22 Figure 2.2 Search public records nationwide. and get free results at KnowX.com. 46 Figure 3.3 Get to know the background of the great stories of. today and the recent past at Poynter.
The Magic Answer Machine
Doesn't this implicitly mean that we are little more than the waiters of the World Wide Web. As the technology sector of the economy regains strength, more electronic resources are coming online.
Ready Reference on the Web
Resources for Patrons
Searching and Metasearching the Internet
Google's Local Search (http://local.google.com/lochp) will graphically identify categories of businesses in the user-specified environment for Canada, the US and the UK. For more fun, PC users can download "Google Earth", the updated and expanded version of Keyhole 3D satellite imagery acquisition.
Beyond Google: Other Search Engines and Web Directories
The portal page of Yahoo! is packed with news, advertisements and links to other services. If you can't find what you're looking for on the original site, go to the Google page.
Metasearch Sites
Still, wouldn't it be nice if you could search them all at once, without having to jump from portal to portal. Vivisimo searches multiple engines at once, then delivers search results that are the cream of the crop.
Search the Invisible Web
Google Scholar fine peer-reviewed journals, books, abstracts, preprints, theses and technical reports – in other words, scientific information available across the web from all research areas. Relevance ranking on Google Scholar takes into account not only the full text of each piece, but also how often it has been cited in academic literature.
Browser Searchbots for the Desktop
Keeping Up with the Engines
Searching Rule of Thumb
Using the Web to Find People
What kind of information is out there, where do you get it and how much does it cost. Still, that doesn't mean all our personal information just hangs around there.
Free Telephone and Address Directories
Mail Search
Most of the phone book sites also offer e-mail address searches; a few directories and machines search only for e-mail addresses. Of course, the best way to get someone's email address is to just call the person and ask.
Finding Family
Although RootsWeb.com is a commercial service, it offers this portal for searching the Social Security Death Index (SSDI) for free. The SSDI database includes deceased people who lived after the inauguration of Social Security in the 1930s and earned benefits.
Public Records
Based in Provo, Utah, this commercial website owns Ancestry.com, RootsWeb.com, Genealogy.com and Ancestry.co.uk. It offers a place to build your own family website for annual fees ranging from $30 to $210.
Background Checks that Cost Money
ChoicePoint is one of the nation's largest and most comprehensive sources of public record information for businesses and government. For fees ranging from $10 to $60, you can find addresses, phone numbers, and background check information for anyone.
Finding the Famous
Heads of State and Cabinet Members of Foreign Governments www.odci.gov/cia/publications/chiefs/index.html. Trust the CIA, which maintains this page, to keep you updated on the heads of state.
Who’s Behind that Web Page?
InterNIC is an ICANN service that registers companies that act as domain registrars. This domain name registration search engine finds the appropriate registrar for the URL you're looking for, then searches that registrar's database for the correct information.
Protecting Your Privacy
Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are!
News on the Net
Providing new information and change is one of the things the Web does best. Knowing what's going on in the world can make a big difference to our customers.
Web News Metaportals
Indeed, one of the great joys of being an information professional is sneaking a peak at the CNN site (www.cnn.com) several times a day and passing it off as research. Interestingly, much of the information from international streams such as the Xinhua news agency (www.xinhuanet.com or, in English, www.chinaview.cn) comes from the People's Republic of China.
Breaking News
I'm like a regular reporter." A newspaper that regularly reviews and serves up news headlines before the mainstream media does. For example, the Travel section (www.usatoday. com/travel/front.htm) offers a flight tracker and up-to-date.
Streaming News
Blogs
An example is The Note, a summary of morning news on politics from ABC News.com (http://abcnews.go. com/sections/politics/TheNote/TheNote.html). Many blogs also have a "blogroll", that is, a list of links to other blogs that the author prefers.
Choose Your News
News Aggregator Sites
The following web applications will keep the news out of your computer and onto the Internet, making it accessible from wherever you access the web. If you find an article you want to keep, you can "clip" it, that is, save it somewhere to read it again later or send it to others.
Desktop News Readers
It will set you back $40, but it gives users a familiar three-panel interface similar to Apple Mail and Outlook Express.
Find RSS Feeds
News Search Engines
Directories of Online Newspapers and Archives
Eric Meyer of NewsLink Associates manages this comprehensive directory of links to media with corresponding web pages. Come here to find links to over 4,000 US newspapers and 2,000 from other parts of the world.
