Published by rwatstein October 5th, 2008
in internet, research and reference.
The Internet is an accepted place to turn for research, and nowhere has this become more apparent than in the fields of medicine and health care. A veritable explosion of available medical information seeks to meet the needs of both professionals and the public. In fact, many professionally-oriented health care sites have evolved to meet consumer needs, and consumer-oriented sites often include professional literature. Although sites for consumers and support groups make up an important and extremely useful segment of health care web sites, I will concentrate on the needs of the professional researcher. For example, legal researchers, who often have to consult medical sources, usually do not have a medical library at hand. We can appreciate that the Internet provides free access to a great deal of the medical literature, either in full text or citation/abstract format, and that it offers relatively good search capabilities. Medical journals, dictionaries, textbooks, indexes, rankings, images – all can be found on the Net, and much of it is free. The sources include publishers, government agencies, professional organizations, health libraries, and commercial entities. The following is not intended to be an exhaustive list, but rather notes on databases that I have found to be reliable and useful.
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Published by rwatstein September 21st, 2008
in social networking and research.
A research fellow at the University of Oxford’s All Souls College is asking academics to sign up for his new online directory of researchers worldwide, part of a growing trend of scholars using social networking to facilitate collaboration in research.
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Published by rwatstein September 21st, 2008
in information, internet, research and health.
WebMD and similar sites are in great shape. Visits to health information Websites have climbed 21% during the past year, according to comScore. The company said that health information site visits grew four times as fast as Internet visits overall.
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Published by rwatstein September 21st, 2008
in information, internet and research.
As US Internet users ages 16 and older gain experience on the Web, the Internet becomes a more-important source of information, according to recently released data from the USC Annenberg Center for the Digital Future. In time, the Internet surpasses even personal sources of information, and all media except the Web stay at the same levels of importance or drop.
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With the nation facing tough economic times, Americans are visiting their local public libraries more often and checking out items with greater frequency. Libraries across the United States report that more people are turning to libraries in record numbers to take advantage of the free resources available there. According to the ALA’s 2008 State of America’s Libraries Report, Americans visited their libraries nearly 1.3 billion times and checked out more than 2 billion items in the past year, an increase of more than 10% since 2001
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Read the State of America’s Libraries Executive Summary here
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Published by rwatstein August 31st, 2008
in libraries and research.
In a survey report that measures the perceptions of libraries and their value on campus, researchers at Ithaka ay they have found a “growing ambivalence about the campus library” in the digital age. Further, the survey, Ithaka’s 2006 Studies of Key Stakeholders in the Digital Transformation in Higher Education, also reveals an emerging disconnect between librarians’ perceptions of their roles and the expectations and habits of the faculty they serve. The report—sure to generate significant discussion in the field—is a deep trend analysis, comparing and analyzing survey data collected in the group’s 2006, 2003, and 2000 faculty surveys, and a 2006 survey of academic librarians. The 2006 faculty survey generated 4100 responses, while the librarian study, which targeted collection development directors, generated 350 responses. In addition to its own data analysis, meanwhile, Ithaka has made the raw data available from both the faculty and librarian studies to those wishing to investigate further.
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Read the Ithaka’s 2006 Studies of Key Stakeholders in the Digital Transformation in Higher Education study here
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Published by rwatstein July 26th, 2008
in research and publishing.
The Internet gives scientists and researchers instant access to an astonishing number of academic journals. So what is the impact of having such a wealth of information at their fingertips? The answer, according to new research released today in the journal Science, is surprising–scholars are actually citing fewer papers in their own work, and the papers they do cite tend to be more recent publications. This trend may be limiting the creation of new ideas and theories.
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The Nielsen Company released the first comparable U.S. figures showing video and TV usage across the ‘three screens’ – Television, Internet and Mobile devices. Nielsen’s findings show that screen time of the average American continues to increase with TV users watching more TV than ever before (127 hrs, 15 min per month), while also spending 9% more time using the Internet (26 hrs, 26 min per month) from last year. At the same time, a small but growing number of Internet and mobile phone users are watching video online (2 hrs, 19 min per month), as well as using their cell phones to watch video (3 hrs, 15 min per month).
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The Library of Congress has awarded $300,000 to Middle Tennessee State University to provide access to some of America’s most important historical documents. The grant to MTSU’s Center for Historic Preservation provides an opportunity to work with “one of the world’s greatest resources,” said Dr. Carroll Van West, the center’s director. The grant will allow the center to focus on several aspects of American history that also are key in Tennessee’s past, said Stacey Graham, research professor at the center and project coordinator. Among them are the eras of Andrew Jackson, the Civil War and Reconstruction, the Depression, World War II and the civil rights movement.Graham said folk life, art, music and architecture are other possible topics of study.
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Published by rwatstein July 5th, 2008
in research.
The US Department of Energy has launched the DOE Data Explorer (DDE), a tool to find scientific research data generated in the course of DOE-sponsored research in various science disciplines. The data that can be found thus include computer simulations, numeric data files, figures and plots, interactive maps, multimedia and scientific images.
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Published by rwatstein June 1st, 2008
in research, archives and reference.
