Tales from the Terminal Room

Meetings and Workshops

Karen.Blakeman@rba.co.uk — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 11:20:22 +0100

Workshop: Assessing the Quality of Information
Organiser: TFPL
Venue: TFPL, London
Date: Friday, 26th September 2008
Presenter: Karen Blakeman.
URL: http://www.tfpl.com/skills_development/courses/cd.cfm?linkid=TR943&catid=f&searchid=2
Outline: This course provides a step by step guide to assessing and evaluating the quality of information. All types of media will be covered but the emphasis will be on electronic resources. The techniques are applicable to all sectors and types of organisations and all levels of expertise.

Meetings and Workshops

Karen.Blakeman@rba.co.uk — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 11:22:14 +0100

Workshop: Business Information - Key Web Resources
Organiser: TFPL
Venue: TFPL, London
Date: Thursday, 17th July 2008
Presenter: Karen Blakeman.
URL: http://www.tfpl.com/skills_development/courses/cd.cfm?linkid=TR945&catid=f&searchid=2
Outline: This one day workshop looks at key sources of business information available on the Internet. It will compare what is available for free with pay-as-you-go and subscription services, and highlight quality, coverage, functionality and price. Throughout the day, there will be practical sessions during which you can work through exercises or try out your own research. Each delegate receives a comprehensive set of notes. The workshop will benefit anyone who plans to use, or already uses, the Internet for gathering business information.

Gizmo of the Month - Page2RSS

Karen.Blakeman@rba.co.uk — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 11:23:32 +0100

http://www.page2rss.com/

Page2RSS monitors web pages for changes and notifies you of those changes by RSS. Simply type in the URL of the page you wish to monitor and then add the feed URL to your favourite feed reader. Excellent tool for pages that do not offer their own RSS feeds. search techniques that they felt would help them target information more effectively.

Directories: Major Companies of the World 2008

Karen.Blakeman@rba.co.uk — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 11:24:30 +0100

Seven new Editions of the World's Major Companies Series have been published by Graham & Whiteside and are now available for purchase on the dataresources (http://www.dataresources.co.uk/contents/en-uk/d57_worldsmajorcompanies.html) web site.

Research Recap

Karen.Blakeman@rba.co.uk — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 11:25:34 +0100

Alacra's Research Recap (http://www.researchrecap.com/) pulls together industry, economic, academic, market, investment and credit research reports. It concentrates on free content but also offers links to selected paid research deemed of relevance to the topic. Priced reports are sourced from a wide variety of providers, including the Alacra Store. Much of the paid research is usually password-protected and will not show up in a Google-type search, but Research Recap has made arrangements with providers to review their proprietary research to determine what is appropriate to highlight for Research Recap's audience. Research Recap does not claim to be comprehensive and may not include items that are widely circulated elsewhere. Research Recap is published in blog format and is also available as an RSS feed.

Energy Export Databrowser

Karen.Blakeman@rba.co.uk — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 11:28:17 +0100

The Energy Export Databrowser (http://mazamascience.com/OilExport/), set up Jonathan Callahan, is based on BP's Statistical Review (http://www.bp.com/productlanding.do?categoryId=6848&contentId=7033471) and provides a quick and easy way to view country data on consumption, import and export of crude oil and natural gas. It covers over 80 countries and data goes back to the 1960s. There is feedback on the browser itself and an interesting discussion on the accuracy and validity of the underlying data on The Oildrum (http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4127).

Live.com updates news interface - but only for the US

Karen.Blakeman@rba.co.uk — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 11:29:12 +0100

Ask is not the only search engine to restrict new services to its US site. Following Live.com's announcement (http://blogs.msdn.com/livesearch/archive/2008/04/17/we-ve-revamped-news-search.aspx) about its revamped news results, I waited with bated breath to see the new improved service in operation. Alas, nothing happened and after several days of monitoring and hearing from other bloggers how wonderful it is I was still getting the same boring old results. Then I twigged that it was probably because Live.com automatically kicks me into the UK version of its services rather than the US one. Those of us in the UK see a straight forward linear listing of text articles.

Ask updates news service

Karen.Blakeman@rba.co.uk — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 11:30:08 +0100

Ask ( http://news.ask.com/ ) has updated it news service to ‘Big News'. Search results look very much like Ask's web search with an option to narrow by category and suggestions on other types of resources you might like to view such as images, profiles and encyclopaedia entries. In addition you can filter the sources by region for example Europe, Middle East, Oceania. Results are automatically sorted by relevance, and stories about the same topic or event are clustered together. You can, if you wish, choose to sort your results by date.

Business Information Top Web Resources

Karen.Blakeman@rba.co.uk — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 11:30:47 +0100

The UKeiG Business Information on the Internet workshop was run on April 2nd and April 8th, 2008. At the end of each day the participants were asked to come up with a list of top sites and search tips. This is the combined list in alphabetical order:lt would help them target information more effectively.

Academic Live and Live Books axed

Karen.Blakeman@rba.co.uk — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 11:31:38 +0100

did a double take when I first spotted this story in my RSS feeds. Live Search have discontinued Academic Live and Live Books Search . Surely a late report of an April Fool, I thought. Unfortunately it was a genuine posting on Live Search's official blog . Both sites have now been taken down and they are winding down their digitization initiatives, including their library scanning and their in-copyright book programs.