Sunday, April 30, 2006

Cross The Line

Office of Immigration Statistics publishes materials "for developing, analyzing, and disseminating statistical information needed to assess the effects of immigration in the United States." Includes the Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, demographic profiles on legal permanent residents (LPR) and naturalized citizens, population estimates, maps, and working papers and special reports. This office is part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Saturday, April 29, 2006

Do Not Resuscitate

Health News Review analyzes the quality of health articles published in magazines and newspapers and health stories on television news. Journalists and health professionals rate stories for accuracy, balance, honesty, and completeness. The site lists rating criteria and contributors' credentials. Searchable, or browse by publication date or media source. Includes explanations of concepts such as absolute versus relative risk. From a University of Minnesota journalism professor and the Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making.

Friday, April 28, 2006

Over The Fence

Migration Policy Institute (MPI) provides analyses of "migration and refugee policies at the local, national, and international levels" from an "independent, non-partisan, non-profit think-tank." Find publications on U.S. immigration policy, U.S.-Mexico relations, European migration, temporary worker programs, refugees, border security, and other migration topics. Includes news releases and links to news stories.

Thursday, April 27, 2006

Green House Effect

Buildings and Land: Home Resource Efficiency is a consumer guide to sustainable and energy-efficient home design, with fact sheets on appliances and lighting, home cooling, household greenhouse gas emissions, water efficiency, construction of new homes, environmentally friendly building materials, renewable energy (such as solar and wind power), indoor air quality, and recycling. From the Rocky Mountain Institute, an energy policy research organization.

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

The Bottom Line

Guide to Finding Business Information at the Library of Congress is a publication that 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.For more in-depth treatment of these and other topics, and for information on related Internet resources see the Specialized Business Guides. These are guides to print publications, subscription databases, and selected freely available Internet sites which are useful for researching a variety of business topics. Also of interest are the Subject Guides to Internet Resourceswith links to freely available Internet resources on business and economics topics arranged by subject.

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Burning The Midnight Oil

The mission of the Law Library of Congress is to provide research and legal information to the U.S. Congress as well as to U.S. Federal Courts and Executive Agencies, and to offer reference services to the public. To accomplish this mission, it has created the world's largest collection of law books and other legal resources from all countries, and now moves into the age of digitized information with online databases and guides to legal information worldwide.

Monday, April 24, 2006

Crank Up The Victrola

Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project contains more than 6,000 digitized recordings from music cylinders of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The project includes spoken word, popular songs, classical music, opera, vaudeville, and religious songs. Each record includes bibliographic information, downloadable MP3 file, downloadable WAV file, and streaming Quicktime audio. The library also offers a streaming cylinder radio feed.

Sunday, April 23, 2006

Order In The Court

Judicial Facts and Figures is a set of tables containing historical caseload data primarily for the fiscal years 1990, 1995 and 2000 through 2005. All tables are in PDF. This publication includes data on the U.S. Courts of Appeals, the U.S. District Courts, and the U.S. Bankruptcy Courts. The sources for the data were the Annual Report of the Director, the Judicial Business of the United States Courts, Federal Court Management Statistics and a few unpublished statistical tables. Specific data sources are noted on each table for easy reference. Except where specifically stated, data were compiled from the published report of the fiscal year noted (i.e., 1995 data are from the 1995 Judicial Business of the U.S. Courts).

Saturday, April 22, 2006

Underground Stream

The Gnosis Archive offers a vast collection of primary texts and resources relating to Gnosticism and the Gnostic Tradition, both ancient and modern. Visit the Gnostic Society Library, a comprehensive library of Gnostic scriptures -- including the Nag Hammadi Library -- as well as a large selection of writings and documents relating to the study of Gnosticism.

Friday, April 21, 2006

The Magic Bullet

Search Newspaper Articles about Kennedy Assassination in more than 50,000 Historical Newspaper Pages. NewspaperARCHIVE.com, the largest database of newspapers online, is providing a free archive of material relating to the assassination of President Kennedy. Within the archive, you will find articles on the President's trip to Texas, the speeches in the days preceding his assassination, as well as coverage of the immediate aftermath of the assassination and the presidential funeral. Click on the timeline to view newspapers in chronological order or begin searching the newspaper pages with your own key words.

Thursday, April 20, 2006

Hotwire

Discover Circuits, a resource for engineers, hobbyists, inventors & consultants is a collection of 20,000 electronic circuits or electronic schematics cross-referenced into 500+ categories to find quick solutions for electronic design problems.

