Virtual Reference

The Australian National Library has published a thorough report on the virtual reference services the library has been providing for the last 4 years. During that period the IRC at the U.S. embassy in Oslo has also been providing a virtual reference service, albeit on a small scale and with the primitive - but efficient and free - Rakim software. Maybe time to revisit the idea of a 24/5 virtual reference service from ircs around the world, using a more sophisticated software?

Wonkosphere for the 2008 elections

The Wonkosphere cliams to be "the best place to keep a finger on the pulse of the 2008 Presidential election. We use patented technology to scour the blogosphere and analyze what is being said, who is saying it, and whether they're ranting or raving. Updated every 4 hours." Nice red white and blue logo!

Keyword Density Checker

Enter a url and Keyword Density Checker will determine the site's keyword density and generate a tag cloud and list of words by frequency. Here are some other web tools at www.webconfs.com...

IP to City
This tools helps you determine the Country, City, Latitude and Longitude of an IP Address.

Domain Age Tool
This tools displays the approximate age of a website on the Internet and allows you to view how the website looked when it first started. It also helps you find out the age of your competitor's domains, older domains may get a slight edge in Search Engine Rankings.

Screen Resolution Simulator
Simulates your web page in different screen resolutions.

Interesting Research Site

I was alerted to this site by its creator, librarian Woody Evans of Texas. It is a useful example of a Google Custom Search engine - this particular engine searches 67 websites each morning to bring light to "the shadow-places of governments, governmental contractors, and non-government actors affecting policy. De-classified, open, or public sources scoured carefully every morning!" A search for "public diplomacy", for example, filters out much of the fluff that would turn up in a general Google search, and returns a pretty substantive list of pd hits.

Dipnote

The State Department has launched its first blog, Dipnote..here's what Sean McCormack has to say about it in his welcome message..:
"Welcome to the State Department's first-ever blog, Dipnote. As a communicator for the Department, I have the opportunity to do my fair share of talking on a daily basis. With the launch of Dipnote, we are hoping to start a dialogue with the public. More than ever, world events affect our daily lives--what we see and hear, what we do, and how we work. I hope Dipnote 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.

We invite you to participate in this community, and I am looking forward to stepping away from my podium every now and then into the blogosphere. Let the conversation begin."

see also New York Times article

Fleck

Discussing the appearance of a webpage via email is one example of when a picture is worth a thousand words (or at least a hundred words) With Fleck you can annotate a web page with notes and bullets, save the changes, and email the page to a contact. Web editors will know how frustrating it is to receive unclear or inadequate instructions about desired edits from other sections of the organization - receiving instructions via Fleck might eliminate some of the confusion.

Sketchcasting (topic: dog discipline)

This is kind of neat, especially if you're one of those people who is good at using a whiteboard for communicating ideas. I'm not, as you can see from the demo below, which is a completely impromptu performance - but somewhat (unintentionally) amusing, I think. Its not hard to imagine this tool being put to better (ie.serious) use, however, and it sure is a lot of fun! Remember to turn on your sound!

WikiDashboard

This post from the "blog of the Augmented Social Cognition Research Group at Palo Alto Research Center (PARC)" concerns Wiki Dashboard, a research tool tries to provide greater transparency about the identity and behavior of contributors to Wikpedia articles. The standard complaint about Wikpedia is that, precisely because anyone can edit anything, it is an unreliable source of information. (or, as a character in the Office quipped, “Wikipedia is the best thing ever. Anyone in the world, can write anything they want about any subject. So you know you are getting the best possible information.” ) The Augmented Social Cognition group turns this idea on its head, and argues that the Wikipedia approach - ie. augmented social cognition - is indeed the same kind of peer review process that provides integrity in scholarly publishing. What's lacking and needed in Wikipedia is greater social transparency. The wikidashboard post also links to a couple of neat tools for Wikipedia analysis..WikiScanner, which helps identify which organizations anonymous Wiki articles and edits are coming from (snoops can while away hours here), and WikiRage, which "lists the pages in Wikipedia which are receiving the most edits per unique editor over various periods of time."

50 sites for booklovers

Mashable's 50 sites for booklovers!

