Information Research Weblog

I've been corresponding with Francis J. Devadason (now retired to farming in Kansas!) about the failure of those promoting the notion of the 'semantic Web' to take proper notice of developments in classification stretching back to Kaiser's 'Systematic indexing' of 1911 (if there is anyone out there who knows who has my copy of that book, I'd be glad to have it back, please!) through Ranganathan's 'faceted classification', to Battacharyya's POPSI.

Those who don't know what I'm talking about may care to read some of the papers mentioned by Devadason:

• After the dot-bomb: getting Web information retrieval right this time, by Marcia J. Bates. [First Monday, 7(7)]
• Ranganathan had SEVEN facets and not FIVE – Semantic Web & Facet Analysis, by Francis J. Devadason
• Faceted indexing based system for organizing and accessing Internet resources, by Francis. J. Devadason, Neelawat Intaraksa, Ponprapa Patamawongjariya , and Kavita Desai
• Metadata: think outside the docs!, by Bob Doyle [eContent, May 3, 2005]
• The rise of ontologies or the reinvention of classification, by Dagobert Soergel [Journal of the American Society for Information Science. October 1999; 50(12): 1119-1120.]

The website http://www.libraries.psu.edu/ebsl/searchstrategies.htm provides the reader with great tips and ideas when searching for specific information. After reading the information on the website, it actually made my new searches easier with more articles that pertained to my topics. In the first section under Vocabulary Section, it discusses how one should keep a research log. Keeping a research log will save a lot of time by just jotting down little steps for each search. This is very important when you are trying to do a research paper.

I imagine that many will have seen notices to the effect that Lynn Brindley, Chief Executive of the British Library is making a special plea for support in what is called in the UK 'the public spending round', i.e., the time when all government departments negotiate with the Treasury on what share of the budget they are to have.

At the same time we have the news that preparing London for the 2012 Olympics is likely to cost something in the region of nine billion pounds. Money that will be found one way or another from the public purse.

I guess that one can expect no more from a government led by the fantasist Mr Bliar (the typo is deliberate) - one of the most uncultured prime ministers since the end of the Second World War. It seems that the height of his intellectual interests is in making friends with drunken rock musicians and fading pop stars. Curiously, I've only seen one political commentator calling him a fantasist - but it is pretty obvious from his personal history - after all a child chorister singing directly to God is bound to have the direct line, isn't he? And if the rock band didn't work out and if the legal career was going nowhere, I guess the best place to work out your fantasies is in politics.

I see that the BBC's technology news

has an item today on 'social tagging' - i.e., 'indexing' :-)

In the article entitled, "Public Services in Special Collections" by Florence Turcotte it explains how some research libraries are trying to bring in K-12 students into the "real research world." I think it would be very cool for a k-12 student to have field trips to famous public & research libraries especially in New York City. I also believe the children will be amazed at the architecture of the building let alone the information inside. If students were more exposed to the "real research world" as they grew older they will appreciate the nature of research. When I was in high school my firends dreaded going to the public library to research information. They dreaded the fact because I never learned how to research information correctly. Luckily, I worked at my local public library since I was about 14 years old...so I was taught by the reference librarian (friend/co-worker. My experiences with researching information in high school was a breeze. It was just a matter of when I was going to sit down and read, digest and spit out information on my computer.

Lots of news and associated links at Wi-fi Planet

Jim Hartley is running a study on people's perceptions of abstracts in journal articles. He would be pleased if you were willing to help. All you have to do is to click on to the address below and press a few buttons.

http://www.keele.ac.uk/depts/ps/jimh/abstracts2007.htm

If you would like more information, please contact Jim at j.hartley@psy.keele.ac.uk

There's a debate (sometimes bad-tempered) going on at the Library and Information Technology discussion list as to the deleterious effects of wi-fi networks in libraries. This results from one college librarian having resigned because the college authorities refused to discuss the issue.

