EIGHTEEN DIFFERENT KINDS OF BLOG POSTS

Ellyssa Kroski [Columbia University, New York, New York, USA] put together a list of kinds of blog posts on her own blog, iLibrarian. She says, “You don’t need to limit yourself to just one, but you can incorporate many different types of posts into your writing. Consider writing one of these types of posts when you’re looking for something new: breaking news, opinion, resource or link list, ideas or inspiration, aggregate lists or guides, review or analysis, humor, how-to or tutorial, interview, case study, snarky or contrarian, diary entry, video, charts and graphs, surveys, or scholarly articles.”

URL: http://oedb.org/blogs/ilibrarian/2007/18-different-kinds-of-blog-posts/

Note: I'm sending this from North Conway, New Hampshire, in the beautiful White Mountains. My husband and I are on a week-long tour of New England. At the end of the week, I will have been in ALL 50 US states!

WELCOME TO DIPNOTE

The US State Department has started a blog, Dipnote (jargon for a diplomatic note—“a formal communication between an ambassador and a minister of the host government or another ambassador.” They hope it “will provide you with a window into the work of the people responsible for our foreign policy, and will give you a chance to be active participants in a community focused on some of the great issues of our world today. With Dipnote we are going to take you behind the scenes at the State Department and bring you closer to the personalities of the Department. We are going to try and break through some of the jargon and talk about how we operate around the world.”

Articles on Dipnote as of today are: The Question of the Week: Who Should be Allowed To Possess Nuclear Technology? UNGA (United Nations General Assembly) 101, Protecting Diplomats at UNGA: The Inside Story, Direct from the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi (India), August in the Big Easy (New Orleans, Louisiana, USA), and an impressive Blog Roll.

It is probably worth checking out this blog just to get information on some the blogs the State Department follows.

URL: http://blogs.state.gov/index.php/P5/

THE SELF-DIRECTED STUDENT TOOLBOX: 100 WEB RESOURCES FOR LIFELONG LEARNERS

The Online Education Database (OEDB) has put together a list of resources for adult learners in the following categories: Adult Education Guides, Audio and Video, Blogs, Career, Disabilities, Distance Education, Finances, Resources, School Skills and Travel. This looks like a great resource if you have customers that are interested in learning on their own.

URL: http://oedb.org/library/beginning-online-learning/

the-self-directed-student-toolbox-100-web-resources-for-lifelong-learners

NEW UK MEDICAL REFERENCE

“GP (General Practice) Notebook is an online encyclopaedia of medicine that provides a trusted immediate reference resource for clinicians in the UK and internationally.” As of mid-September 2007, it had over 26,000 pages of information. You can browse by clinical chapters (29 of them) or use their search facility. I looked up my usual test phrase (peripheral neuropathy) and found possible causes, links to related conditions, and five articles (one from GPnotebook, one from emedicine.com, two from US journals—one scholarly and one from an association, and an international journal). Not much, but often I find nothing, so that’s a good sign. The service is from Oxbridge Solutions Ltd and authors are listed as from Warwick University, Cambridge Institute for Medical Research, Birmingham Children’s Hospital, one medical student, and three physicians in private practice—seems like a good mix to me. This should be a very useful resource when used with other sites like PubMed, etc.

URL: http://gpnotebook.co.uk/

FIND NEWS ARTICLES FOR EUROPE

The tag line for NewsExplorer from Europe Media Monitor (a service of the Joint Research Centre of the European Union) is “daily news analysis, across languages and over time.” You can use it on many levels: just as a search engine—in one of a dozen languages; to locate articles on a specific person; to read articles about the same news event in various languages; or to see a visual representation (news cluster) for a subject on one day. You get variant spellings, photos of a personality, lists of related articles, countries, and organizations. You can even map information on Google Earth and sign up for an RSS feed. It is a fascinating site.