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Eye In The Sky

The National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC), located in Boulder, Colorado, is a part of the US Department of Commerce (USDOC), National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service (NESDIS). We are one of three NOAA National Data Centers (NNDC). NGDC's Vision is to be the world's leading provider of geophysical and environmental data and information. NGDC provides services for geophysical data describing the solid earth, marine, and solar-terrestrial environment, as well as earth observations from space. NGDC's data holdings currently contain more than 300 digital and analog databases.

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

The Large And Small

Worldmapper is a collection of world maps, where territories are re-sized on each map according to the subject of interest. New maps are being added during 2006. The maps presented on this website are cartograms, otherwise known as density-equalising maps. The maps of the world you are used to seeing attempt to represent countries according to their land area. A cartogram re-sizes each country (or other geographical unit) according to some other variable - for example population, GDP, number of people with AIDS, etc. In the population example, densely-populated country such as the UK will appear much larger than it does on a standard map, and sparsely populated countries will appear smaller. The colours used on the maps group the territories into 12 geographical regions, and allow for an easier visual comparison between the maps than would otherwise be possible. The shading of each territory within a region is consistent throughout all of the maps, and helps to make the borders clear, and to identify each territory.

Monday, April 17, 2006

Draw Up A Contract

The ketubbot digitization project aims to create a worldwide registry of ketubbot in public and private collections throughout the world. Based on the collection of the Jewish National and University Library with over 1200 items, the project contains ketubbot originating from dozens of different countries, and covering a time period of over 900 years. It is a major resource for research in Jewish history, law and art.

Sunday, April 16, 2006

An Itch To Scratch

The World Trade Organization (WTO) database provides access to the official documentation of the World Trade Organization, including the legal texts of the WTO agreements. The database contains WTO documentation from 1995 onwards and is updated daily. It also contains selected material for the period 1986-1994, principally Uruguay Round documents and a small number of GATT documents. There are currently over 100,000 documents in the database in the three official languages of the WTO.

Saturday, April 15, 2006

Back Scratching

At present the GATT Digital Library provides access to over 30,000 public documents and 300 publications of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) are accessible from this site, a digital library created in a partnership between the Stanford University Libraries & Academic Information Resources (SULAIR) and the World Trade Organization (WTO). The public documents include reports, studies, and meeting records covering a broad range of topics related to international trade in the post-war period. Each document bears a unique symbol number and the entire collection is searchable by a range of fields including symbol, date, keyword in title, keyword in title, and organization name.

Friday, April 14, 2006

They All Count

Faces of the Fallen from the Washington Post has information that has been compiled from military releases, news service reports and local newspaper stories. The photographs come from news services, local newspapers and family members.The total may include deaths of service members whose names have not yet been released. The number includes four civilian employees of the Defense Department.Total Fatalities as of April 17th 2006 is 2,616, Operation Iraqi Freedom: 2,335 and Operation Enduring Freedom: 281

Thursday, April 13, 2006

Old World Charm

"The National Anthropological Archives collects and preserves historical and contemporary anthropological materials that document the world's cultures and the history of the discipline." The NAA site is an excellent means to accomplish the first stage of anthropological archival research from a remote location. Their online Guide to the Collections of the National Anthropological Archives includes for each entry "a title, biographical data or administrative history, an indication of the type of documents available, and a description of contents (often including lengthy lists of authors, photographers, and correspondents)" as well as assessments of the state of the material and its possible research uses. The site's online exhibits feature substantive reviews of selected collections in the Archives, including photographs and facsimiles.

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

They Went Two By Two

The Archival Research Catalog (ARC) is the online catalog of NARA's nationwide holdings in the Washington, DC area, Regional Archives and Presidential Libraries. ARC allows you to perform a keyword, digitized image and location search. ARC's advanced functions also allow you to search by organization, person, or topic. ARC currently contains descriptions of 45% of the National Archives traditional holdings. Archival materials that have been digitized in ARC include 15 architectural and engineering drawings items, 58 artifact items, 308 maps and charts, 57,786 still pictures and 15,005 textual documents.

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

State Stats

StateMaster.com, a unique statistical database which allows you to research and compare a multitude of different data on US states. They have compiled information from various primary sources such as the US Census Bureau, the FBI, and the National Center for Educational Statistics. More than just a mere collection of various data, StateMaster.com goes beyond the numbers to provide you with visualization technology like pie charts, maps, graphs and scatterplots. They also have thousands of map and flag images, state profiles, and correlations. They currently have 2,613 stats on everything from toothless residents to percentage of carpoolers.

Monday, April 10, 2006

Looking Behind The Fence

SourceWatch, a collaborative project of the Center for Media and Democracy to produce a directory of the people, organizations and issues shaping the public agenda. SourceWatch's primary focus is on documenting public relations firms, think tanks, industry-funded organizations and industry-friendly experts that work to influence public opinion and public policy on behalf of corporations, governments and special interests. Over time, SourceWatch has broadened to include others involved in public debates including media outlets, journalists and government agencies.