As far as I can see, there's not a lot of work specifically on wi-fi networks: most research seems to be concerned with mobile phones. However, this bit of work seems interesting and, perhaps, puts the debate into some kind of rational context:

J. Boyle Wireless technologies and patient safety in hospitals.
Telemed J E Health. 2006 Jun;12(3):373-82.

CSIRO E-Health Research Centre, a joint venture between Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation and the Queensland Government, Brisbane, Australia. Justin.Boyle@csiro.au
In the development of policies for wireless technologies, it is important for healthcare organizations to reduce risks to patients from use of wireless devices. Policy should be devised for instructing hospital staff, visitors, and patients, avoiding unwarranted restrictions but not ignoring evidence regarding potential interference problems, and allowing comparison with other clinical facilities of benefits of policy. To inform policy developers and a general audience of hospital personnel, a review was conducted on the safety of wireless devices for communication within hospitals. This review targeted electromagnetic interference effects of devices on medical devices and summarises key recommendations from published reports and international standards. There is consensus that the highest risk of interference occurs with two-way radios used by emergency crews, followed by mobile phones, while radio local area networks produce negligible interference. Wireless technologies are deemed suitable for use throughout hospital areas including intensive care units and operating rooms, given that recommended separation distances from medical equipment are observed.

There's other work on similar lines suggesting that wi-fi networks are OK to use in hospitals - and if there, why not in libraries?

As an aside, why is it that some people are unable to participate in online discussions without becoming abusive?

The latest issue of Information Research is now available at http://InformationR.net/ir/

Here is the Editorial

Introduction Managing an electronic journal is a non-trivial task and, although I have Associate Editors who help greatly in the process of evaluating submissions, the main work of getting the issues out is down to me. With the loss of my volunteer proof-reader, Rae-Ann Hughes, the checking is an additional load. It is something of a relief, therefore, to know that Lund University Libraries (our host institution for the server) is implementing the journal management package, Open Journal Systems. Together with the Associate Editors, I am in the process of testing the system and hope, shortly, that all submissions will be handled through OJS.

This said, there is still room for more volunteers to help with the production of the journal: ideally, a proof-reader who knows British English and an XHTML code editor would be very useful. So, if you have a little time on your hands (a vain hope in these days of overwork!), or if you are recently retired and interested in helping the open access movement, do contact me.

And, speaking of volunteers, thanks to Elena Maceviciute for her link checking this issue - a bigger task than usual, and to Pedro Dias and Jose Vicente Rodriguez for the Spanish abstracts; again, a much bigger task than previously.

In this issue The main work of this issue has been in preparing the final batch of papers from the Information Seeking in Context Conference, which was held in Sydney last year. As usual, the range is very wide, from the information needs of Iranian engineers, to the information behaviour of Taiwanese aborigines—evidence that the information behaviour field is dynamic and growing. Very few of the authors, however, explore the implications of their work for information practice, and I hope that the 2008 conference (to be held in Vilnius, Lithuania) will address this issue.

We also have five other peer-reviewed papers and another open access case study. The five papers cover very different topics: professional education in Brazil, Internet services in the countries of the European Union, students' use of the Internet for their Finnish Masters' theses, the impact of the Terrorist bombings in Madrid on the 11th March, 2004, on newspaper documentation centres (in Spanish) and a workflow model for scholarly communication. This last one is very long for a paper and the author has provided a link to a .pdf file so that you may print it out more easily. The case study deals with Medical Education Online, which was established (like Information Researh) by an individual, enthused by the idea of open access publishing.

Partly because of the ISIC papers, we have a good geographic spread of papers in this issue: USA - 4, Finland - 3, Japan - 2, Spain - 2, Brazil - 1, Canada - 1, Iran - 1, Singapore - 1, Taiwan - 1, UK - 1.

Google Analytics As I noted in the previous issue, I now use Google Analytics to monitor the use of the journal and (at the time of writing) I now have four months of data. The data show that the top page of the journal has had 35,323 'unique views' and 66,145 'page views' in this time - which I assume means that each visitor comes back to the top page ('home' on the navigation bar) at least once after the initial click. Extrapolating that for 2006 as a whole suggests that the top page has had 105,969 unique views and 198,435 page views. I've also been using OneStat.com since last April and it shows 32,517 page views for the top page in eight months - extrapolating gives us 48,775 for the year, which is significantly fewer than suggested by Google Analytics, so I'm not quite sure what's going on there :-). However, in 2005 we had 47,117 hits, so usage continues to increase. One thing is certain: the papers in Information Research are getting a lot of exposure!

The Editorial Board I am making changes to the Editorial Board, with a view to stabilizing membership by the beginning of the next volume. Membership is for a period of three years, renewable, and some members are now due to retire, so with this issue, we welcome three new members of the Editorial Board: Jim Jansen, Victor Kaptelinin and Bonnie Nardi. Jim strengthens our representation of the Web research community, while Bonnie and Victor, apart from helping review papers for the activity theory issue due in April, strengthen the information systems area. Welcome folks!

