March 18th, 2008 Brian Herzog
In the wake of the recent announcements of companies ditching DRM* as a mechanism to control access to audio files, the New York Times is reporting that Sports Illustrated is opening up access to its entire archive.
The Times did this itself not too long ago, as did Atlantic Monthly, but SI’s project is supposed to go a step further - not just text, but they’re making available their photographs and video and everything. They’re also including a handy search interface that lets people search by athlete, team, coach, year, etc.
Hopefully, more and more periodicals will start making their archives available, too (after all, Information Wants To Be Free). This of course would dramatically change the relationships libraries have with long-time vendors like EBSCO, NewsBank and Proquest, but information is information. If all the information is free, then the real value-added piece becomes the interface.
By the way, I found about this through The Huffington Post. I’ve also read recently about a few more free online resources:
*update: OverDrive just announced (at PLA, anyway) that they, too, are finally moving in the right direction. In June they’ll start offering mp3 files - which, best of all, will be iPod-compatible. And they’ll finally come out with a Mac interface, too. Read the entire announcement [pdf, 70kb].
Tags: archive, archives, free, ipod, libraries, Library, mp3, overdrive, pluc, research, resource, Resources See Also
Posted under Library, Resources | 1 Comment »
March 15th, 2008 Brian Herzog
A patron walked up to the desk and asks for a resource that tells him how the world financial markets are doing.
At first, this seemed like an easy question. But after I thought about it a minute, I realized we don’t have any print resources in the library devoted to world financial markets - just the domestic markets.
So, we tried a few different internet searches, and “global market index” seemed to yield the greatest number of reputable websites, such as:
Plenty of other websites referenced international indices, but I couldn’t tell how reliable they were. Also, some only did currency exchange, but that wasn’t what the patron was after.
The patron was happy with this list of urls, so he jotted them down to bookmark when he got home.
The financial world is still mostly a foggy mystery to me, so every time I do get a question about it, I try to poke around and keep looking until I learn something.
In this case, I soon found myself at the About.com page for Foreign Stock Exchange Quotes. Listed as one of the links on this page was Google Finance, and since I use Yahoo Finance for various things, I thought I’d check out how Google compared.
While searching here, I think it was me using the term “world” that led me to the World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc.’s financial statements. Of course I was curious, so I took a look, and here are some interesting facts from their 2007 annual data:
- revenues: $485.65 million
- expenses: $417.22 million
- net income: $52.14 million
- they paid $24.33 million in taxes
- they also had a line item for “Research & Development” but no monies charged to it
Sadly, the reports weren’t very detailed, so I couldn’t tell how that $417.22 million was spent. Also sadly was their lack of research and development - but at least they had a line item for it. Now this was worth learning, wasn’t it?
Tags: financial, global, index, indexes, indicies, international, libraries, Library, market, markets, money, public, Reference Question, world, wwe See Also
Posted under Library, Reference Question, Resources | 1 Comment »
March 6th, 2008 Brian Herzog
When I use Google to find information, I often use the “site” limiter to improve the returns.
For instance, when looking for information on the new economic stimulus tax rebate thing, a search for “tax rebate site:irs.gov” gives much more direct information than does just searching for “tax rebate.” Which is great if you know the domain to which you’d like to limit your search, but yesterday, I didn’t.
Someone was looking for information on the James Madison dollar coin, and the U.S. Mint website seemed the most logical place to look for it. However, I didn’t know the Mint’s domain name. So before my usual site-specific search, I first searched for “us mint” to get the domain, and then I was going to run a second search limited to that domain.
But Google is one step ahead of me (I don’t know if this is a new feature or if I just never noticed it before): my search for U.S. Mint returned the Mint’s website as the first result, and the listing included a site search built right in to the search result (see picture).
Neat. And it saves me a step. Searching there for “james madison dollar” gave exactly what the patron was looking for as the first result.
I’m generally skeptical of Google as a company for hording private data, but they do have smart people working there.
See Also
Posted under Library, Resources, Technology | 2 Comments »
February 14th, 2008 Brian Herzog
Last week’s Reference Question was about me finding a new source for suggesting good books for patrons - the Mass Book Awards.