URL: http://press.jrc.it/NewsExplorer/

SEARCH 9 UK NEWSPAPERS AT ONE TIME

Chipwrapper’s “first tool [in Beta] is a Google© Custom Search Engine across nine of the UK’s leading national newspapers: The Daily Express, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, Financial Times, The Guardian, The Independent, The Sun, The Telegraph and The Times.” The simple search page also provides the latest headlines—clickable. The service also provides RSS headline feeds, a rugby edition, and a mobile edition.

URL: http://www.chipwrapper.co.uk/

SOCIAL NETWORKING FOR LAWYERS (USA)

“LawLink is the first online network exclusively for licensed attorneys.” As of mid-September 2007, there were over 1500 members. It is free, of course, and you can put up announcements, personals, job openings, and even a brochure.

URL: http://www.lawlink.com/

RANGANATHAN'S FIVE LAWS REWRITTEN FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

Michael Stephens asked his library students at Dominican University (River Forest, Illinois, USA) how they would rewrite Ranganathan’s Five Laws of Librarianship. Here are the original laws and two newer versions.

Original Laws

1. Books are for use.

2. Every reader his or her book.

3. Every books its reader.

4. Save the time of the reader.

5. The library is a growing organism.

January 2007

1. Collections are for use.

2. Every collection its user.

3. Every user his collection.

4. Save time and energy of user.

5. The library is a growing organism.

September 2007
1. Materials are for use and not just in library
2. Every user his or her material
3. Materials are for all
4. Save the time of the user
5. The library is an evolving organism (catering to the needs of the community)

Fascinating.

(As seen on Michael's blog, Tame the Web.
URL: http://tametheweb.com/

ANOTHER QUESTIONABLY USEFUL RESOURCE

AUSTRALIAN HEALTHCARE NEWSLETTER NOW AVAILABLE TO NON-MEMBERS AS WELL

ARCHI, the Australian Resource Centre for Healthcare Innovations, now allows non-members to access its online newsletter, ARCHI Net News. The current issue has articles on decision-making tools to assist nurses and midwives, why patient flow matters (a master class), and conference papers. Unfortunately, you cannot click through to the full-text of the articles, so I’m not sure that this is anything but a membership promotion effort. But it’s more access than we’ve had before.

URL:
September 2007 issue: http://www.archi.net.au/our_services/nn/2007/sept

ONLINE MEDICAL RESOURCES IN INDIA

QMed Services has put together a “comprehensive Directory of Medical websites from India or created by Indians.” It is updated at least twice a week. Search capability is coming. Categories include: blood banks, books online, chemists (pharmacies), clinics, conferences, diagnostic centers, diseases, doctors, educational institutions, foundations, government research, guidelines, health associations, health care portals, health insurance companies, hospitals, journals, medical equipment companies, medical libraries, pharmaceutical companies, and telemedicine portals. QMed is a Mumbai company providing “information and library services for medicine, online services that include literature searches, customized training programs, information management and web-development.”

URL: http://www.qmedin.com/medsites/

BIOGRAPHIES OF NOTABLE AMERICAN SCIENTISTS

The National Academy of Sciences makes available brief biographies of deceased members of the Academy online. Not all are available yet, but they will be soon. This is a good place for students (and others) to start when looking for information on prominent US scientists.

URL: http://www.nasonline.org/site/PageServer?pagename=MEMOIRS_A

EARTH SCIENCE INFORMATION FROM NASA

The Global Change Master Directory is produced by the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration/Goddard Space Flight Center. It has data on agriculture, atmosphere, biosphere, biology, climate, cryosphere, human dimensions, land, oceans, paleoclimate, the earth, spectra and imagery, sun-earth interactions, and ground water/water quality. You can search by subject, name, date, or location. There are also links to tools for data analysis, models, and metadata handling. If NASA has collected it, you can probably find it here.

URL: http://gcmd.gsfc.nasa.gov/

GREEN RESOURCES—A GOOD EXAMPLE TO FOLLOW

The King County Library System (Seattle, Washington, USA) has a great page on their website with lists of “green” resources—on responsible environmentalism—in their collection. Not only is it a good source for collection development, but it is an example that you could follow if your customers are interested in this subject (which they should be). It is divided into books, picture books for children, books for students, periodicals, DVD or videos or kits, and websites.