The journal's publication schedule will also be changing, partly to bring the volume year into line with the calendar year and partly to avoid holiday periods as far as possible. So, this year, the final two issues of Volume 12 will be published in April and October and Volume 13 will have its four issues in March, June, September and December of 2008, with subsequent volumes having the same publication pattern. This way, I might actually have some holiday time at Christmas!

Given how far the month is advanced, it may seem a little late, but... a very Happy New Year!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Professor Tom Wilson, Publisher/Editor-in-Chief January 2007

With immediate effect, submissions to Information Research will be handled through the journal management system, Open Journal Systems. This will provide the Editors, Reviewers and Authors with direct access to the process of review and will maintain more effective statistics on the number of submissions, etc. Papers currently in the process of review will not be affected by this change.

Also, given the amount of work I had to do over the Christmas 'holiday' to get the January issue ready, I have decided to change the production schedule. This year, there will be issues in January, April, and October (the remaining three issues of volume 12), and, with effect from 2008, the volume will be conterminous with the calendar year, with the issues of volume 13 being published in March, June, September and December. This will also have the effect of avoiding a July issue, thereby enabling a genuine summer vacation :-)

Sure - I'm all for the option of deciding what to do with a file (and I'm aware of what the Options menu provides), but I'd like the option to view, without being asked where I want to save that viewed file. I'm pretty sure that Firefox used to have this feature because the lack of it now niggles me.

I think a distinction needs to be made between downloading a file from a download site, and viewing an enclosure in an e-mail message - which I may or may not wish to save.

I was surprised at your comments, partly because I prefer to have control over the download (as per firefox) than to have it automatically open (as per internet exploder), but more because if you go to the Options menu -> Tools -> Options, then select the Downloads tab, you can configure automatic options for PDF downloads (and in fact any other type of file).

I see the word 'folksonomy' occasionally, used to describe the social indexing of Web pages. It's a really, really silly term: according to Wikipedia:

The term folksonomy is a portmanteau that specifically refers to the tagging systems created within Internet communities. A combination of the words folk (or folks) and taxonomy, the term folksonomy literally means "people's classification management": "Taxonomy" is from the Greek taxis and nomos. Taxis means "classification" and nomos (or nomia) means "management," while "Folk" is from the Old English folc, meaning people.

This is etymological nonsense - taxonomy comes from two Greek words meaning 'order' and 'law' or 'science' - hence taxonomy is the science of order or ordering. 'Folksonomy' is etymologically illiterate since it tries to combine the Germanic origin word 'folk' with the Greek origin for 'science', hence 'folksonomy' would be a bastardised word meaning 'the science of people'.

Perhaps the adoption of 'classification' and 'indexing' would remove the silliness that seems to inflict Web gurus.

I see that with Firefox 2.0 only recently released, Mozilla already has an advance version of Firefox 3.0 out - it's called "Gran Paradiso Alpha 1", presumably a reference to the Italian national park of the same name :-) But who can tell where they get these names from? The pilot of version 2.0 was "Bon Echo" - which is a provincial park in Ontario. Perhaps the development team has a thing about parks?

I have some grouses with Firefox 2.0 - the location of its new tab button is not as convenient as the one in Maxthon (where it appears at the end of the existing tabs - very convenient), and its pdf download can still be messy. In fact its downloads are a disaster - everything I simply want to view has to be downloaded and saved somewhere - VERY messy.

If you are really, really into browser development, there's also a Firefox 3 wiki.

I'm really torn, but currently I'm using Maxthon more than I'm using Firefox.

For those interested in open access developments, Peter Suber's review of developments in 2006 should be essential reading.

Growing incivility in society, among other things, contributes to a library's problems according to this report from the New York Times.

Every afternoon at Maplewood Middle School’s final bell, dozens of students pour across Baker Street to the public library. Some study quietly.

Others, library officials say, fight, urinate on the bathroom floor, scrawl graffiti on the walls, talk back to librarians or refuse to leave when asked. One recently threatened to burn down the branch library. Librarians call the police, sometimes twice a day.

