From the ALA District Dispatch Blog:

After considerable pressure by librarians, researchers and the public, Congress has ordered the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to restore its library network. In the fiscal year (FY) 2008 Interior Appropriations bill, the Senate Appropriations Committee orders EPA to reopen the closed libraries. Last year, EPA closed its Headquarters Library in Washington, DC, to visitors and walk-in patrons. EPA also closed several regional libraries, the toxics and pesticides library and the Ft. Meade Environmental Science Center Library.

Source: ALA

OSTI archives scientific data on the Web

The Web is an electronic river of information in constant flux, a place where data changes by the nanosecond. That’s one reason the Energy Department’s Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) has set up a partnership with Internet Archive to provide uninterrupted access to more than a million online research papers from OSTI’s E-print Network.

Direct to DOE’s Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI)

See Also: Official News Release

Source: Government Computer News

During the past couple of days we’ve noticed a tweak or two on the AOL Mobile WAP home page at: http://wap.aol.com/portal/.

Here’s a screen cap of the of the AOL WAP home page from about a week ago.

What’s New?

First, you’ll now see a promo button at the top of the page for AOL services. We’ve noticed promos for AOL E-Mail and MapQuest.

Second, various services on the page are now placed in categories. The local category consists of:
+ MapQuest
+ CityGuide
+ Moviefone
+ Weather

The information category includes:
+ News
+ Money & Finance
+ Sports
+ My AOL Favorites

Finally, the “Fun” category consists of:
+ Entertainment
+ AOL Pictures
+ Horoscope
+ AIM Pages

Again, the live home page is here. In case you’re unable to access it, a screen cap (of the page as seen on June 30th) is available here.

Bill Slawski and the others at Search Engine Land do a great job of covering newly awarded and/or recently published patents apps. It’s a must to monitor. Of course, we’ve been tracking patents and patent apps on RS for a long time and every now and then we still like to take a look at the USPTO dbase. In the past few weeks we’ve noticed a bunch of interesting Published Patent APPLICATIONS (not awarded patents) from Microsoft.

+ Advertising keyword cross-selling

+ Inferred relationships from user tagged content

+ Factoid-based searching

+ Power filter for online listing service

+ Context-based key phrase discovery and similarity measurement utilizing search engine query logs

+ Search By Document Type And Relevance

+ Search By Document Type

and on a Yahoo patent note…A month ago, Yahoo had a patent application published for tagging/Del.icio.us) technology.

As you’ll see, Del.icio.us founder, Joshua Schachter, is listed as a co-inventor.

Patent Title: Method and apparatus for tagging data
Inventors: Joshua Schachter (Mountain View, CA); Albert Wenger; (Scarsdale, NY)
The application was filed with the USPTO on October 25, 2006. Yahoo acquired Del.icio.us on December 9, 2005.

Worth noting that this application “is a continuation-in-part of U.S. applications” entitled “System And Method For Selecting Advertising” by J. Schachter, et al. filed Sep. 20, 2005.
Published March 22, 2007.

and

System And Method For Selecting Advertising In A Social Bookmarking System” by J. Schachter, et al. filed Nov. 14, 2005.
Published March 22, 2007

Source: USPTO

From the CLA Digest:

CLA Executive Council has approved some recommendations from the Open Access Task Force that move CLA towards providing virtually all of its intellectual property free of charge, in digital form,online and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. The revised policy has four parts:

* CLA will provide for full and immediate open access for all CLA publications, with the exception of Feliciter and monographs The embargo period for Feliciter is one issue, and the embargo policy itself will be reviewed after one year. Monographs will be considered for open accesspublishing on a case-by-case basis.
* CLA actively encourages its members to self-archive in institutional and/or disciplinary repositories and will investigate a partnership with E-LIS, the Open Archive for Library and Information Studies.
* CLA will generally provide for the author’s retention of copyright by employing Creative Commons licensing or publisher-author agreements that promote open access.
* CLA will continue its long-standing policy of accessibility to virtually all CLA information except for narrowly defined confidential matters (e.g. certain personnel or legal matters).

The full text of Open Access and CLA Publications is online.
23 pages; PDF.

