Resources of the Week: People!
By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor
Pretty much everyone who's ever worked as a librarian is familiar with the Marquis Who's Who series of reference materials. Well, we recently stumbled across a great free resource from the Who's Who folks, and you know how enthusiastic we are about free quality content here on ResourceShelf.
The launching of this Web site, WhosWhoInAmerica.com, marks an exciting time for us as we expand beyond the pages of our books to the digital world. Expect to see the same great biographical information coupled with recommendations and advice directly from the experts of Who’s Who. Find out which restaurants our chefs prefer, what vacation spots our travel specialists say are “must visits,” and which doctors are the best for what ails you—and that’s just the beginning. Check back soon for the latest in luxury lifestyle, fashion, beauty, real estate, art, business and more.
You'll find advice from familiar names here -- e.g., Peter Greenberg and Arthur Frommer providing travel tips. You'll also find interviews with folks who are not necessarily household names, but who are notable in their own fields, such as medicine and real estate. The site is divided into several sections, according to content:
You can sign up for e-mail updates about new content in any or all of these sections.
What's cool...as you travel around the site, when you click on a highlighted name, you are taken to that person's Who's Who biography, which includes date and place of birth, career achievements and awards, family info, and more.
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Another venerable -- and widely available through public libraries -- people resource is Biography Resource Center, from Gale Cengage. We didn't learn until recently that it has its own blog, with postings about people in the news, celebrities, historical figures, and new content added to the database. It offers an RSS feed, e-mail updates, and notes that, "Twitter is coming soon."
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? 