As a result, starting on Jan. 16, the Maplewood Memorial Library will be closing its two buildings on weekdays from 2:45 to 5 p.m., until further notice.

Happy New Year, everyone. No doubt the old Earth will continue on its path for at least one more year.

Signs of the times: before going out to buy the newspaper this morning I checked that the Guardian was published today - but, when I got to the newsagent, they'd sold out, the nearby supermarket had no newspapers, another five minutes in the opposite direction the newsagent in the hospital was closed and so was the small newsagent nearby! Can't blame them for being closed on New Year's Day, but why do I buy a newspaper any longer with all the news that's on the Web? So, it will be half an hour with the Guardian online today.

Observant readers will notice that there's a new button on the front page of the Weblog - I got rid of NedStat, which I've used for years, because it has changed hands and now distributes annoying pop-ups. OneStat.com is free but doesn't have that nasty trait!

There's an interesting paper in the January issue of JASIST: Using the h-index to rank influential British researchers in information science and librarianship by Charles Oppenheim. This demonstrates that the leading researcher in the UK is my former colleague, Peter Willett - a fact that doesn't surprise me, although it will surprise those who have carried out citation studies and have used only the Social Science Citation Index - most of Peter's work is in chemoinformatics and information retrieval and much of his research is covered only by the Science Citation Index.

There are one points of argument in the paper, e.g., I am still research active, although retired, and Beaulieu is not yet retired, and, I think, still associated with the Department at Sheffield. I'd also be rather doubtful about including Harnad as an information scientist - he's a publicist for open access, but his research is in cognitive psychology.

However, read the paper and make up your own mind :-)

I see that the founder of Wikipedia is getting into the search business, with a project to develop a 'community organized' search engine. It'll be interesting to found out what happens, but I found the mailing list contributions pretty impenetrable. I guess the 'community' involved here consists of the open software programmers.

Sorry about the long post yesterday - my efforts to use a macro to avoid it failed and I'm still researching the problem

Free Conversant has a feature that enables me to prevent a long message from being posted on the e-mail list. I hope I've managed to implement it - if so, you will not have received a message about the hits on papers in Information Research. If you would like to see the message, go to http://www.free-conversant.com/irweblog/798

It's a while since I've reviewed the state of the papers in Information Research in terms of the number of hits attracted. This time I give the information on the most hit papers in each volume (excluding the present volume, of course).

Probably the most interesting point is the way in which papers in the early volumes continue to attact hits - if you want your work to be used, publish in an open access electronic journal!

All of the numbers are live links to the counters, so they will be automatically updated if you bookmark this message and keep on revisiting.

Volume 1 - P. Riding, S.P. Fowell, and P.C.M. Levy
An action research approach to curriculum development

Volume 2 - Zita Correia and Tom Wilson
Scanning The Business Environment For Information:A Grounded Theory Approach

Volume 3 - Hooi-Im Ng, Ying Jie Pan, and T.D. Wilson
Business Use of The World Wide Web: a report on further investigations

Volume 4 - Joyce Kirk
Information in Organisations: Directions for Information Management

Volume 5 - T.D. Wilson
Recent trends in user studies: action research and qualitative methods

Volume 6 - Maija-Leena Huotari and T.D. Wilson
Determining organizational information needs: the Critical Success Factors approach

Volume 7 - Chun Wei Choo
Environmental scanning as information seeking and organizational learning

Volume 8 - T.D. Wilson
The nonsense of knowledge management

Volume 9 - Jannica Heinström
Five personality dimensions and their influence on information behaviour

Volume 10 - Christian Schlögl
Information and knowledge management: dimensions and approaches.

Volume 11 - Liana Kourteli
Scanning the business external environment for information: evidence from Greece

I made an initial foray into the cellar recently, to begin the process of throwing away the accumulated junk of years. One of the things I found there may be of interest to a future historian of information behaviour research (and, indeed, of what is now called 'information literacy' research). It's a document I wrote for a UNISIST invitation meeting in Rome: the UNISIST Seminar on the Education and Training of Users of Scientific and Technological Information, 18-21 October 1976. [Clearly, a time when language was plain and straightforward and said what it meant :-)]

The paper was called: 'The investigation of information use and users' needs as a basis for training programmes' The paper is now on my Web site, slightly tidied up and with a couple of notes added. Devotees of the arcana of information research may find it interesting for (I think) the first appearance in print of the framework I evolved during a doctoral seminar at the University of Maryland in 1971, which ultimately became part of the models in my 1981 paper. The history of the evolution of the models is told in Fisher, K.E. et al. (2005). Theories of information behavior. Medford, NY: Information Today.