Source: CLA Digest

Top 100 Venture Capital Firms

Venture capital isn’t for everyone–not all entreprenurs need $1 million or more for funding. But for entrepreneurs who want to join the big leagues, a venture capital firm can invest the funds to get you there. Every year, we take the pulse of the venture capital industry to help you determine if now is the right time to seek funding. Our listing ranks VC firms by the number of early-stage deals made in 2006. This year, we’ve included an additional online listing of 50+ firms ranked by later-stage deals and a VC primer that’ll show you the ins and outs of this financing option.

Source: Entrepreneur.com

Posted 29 June 2007 on DocuTicker:
+ World Wealth Report 2007 (Capgemini U.S.)
+ Annual Energy Review 2006 (Energy Information Administration)
+ Temperature, temperature extremes, and mortality: a study of acclimatisation and effect modification in 50 US cities (Occupational and Environmental Medicine)

Michael Hart, the founder of Project Gutenberg (some 36 years ago, who says book digitization is new) sends along a note that Project Gutenberg Canada will go live on Canada Day, this coming Sunday.

He writes:

The twin missions of Project Gutenberg Canada are to promote and make available, free of charge:

CANADIAN BOOKS
- Canadian literature (in both of Canada’s official languages)
- non-fiction books on Canadian history, politics, and culture

INTERNATIONAL BOOKS
- fiction and non-fiction (from all countries) which are in the Canadian public domain
- in any language, as is appropriate for a country with Canada’s multicultural makeup

He adds:

Gutenberg Canada’s inauguration will consist of not less than a dozen new ebooks, including

- novels
- children’s books
- autobiographies
- a chess treatise

But the site already includes around 200 titles by such famous

Canadian authors as Emily Carr, Frederick Philip Grove, Louis Hémon, Pauline Johnson, Stephen Leacock, Nellie McClung, and L. M. Montgomery of “Anne of Green Gables” fame.

For more info about Project Gutenberg Canada contact: Mark Akrigg

See Also: Second Annual World ebook Fair Begins Next Week
Nearly 750,000 full text books available for downloading at no charge. That’s right, free!

Now Available from GPOAccess: George W. Bush Public Papers - 2003 Book II
Book 1 contained material from January 1 to June 30, 2003. You can browse all George W. Bush papers from 2001-2003 here.

You can also keyword search all papers from 1991-2003 using this interface. Browsing is also available.

Learn More About the Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States
From the document:

The Public Papers of the Presidents, which is compiled and published by the Office of the Federal Register, National Archives and Records Administration, began in 1957 in response to a recommendation of the National Historical Publications Commission. Noting the lack of uniform compilations of messages and papers of the Presidents before this time, the Commission recommended the establishment of an official series in which Presidential writings, addresses, and remarks of a public nature could be made available.

Each Public Papers volume contains the papers and speeches of the President of the United States that were issued by the Office of the Press Secretary during the specified time period. The material is presented in chronological order, and the dates shown in the headings are the dates of the documents or events. In instances when the release date differs from the date of the document itself, that fact is shown in the textnote.

Source: GPO

+ Get Maps from Google Voice Directory Service (via Google Blog)
When you use the Google Voice Directory (1-800-Goog-411) just say “map it” or say “details” and then “text message” and directory info along with a link to a map of the location will be sent to you via SMS. Google will also automatically dial the number.

Btw, Google Voice isn’t the only service that offers you a link to a map and directory info delivered via SMS.
Btw, to access the actual map, you’re going to need a phone with a wireless web browser.

Other Free Directory Assistance Services: 2 Offering Info Sent via SMS Including a Link to a Map
+ Tellme/Microsoft: 1-800-555-TELL
In addition to business directory info, other services are available (news, stock quotes, movie times (including ticket purchase), travel info, etc.).

Tellme Business listings (phone number, address, and a link to a map) can be sent via SMS. Another useful feature is that you can also send the directory info/map to others via SMS. Just say or type the other persons phone number. The data is sent instantly.

Btw, Tellme directory info is also available via SMS at 83556 (TELLM) and with some carriers and phones, via a client app.

+ 1-800-FREE411
Residential, government and business listings. The phone number (only) can be sent (press 3) to your phone via SMS.

+ 1-800-YellowPages/(1-800-935-5697)
AT&T service. Currently only available in Bakersfield, Calif.; Oklahoma City, Okla.; and Columbus, Ohio.

+ 1-800-411-SAVE
Not available in all areas.

+ 1-800-SAN-DIEGO
Not available in all areas.

