Resources of the Week
A couple more for you to explore....
1) Marine Science--Directory
Source: International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange (IODE), Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC), UNESCO OceanPortal
If you're looking for data or information in the marine sciences, this searchable directory of more than 5,000 related websites is a good place to start. The directory is organized into several major areas, each of which is the top of a subject tree:
+ Information Resources -- libraries, literature, documents, repositories, directories, training & tools for librarians, discussion groups/news groups/listservers, e-repositories, expert directories
+ Data Resources files, images, software, data inventories, data centers, data products
+ Scientific Topics -- marine topics, including detailed descriptions of specific research projects within the topic
+ Agencies & Institutions -- government agencies, schools and laboratories, international scientific unions, etc.
+ Societies & Associations -- NGOs, professional societies, conservation and environmental groups, marine science library societies and associations
+ Administration, Conservation & Policy -- conventions/treaties/laws, coastal zone management, marine protected areas
+ Commerce & Trade -- commercial fishing equipment/services, maritime industry
+ Miscellaneous -- careers/employment funding sources, language translators
Scroll down the front page to see the latest links that have been added to the directory, or click on New Listings on the navigation menu at the top. If you click on Hot Listings, you'll see a page of links to those directory entries that have been accessed most often. There's also an Editor Pick link, where you can see resources that have been culled out by the site's (human) editors.
Each directory entry consists of a record that contains some or all of the following: the resource's title, URL, a brief description, top-level category or categories (as listed above), date the resource was added to the directory, a contact name and e-mail address. Registered users can write a review or rate the resource. (If you register -- which is free -- you can maintain a list of links to "favorite" resources. A link at the bottom of each entry allows you to e-mail the resource entry to a friend or colleague. Got a website you think belongs here? You can add it by clicking on the List Your Site link on the top navigation menu when you've browsed to the level of the subject tree where you think it belongs. A form is displayed that allows you to enter the information.
A simple keyword search box is available at the top of the home page, but you may want to take advantage of the site's Power Search page, which features a dropdown menu that allows you to confine your search to one of the main categories of links as detailed above -- i.e., Administration, Conservation & Policy; Agencies & Institutions; Commerce & Trade; Data Resources; Information Resources; Scientific Topics; Societies & Associations; and Miscellaneous. Most of these categories are subdivided by specific subject area, country, type of data, etc. The search engine indexes html files, MS-Word (.doc) documents, Acrobat PDF (.pdf files) and PHP files.
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2) Library of Congress--Webcasts
Source: Library of Congress CyberLC
There's always something interesting going on at the Library of Congress, but it's impossible to take advantage of every single event. Even if you live in the Washington, D.C. area, you can't really abandon the day job to go running off to LC every time you want to hear a public policy speaker or listen to an author read from his or her work.
But you can catch at least some of these events after the fact, at your convenience via CyberLC, an archive of webcasts from LC happenings. Choose from the recent webcasts on the main page, or explore the various offerings under Lectures, Events, Conferences and Interviews. You'll need RealPlayer to view these webcasts. Transcripts are available for some of the events. The archive is keyword searchable.
Some events archived here would be especially interesting to information professionals:
+ 2004 FLICC Forum on Information Policies: "E-Competencies for E-Government: Changing Role of the Federal Information Profession"
+ Inside the Library with Kurt Maier: "Senior Cataloger and longtime docent at the Library of Congress, shares a personal perspective on the Library's historic buildings and collections."
+ Library and Information Science Education in North America: Bridging the Gulf Between Education and Practice: "R. David Lankes (Syracuse University) chairs a panel on the ongoing tension in the library and information science (LIS) field between the demands of preparing professionals and the forward-looking research mission of many of today's LIS programs."
+ Stewardship in the Digital Age: Roles and Issues for Libraries for Preserving Our Cultural Heritage: "Meg Bellinger of Yale University explores the development and evolution of the digital repository and how digital preservation or archiving in the repository environment fundamentally differs from the purposes of preservation services in the past attempts to refine definitions."
A family of resources to help information workers be more effective, raise the value of information in their organisations and contribute to success. Read more »
Recently I have found myself cooing over visualisation maps (and heat maps) of health and well being resources. The content rich data is overlayed with mapping technologies, and some interesting themes and patterns are emerging.
A lot of the talk around social media in the last year has been around information overload. Social media has provided us with new and exciting ways to create content. But it has also meant learning new ways to manage and engage with social media tools. Are we teetering on the edge of an information overload precipice?
Information overload is a figment of your imagination. Or a failure of your filter. Or a symptom of your technological submissiveness. Depends on who you ask.
What if you had to sort through 3.5 million articles and social media posts a day and try to pull out the most relevant items for your organisation? What if you then had to cobble it all together into something readable for your top groups and executives in your organisation?
Alacra Compliance saves time by aggregating information from both free and fee-based sources and enabling users to conduct an accurate federated search across these sources (coined “simultaneous search” by Alacra).
FreePint Family
Quilting big data threads
The fallacy of information overload
Information overload: fact, fantasy or filter failure? 