URL: http://www.kcls.org/research/infogreen/

ALTERNATE WAYS OF LOOKING AT INFORMATION

Information Visualization is a blog from Mohamed Taher of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is new, but has some very interesting posts that may change how you look at—and present—information.

URL: http://akbani.blogspot.com

INFORMATION ON RARE MEDICAL DISORDERS

The National Organization for Rare Disorders makes their database of over 1150 diseases available free on their website, as well as lists of over 2000 related organizations and other useful links. Reports in the database include symptoms, causes, related disorders, treatment, research, and organizations. New is an online community for patients, families, and caregivers. Specialized, but great resources if you need them.

URL: http://www.nord-rdb.com

FREE (US) PUBLIC RECORDS

The people from Facts on Demand have links to sites with free access to state, county, city, federal, court, and military records in the USA and some records in Canada and elsewhere. There are also links to for fee records vendors and other related resources. You can even sign up for a free monthly electronic newsletter, Public Record Update. Nice site.

URL: http://brbpub.com/pubrecsites.asp?h=1

LIBRARIANS IMPROVE RETURN ON INVESTMENT

"New report from Outsell confirms what librarians knew all along. "

This was the subtitle of an article by Daniel Griffin about a new Outsell report, Information Management 2.0 Advances Collaboration, Communication and Knowledge Management, by Joanne Lustig, It is a follow-up to their earlier our report, Information Management Best Practices: Enterprise 2.0 and is available as a PDF download for US$395.00.

The report “showed that on average, information end-users cut the amount of time they spent on tasks by nine hours for each session and also saved over $2,000 in costs. According to the report, two-thirds of respondents say that the enterprise library resources assisted in making a significant decision. …the most significant amount was in the corporate and government funded sectors. The greatest financial savings came from the corporate world with direct costs of information saving a $3,107 for each use, government users reported a saving of $2,575.” It also showed that libraries in the corporate world generated [an average of] US$6570 in revenue.

URLs:
Griffin’s article in Information World Review, http://www.iwr.co.uk/information-world-review/news/
2197686/organisations-access-enterprise

To order the Outsell report:
http://www.outsellinc.com/store/products/523?refid=home

THE FIVE TYPES OF LIBRARY NEWS STORIES

As reported on her blog, The Eclectic Librarian, Anna Creech [Central Washington University, Ellensburg, USA] has determined that there are five types of general news articles about librarians:

1. Librarians are hip. No, really! That stereotype thing is so last week.
2. Librarians are awesome! Look at all the cool stuff they do. No one appreciates them as much as they should.
3. Gasp! A librarian did [insert act of bravery or indecency]!
4. OH NOES! There aren’t enough librarians!
5. OH NOES! There aren’t enough librarian jobs!

My comment: isn’t it time to get rid of numbers 4 and 5 and make sure there are more of number 2?!

URL: http://www.eclecticlibrarian.net/blog/archives/000851.html

MANAGEMENT PORTAL

Value Based Management.net bills itself as “a management portal specifically aimed at the information needs of senior executives with an interest in value creation, managing for value and valuation.” It looks to have links to just about every management method, model, theory, or buzzword you could ever need. The list of links itself takes three pages to print out. You can browse alphabetically or by these categories: articles, books, glossary, leaders, and organizations. It is edited by Jaap de Jonge, a Dutch consultant.

URL: http://www.valuebasedmanagement.net

AUSTRALIAN PATENTS NOW SEARCHABLE

Patent Lens now includes Australian Granted Patents, searchable and full-text, in addition to the US and European ones already available. The service provides free PDF downloads. CAMBRIA in Canberra, ACT, Australia produces Patent Lens, as well as other “molecular enabling technologies with a focus on their use by disadvantaged communities, for example, in international agriculture and public health.”

