Links from Wikipedia

If you want to see which Wikipedia articles link where - to your website, for example - use the "Search web links" page. You can also use wildcards...by entering "*.usembassy.gov", you'll get a list of articles that link to embassy websites, ordered alphabetically by embassy. Neat!

more PD resources...

See also the Public Diplomacy Council & Public Diplomacy Institute's list of key PD resources, and PDI Director Bruce Gregory's periodically updated (but unfortunately not cumulated) review of PD books, articles and websites. The Public Diplomacy Council is also the publisher of a new (December 2006) book edited by former PD officer William P. Kiehl: "America's Dialogue with the World" includes contributions by Dan Sreebny and Joe Johnson, among others (see TOC below). Some of the contributions are available in article form at the the USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Introduction
--William P. Kiehl
The Message is “Liberty”
--John Hughes
The Indispensable and Unappreciated
Global Role of the United States
-- Michael Mandelbaum
Refocusing America’s Message
--Anthony C.E. Quainton
You Talkin’ To Me?
--Ralph J. Begleiter
The Role of Competitive Fellowships
--Alice Stone Ilchman
Professional Exchanges, Citizen
Diplomacy and Credibility
--Sherry Lee Mueller
Arts Diplomacy: The Neglected
Aspect of Cultural Diplomacy
--John Brown
Public Diplomacy: The Field Perspective
--Dan Sreebny
The Technology Dimension
--Joe B. Johnson
Many Voices: Is Anyone Listening?
--Adam Clayton Powell III
Opportunities for Public Diplomacy
Programs in USAID and the Peace Corps
--Jerrold Keilson
Conclusions & Suggestions
--William P. Kiehl

Interesting PD site

The Institute for Cultural Diplomacy website has much information about cultural and public diplomacy, including a very impressive list of recent books, articles, reports and other resources on cultural diplomacy.

FirstGov Visitor's Portal

FirstGov has added a "for visitors to the U.S." section to the portal, providing information presumed to be of interest to anyone planning a visit. Includes border wait times, college/unversity locator service, information about travel, study, doing business and working in the U.S., visa and immigration information, history, culture, U.S. government, laws, etc.

New laws 07

Stateline.org has compiled a list of new state laws taking effect 1/1/07. Maybe of interest to journalists?

Thumbnail previews

If you'd like to provide thumbnail mouseover previews of urls on your site, snap.com provides the service free of charge. All you need to do is paste a little snippet of code into your html page.

Foreign Policy In Focus

Foreign Policy in Focus is a joint project of the International Relations Center and the Institute for Policy Studies FPIF's political agenda, in its own words: "FPIF aims to amplify the voice of progressives and to build links with social movements in the U.S. and around the world. Through these connections, we advance and influence debate and discussion among academics, activists, policymakers, and decisionmakers." Among much interesting material, see the recent exchange by Nancy Snow and others on public diplomacy and anti-Americanism.

History News Network

George Mason University's History News Network
argues that the history in the media is too often abridged to serve the purposes of journalists, economists, politicians, pollsters and others seeking to shape public opinion. HNN's mission statement:"To expose politicians who misrepresent history. To point out bogus analogies. To deflate beguiling myths. To remind Americans of the irony of history. To put events in context. To remind us all of the complexity of history." The sections on Breaking News and Hot Topics will be of particular PD interest.

LC RSS feeds

The Library of Congress is now offering a number of RSS feeds....

General

• News
  A bulletin service of the latest news from the world's preeminent reservoir of knowledge, providing resources to Congress and the American people
• Upcoming Events
  Listing of the dozens of free concerts, lectures, exhibitions, symposia, films and other special programs offered at the Library on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.
• New on the Web
  Updates on new collections, features, reference materials and other services available on the Library's award-winning Web site
• New Webcasts
  The latest webcasts and podcasts of lectures and events sponsored by the Library
• What's New in Science Reference
  New products and services on the subject of science and technology from the Library's Science, Technology & Business Division

Copyright (from the U.S. Copyright Office)

• Current Legislation
  Notices of Current copyright-related legislation
• Federal Register Notices
  Announcements, rules, proposed rules and other notices published in the Federal Register
• NewsNet
  Alerts on hearings, deadlines for comments, new and proposed regulations, new publications and more
• What's New on the U.S. Copyright Office Web site
  What's New on the Copyright Office Web site

International Calendar of Events

The State Department's Office of International Information Programs has put together a nice International Events Calendar for events that are of interest to the international relations community. Includes links to State Department information on events and issues.

2006 best 2.0 applications

The 2006 award-winning web2.0 applications are worth a browse..

Future of bibliographic control

From LOC, a Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control "Advances in search-engine technology, the popularity of the Internet and the influx of electronic information resources have greatly changed the way libraries do their work. To address those changes, the Library of Congress has convened a Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control to examine the future of bibliographic description in the 21st century."

DOJ capital punishment report

DOJ's Bureau of Justice Statistics has released its annual report on capital punishment Presents characteristics of persons under sentence of death on December 31, 2005 and of persons executed in 2005. Preliminary data on executions by States during 2006 are included. The report also summarizes the movement of prisoners into and out of death sentence status during 2005.

Creating dynamic research guides with OPML

Wilcox, Kimberley, "Gear Up Your Research Guides with the Emerging OPML Codes" (Computers in Libraries, Nov-Dec 2006, pp. 7-8; 46; 48).
http://www.infotoday.com/cilmag/nov06/Wilcox.shtml
Outline Processor Mark­up Language (OPML) is not widely-adopted yet, but its ability to create dynamic research guides, with feeds of new titles from the library catalog and databases, latest headlines from selected blogs, etc. should attract the interest of reference librarians. Wilcox discusses how to start taking advantage of OPML even before the most popular RSS aggregators fully support it.

