by historians on current events, and as such occupies a unique position among the many web-based news aggregators available in the websphere. So much news appears without (or with utter disregard for) the historical context: this site seeks to bring a historical perspective to news reporting. There's also a "Hot Topics" section which links to relevant articles on a variety of timely issues.

This is a great addition to high school and college web collections that support critical thinking on historical issues. HNN is a project of the Center for History and New Media of George Mason University.

Recommended Resource: Raptor Information System

Spotted on Resourceshelf, RIS is a searchable database of over 33,000 bibliographic references about the biology and management of birds of prey. It includes books, articles, theses, government reports, and other gray literature regarding raptors worldwide. Alhough the results of a search don't link directly to web content, this source is an excellent entry point into the literature on this popular school topic.

You can search by author, title, keyword, year of publication... or any combination of these fields. You can also search for articles on a particular raptor species by typing in the genus and the species or by referring to an extensive 4,000 keyword list. RIS is a service of the USGS, Forest and Rangeland Ecosystem Science Center, Snake River Field Station.

Tutorials Directory

Need help with essential software and office programs? Take a look at Tutorials.com, a helpful collection of links to tutorials related to computer operating systems, web design, Macromedia products, MS Office, graphics and programming.

Some New Sites for Kids

A few new and interesting sites for school-age children, spotted in recent issues of the Scout Report for Science and Technology

KidPsych a website that offers some fun activities for kids 1-9 and their parents to try online. The activities help develop children's skills in hand-eye coordination, cognitive thinking skills, deductive reasoning, and creative problem solving, among other concepts. Each game has a link to information about the activity objectives, providing parents some understanding of child development and cognitive thinking. (Scout Report)

PSRC: Physical Sciences Resource Center
Developed by the American Association of Physics Teachers, "the Physical Sciences Resource Center (PSRC) is a web-based databank that provides K-20 teachers links to a wide range of teaching and learning resources in the physical sciences." Users can search the numerous resources by topics, type, or keyword. With each entry, the website provides a description, information on the author, subjects covered, level, intended users, resource types, possible costs, and other useful facts. Interested individuals can register at the website in order to store their search preferences, join discussion forums, submit materials, and store resources. (Scout Report)

Science, Engineering, Mathematics, and Technology Network
The Science, Engineering, Mathematics, and Technology Network (SETNET), created by the British Department of Trade and Industry, "seeks to stimulate the interests of young people in science, technology, engineering and mathematics and in pursuing careers related to these subjects." Local networks partner with educational organizations, professional associations, research institutes, industry, government departments, and charities to "deliver high quality STEM activities and experiences to schools and young people." The website provides information on the group's program and publications documenting the program's effectiveness, as well as some external publications on issues relating to STEM education in the United Kingdom (UK). The links section, where SETNET has posted a database of "schemes and resources," is most likely to interest teachers beyond the U.K. Visitors can search the database or browse the list of lesson ideas, each of which includes links to online resources for developing, planning and communicating ideas, working with equipment, tools, evaluating processes and products, as well as useful materials and components, and resources for understanding of materials and components. (Scout Report)

IMSA Citation Wizard Helps Users Cite Web Pages

The 21st Century Information Fluency Project Portal, a cooperative project of over 100 schools in Illinois, has developed some novel all-on-one-page search tools worthy of review. In addition to their Search Wizard, a fill-in-the-blanks template for advanced searching of Google, and the Evaluation Wizard, a tool to help students evaluate web pages, the project has produced an innovative web-based Citation Wizard to help users automatically create properly-formatted citations in any one of four commonly accepted citation styles. Note that at the present time, the wizard only supports formatting for web page citations, and not traditional print citations.

Best Reference Sites on the Web 2004

Every year, the Machine-Assisted Reference Section of the American Library Association puts out a best-of list of recommended free web reference tools. This year's list is full of gems, showing us that the web continues to offer richly rewarding FREE content to support a wide range of research topics. Every library that maintains lists of best-of-the-web for their users should review this list.