Liz’s comment on the post was a good one, and I thought it warranted a bit of research and a full post devoted to answering it. She said:
There are a few websites which allow you to enter some of your favorite bands and it pops out suggestions of similar bands you might like - wouldn’t it be awesome if they had a site like that for books?…
Here are some resources I found that let you search for a book/author you like, and then link from it to similar books:
- WhatShouldIReadNext.com - search for a book to see recommendations
- reader2.com - search for a book to see recommendations; also shows tags associated with each book
- AllReaders.com - search for a title or author, and similar books are listed at the end of each book description; also allows searching by plot, setting, or character
- StoryCode.com - lets you search for a title or author and suggests similar stories (based on user data); also has other features
- LibraryThing.com - offers book suggestions based on user-entered tags; you can also browse tags for books on a certain subject, or use their unsuggester to find books unlike a particular book
- GoodReads.com - seems a lot like LibraryThing, but puts more emphasis on recommendations of people in your friends network rather than cumulative data
- NoveList - the old standby, but you probably need to go through your local library for it
- Amazon.com - it is Amazon, so it’s primary focus is to sell book, not recommend them, but it does offer suggestions based on what people purchase and search by topic (as it were)
There are lots of other sites devoted to book suggestions. A few others I found that didn’t fit above but that are also useful are:
- Listal.com Books - search (hidden in upper right corner) for books and link to others via tags (seems to focus more on social connections)
- FictionFinder from OCLC - offers Subject cloud (like tag cloud) to find similar books; also allows searching, and each book has links to see other books with the same subjects, genres, characters or setting
- Find a Good Book from Hennepin County Library - search for an author to find recommended reading lists where that author’s books appear (plus links to other listings and resources)
- Staff Recommendations from the Skokie Public Library - search for a subject to find books their staff has reviewed and recommends
And here’s a few resources that are list-based - you click the subject you like, and you browse the list of books in that subject:
I’m sure there are tons of others - even my library also has a readers advisory webpage. If I missed one of your favorites, please share it with a comment below.
Tags: advisory, book, Books, libraries, Library, public, reader, readers, readers advisory, reading, recommendations, suggestions See Also
Posted under Books, Library, Resources | 4 Comments »
January 26th, 2008 Brian Herzog
A patron came up to the desk and said:
I keep hearing on the news about other states’ primaries and caucuses. I know it’s for the President, but what’s the big deal? We don’t vote until November, right? What’s the difference between a caucus and a primary? What happens if you don’t win them? Does Massachusetts have one? And I keep hearing good and bad things about all the candidates - who is winning?
I love easy questions like this.
I knew the Massachusetts primary is coming up, so the first thing I wanted to do is search the state’s website for information on that. While doing that, I tried to give a brief description of the whole primary/caucus system: candidates win delegates in each state, who then cast votes in the party conventions to decide who actually runs for President…
By this time I had found a few Massachusetts resources:
- MA Elections Division, which listed the primary’s date (Feb. 5th), as well as lots of information on both state- and national-level elections
- The Voting Process website, which explained how to register, how to apply for an absentee ballot, what do to and where to go on election day, and more
At this point, the patron confessed that she was far more interested in who was winning than in how the process itself worked. A website I found a few weeks ago is perfect to answer this: CNN Election Center 2008.
I like this website for the same reason I don’t like USAToday - it breaks everything down into easy to understand chunks, and does so with lots of colors and graphs. It lists who has won each primary/caucus so far, and how many delegates each candidate has earned.
It also explains the major issues and where each candidate stands, has an easy-to-use calendar for upcoming primaries and caucuses, shows which candidates have dropped out, how much money each candidate has raised and spent, and more.
All in all, it seems like a fairly complete election coverage source. And it satisfied the patron (actually, it outright delighted her to see Ron Paul has won more delegates than Rudy Giuliani even though Giuliani has spent $30.6 million to Paul’s $2.8 million). She wrote down the url and promised to read more about the issues before Feb. 5th.
I was curious, though - even though I think CNN is a reliable source, I also wanted to see what other election coverage and resources were available. I spent some time searching, and here’s what I came up with, broken down by type:
Election News Coverage:
Campaign Finances:
Election/Voting Resources:
Political Parties and National Conventions:
I didn’t bother linking directly to each candidates’ website, because many of the sites above do that. In fact, since they’re all reporting on the same thing, most of the information on these sites is duplicated. I guess the point is to pick at least one resource you trust and stay informed.
2008, campaign, candidates, election, elections, libraries, library, politics, president, presidential, public, question, reference, reference question
Tags: 2008, campaign, candidates, election, elections, libraries, Library, politics, president, presidential, public, question, reference, Reference Question See Also
Posted under Library, Reference Question, Resources | 1 Comment »