Speaking of maps and roadways, don’t forget about the voice-activated, real-time traffic info service from Traffic.com at 1-866-MY-TRAFC.

+ Britannica Launches Global Reference Center Web Site
Direct to site at http://global.eb.com.

+ MIT Libraries Launches New Virtual Reference Collection (Beta)

+ Multimedia Search: eZanga and Pixsy Announce Deal

+ In the Past Month Two Pages from LC’s Manuscript Division Reading Room Web Site Have Been Updated
++ Manuscript Division Finding Aids Online
++ Guide to Using the Collections

+ Real-Time and Predictive Traffic Info Comes to Telmap via Inrix
See Also: Learn More About Telmap and Inrix

Congressional Panel Favors Access to Publicly Funded Research
From the news release:

Public access to NIH-funded research took a major step forward this week with Senate Appropriations Committee agreement to direct the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to require that its funded research be made publicly available on the Internet.

This milestone was immediately praised by the Alliance for Taxpayer Access (ATA), a coalition of patient groups, researchers, consumers, and libraries that has long called for such a step.

“The momentum is real and Congress understands the public’s interest,” said Heather Joseph, Executive Director of SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, an ATA founding member).

Source: ATA

AOL Introduces New Mail and Instant Messaging Products
From the news release:

AOL announced today that it has released the first free, Web-based e-mail service with full AIM integration into beta, http://beta.aol.com/webmail, which lets users simultaneously e-mail and IM from the same application using the most popular instant messaging service in the U.S. AOL has also launched the new AIM WIMZI Widget (http://wimzi.aim.com), allowing bloggers, website owners and consumers with social networking profiles to instant message easily and privately with site visitors.

+ Government Docs: New Members Named To Depository Library Council (via GPO)

+ Is Endeca the Next Google (via News.com)
Note: If you are going to include Endeca you have to also include Siderean. Bottom Line? Those of you who have been looking at our blog since the early days know that we are big fans of faceted “searching/browsing.”
See Also: Siderean is being used at LII.org, TheGateway.org, and Environmental Health News
See Also: Endeca is being used at North Carolina State University as their library catalog.

+ Walt Mossberg of the Wall St. Journal Reviews Ask.com* (via WSJ)
*Gary is Director of Online Resources at Ask and wrote a detailed overview of Ask 3D (what Mossberg writes about) the day it launched. He also added a few comments (about Ask, Exalead, and Clusty) in this post (first item) about web search brands.

It’s quite likely that many of you are familiar with NOAA Weather Radio from the National Weather Service. For those of you who aren’t, NOAA offers weather forecasts, hourly temperature info, watches/warnings any other weather related info for cities/metro areas around the country.

Now, many of these local stations are streaming their content on the Internet. All you need is RealPlayer. If you have a mobile device/phone with streaming capabilities (MP3), these reports can also be delivered on mobile devices. Many of these streams are made available by third parties like universities and Weather Underground.

Those of you outside of the U.S. who have an interest in meteorology can also listen in.

Here’s a list of stations (organized by state) where streaming audio is available. More stations can be found here.

Remember, not every station is streaming live on the web. Here’s a map that offers info about all NOAA Weather Radio stations.

Also, via RSS, you can be notified of new/updated content for some stations. This is an experimental service. Event-driven products such as watches and warnings are not included at the present time.

See Also: Learn about the automated voices that are used on these stations.

Source: NOAA

See Also: Weather Underground List of Weather Radio Stations on the Web

From the article:

LB Westminster is to replace its traditional parking meters and cash pay-and-display machines with a pay-by-phone scheme

It will begin the changeover from autumn, with all 3,700 meters across the borough to be axed by December 2008.

Motorists can sign up to the scheme by providing the council with their name, credit card details and vehicle registration number. Once signed up, they can either call up or send a text message with the length of time they want to stay and the parking bay reference number.

Source: Kable’s Government Computing

See Also: This reminds us of a trial Qantas was running in Australia a couple of years ago. A bar code would be downloaded from the mobile web to your mobile device and used as your boarding pass.

+ Twitter, digg, and More Widgets Now Ready for Mobio
If your phone of mobile device can handle Mobio widgets (now Blackberry friendly), Mobio has just released new widgets for:
+ Twitter
+ digg
+ RSS Aggregator
+ Kaboodle