URL: http://www.patentlens.net

GLOBAL SCIENCE GATEWAY

WorldWideScience.org “is a global science gateway—accelerating discovery and progress through a multilateral partnership to enable federated searching of national and international scientific databases.” It is a project of the US Office of Scientific and Technical Information, Department of Energy. The 18 databases on the system now represent 11 countries: African Journal Online (South Africa), Article@INIST (France), Australian Antarctic Data Centre, CISTI (Canada), CSIR Research Space (South Africa), Defence Research and Development (Canada), DEFF Global E-Prints and Research Database (Denmark), Electronic Table of Contents (UK), J-EAST, J-STAGE, J-STORE (Japan), NARCIS (Netherlands), Science.org (USA), Scientific Electronic Library Online (Brazil), Transactions and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New Zealand 1868-1961, UK PubMed Central, and Vascoda (Germany).

URL: http://worldwidescience.org

INTERESTING, NON-ESSENTIAL, WEBSITES

Official Guide to ABA-Approved Law Schools
The American Bar Association-Law School Admission Council have a searchable database of law schools online. You can search by area, keyword, or alphabetically. Information includes data on tuition, rate of bar passage, employment grants, faculty size, and more. There are also articles with general information about legal education: fields of law, preparing for law school, the admission process, minorities, financing, finding a job, post-JD programs, and other resources.

URL: http://officialguide.lsac.org/

ChemSpider
ChemSpider is a social community for chemists, with a webzine, a blog, a searchable archive of full-text articles and featuring “the fastest chemical structure searches available online.” It is a product of ChemZoo, North Carolina. There’s not that much here, but your chemists may be interested in it.

URL: http://www.chemspider.com

Free Full Text
FreeFullText.com “provides links to the full-text content of over 7000 scholarly periodicals that anyone may access online for free.” You should have the citation at hand for best searching. Not all the links are to free articles, however—they admit this on the first page! The list of journals beginning with “library” is meager: Libraries and Culture, Library and Archival Security, Library Collections, Accquisitions, and Technical Services, Library and Information Science Research, Library Philosophy and Practice, and Libres: Library and Information Science Research Electronic Journal. I would expect to find more. It is heavy on medical texts, so librarianship may not be a primary focus. But you may find what you are looking for; although there are other ways to accomplish the same thing. I don’t really think this lives up to its slogan, “A supplement to every library catalogue on the planet!” From Scientific Reference Resources, Davis, California, USA.

URL: http://freefulltext.com/

Factbites: “Where results make sense”
Factbites is a product of Rapid Intelligence, a content technology company in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It bills itself as offering “users meaningful, relevant sentences from every site in the search results…you can often gain a great deal of factual information on a topic without ever having to leave the search page!” (They like exclamation points!) I put in “libraries” and got back three pages including Library Journal, USA Today, Wikipedia, the Hirons Library (), DBU Library (), WWW Virtual Library, Texas State Library, Bodleian Library, Boston Public Library, American Library Association, various blogs, freefind.com, National Library of Medicine, Thinkquest.com, The British Library, and the library of the London Stock Exchange. Interesting results, but I don’t know how useful they are. It’s in beta, but has possibilities, I suppose. You’ll have to play with it and decide for yourself.

URL http://www.factbites.com/

TWO REINCARNATIONS OF OLD LAW BLOGS

Legal Scholarship Blog is the new name for the Legal Conference Watch. tracks workshops and conferences and calls for papers in the field of law all over the world. It comes from the University of Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania) School of Law and the University of Washington School of Law.

URL: http://legalscholarshipblog.com/

nota bibliothecae is “the new voice of the Zimmerman Law Library (University of Dayton, Ohio). While this re-launch of our blog retains the overarching concept of social justice from our last incarnation (Vox Bibliothecae), we look forward to incorporating other subjects and viewpoints that relate to contemporary cultural and legal issues.”