By coincidence, that 1981 paper has been resurrected by the Journal of Documentation in its series to celebrate its 60th anniversary. The current issue, volume 62 number 6, reprints the paper, together with a commentary by the Editor, David Bawden, and a response to that commentary by myself. I wonder what will happen at the 75th anniversary? :-)

Again, by chance, the same issue contains two reviews of the collection, 'Introducing information management: an Information Research reader' edited by Elena Macevičiūtė and myself. There's been something of a production failure here, since the two reviews are not separated, but presented as if a single review with two authors, and then the authors have been mis-assigned to each other's institution. Still, you can't have everything!

For years I used the free analytics site NedStat - originally set up by the Netherlands Statistical Office - but they sold out and the new company started using pop-up ads, so moved to OneFreeStat.com. Here's their analysis of the hits on the 'top ten' pages of the journal from April to December. It's interesting that the most hit paper is in Spanish: justification, I think for my decision to include papers in Spanish in the journal. After all, it is an 'international electronic journal', so why not? :-)

Table 1: OneStatFree analysis of pageviews from April to December 2006

Rank	Page	Pageviews	%
1.	Journal home page	37,753	34.63%
2.	Other	9,970	9.15%
3.	Contents page Vol. 11 No. 3	5,988	5.49%
4.	Contents page Vol. 11 No. 4	5,557	5.10%
5.	Paper258-Herrera-Solano & Hassan (in Spanish)	5,266	4.83%
6.	Contents page Vol. 12 No. 1	5,021	4.61%
7.	Contents page Vol. 11 No. 2	4,466	4.10%
8.	Paper254-Ankem	2,283	2.09%
9.	Paper260-Wilson	2,135	1.96%
10.	The Rest	30,559	28.04%
Total		108,998	100.00%

However for the site as a whole (i.e., information.r.net) I use Google Analytics, which has some pretty pictures:

 

 

This shows some interesting things: most visitors have been new visitors (almost by definition, given the short time the counters have been active), but 20% are returning visitors. When we compare that number with the percentage who come directly to the site (usually from bookmarks), i.e., 26%, we can guess that, probably, most of those who come directly, are returning visitors - my regular readers, if you like. The map is also instructive (although not as much as in the earlier message), particularly when you see the big bulge of users from China.

The 'top ten' pages from Google Analytics (covering the whole site, remember) are, naturally, different from the top ten identified by OneFreeStat.com:

Table 2: Google Analytics report

Rank	Page	Unique views	Page views
1.	Information Research (journal top page)	32,505	60,904
2.	World list... information studies, information management, etc	6,694	11,890
3.	Electronic Resources for Research Methods	5,314	9,124
4.	Europe: World list...	1,305	3,335
5.	(Page without the title tag)	1,809	2,561
6.	Information management (Wilson - Encyclopedia entry)	2,164	2,515
7.	USA - World list...	1,174	2,444
8.	Digital information in the Information Research field (open access magazines, etc.)	1,437	2,100
9.	World list... USA (a duplicate page - needs removing!)	790	1,943
10.	Alfred Schutz, phenomenology (Wilson - conf. paper)	1,637	1,820
Totals (whole site)		94,310	147,149

Maintaining this entire site is a pretty time-consuming task - or set of tasks! However, it looks as though most of what is provided is being used, and it will be interesting to see what the picture looks like when the Analytics cover an entire year. (Incidentally, it also shows the benefits of archiving your publications on your home site.)

All of this stuff is going to be used in one of the Open Access Case Studies running in the journal, so watch out for an update some time next year.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

I've been using Maxthon in preference to Firefox for some time - my impression is that it is less memory hungry and it has pretty well all the features that make Firefox an excellent browser. Now version 2.0, available in beta for the present, is an improvement. In fact it has the tidiest layout of any browser I've come across - Microsoft could learn a thing or two from this piece of software, which uses the IE engine. Go get it.

In the UK, Internet service providers advertise 'up to 8Mb' broadband - a bit of advertising weasel wording (with small print get out clauses) that hasn't been thoroughly stomped on yet.

