Resources of the Week: A Half-Dozen LC Jewels
By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor
The Library of Congress website is ginormous and multifaceted. While we regularly post useful features and items that we learn about, we readily acknowledge that there is probably plenty we are missing. Still...here's a small collection of LC resources we like. If we've missed any of your favorites, please let us know. We'll probably feature another collection like this in the future.
The sites listed below all include, to various degrees, graphic or textual materials relating to baseball. These links are all found on Library of Congress Web pages, and do not include materials found on other web sites, except for those provided by the Library's program American Memory: Historical Collections for the National Digital Library. The links were collected by staff in the Music Division (Performing Arts Reading Room), where one can find an extensive bibliography of published baseball music and songs (included below).
Your ResourceShelf editors are serious baseball fans, and we know the game has a loyal following among information professionals generally. (SLA's Baseball Caucus is a group of the nicest, most knowledgeable fans you'll ever meet.) And this guide is a great pathfinder for all the baseball-related materials on LC websites.
This publication describes selected print resources in accounting, company and industry information, entrepreneurship, international trade, statistics, business education, regional economic information, non-profit organizations and trade associations, and the federal budget and expenditures.
Guides to print publications, subscription databases, and selected freely available Internet sites which are useful for researching a variety of business topics.
Use of the subscription resources listed in this guide is limited to users on site at the Library of Congress.
Yes, but...your own library may well have access to at least some of these databases. The detailed descriptions provided are valuable in and of themselves. And a few of these are free on the open web to everyone.
Links to freely available Internet resources on business and economics topics arranged by subject.
Valuable to everyone. They are also accessible by title.
++ Law Library of Congress
The Law Library of Congress bills itself as "The world's largest collection of law books and legal resources." As such, most of its services and resources are restricted to on-site use. But you'll also find a variety of excellent online resources, such as:
GLIN: Global Legal Information Network
International legal database with official full texts of published documents in the original languages.
The Global Legal Monitor is an online publication from the Law Library of Congress covering legal news and developments worldwide. It is updated frequently and draws on information from the Global Legal Information Network, official national legal publications, and reliable press sources. You can search previous news by searching the archive.
The Learning Page is designed to help educators use the American Memory Collections to teach history and culture. It offers tips and tricks, definitions and rationale for using primary sources, activities, discussions, lesson plans and suggestions for using the collections in classroom curriculum.
American Memory is a gateway to the Library of Congress’s vast resources of digitized American historical materials. Comprising more than 9 million items that document U.S. history and culture, American Memory is organized into more than 100 thematic collections based on their original format, their subject matter, or who first created, assembled, or donated them to the Library.
The original formats include manuscripts, prints, photographs, posters, maps, sound recordings, motion pictures, books, pamphlets, and sheet music. Each online collection is accompanied by a set of explanatory features designed to make the materials easy to find, use, and understand.
This database has been established to assist researchers interested in investigating the U.S. Government documents pertaining to U.S. military personnel listed as unaccounted for as of December 1991. The title of this collection is "Correlated and Uncorrelated Information Relating to Missing Americans in Southeast Asia." The documents are declassified by the Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) and released to the Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, for public access.
Researchers using this database can identify documents of interest by using search terms such as last names, country names, service branches, keywords, and statements such as "downed over Laos." Once identified, copies of desired documents may be obtained in three ways:
Researchers wishing to use this microfilm collection may come to the Library of Congress Microform and Machine Readables Collection Reading Room, located in the Thomas Jefferson Building, First Floor, Room LJ-139B.
Microfilmed copies of the material can be sent to the researcher's local library on inter-library loan for viewing. This service is free, but materials must be returned to the Library of Congress.
Photocopies or microfilmed copies of desired documents can be ordered from the Library of Congress' Photoduplication Service. These copies must be paid for, but are retained by the researcher.
As of September 2008, this database contained 153,206 records.
++ Webcasts from the Library of Congress
A privileged few of us are able to take first-hand advantage of LC's rich and varied schedule of events, performances, panel discussions, etc. But everyone can pick and choose from among the many, many webcasts available online here. Browse by general topic (biography/history, culture/performing arts, education, government, poetry/literature, religion, science/technology), choose from among the current top ten (listed at the upper right), or check out what was recently added -- such as playwright and screenwriter Mark Stein discussing How the States Got Their Shapes. You'll even find webcasts and podcasts from the 2008 National Book Festival.
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? 
