Web Search--Google
Source: News.Com Issues with Google Providing Access to More Formats
A few weeks ago we mentioned that Google was now crawling and making available content from MS Word files, Excel spreadsheets and more. Now, an article expressing concern over security issues. I agree with Google on this one. If a document is "on the Internet" (publicly available) than it should be the responsibility of the document owner and/or webmaster to block the crawler from accessing the material. Remember, the document(s) were placed in a publicly available location in the first place. Perhaps this story and information will be a wake-up call for many webmasters. From the article, "Our specialty is discovering, crawling and indexing publicly available information," said Google spokesman David Krane. "We define public as anything placed on the public Internet and not blocked to search engines in any way. The primary burden falls to the people who are incorrectly exposing this information. But at the same time, we're certainly aware of the problem, and our development team is exploring different solutions behind the scenes." Bottom line: Yes, security is an issue. However, a great deal of info that might be of value exists in PUBLICLY available formats other than html and pdf. Let's hope a happy medium between security concerns and potentially useful material.
Info Industry--ProQuest Proquest Makes an Acquisition: SoftLine Information
From the news release, "The company's [SoftLine] critically acclaimed full-text databases will become available from ProQuest immediately. SoftLine offers more than 500 newspapers and magazines from ethnic, minority, native, gender, alternative, and independent press. Prior to SoftLine's introduction of its databases, most titles were not available in electronic formats. The titles are organized into five specialized databases covering ethnic, cultural, and demographic diversity, including: Ethnic NewsWatch, Ethnic NewsWatch History, Alt-Press Watch, Gender Watch, and Diversity Your World."
Info Industry--Eliyon Biographical Information--Databases
Source: Information Today NewsBreaks Eliyon Offers Business Database Built with Web Information
Business research expert and author, Sheri Lanza offers a review of Eliyon, a database, "that uses Web data-extraction technology to build a database on the business history of 6.4 million people and 560,000 companies in the U.S." Lanza's review also shares several, "glaring weaknesses" with the system.
New, Updated, & Newly Discovered Resources (4 Items) World War II--Digital Archive New, Digital Archive of Historic World War II U.S. Government Documents Online, Impressive
Search or browse, then view scanned images of documents. All of the actual content resides on the Invisible Web. This database is provided by Southern Methodist University.
---- Demographics--United States U.S. Census Releases Data About Families
From the announcement, "The Census Bureau will release the most comprehensive and detailed data on American families in 64 cities across the country today. The Census 2000 Supplementary Survey (C2SS) data detail housing, language, income and other statistics." "C2SS data can be accessed through the Census Bureau's new search-and-retrieval database, American FactFinder, at http://factfinder.census.gov. C2SS operational information, narrative and tabular profiles for all summary levels and rankings at the state, county and place levels also may be found at http://www.census.gov/c2ss/www.
---- School Districts--United States
Source: NCES School District Demographics System
From the site, "CES' new School District Demographics Website provides access to school district demographic data useful for describing and analyzing characteristics of school districts, children, and K-12 education."
---- Health--Canada Redesigned Site: Health Canada
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