What 'up to 8MB' really means is that you will never get anywhere near 8MB speeds - in fact, on average, across all providers you'll be lucky to get half of that and most of the time you'll get less than half. The broadband speed tester Nuria has data on a number of suppliers:

	Provider	Maximum	Average kb/s
1	Telewest Blueyonder 10 Mb elite	10240	5250
2	Telewest Blueyonder 4Mb complete	4096	2842
3	BT Broadband Option 4	8192	2420
4	Tiscali Broadband Max	8192	2307
5	BT Broadband Option 3	8192	2170
6	BT Broadband Option 1	8192	1982
7	BT Broadband Option 2	8192	1970
8	Plusnet Broadband Premier	8192	1931
9	Tiscali 2 Mb unlimited	2048	1438
10	Tiscali 1 Mb unlimited	1024	679

From this, it is pretty evident that consumers would be sensible to resist the Siren call of 8Mb and opt for a 4Mb cable connection - they won't get 4Mb, but at least they will be getting better speeds than most of us who have the 'up to 8Mb' connection!

The big question here is, 'Why does Ofcom - the communications regulator - allow them to get away with it?'

New developments in the Pipex battle. I've been contacted by the company after writing to the CEO (who, needless to say, lacked the courtesy to give even a token response himself) by someone who claims that my experience is only typical of broadband users generally! This is an outright lie: I've used the ADSLGuide.com pages to compare all of the providers in the UK - and Pipex turns out to be one of the worst. IDNet, Ke-Connect, Supanet, Twang and Zen Internet are the top performers as far as speed is concerned - regularly achieving 75% of their advertised speeds.

I also used the line checking services of a couple of these providers and they note that I can get up to 2Mb/s at present, with the prospect of 'up to 8Mb/s' in the future. (That 'up to' is really weasel wording on the part of companies!)

A further check on the status of British Telecom's exchanges (upon which all these providers rely) tells me that my loca exchange, is still undergoing upgrade, and is not expected to be finished until 2nd December. Now - if I can discover this, I think I can claim that Pipex Homecall has been mis-selling its services, since they would evidently know that the full service would not be available - I'll be asking them for a rebate for the couple of months of slow speeds.

I recently made the most stupid decision to swith ISP from Pipex, with a 2MB connection to Pipex Homecall with, supposedly, an 8MB connection. Actually, British Telecom told me that the line was capable of 6.5MB rather than 8, but, still, I expected an improvement.

Silly me! The service in now actually slower than the previous 2MB connection - this morning, for example, it was running at about 1MB, and that was an improvement over the 0.5MB and 0.7MB of previous days.

I had expected that Pipex Homecall would be using the Pipex servers that had always given me good service, but I learn that the service is actually provided by Tiscali, which has one of the worst records for customer service in the UK - there was not mention that Pipex would not be the provider when I took up the offer.

In fact, broadband in the UK is in a complete mess - even the cable company NTL, which offers 10MB, can't actually do better than about half that speed most of the time and I don't think there is a single 8MB provider in the country that is matching its advertised speeeds.

There's a clear message here - if your 2MB provider is doing a reasonable job, don't think of switching to an offered 8MB - it's a fiction. I'm not pursuing formal complaints through Ofcom, the communications regulator - as are many more: perhaps we'll have some influence on the outcome.

It's more fun than KFC :-)

 

 

The dots represent hits on the top page of the journal. The map is regularly updated and you can see it by scrolling down to the bottom of the page at http://InformationR.net/ir/

See: http://michaelcastellon.blogspot.com/2006/11/kfcs-logo-first-to-be-seen-from-space.html and read the comments!

There's an interesting little discussion going on on the Library and Information Technology discussion list at the moment, prompted by a request from the police in Worcester, Massachusetts that the public library should install a 'sniffer' to detect possible use of the Internet for 'suspect' purposes. Guest access to the LITA-L archive is said to be possible at http://lp-web.ala.org:8000/ but it looks as though the system isn't working effectively because I kept on being thrown out! Come on, LITA! Freedom of information is also about letting people read your stuff easily!

Jimmy Atkinson of the Online Education Database, has drawn my attention to an article he has written on Research Beyond Google. This is a list, with links, of 119 research resources, including 'deep Web' search engines, books online, general research, government literature, etc. There's an understandable US bias here, but it ought not to be too difficult to create local replicas of the list.

