Millions and Millions of Government and Military Web Pages Archived by NARA and The IA
Last year we posted a note on ResourceShelf about the “2004 Presidential Term Web Harvest†containing more than 75 million .Gov and .Mil web pages, equal to about 6.5 terabytes of data. It's a project of NARA and The Internet Archive. The archived sites can be browsed or keyword searched. Now available is the 109th Web Harvest. What does it contain? + More than four million pages (42 GB) crawled and archived between 11/11/06 and 12/11/06 + Browse by Members Name + Browse by Committee Name + Browse by Leadership + Browse by House or Senate Organizations Go to: http://www.webharvest.gov/collections/
The harvest produced a public reference copy of the web sites for the purpose of continual availability to the public, and also produced a record copy to be retained in the holdings of NARA…Web sites included in the harvest were identified from information provided by the Web Systems Branch of the House Information Resources staff and by Senate webmasters in the Offices of the Secretary of the Senate and the Sergeant at Arms.A bit more on ResourceShelf including a comment by Librarian of Congress, James Billington, about the average lifespan of a web site. Continue reading
Need Some Planning Calendars
First, thanks to the FGI team (especially James) for allowing me to "guest blog" last month and for the invite to continue posting I'm going to take him up on the offer. Second, planning calendars are all over the web. On ResourceShelf, we are constantly updating this post with all sorts of calendars, From election dates (around the globe) to diplomatic events to scientific meetings to space events and a lot more. We hope you find it useful. Continue reading
A Quick Look at CapWiz
It's likely many of you are aware of CapWiz from Capital Advantage but just in case you haven't, a quick look. CapWiz (it's available on several sites) offers a number of databases with congressional data, local political data, media info, and more. Almost all links allow you to contact a politician/reporter/etc. via email. Three places to find the database: 1) C-SPAN 2) The Hill (a D.C. polical newspaper/web site) 3) USA Today Key Features: + Weekly Free E-Mail Alerts with Voting Records of U.S. Reps + Selected Legislation Listed at Bottom of Page + Media Database (organizations, reporters, producers). The scope is impressive and useful for addresses and phone numbers. However, I found a few cases where it could be updated in a more timely manner. One example. Perhaps the most featured filled version of the CapWiz database comes directly from Capital Advantage at Congress.org. Features include: + Weekly Congress.org Update Newsletter + Congress This Week Podcast + RSS Alerts from Various issue-based Organizations (a directory is also a available) Continue reading
CRS Updates
On ResourceShelf, our co-senior editor, Shirl Kennedy, has posted some thoughts and recent memos about general public access to CRS content.
Said CRS Director Daniel P. Mulholland, in a memo (PDF; 132 KB) dated 20 March 2007, “(T)o avoid inconsistencies and to increase accountability, CRS policy requires prior approval at the division level before products can be disseminated to non-congressionals.â€We also link to a blog post by Steven Aftergood at FAS. Continue reading
Some Bits About Ask.com
When I was first asked to be a guest blogger on this site I asked if it would be possible to every now and then mention some of what we were up to at Ask.com. I was told, absolutely yes, go for it. Well, here it's the 20th of the month and I have shared very little about Ask.com. So, without further adieu here are some fast facts and examples. For more about my role at Ask, I was interviewed by Search Engine Watch last week. It's important to remember that the Ask.com of 2007 is not the same Ask Jeeves product that was around in the 1990's. Far from it. Jeeves retired :-) in 2006 and Ask.com is now an algorithmic engine (like Google, Yahoo, MSN Live, others) with some human edited features. We can save the discussion about what makes are algorithm different (ExpertRank) for another time. 1) Smart RSS If a person enters the name of a blog or feed, the editors name (in some cases) not only do they get web results back but also a near real-time feed of headlines. Three Examples: + Metafilter + Om Malik + FDA Recalls 2) Query Context If the search is pics of golden gate bridge not only are web results returned but also results from the Ask.com image database. Ask was the first major engine to offer this feature. 3) If a country name is searched Ask offers several sources for info about the country (or state) at the top of the page. Sort of a virtual ready reference shelf. In some cases, if a stat is searched for, that will also be returned on the results page. Example: Market Cap Cisco (CSCO). or Area of Iceland or Seattle, WA Direct links to NCES database, city home page, chamber of commerce, etc. 4) This search for Ben Franklin not only offers useful results at the top of the page (a Smart Answer) but also options to narrow, expand, and see related names. These results are called Zoom, related results and are similar to what once was available on Teoma. In fact, Teoma technology powers Ask.com. Here's another example for San Francisco earthquake.* We place them on the right rail because it's a highly visible spot (where others place sponsored links). 5) Ask.com also owns Bloglines and both sites have blog/feed engines. Same database, different features. One feature people like about the Ask.com interface are the direct links (below each title) to subscribe to the feed or share the post using a variety of services, including Ask.com and Bloglines competitors. 6) Ask Maps. Two points here. A) Ask offers both walking and driving directions. B) Ask offers dynamic rerouting and route recalculation. Here's an example. Now, drag the #1 or #2 "pin" to a new location. Watch the street name(s) change and the route recalculated on the fly. You can have up to 10 locations. You can also add location by simply selecting a spot on the map, right clicking and selecting "Add Location." Aerial imagery is also available by selecting the aerial link at the top of the map. 7) Ask.com is also helpful for the typical searcher who might want a Zip Code but only enter a city name. Example: Zip Code Springfield. We offer a pull-down that lists all cities named Springfield along with a direct link to the USPS for all Zips in the selected city. Here's another example with disambiguation built in. This time, a search for info about man's best friend. * Ask.com offers a near real-time feed of Earthquake data with a simple search for earthquake. Via the USGS. Clicking the link takes you to the data, mapped. Continue reading
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