United Nations Official Documents System

Wow, the UN now has over 800,000 documents accessible through it's Official Documents System, dating back to 1993, but legacy documents are continually being added to the system. A useful FAQ is available on the site. Many search options, including a full-text search, are available to aid retrieval.

Government Gazettes Online

Another excellent resource list from the University of Michigan Library -- Government Gazettes Online points users to links for government gazettes from around the world.

Recommended Resource: OceanPortal

Ocean Portal is a high-level directory of Ocean Data and Information related web sites. Its objective is to help scientists and other ocean experts in locating such data & information. The site is created by the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, a division of UNESCO. The database is keyword searchable and browsable, and meta-data for each entry (title, description, subject categories) aid retrieval.

Recommended Resource: Who2

Who2 is a free web site provides one-click access to basic information about famous people. Writer, editor, and Jeopardy award winner Fritz Holznagel and former Yahoo! Life editor Paul Hehn are behind the site, creating brief fact-based biographies plus a few carefully chosen links for followup information. The site is free of editorial ads but is supported by ad content in the margins, and an optional search feature catapults users to AskJeeves from the bottom of each page.

United Nations Research Guide

Spotted on Resourceshelf:

(from the guide home page) "This guide is designed for researchers and information professionals with an interest in United Nations documentation. It presents an overview of the various types of documents and publications issued by the Organization (e.g, reports, resolutions, meeting records, sales publications, press releases) and gives guidance on how to work with them. The Research Guide also provides information on actions taken by the General Assembly as well as the Security Council and introduces researchers to major fields of UN activities: human rights, international law, and peacekeeping."

Finding Declassified US Documents

Spotted on Infomine, Declassified Government Documents is a handy online primer to the classification of US government materials. From the Infomine entry, "... Access to electronic records, national archives, presidential libraries, Central and East European archives are all discussed. There are finding aids with accompanying analysis and description as well as close to thirty links to relevant material." The site is produced by the Doe & Moffitt Libraries, University of California at Berkeley.

ConsumerWebWatch weighs in on online lawyer directories

A newly released report, Law and Disorder: The Complicated Online Search for Lawyers, evaluates several lawyer directories online and, as expected, finds some are better than others. From the abstract:

"Consumers searching for a local lawyer may find little more than advertising-based listings and nothing resembling thoughtful advice. Some sites, like FindLaw.com, are legitimate, ad-supported directories. But others, such as TheBestLegalServices.com, collect personal information and fail to disclose who they are or where they're sending the data. The result can be unwanted phone or e-mail contact from any number of law firms, and with no way to stop it."

Recommended Resource: The Memory Hole

Spotted on Informine, the Memory Hole site exists to preserve and spread material that is in
danger of being lost, is hard to find, or is not widely known. Unlike the Wayback Machine/Internet Archive, which seeks to capture web information of all kinds at various points in time, the Memory Hole emphasizes preservation of "things that we're not supposed to know (or that we're supposed to forget)."

This site could be useful in providing examples of materials deliberately pulled off the Internet for reasons of security or public relations. Searchers will be required to perform their due diligence in testing and evaluating materials sited, as this site has a decided bias. Note to international searchers: the materials is predominantly of US interest.

Recommended Resource: HuRiSearch

HuRiSearch, the Human Rights Search Engine, is a searchable database of over 1300 human rights sites in 58 languages.

The site is sponsored by HREA, the Human Rights Education Associates, an international organisation that supports training, education, and community-building in the area of human rights.

The site uses FAST technology (which formerly powered the Alltheweb.com search engine until it was replaced by Yahoo's) to power its site search. FAST's technology enables the use of double quotations to encapsulate phrases, and enables users to subsequently narrow their search by either doc type (e.g. pdf), or size of file. The wildcard symbol * is supported, but only at the end of words (e.g. countr*). Abbreviated help is available in the help files associated with the search interface. Overall, this is a high-quality, user-friendly site that can be a helpful alternative to general search engines for finding information resources in this field.