URL: http://notabibliothecae.blogspot.com/

LIBRARIAN BLOGGERS--A TOP 25 LIST

Online Education Database created a top 25 librarian bloggers list, “using objective data from reliable sources [to show] which blogs are the most popular, according to visitor traffic and site backlinks. To begin, we found a set of Web sites that met a certain criteria. To become a member of the set of Web sites to be ranked, a Web site must, as of August 14, 2007: be listed on the DMOZ page Library and Information Science: Weblogs and be a blog written by a librarian; or be listed in the top 200 results for a Google search for ‘librarian blog’ and be primarily a blog site; and not be hosted on a subdomain of a domain whose purpose is not primarily related to a blog written by a librarian.To this end, we used data for these four metrics to calculate the rankings: Google PageRank, Alexa Rank (toolbar users), Technorati Authority, and Bloglines Subscribers.”

This methodology is far from perfect. What about those using Google Reader (like me), or not using the Alexa toolbar (whatever that is)? And the list of blogs is missing some important ones, like Baby Boomer Librarian, David Lee King, Federal Info Pro, InfoBuzzz, It’s all good, Librarian of Fortune, Librarians Matter, Library Boy, Library Garden, Library Marketing: Thinking Outside the Book, Library Revolution, LibraryCrunch, Musings of a Medical Librarian Maven, Out of the Jungle, Rambling Librarian: Incidental Thoughts of a Singapore Liblograrian, Shelved in the W’s, Stephen’s Lighthouse, Strategic Librarian, Tame the Web, The Corporate Librarian, The Kept-Up Academic Librarian, The Liminal Librarian, and Young Librarian. (And these are just the ones I follow that weren’t on their list.)

But, it’s nice to be included.

See the raw scores for all 55 blogs in their set—including OPL Plus—at

http://oedb.org/library/features/top-25-librarian-bloggers-by-the-numbers

Top 25:

1. librarian.net

2. The Shifted Librarian

3. Librarian in Black

4. Free Range Librarian

5. Law Librarian Blog

6. A Librarian’s Guide to Etiquette

7. The Travelin’ Library

8. Walt [Crawford] at Random

9. Filipino Librarian

10. h20boro lib blog

11. InfoTangle

12. The Ubiquitous Librarian

13. Confessions of a Science Librarian

14. Libraryman

15. Google Librarian Centrral

16. The Days &Nights of the Lipstick Librarian

17. Vancouver Law Librarian Blog

18. Annoyed Librarian

19. Librarian (Kathleen de la Pena Cook)

20. Connie Crosby

21. The Handheld Librarian

22. The Other Librarian

23. Alternative Teen Services

24. Jason the Content Librarian

25. The Krafty Librarian

A NEW SONG FOR THE MODERN LIBRARIAN

There is a great new librarian song, Addy Will Know, by the indie pop band SNMNMNM. “Serving as a musical tribute to the modern librarian, it is about a real librarian [related to one of the band members] who leads a lost patron to the four books he is looking for. The names of the books are never mentioned, but as a kind of puzzle, the song itself includes call numbers that correspond to the books hinted at in the verses.”

The band invites you to participate in this phenomenon.

“Record yourself singing the song at work or school, upload your video to sendspace or yousendit then email us (snmnmnm@gmail.com, with subject as Addy+Will+Know+-+Video+Submissions) the link. We will edit your video with all the others, creating a video collage of modern librarians.

“Be one of the first ten librarians to identify the books of the call numbers mentioned in the song and you will win a copy of the new cd Crawl Inside Your Head.” Winners’ names will be posted on the wiki.

URL:

download the song at http://addywillknow.pbwiki.com/Addy+Will+Know+-+Song+Page

Addy wiki: http://addywillknow.pbwiki.com/
Sendspace: http://www.sendspace.com/

Yousendit: http://www.yousendit.com/

Contest rules: http://addywillknow.pbwiki.com/Addy+Will+Know+-+Contest+Rules

WELCOME TO THE LIBRARY VIDEO

Jönköping University, Sweden, has a great two-minute welcome video introduction to their library. It is in Swedish, but there are English subtitles. While you’re there, check out their other videos: loans and library cards, searching for information, and the library on your computer.

URL: http://www.bibl.hj.se/filmer/eng/valkommen/

PUBMED TUTORIAL MOVED

The PubMed Tutorial has moved to http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/disted/pubmedtutorial/ . Please update your links. We apologize for the inconvenience.