Until recently, if you were a historian and you wanted to write a fresh account of, say, the Battle of Leyte Gulf in World War II, research was a pretty straightforward business. You would pack your bags and head to the National Archives, and spend months looking for something new in the official combat reports. Today, however, you might first do something very different: Get online and pull up any of the unofficial websites of the ships that participated in the battle - the USS Pennsylvania, for example, or the USS Washington. Lovingly maintained by former crew members and their descendants, these sites are sprawling, loosely organized repositories of photographs, personal recollections, transcribed log books, and miniature biographies of virtually every person who served on board the ship. Some of these sites even include contact information for surviving crew members and their relatives - perfect for tracking down new diaries, photographs, and letters.
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Published by rwatstein May 26th, 2008
in demographics and research.
US Hispanic-American Internet users are more likely to spend time online than watching TV, according to a February 2008 comScore Media Metrix survey conducted on behalf of Terra Networks USA. While 50% of the Hispanic-American Internet users surveyed said they spent at least one hour per day watching television, 56% said they spend at least one hour per day online.
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Published by rwatstein May 4th, 2008
in research, Wikia and wiki.
Even if they won’t admit it, students are using Wikipedia to kick off their research and fill the gaps in their class notes … right now. It might not show up in the bibliography, but the free, open source online resource has long since become the starting point for settling factual disputes, brainstorming paper ideas and even offering suggestions for further reading. If that’s an open secret, then so is this: For all the hand-wringing over whether Wikipedia is a legitimate source for completing college assignments, some professors are quietly incorporating it into their classrooms and even their research. Others, noting features of the Web site that contribute to inaccuracies and shortchange the value of expertise, are building variations on the model that are more amenable to academics and to peer review.
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Published by rwatstein May 4th, 2008
in demographics, internet and research.
Most Internet users worldwide use the Web primarily for e-mail and search, according to a global survey conducted by Gartner during the fourth quarter of 2007. Online banking is the third most popular use of the Internet (except in emerging markets), while sharing photos, videos and files is the fourth.
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Published by rwatstein April 27th, 2008
in libraries, sources, research and digital.
The British Library recently conducted a survey on researchers’ attitudes and needs in the digital age. Of the respondents, 93 percent stated that access to online research material should be the same as for books. A majority of the survey participants agreed that, in the age of the Internet, anyone involved in non-commercial research should be allowed to copy parts of electronically published works. These include online articles, news broadcasts, film or sound recordings.
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Published by rwatstein March 23rd, 2008
in web 2.0, research and collaboration.
What technologies do researchers need at different phases of their projects? With new possibilities constantly emerging, it seems we must keep reconsidering all our options. Part of research now is not just doing our research, but keeping abreast of new collaboration technologies.
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Published by rwatstein March 16th, 2008
in libraries and research.
InterConnections: The IMLS National Study on the Use of Libraries, Museums and the Internet offers insight into the ways people search for information in the online age, and how this impacts the ways they interact with public libraries and museums, both online and in person. Among the findings: Libraries and museums evoke consistent, extraordinary public trust among diverse adult users; An explosion of available information inspires the search for more information.
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Published by rwatstein February 18th, 2008
in libraries and research.
If you’re tired of using the same old search box on your local library website for research projects, it might be time to broaden your horizons. Try out one of these in-the-works betas sponsored by world-class libraries around the world. From academic libraries like that at MIT or renowned research centers like the Library of Congress, the following beta research tools feature innovative tricks to connect you with the most relevant, valid results on the Internet and in their card catalogs. Melvil Dewey would be proud.
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Published by rwatstein February 9th, 2008
in web 2.0, research and reference.
“The purpose of this study was to determine the effective behaviors of reference librarians during the chat reference interview, with particular emphasis given to whether the service users would feel more satisfied when librarians adopt the behaviors recommended in the revised “RUSA Guidelines for Behavioral Performance of Reference and Information Services Providers.” The data analyzed for this study consisted of 422 chat reference transaction transcripts and corresponding user surveys obtained from a public library system that participated in a nationwide chat reference consortium.
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How they came to their careers is as varied as the people themselves, but despite some clear challenges for college and university librarians in the digital age, academic librarianship is good work, according to Library Journal’s recent Job Satisfaction Survey (examined in Take This Job and Love It ). The overwhelming majority of the 1,209 academic respondents—some 70 percent across all age groups and institution size—reported being either “very satisfied” (32.1 percent) or “satisfied” (37.9 percent) with their jobs. Just under a quarter reported they were “somewhat satisfied” (23.4 percent). Only 6.7 percent admitted they were dissatisfied with their career choice.
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Published by rwatstein February 5th, 2008
in information, research and economics.
Revenue growth for the information industry slowed 5.3% last year to $381 billion, compared with 6% growth in 2006, according to a report released recently by market research and advisory company Outsell. The report, “Information Industry Market Size and Share Rankings: Preliminary 2007 Results,” analyzed data on the information industry as a whole, as well as 12 separate segments. These segments included b-to-b trade publishing; company information; market research, reports and services; IT and telecom research.
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