New and Improved US Blue Pages

The US Federal Government has made some improvements to the Blue Pages web site. Easy drop down menus permit guided state, city, and agency searching; an employee directory is also provided.

Recommended Resource: Library Research Service - A Portal for Library-Related Statistics and Research

The Library Research Service provides library professionals, educators, public officials, and the media with research and statistics about libraries. The service is a unit of the Colorado State Library and the Colorado Department of Education and operates in partnership with the Library and Information Science (LIS) Program, College of Education, University of Denver.

From the site: "LRS.org provides online access to research and statistics about academic, public, and school libraries in Colorado and beyond. For each type of library, it provides statistics for Colorado, other states, and the nation. The website also provides access to two types of reports: FAST FACTS, one- to three-page issue papers on current topics and trends facing libraries that are published once or twice a month; and A CLOSER LOOK reports, more in-depth analyses resulting from major LRS research projects that are published two or three times a year. In addition, the site provides links to research and statistics on specific library topics—such as materials prices, public opinion about libraries, and library technology—and links to dynamic tools that assist users in making sense of library statistics—such as peer comparison tools and calculators that adjust dollar figures for inflation over time or cost-of-living differences from place to place. Contact information for other organizations involved in library research and statistics and key individuals in those organizations is also provided."

Bibliography of Legal Literature on Same Sex Marriage

Paul Axel-Lute of Rutgers University Law Library has compiled an outstanding bibliography of legal resources on same-sex marriage. In addition to web based resources and book citations, Axel-Lute includes lists of articles that debate both sides of the issue; links to key state legislation or rulings; and legal information from several other countries that have recent rulings on same-sex unions. (Spotted on Resourceshelf.com)

Internet Resources for Non-Profit Organizations

In the February 2004 issue of Searcher, Hazel Cameron, a librarian at Western Washington University, has contributed an excellent review essay on web resources related to the not-for-profit sector.

Hot Paper Topics

Hot Paper Topics is a great little site to help writers quickly find high quality pre-selected resources on about 30 different term paper topics. For each topic, librarians at St. Ambrose University's O'Keefe Library select and briefly annotate a handful of high quality free web resources. Topics covered are typical of late high school/college assignments and include subjects such as censorship, attacks on America, same-sex marriage, and welfare reform. The site also links to other lists of "hot topic" link lists on the web.

Sourcing US Laws and Government Documents

In the Winter 2004 issue of the SLA Courier, Stephanie Blundell of AIC Investment Services has contributed a handy overview and link list of major starter sites for finding US government documents, including treaties, regulations, federal and state legislation, and related search tools. Available at the Courier web site or in PDF.

Global Resources for Forest Information

Roger Mills, a librarian at Oxford University, has contributed an excellent review article on forest information resources in Issue 152 (February 2004) of FreePint.

Flags of the World

Spotted on Infomine's Alert Service, Flags of the World website "contains 20,000 pages of information about flags and 37,000 images of flags... Also included are flags for militaries, organizations, religious groups, cultural groups and fictional flags. There is also a glossary of vexillology terms, a bibliography, information on flag traditions, and links to related sites." (quoted information extracted from Informine Alert Service)

Handy Audio and Video Search Tools from FaganFinder

Michael Fagan, a university student in Ontario, is the creator of several meta-search finding tools, part of his FaganFinder web site. (See my comments on his Image Finder). I've always liked his approach to meta-searching (first pick, then search) even though I often have quibbles with his selection of resources included. Fagan reports that he recently added sixteen new resources to his Audio and Music Search Engines section, and fourteennew resources to the Movie and Video Search Tools section.

Hundreds of University Policy Handbooks

Spotted on Research Buzz, the University Policy Handbook Index is a searchable collection of 950 policy handbooks from 691 universities and colleges in the U.S. This site will be particularly valuable to human resources professionals, policymakers, and contract negotiators.