Jottit

If you need to post something on the web immediately, at no cost, and independently of your own website - Jottit is one solution. Just go to Jottit, type in your text, click "create page", and Jottit creates the page at a unique url. Its Markdown formatting system is somewhat primitive - the syntax is only a small subset of html - but it does allow hyperlinks and basic formatting.

more resources for students and teachers

Resource Shelf's resource of the week is this nice assortment of resources for teachers and students.

Online access from public libraries

(from http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/015954.html)
Public libraries are sole source of online employment and education information for millions of Americans

ALA: "Ever-growing patron demand for computer and Internet services in U.S. public libraries has stretched existing Internet bandwidth, computer availability, and building infrastructure to capacity, according to a new study “Libraries Connect Communities: Public Library Funding & Technology Access Study 2006-2007,” conducted by the American Library Association (ALA) and the Information Use Management and Policy Institute at Florida State University (FSU). The study, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and ALA, found that more than 73 percent of libraries report they are the only source of free public access to computers and the Internet in their communities. Surveyed libraries said that the top three Internet services most critical to their community are online educational resources and databases for K-12 students (67.7 percent); services for job seekers (44 percent); and computer and Internet skills training (29.8 percent)."

Libraries Connect Communities: Public Library Funding & Technology Access Study 2006-2007 Report

Customize Google

Customize Google is a useful Firefox addon that lets you add wanted and remove unwanted features to your Google searches.

Features

• Use Google Suggest (suggest words while you're typing)
• Add links to competitors
• Rewrite links to point straight to the images in Google Images
• Removes image copying restrictions in Google Book Search
• Secure Gmail and Google Calendar, switch to https
• Block Google Analytics cookies
• Hide the Gmail spam counter
• Make URL previews on sponsored links visible NEW!
• Add favicons in the web search result NEW!

• Remove ads
• Anonymize your Google userid
• Add a result counter in search result
• Filter spammy websites from search results
• Add links to WayBack Machine (webpage history)
• Remove click tracking
• Add links from Google to your bookmark manager
• Use a fixed font for Gmail mail bodies
• Stream Google search result pages NEW!
• Sticky Google Preferences NEW!

CRS capital punishment report

RL34163 The Death Penalty: Capital Punishment Legislation in the 110th Congress
September 07, 2007. While most capital offenses are state crimes, Congress did revive in 1994 the death penalty as a federal sentencing option. More than a few federal statutes now proscribe offenses punishable by death. This CRS report surveys legislation in the 110th Congress that would modify federal law in the area.

Geography teaching aid

Statetris (tetris with a twist) is a game that teaches you (or pupils) where the 50 states are located - and for a test of your "U.S.centrism", try locating the regions of France, the counties of the U.K, and the nations of Africa and Europe. (another fine tip from Neat New Stuff)

Free Full Text

FreeFullText.com provides direct links to over 7000 scholarly periodicals which allow some or all of their online content to be viewed by ANYONE with Internet access for free (though some may require free registration).

09/11 resources

Here, courtesy of Resource Shelf, are some 09/11 resources.

FactCheck.org

FactCheck.org will surely come in handy as the as the campaign trails become increasingly littered with facts during the coming year. Note also the companion site, www.factcheckED.org, which is intended to help educators teach their students to be smarter news consumers.

LOC teachers page

The Library of Congress page for teacherswill soon sport a new look - here's a preview.

The promise of noopolitikk

The promise of noöpolitik
by David Ronfeldt and John Arquilla
This is another interesting article from First Monday, about the noosphere - a realm of communal mind conceived of 80 years ago by Teilhard de Chardin, but only now enabled by cyperspace - and its impact on grand strategy and diplomacy in the form of noöpolitik. The authors' thoughts on noöpolitik will be collected in a forthcoming handbook on public diplomacy.

Table 1: Contrast between realpolitik and noöpolitik.
Realpolitik	Noöpolitik
States as the unit of analysis	Nodes, non–state actors
Primacy of hard power (resources, etc.)	Primacy of soft power
Power politics as zero–sum game	Win–win, lose–lose possible
System is anarchic, highly conflictual	Harmony of interests, cooperation
Alliance conditional (oriented to threat)	Ally webs vital to security
Primacy of national self–interest	Primacy of shared interests
Politics as unending quest for advantage	Explicitly seeking a telos
Ethos is amoral, if not immoral	Ethics crucially important
Behavior driven by threat and power	Common goals drive actors
Very guarded about information flows	Propensity for info–sharing
Balance of power as the “steady–state”	Balance of responsibilities
Power embedded in nation–states	Power in “global fabric”

Infomania

I hate to interrupt, but this is important...
"Infomania is the mental state of continuous stress and distraction caused by the combination of queued messaging overload and incessant interruptions."
Interested? Read the whole article, "Infomania, why we can't afford to ignore it any longer," in the August issue of First Monday.