News Magazines
S. News Online
News Evaluation
The Center for Media and Public Affairs maintains this page, designed to "watch the media on behalf of news consumers." The center aims to hold journalists to professional standards of fairness and accuracy. The media channel collects lively writings from around the world that try to keep journalists honest.
News of the Past
S. News Archives on the Web
Volunteers from the Association of Special Libraries keep those windows clean by maintaining a directory of links to the U.S. David Shedden writes in the Poynter Institute's News Links column, which compiles valuable Web resources on current and past topics. news since 1995.
All the News that Fits the Web
Quality Reference
Resources on the Web
Index to the Internet provides links to more than 14,000 Internet resources in subject areas maintained by more than 100 librarian indexers. Index to the Internet also offers an update service, with new discoveries every week.
Single Subject Portals
His happiness was to create this pretty damn comprehensive collection of links on the web, "rationally indexed". Drudge writes, “Refdesk.com's database is three-tiered: fast, studied, and deep. Research, and "My Facts Page". For a more studied approach: "My virtual newspaper" and "My search engines". For deep exploration: “My virtual encyclopedia” with 50 volumes of indexed topics.” Plus, the whole thing is searchable.
Humanities
Social Sciences
Librarians and technologists from the Institute for Learning and Research Technology at the University of Bristol, UK The University of Amsterdam hosts this "comprehensive list of all the sociological resources on the Internet." Come here to browse the "world stage of the social sciences".
Governments and Statistics
This searchable gateway to all psychological issues includes access to professional information, information about psychology students, and information about mental health topics designed for the public. The Federal Interagency Council on Statistical Policy maintains this site to provide easy access to the full range of statistics and information produced by these agencies for public use.
Economics and Business
FindLaw provides an extensive full-text searchable database of Court rulings up to 1893 (www.findlaw.com/casecode/supreme.html). His idea is to spread legal knowledge in a Figure 4.2 Search for quality legal resources at FindLaw.com.
Science and Engineering
Medicine
Eric Rumsey compiled this page for the Hardin Library for Health Sciences at the University of Iowa. Hardin MD also links to medical photos, so users can see what a lone brown recluse spider bite looks like, for example.
Guides Aplenty
This directory of quality health resources is the result of a collaborative effort between the Health Sciences Library at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the Committee on Institutional Cooperation. Click on a general disease category to find links to all the major web portal sites that address a problem.
Internet Sites for Kids
At least three dedicated Kids' Path computer terminals serve patrons in each Los Angeles Public Library branch, in addition to the cluster in Central Library. Kids tend to follow the Kids' Path links or use the filtered search engines listed there.
Web Starting Points for Kids
Search Engines for Kids
Homework Help on the Web
My son has to report on Mission San Luis Obispo.” "What good are molds?" Or: "I need exactly 200 pages about Cabeza de Vaca.". What do these parents, or better yet, their children, do about homework when the library is closed?
General Homework Sites
However, some pretty useful and authoritative homework help is out there on the open web if you know where to look. FactMonster has access to all that information through a kid-friendly interface and a homework help center.
Language Arts
Look up a word in the dictionary, then search the thesaurus with just the click of an online button. Schwartz wrote this guide as a student in the Information and Library Studies program at the University of Michigan.
Science
When doctors and nurses get sick, they turn to the Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy as their standard of diagnosis. But the medical terms in regular Merck are often incomprehensible to the layman.
Social Studies and History
Students can visit this site to find information about conditions, diseases, drugs and wellness. Use this site to play with a virtual solar system, make maps of anywhere on Earth, or learn to sail a boat interactively.
Math
Although a commercial destination, this site can be of great help to those with mathematical problems. A nice section here called "Everyday Math" can really save stubborn adults like me who still need a good half hour to remember how to calculate square footage for a home improvement project or how to convert prescription amounts from British to US.
Other Handy Tools
Type
Child’s Play
If, in order to play Donkey Kong, I have to learn how to type, you can bet I will, at least enough to play the game.
Little Guys
Elementary School Kids
Teens
A word of warning: this site is part of the Kaboose Network, an online marketing company.
Protecting Kids
We strongly recommend that you monitor your child's Internet use at home and in the library." The Children's Partnership offers parents clear explanations of the issues surrounding their children's Internet use.