Dictionary of Canadian Biography

A major effort to increase access to an important historical resource, the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online provides access to the fourteen volumes of the print version of the Dictionary of Canadian Biography.

The first phase [of the Dictionary Online] presents persons who died between the years 1000 and 1920 or whose last known date of activity falls within these years. According to the supporting materials, biographies are fully searchable by keyword and volumes 2, 4-8, and 11-14 are accessible by identity/profession and volumes 2, 5-8, and 11-14 are accessible by geographic region. In addition to the basic html version, a Flash-enhanced version is also available from the main page.

Recommended Resource: RePEc [Research Papers in Economics]

Part of the SOCIG project, RePec is "a collaborative effort of over 100 volunteers in 41 countries to enhance the dissemination of research in economics. The heart of the project is a decentralized database of working papers, journal articles and software components. Any institution is welcome to join in contributing its research materials.

"All RePEc material is freely available. Please note that RePEc does not contain full-text journal articles; RePEc services provide links to many full text articles, but you may need a personal or institutional subscription to follow those links.

"The RePEc database holds over 209,000 items of interest, over 117,000 of which are available online: 120,000 working papers; 88,000 journal articles; 1,000 software components; 600 book and chapter listings; 3,700 author contact and publication listings; 7,300 institutional contact listings."

Worldwide Weather Sites

World Weather Information Service provides official weather forecasts and climatological information for more than 800 cities worldwide. Why continue using commercial weather services when this handy from-the-source site is almost as easy?

Recommended Resource: CensusFinder

Spotted on the Toronto SLA resource list: Censusfinder is a meta-site of over 18,000 links to many sources of census records.

Recommended Resource: Consumer Search

Spotted on Resourceshelf.com, this is a portal site for consumer product reviews available on the web. In addition to linking to reviewing sources, Consumer Search also conducts reviews of the reviews, adding its editors own views on review quality and reliability. There are no apparent editorial relationships with the review sources that are covered. (If there were, the content would be suspect. The site generates revenue from ad placements and linkages to comparison pricing databases.) A worthwhile addition to consumer resource link lists.

Interesting Research Sites from INFOMINE's latest updates

Some interesting and substantial web resources gleaned from the last few issues of InfoMine's Alert Service:

IDEAS is a central index of over 200,000 bibliographic citations (100,000 in full text, downloadable!) in economics research.

Business Ethics in the Movies is a small database of approximately 80 movies that portray some aspect of business ethics.

Human Rights Internet: a clearinghouse of human rights information worldwide. Includes news, reports, articles, directories of human rights organizations and more.

Ethics Resources on the Web

Sharon Stoerger of the University of Illinois maintains an excellent series of link lists on a variety of ethics topics at http://www.web-miner.com/ethicsindex.htm.

As the new school year kicks in, SiteLines readers will be particularly interested in her resources on plagiarism. The list includes links to copyright issues, sites for instructors and students, case studies (great for teaching!) buy-a-term-paper sites, and a nifty set of plagiarism detection tools -- which includes Google!

5 Favorites for FreePint

FreePint, a British web zine for librarians and other serious business researchers, has a monthly feature called "My Favorite Tipples" where guest writers contribute 5 of their favorite web search resources. Read my list in the latest issue of FreePint.

Selecting Web Sites for “Beyond Google” Resource Discovery

You can read my latest article for the July 21 issue of LLRX.com, Selecting Web Sites for “Beyond Google” Resource Discovery.

One-stop shopping for online books

Spotted on Marylaine Block's Neat New Stuff I Found on the Net: Addall.com is a meta-bookstore search tool that allows you to price-compare a book across more than 40 online bookstores, including all the major stores and several out-of-print sources.

