SOCIAL TECHNOGRAPHICS DATA—WHAT?

Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research has just published his newest Social Technographics data. He divides US online adults into six groups: creators, critics, collectors, joiners, spectators, and inactives. More people are participating—inactives dropped from 44 to 25 percent from 2007. However, there were only relatively small gains in the most active groups: creators up3percent, critics up 12 percent, collectors up 7 percent, and joiners up 10 percent. (Yes, I know those don’t seem to add up—they’re his numbers, not mine.) Nevertheless, it’s an interesting report.

URL: http://blogs.forrester.com/groundswell/2008/10/new-2008-social.html

RAND RADIUS R&D DATABASE, PART 2

I got my password for RaDiUS and did a quick search so I can tell you how it works. I entered the term “library” and got 1974 hits just for fiscal year 2006! They were listed by federal organization: the most were for Health and Human Services with over 1200. I chose one from the US Department of Agriculture.

What was in the record? I won’t give you the details because there are security issues, but it had a short description of the project, the department and division sponsoring it, the type of funding mechanism (this one was “extramural/cooperative agreement,” start and end dates, who is doing the work and their location (contact name and phone), “Average FY Federal Funding,” and “FY Actual Funding” (both Federal and non-Federal). It’s not a lot of information, but may be useful to some of your customers.

DATABASE OF (USA) FEDERAL RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

The RAND Corporation and the US National Science Foundation have created RaDiUS, “the most comprehensive database of information on federally-funded research and development.” It is free, but you have to request a password. There is a user handbook and glossary of terms—nice. Note: “Certain records in RaDiUS can only be accessed by employees of agencies of the Federal Government and/or entities that are a direct party to a contract with federal agencies, as defined in FAC 90-40, Part 2.101, or that are participating in formal potential contractor programs sponsored by federal agencies. Access to some of these records is further restricted to only employees of DOD [Department of Defense] and DOD contractors and participants in DOD's Potential Contractor Programs, while access to others is restricted to only employees of DOE [Department of Energy].”

URL: https://radius.rand.org/radius/index.html (be sure to type https)