From Soccer Mom to Super Internet Librarian Mom
Visit their "Internet 101" page for tips on how to keep you and your kids safe on the open web. With wireless Internet access on the rise, that day may be just around the corner.
Free Full-Text Resources
The Great Books Movement and the Internet
In any case, it's nice to know that these classics are so freely available on the open web, especially when you consider that the humanities generally get such a short time in the online world. Michael Hart keys with volunteers mainly English-language literature that is unmistakably in the public domain in the United States, that is, published before the mid-1920s.
Handmade or Book Trade?
Directories of Literary Electronic Text Archives
The University of Texas at Austin General Libraries are hot on electronic texts. In addition to providing a gateway to NetLibrary, a commercial e-text provider, this site also links to university-produced materials and online full-text resources.
Online Collections of Literary Electronic Text
Library of Southern Literature, Beginning to 1920." This collection is based on a list of the 100 most important works of Southern literature prepared by the late Robert Bain, professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Perry Willett of Indiana University acts as the general editor of this highly accurate transcription of the works of more than 40 British women writers of the late 19th century.
Individual Authors
East of Web brings us the complete texts of "classic" (read . "old") short stories, as well as new and unpublished ones. Urbina also provides plenty of fabulous supporting material, including an author biography and a.
Poetry
Concordances
Literature in Languages Other than English
You will need to download Greek fonts to view some of this material (see www.perseus.tufts.edu/Help/fonthelp.html). Mac users can use the free "Stuffit Expander" (www.stuffit. com/mac/expander/index.html) to open a new font file.
Contemporary Nonfiction
From Azerbaijan to the United Arab Emirates, visit these studies to learn the history, geography and recent government status of 101 countries. UC Press and the UC Berkeley Library have partnered to publish the full text of nearly 1,400 online editions of modern scholarly works, about 400 of which are available to the general public.
History and Law
Go straight to the source with this collection of international documents "relating to the fields of law, history, economics, politics, diplomacy, and government." Documents are grouped by century. Harry Plantinga, professor of computer science at Calvin College, offers full-text access to "the most important public domain Christian books for theological study and ministry." Some of the works are available in other languages, especially Russian.
Full-Text Articles on the Open Web
Stanford University Libraries is trying to wrest some control over academic publishing from exorbitantly expensive commercial publishers by linking to all the online sites that provide access to full-text scholarly articles for free. In exchange for a free registration, get access to full-text articles with the latest medical news in 25 specialty areas.
Full Up to Here with Full-Text Online?
In this case, Google would have to negotiate with the copyright holder for permission to digitize and display any work that is not in the public domain. At this writing, the legal status of the material in the Google Book Search database has not yet been settled.
Health and Medical Information Online
Even clinical trials with experimental protocols can sweep one completely out of the statistical distribution. Judy Consales, director of the Biomedical Library at the University of California, Los Angeles, agrees.
General Medical Information
Long offers self-diagnostic psychology tests for a modest fee on his sister site MyTherapy.com (www.mytherapy.com/features). The American Academy of Family Physicians (www.aafp.org) offers this searchable directory of consumer health information about the wide variety of conditions and ailments that a family physician may encounter.
Disease Directories
Visit the CDC to learn about emerging infectious diseases, various diseases and conditions, and other health and safety topics. The Incomparable LII brings you this extensive list of links to annotated site selections chosen by librarians.
In-Depth Resources and Literature
Use this site to search not only MEDLINE, but also AIDS Meetings, DIRLINE, OLDMEDLINE, and others.
Other Medical Resources
Find out using the online version of the Merriam-Webster Medical Dictionary, brought to you by Aetna InteliHealth. Visit this page for laboratory test information by disease, test name, or screening population group.
Cancer: What Is It Good For?
The American Cancer Society (ACS) website targets the most common cancers, such as lung, breast and colon. The National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship, a nonprofit advocacy organization, sponsors this portal, which brings together psychosocial resources for cancer patients and their families with links to websites around the world.
Clinical Trials
The section describing clinical trials is very well done and will help any newly diagnosed cancer patient. Query by cancer type, treatment type, clinical trial phase and, most importantly, by geographic location.
Quack Attack
The Health On the Net Foundation (www.hon.ch), a non-profit organization based in Geneva, Switzerland, was established with the support of telemedicine experts and major medical institutions in Europe, Asia and the Americas to build and support an international health and medical community on the Internet and the World Wide Web. The Health On the Net Foundation publishes its Code of Conduct online in 17 languages (www.hon.ch/HONcode/. Conduct.html).