The search tool is fairly rudimentary (title, author, ISBN, keyword), but good enough if you're searching for a known item. You can limit to those stores that ship to a particular country, and specify a pricing currency for display. A memo option allows you to retain a temporary note of the items/bookstore selected while you keep searching.

Recommended Resource: History Guide

Another model meta-site, the History Guide is a cooperative project of 9 German research institutes and library partners. This meta-index connects users to over 3000 scholarly relevant web links in history. Users can browse by region, time period, or general subject area. Virtual Libraries and Source Materials links to reference tools, discussion lists, free electronic journals and other meta-sites. Organizations and Institutions links to institutes, associations, universities and libraries. A my.historyguide is in the works, which will enable some personalization features.

New Resource: Conflict Resolution Links

Spotted on Librarians Index to the Internet: CRInfo is a comprehensive gateway to conflict resolution resources. The site permits users to search or browse more than 20,000 links to Web, print, and organizational resources in the conflict resolution field. This free service is funded by the the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and maintained by researchers at the Conflict Research Consortium at the University of Colorado.

Search Engine Position Analyzer - A Tool for Web Trainers

A search engine position analyzer enables you to check to see if a particular web address would have been displayed in the first few pages of search results (the only ones most people look at) if you searched using selected keywords.

This type of tool can be of great benefit to those who teach web searching. A position analyzer provides an easy way to discover if an allegedly "invisible" web search result would have come up in a typical keyword search of a major search engine. I often use them to test my class examples.

Search engine position analyzers are employed by search engine optimizers to check relative positions of a client's site. There are several professional-level SE position analyzers but I came across a free one that worked reasonably well in several tests that I conducted. The Search Engine Position Analyzer Script enables users to enter a URL, then enter the keyword(s) that would be searched. Check up to 7 search tools to test, and the analyzer returns information indicating if the URL would turn up in the first 50 results for that keyword search. The analyzer also links directly to the source search tool's results, so you can check the hit list to make sure.

Please note that during my tests, some of the listed search tools did not deliver results properly, indicating that the script may be somewhat out of date. (I attempted to contact the script's author without success.) The script's links to Google, Hotbot, and Altavista worked properly, with Hotbot defaulting to AlltheWeb's results. The script linked incorrectly to or returned no sites from Excite, Infoseek (now Disney's Go.com) and Lycos. Although it also linked to Magellan, that site no longer exists.

JISC Resource Guides

JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) is a cooperative body of UK higher education stakeholders. JISC promotes and sponsors technology projects related to teaching, learning, research and administration in the United Kingdom. Today JISC announced seven subject based Resource Guides in the following areas:

* Arts and Humanities
* Engineering, Mathematics and Computing
* Geography and the Environment
* Health and Life Sciences
* Hospitality, Leisure, Sports and Tourism
* Physical Sciences
* Social Sciences

The JISC Resource Guides are designed "to make life easier for staff and students in higher education by guiding them to key quality resources in the their subject area." I liked the way the guides captured the most essential information sources on broad topics. Readers should note that many entries in the guides represent licensed proprietary databases and journal indexes which may not be available to all.

More information and links to the guides at http://www.jisc.ac.uk/resourceguides/

Meta-Search Template for Images

Michael Fagan is an Ontario high school student and creator of FaganFinder, a search meta-resource consisting of several all-in-one pages that permit keyword searching for various categories of materials. One of the most useful parts of FaganFinder is the Image Search Engines page, which enables users to conduct off-the-page keyword searching of over 40 image databases. Just check the radio button of the source you want to search, then type in your keyword(s) and search.

I tried searching "superman" off Fagan's page for about 2 minutes (I timed myself) and came up with several good-enough links to make my time well spent.

I'm not usually a fan of secondary-source search templates ("secondary source" in this case means one site (e.g. FaganFinder) providing a keyword search link to a second site (e.g. Google Image Search) which is the actual "primary" source of the database). Much can go wrong with secondary-source programming: you're entrusting the search to a third party who may not instantly update the search link when it changes. As a result, your search may incorrectly produce low or zero results In addition, secondary-source search templates may not contain all the search options of the primary search page, which could mean more low/zero results.