U.S. entry process rated worst by travelers

The Discover America Partnership is an " effort led by some of America's foremost business leaders to strengthen America's image around the globe. These leaders recognize that public diplomacy is not the sole responsibility of government, but also of business and the American people." The group recently issued a report demonstrating that the U.S. entry process is considered the "world’s worst" by international travelers. The organization suggests that minor improvements in welcoming travelers could yield substantial diplomatic and economic gains. Read the 11/20 press release and summary of findings.

p.s. - the commercial sector appears to be very committed to the PD cause! In the past week alone, 3 such organizations have come to my attention...in addition to the Discover America Partnership, there's Business for Diplomatic Action (discussed in post below) and Compete America.

Understanding the Federal Courts

This latest version of Understanding the Federal Courts is from 2003. Available as an attractive pdf or easy to navigate website.

Transforming NATO (again)

CSIS recently released "Transforming NATO (again): a Primer for the NATO Summit in Riga 2006". The report, a joint effort by CSIS, the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies, and the Clingendael Centre for Strategic Studies, provides an overview of inititatives slated to emerge from the Summit, and offers suggestions on ways for the Alliance to prepare for its next summit in either 2008 or 2009.

Free Government Info

Free Government Info (FGI) has many interesting nooks and crannies (see f.ex. its blogroll of "recommended government information blogs" ) , and is surely worth checking in on from time to time. It also provides an RSS feed...you can read it when you drop by here under "more RSS feeds" on your left, or subscribe to it directly.

World's best blog?

Deutsche Welle's Best of the Blogs has named the Sunlight Foundation blog as winner of the 2006 International Weblog Awards. The mission of the Sunlight Foundation is (in its own words) "to use the power of the Internet and technology to help citizens learn more about what Congress and its representatives are doing, and help reduce corruption and produce greater transparency and accountability in government. The blog has been the epicenter for the Foundation, where the group writes about its projects, exhorts readers to join into investigations and updates people on these "distributed journalism" efforts."

Converting search to RSS

Saving your search as an rss feed is a good way to continually update your search results, without having to go back to reenter the search periodically. Both Google News and Yahoo News allow you to do this by clicking on the RSS icon once you've conducted your search. There are however a number of other services that enable the same kind of alert service via RSS, including Technorati (for the blogosphere) and Findarticles (for magazines and journals). Sharon Hously of FeedForAll has put together a very useful overview of such "RSS Ego Search" services at the RSS-Specifications site.

Foreign Media Relations Guide

Here's an article by Alvin Snyder that compares the public diplomacy approaches of the State Department with the way it's done in the commercial sector. The article discusses the organization Business for Diplomatic Action(BDA) (very slick website!) The mission of BDA is "to enlist the U.S. business community in actions to improve the standing of America in the world with the goal of once again, seeing America admired as a global leader and respected as a courier of progress and prosperity for all people." This it aims to achieve through its 5 point strategy plan, STARS:
Sensitize key U.S. constituents to the rise in anti-Americanism and its implications.
Transform the bad American attitudes that exacerbate the problem.
Accentuate America’s positive qualities and contributions to the world community.
Reach out to business leaders in strategic world markets to build new bridges of mutual respect and understanding.
Serve as the private sector connection for public diplomacy efforts by the U.S. government.

The organization recently issued a Foreign Media Relations Guide, which Snyder compares and contrasts interestingly with Karen Hughes's "Karen's Rules," the IIP media guidelines recently issued to the field. (see article by Elizabeth Williams in the WP Nov.8 and Karen Hughes's letter to the editor/rebuttal in today's (11/16)Post.

Civil rights database

From Researchbuzz: Washington University in St. Louis has created a new database of materials related to civil rights courts cases, including settlements, court orders, opinions, and case study research. The “Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse” contains documents related to over 1,000 cases and is available at http://clearinghouse.wustl.edu/ .

Immigration statistics

DHS has published some recent immigration statistics including profiles of legal and unauthorized residents by country of birth. Another resource that might be useful for IRCs is the 112 page Welcome to the United States Guide for New Immigrants, available in 11 languages.

Death and taxes

"Death and Taxes" provides a representational graph of the federal discretionary budget, ie the amount of money that is spent at the discretion of your elected representatives in Congress. Not sure if this is a very useful way to study the budget on a computer screen, but it looks nice, and might make a nice slide in a powerpoint presentation (also available in hardcopy as a poster!)

Ask.com's election day page

Ask.com's election page should just about cover it. Analysis, resources, and a dropdown that takes you directly to "voter info by state."

Presidential speeches tag clouds

Chirag Mehta's "US Presidential Speeches Tag Cloud" site is really neat! By comparing tag clouds from presidential speeches 1776-2006, you get a vivid picture of how the agenda has changed over the years. The tag clouds show the popularity, frequency, and trends in the usages of words within speeches, official documents, declarations, and letters written by the Presidents of the US between 1776 - 2006 AD. Cycle through the administrations by using the slide rule at the top. Awesome!

Thinkature

Thinkature is a collaborative brainstorming web2.0 application. Collaboration is enabled through a shared workspace and chat. Looks very impressive...will report back once I've tried it out with some collaborateurs...

Yahoo election site

Yahoo's midterm election site appears to be a very complete service, drawing on a wide range of wire, print, broadcast and web sources. Bookmark for tomorrow!

Constitution Finder

Constitution Finder is a handy collection of constitutions in English...for a more thorough annotation, see Virtual Library Cat

CFR election guide

CFR's election guide is "A cross section of recent Backgrounders, op-eds, meeting transcripts, and interviews from CFR.org, the Council on Foreign Relations, and Foreign Affairs."