A Long Struggle
The Foundation has developed eight ethical governance principles for healthcare website developers, including the criteria that healthcare professionals provide the website's information and that the website clearly acknowledges the source of funding. Still, good quality current medical information obtained from the web can improve the doctor/patient relationship and make both aware of new life-saving treatments that are becoming available every day.
Minding Your Money on the Web
Financial Portals and Portfolios
This is the online version of Dow Jones & Company and Hearst Communications, Inc. magazine. on "personal business". It offers detailed coverage of financial news and markets, as well as a variety of investment tools. Guests get plenty for free, including general financial and technology news, a global business digest, business school and career building news and tools, a small business portal and, in exchange for free registration, a portfolio tracker.
Business News and Commentary
Get business news and reviews written on site or streaming video or audio on this beautiful news portal. Digital Tool” to read the most useful article of the week from the editor.
Online Resources for Stock Trading
Mutual Funds
Bonds
Simply click on BondsOnline to get education and guidance on making bond investment decisions. Visit BondTalk.com and search for "live talk and analysis of the bond market and economy." This site contains research by Anthony "Tony" J.
Financial Planning
How-To” Sites
Finally, students graduate after learning how to study, track, then buy and sell stocks. This site offers a free set of awesome tutorials (in exchange for signing up) that teach how to manage and then invest our hard-earned dough.
Company Information
If you grow your money north of the border, this is the place for you. This is a great site for information on companies not based in the US, although many U.S.
Fraud Watch
According to CNN, "Enron's collapse left investors burned and thousands of employees out of work with lost retirement savings" ("Explaining the Enron Bankruptcy," http://archives.cnn.com/2002/US/01/12/ . enron . qanda.focus). Bigger than Enron: Questions Investors Need to Ask www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/regulation/.
Free vs. Fee
For example, if you simply want to monitor the daily pulse of your stock holdings, you have your choice of sites - most of which offer direct links to commercial web-based stock trading sites. So if you are a member of the fast disappearing profession, the day trader, you will want to turn to paid services that serve up their stock prices in real time.
Let’s Go Cyber-Shopping
Consumer Advice
However, Consumer Guide has gained a reputation recently, especially in the field of automotive reviews. The website offers this service for free, along with reviews of many other things consumers may want, including electronics and baby gear.
Hunter or Gatherer?
Sites For Gatherers
Simply click on the "Products" icon to bring up a cost comparison grid powered by PriceGrabber.com. To find the best prices on used books, you can't do better than BookFinder.com.
Sites for Hunters
Coupons
In the spirit of saving money by shopping online, let's grab some online coupons before we get started. The company that brings us weekly coupon savings in our Sunday paper and stocks our stores with little red coupon dispensing machines now offers online coupons to print on our computers via a special downloadable "coupon print manager."
Commerce and Security
However, we have all read about credit card data thefts that have occurred recently. In all of my online purchases, I feel fortunate that I have never experienced credit card theft.
All Shopped Out
The Librarian as Information Technician: Working with the
Managing Web-Based E-Mail
To understand the importance of e-mail, we need to look back at the history of the Internet. Fast forward to 1980: The ARPANET was opened to the academic community and is now known as the Internet.
I Want My E-Mail
The mid-1990s saw the creation of POP3 (Post Office Protocol) mail, in which a program on your machine, for example Eudora (www.eudora.com), opens a connection to your ISP, downloads your mail, and then cuts the compound. There remains the possibility that a patron could download a virus through the mail and open it on your hard drive.
Free E-Mail Directories
But, as always, with a tremendous triumph comes other problems - like, for example, trying to release obsessive-compulsive people from your public terminal when their time is up. When you get your public Internet access system in place and things are flowing well, then magic happens.
Quality Free E-Mail
Also, the kind of subtle, relevant advertising that appears on Google is much better than flashing spyware banners. Still, I wouldn't use my Gmail account to send messages that mention something I want to keep private, like medical conditions or matters of the heart, if you get what I mean.
Choosing a Screen Name
Since your screen name is your most important online identity, you may want to avoid the big free services like Hotmail, Yahoo. Once you find a good password, you can pretty much use it for all your free email accounts, or, if you're very security-oriented, you might want to come up with others.
Attach This