Sunday, April 09, 2006

Registar To Vote

Election Guide is provided by IFES, an international nonprofit dedicated to the building of democratic societies. Launched in 1998 through a grant from USAID, ElectionGuide is the most comprehensive and timely source of verified election information and results available online. ElectionGuide provides timely and accurate information on national elections around the world, and other electoral events deemed of high interest,political parties and candidates,referenda provisions,breaking news on election-related laws and political developments around the world, governmental and electoral structures and election results and voter turnout.

Saturday, April 08, 2006

Survey Says

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is composed of four Disciplines (Biological Resources [BRD], Geologic [GD], Water Resources [WRD], and National Mapping [NMD]). The mission of the U.S. Geological Survey is to provide reliable scientific information to: describe and understand the Earth; minimize loss of life and property from natural disasters; assist others in managing water, biological, and mineral resources; and enhance and protect quality of life. The USGS provides a broad range of national expertise in geography, geology, hydrology, and biology. The USGS places a special emphasis on providing science to the land and resource management bureaus of the Department of the Interior (DOI). The USGS BRD studies assist in maintaining healthy ecosystems and natural resources so that these habitats can continue to provide food, energy, medicine, transportation, and recreation.

Friday, April 07, 2006

Cloistered Reading

Early Christian Writings is "the most complete collection of documents from the first two centuries with translations and commentary. Includes the New Testament, Apocrypha, Gnostics, and Church Fathers." Entries include links to the online texts (a variety of translations), to online and offline resources about the text, and a brief article about the text.

Thursday, April 06, 2006

The Next Generation

"Each year, UNICEF's flagship publication, the 'State of the World's Children,' closely examines a key issue affecting children. The report includes supporting data and statistics and is available in French and Spanish language versions." The site features reports back 1996, with themes such as excluded and invisible children (2006), education and development (2004), nutrition (1998), and children at war (1996). Also will find a large collection of photo galleries.

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

A Right Turn

The University of Minnesota Human Rights Library houses one of the largest collections of more than twenty-three thousand core human rights documents, including several hundred human rights treaties and other primary international human rights instruments. The site also provides access to more than four thousands links and a unique search device for multiple human rights sites. This comprehensive research tool is accessed by more than a 175,000 students, scholars, educators, and human rights advocates monthly from over 135 countries around the world. Documents are available in six languages - Arabic, English, French, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish.

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Would You Believe

"The American Religion Data Archive (ARDA) is a project funded by the Lilly Endowment, Inc. and acts to preserve quantitative data on American religion, to improve access to this data, to increase the use of the data, and to allow comparisons across data files. The ARDA collection includes data on churches and church membership, religious professionals, and religious groups (individuals, congregations and denominations)."

Monday, April 03, 2006

Children Are Our Future

Child Trends DataBank provides "national trends and research on over 100 key indicators of child and youth well-being." Data is organized by the following subject areas: Health, Social and Emotional Development, Income, Assets and Work, Education and Skills, Demographics, Family and Community. Also provides CrossCurrents Data Briefs, a series of data briefs drawing from multiple indicators to examine broad topics and special populations of greatest concern to policy makers, service providers, the media, and the general public.

Sunday, April 02, 2006

Ruler Of The Free World

The American Presidency Project provides information on the American presidency. The major divisions on the site are Data, Documents, Elections, and Media. Included in the data archive are relations with Congress, popularity, public appearances, growth of the executive branch and presidential selection. The document archive includes the Public Papers back to 1929, State of the Union messages, fireside chats, candidate debates, and political party platforms. The site also provides election results for every presidential election from 1828 to 2004. The media archive includes audio and video of selected presidential events.

Saturday, April 01, 2006

Making Africa Count

The African Census Analysis Project provides access to census data from African states since 1945. African censuses until recently have been greatly underutilized. Most of the census micro-data collected prior to and including the 1960s have deteriorated as a result of poor archiving. Nevertheless existing censuses provide the raw materials for examining demographic trends in several key areas such as population growth, mortality, urbanization, and migration, with great potential not only for training new researchers, but also for local use in administrative and policy-relevant applications. Census data allows study demographic processes at the local administrative level and to examine the spatial components of demographic processes. ACAP pursues three specific aims: archiving of African census data, research collaboration with African researchers, and demographic capacity strengthening in Africa. To date, ACAP has obtained and archived 38 censuses from 16 African nations thus preventing some of them from further destruction. The fifteen countries from which we currently have data spread across all regions of Africa.