But with those caveats, this little tool is a handy way to quickly check many sources of pictures and icons.

Librarians in the Movies

Martin Raish, Director of the library at BYU-Idaho, keeps a list. Two choices here: fuel your firey rage against the persistence of librarian stereotypes, or just enjoy it. Shhhh....

Comments on AskJeeves' Redesign

AskJeeves.com redesign presents a cleaner, whiter interface, with image, news and shopping search options. Initial results are identical to Teoma (which is owned by AskJeeves) but lack Teoma's Related Search links and helpful sidebar to subject portals. It's these "subject specific popularity" algorithms that make Teoma an interesting Google alternative. (See my posting Subject-Specific Popularity -- Teoma's Magic Bullet? for more info on this feature.)

Nothing in the redesign changes my resistance to including AskJeeves in a serious web searcher's toolbox. If you want to keyword-search the web for information, Teoma is a better choice than AskJeeves. For images, check out some of the resources reviewed in Review of Image Search Tools.

AskJeeves for Kids remains a good quality choice for kid-friendly sites, as it lacks some of the advertising gimmickry that seems to infect most commercial web search tools aimed at adults.

Tips for Yahoo! Users

Yahoo!'s new look focuses this portal more than ever on white/yellow pages services, shopping, and searching. Serious web users who still rely on Yahoo! for its information sources are probably better served by starting at Yahoo's directory page rather than the cluttered main Yahoo page.

For web site selectors who are interested in finding new resources, the Yahoo directory page has handy links to resources added to the directory during the past week by Yahoo's staff . A quick view of these What's New lists shows that Yahoo! still favors business sites: the vast majority of added resources fall into either the business or regional (local business) categories.

Sites for Lefties

When my dentist told me that she had to specially equip her entire office -- at some considerable cost -- to accommodate her lefthandedness, it struck me that there must be an entire lefthanded world out there -- of implements just for lefties. Sure enough, there is, and here are a few ineresting sites...

Rosemary West's Left-Handed World contains plenty of information and trivia on left-handedness. Anything Left-Handed and The Left Hand are both shopping sites for lefties.

Disaster-Related Web Sites

Concerned about floods, terrorism, health scares? Or are you serving customers with disaster-related questions? Be sure to check out CBS NEWS Disasterlinks.net , a compilation of links to dozens of disaster-related websites.

PC Magazine's Top 100 Web Sites

In the March 25 2003 issue of PC Magazine, "Top 100 Web Sites" features a mix of amusing (All About Hangovers) and baffling site selections. The links in the Computing section are the best -- offering great information and support sites for tech do-it-yourselfers. Keeners can download the entire Top 100 list in a zip file.

Not-for-Profit Web Directories in Trouble

Genie Tyburski's March 5 column in TVC Alert, notes that the very best non-profit web directories like the Internet Public Library are in dire financial straits.

In his article, "Why is the Internet Public Library Broke?", Joseph Janes, one of the original members of the IPL team, explains that even though the project received funding from local and regional sources, "it's not anybody's responsibility to fund a 'public library' for the entire Internet."

How short-sighted. Wonderful resources like these deserve to flourish. Without them, we would be completely captive of search engines, which can only deliver answers to questions that you know how to ask. Good directories enable serendipitous browsing and resource discovery, and nothing can replace them.

Commercializing subject directories hasn't proven to be a reliable survival tactic -- most free commercial web directories now reek of preferential treatment for paying customers. Every search engine except for Google now features pay-for-placement options in search results, and in doing so drives the best content out of sight. I frankly can't imagine what I would do without high quality web directories to find the hidden gems that search engines miss.

Can regional, state, and federal funders find the vision and funds to sustain these unique web directories until they become so well known that their value as essential services will make them politically difficult to shut down?