IFLA Toolkit for Developing Reference Services

This toolkit might be of interest to IRCs, and their library contacts, in some parts of the world; "To assist librarians and decision makers in developing countries and elsewhere, the Reference and Information Services Section, through an IFLA project, successfully developed a Toolkit for Developing Reference Services. Designed to enrich reference knowledge and to advance reference services, the Toolkit prepares reference librarians and decision makers to understand reference functions and the information needs of library users."

Views of Press Values and Performance: 1985-2007

A new Pew report examines perceptions of the press:
"The American public continues to fault news organizations for a number of perceived failures, with solid majorities criticizing them for political bias, inaccuracy and failing to acknowledge mistakes. But some of the harshest indictments of the press now come from the growing segment that relies on the internet as its main source for national and international news. The internet news audience – roughly a quarter of all Americans – tends to be younger and better educated than the public as a whole. People who rely on the internet as their main news source express relatively unfavorable opinions of mainstream news sources and are among the most critical of press performance."

Cyberjournalist list

The Cyberjournalist List is a very extensive list of blogs published by journalists. Includes blogs..

• Published by news sites - ongoing
  
• Published by news sites - spot news and events
  
• Published independently by journalists
  
• Personal sites of journalists

Whereabill

The Whereabill (discussed in the Garvin column mentioned in previous post) is a rare bird that shows WHERE a bill becomes a law, and where it may have wandered along its way. Could be an amusing teaching aid for IRC folks and diplomats who are still in the business of explaining the U.S. legislative process to students and educators.

Insanely useful government websites

A recent posting by the Sunlight Foundation on "insanely useful [government] websites" has inspired Peggy Garvin to write about those sites and some others in her July 27 "Government Domain" column at LLRX.

Government Innovators Network

(an interesting post from Neat New Stuff)
"The news media never talk about government when it's working well, but in
fact, state, local, and regional government agencies are coming up with
thousands of ideas for better service to their communities. You can find
documents, news stories, multimedia, awards, and upcoming events about
them here. Search or browse through broad categories or through
Innovation Awards. (A search for LIBRARIES retrieved nearly 300 items.)"

Madison Avenue principles for hearts and minds

This sounds vaguely familiar; a new Rand report suggests that Madison Avenue advertising principles might be effective in winning hearts and minds around the world. "Enlisting Madison Avenue: 'The Marketing Approach to Earning Popular Support in Theaters of Operation' extracts lessons from business practices and adapts them to U.S. military efforts in a unique approach to shaping the attitudes and behavior of local populations in a theater of operations. Foremost among these lessons are the concepts of branding, customer satisfaction, and segmentation of the target audience, all of which serve to maximize the impact and improve the outcome of U.S. shaping efforts. Enlisting Madison Avenue also offers insights based on previous operational endeavors to provide a much-expanded blueprint for shaping target audiences."

web2.0 forum

For more on the issues raised by Andrew Keen in Cult of the Amateur, visit the Britannica blog's lively forum on web2.0 One of the bloggers, can you believe it, is that unrelenting ridiculer of blogs Michael Gorman - has he found his medium at last?! Gorman's opinionated rants would surely not get a hearing in the refereed and scholarly world he calls home, but he enriches the blogosphere with his contributions - always amusing, well-written, and insightful.

GAO Public Diplomacy report

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report yesterday to Senator Richard Lugar on the evolving strategic communications and public diplomacy initiatives at the U.S. Departments of State and Defense, and the Broadcasting Board of Governors. As one might expect of an accountability(formerly accounting) office, emphasis is on measurable results - no touchy-feely stuff. A buzzword is "campaign-style", and one of the recommendations for the State Department is to "Formally endorse and adopt a research-based campaign-style approach to thematic communications." The State Department responds to the report by suggesting that its own “ABCDE” communication process model - a planning tool that can be used to think through the message and the best way to deliver it to a target audience - is essentially the kind of campaign-style approach the GAO is asking for. The ABCDE model is explained/exemplified (not very clearly) in the new PD Strategy document that was posted here last month.