1. Google

The Guardian newspaper has an interesting article about Google getting into the political lobby business. With all of the threats to 'net neutrality' and related issues, this is probably not before time!

2. Firefox

Version 2.0 is due to be released at 17.00 Pacific Standard Time today - 00.00 GMT. According to the BBC News report:

The first version of Firefox was released in November 2004 and since then has steadily been chipping away at the dominance of Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser.

Now it is believed to enjoy a 12-15% market share of the net browsing market globally. But, said Mike Schroepfer, vice-president of engineering at Mozilla, in some nations the share is far higher.

Mr Schroepfer said that there were about 12 big improvements in Firefox 2.0 along with thousands of minor tweaks and bug fixes.

Big changes include a phishing finder that alerts people when they stray on to a site that tries to trick them into handing over login details for a bank or other valuable service.

Another change was a spell checker that keeps an eye on every bit of text typed in almost any Firefox browser box be it in a web-based e-mail program or an add-on that lets people post blog updates directly.

Firefox 2.0 also has an improved session restoration system that will let users resurrect tabbed webpages they accidentally closed or will re-start a net session at the point before a crash.

Other changes include improvements to the web feed, search engine and add-ons manager.

Chasing down a reference recently, I happened upon the 'Language Corner' of the Columbia Journalism Review. Back entries are available in two printable lists. Here's a sample:

Unlike the distinctly unlovely use of 'reference' as a verb (CJR, July/August 2006), the figurative use of 'resonate' is effective and apt. But it became painfully popular as the century rolled over; a nice metaphor has been cheapened.
'Resonate' means to sound strongly and deeply, or to echo, pleasingly or otherwise. And our word makes for a fine, versatile metaphor, meaning ring a bell, strike a chord, make a strong impression, have a lasting impact, be memorable, and so on.
And on:

'But it takes a Byrne, Rushdie or Fellini or Dali to make the details resonate'.
'What is important is that the Teen-age Mutants resonate so strongly with the kids'.
'The songs resonate to her own experience'.
'When people see the big company letterhead, it resonates well'.

But enough — and that’s the point. 'Resonate' is trite. We should let it rest awhile.

and

Some distinctions between similar words need to be maintained because they’re useful; examples abound in the archives of this font of wisdom. Here’s another: the distinction between 'historic' and 'historical.' In the phrase 'Chile, Bolivia’s historic enemy,' the choice was unfortunate. By hoary consensus, 'historic' has been reserved for events of great moment, like the Battle of Yorktown or the Emancipation Proclamation. To describe a longtime pattern, like Chilean-Bolivian enmity, or for any variation on the broad notion 'relating to history,' the job is best done by 'historical.' Different words for different meanings. Useful. (CJR September/October 2004)

Not at all useful is the insistence among the finicky (including this traveler at one time) that 'advisor' is a misspelling, an ignorant back-formation from 'advisory,' and that only 'adviser' is correct. 'Advisor' is ubiquitous, and it was not surprising to find 'became a valued advisor' in a historical (not historic) work of impeccable pedigree. So we should pick a spelling (CJR prefers 'adviser'), stay with it, and relax.

It's good to know that there's a small voice of reason in journalism in the USA, although the battle against the linguistic barbarism of current academic writing will probably be a long one

So Internet Explorer Version 7.0 is finally out, but, according to a couple of reviews I've seen, still playing catch-up with Firefox and, when Firefox 2.0 is out (coming shortly), presumably IE 8.0 will have to get under development. The most complete review so far appears to that on PC World's Website. The crazy thing for IE users is that browsers using the IE engine have been providing some of the new features for some time - see Maxthon, for example - so the died in the wool IE user needed have waited all this time for something better. And, of course, Opera is still going strong and had most of the features that IE is finally bringing on stream some time before Firefox.

Just for interest, readers of Information Research over the past month have been using the browsers like this:

IE	79.81%
Firefox	15.70%
Safari	1.81%
Opera	1.07%
The rest	1.61

That's still a massive lead for IE and the picture in the rest of the Internet user world is usually portrayed as IE having about 93% of the total.

Peter Suber's Open Access Newsletter is always worth a read - and worth subscribing to, and this month's issue is particularly interesting, devoted as it is to the issue of quality in OA journals. Peter demolishes a number of myths, largely put about by the commercial publishers and provides links to lots and lots of evidence. If you are at all interested in open access, Peter's newsletter is a 'must read'.