Tag Archives: libraries

With North Korea once again pushing its way to the front of the headlines, this is a good time to show off a librarian produced resource guide from the ALA GODORT Handout Exchange Wiki on this pariah nation: North Korea Country Guide (University of Colorado at Boulder Government Publications Library, 2008) Like the other excellent country guides produced by the UCB govpubs library, this guide is broken into the following sections:

• Government Information
• Country Profiles
• Articles & Databases
• Diplomatic Relations
• Health
• Peacekeeping & Military Information
• Resources in the Catalog
• Related Topics

The Government Information section indicates that the main official page for North Korea is a dot com and appears to be linked to an organization called the Korea Friendship Association. In addition there are two unlabeled portraits on the North Korea home page. I suppose they are current leader Kim Jon Il and his father Kim Il Sung. But I guess the North Korea web authors feel that only people who know that for sure will be visiting the North Korea web site. As mentioned in other highlights of UCB country guides, the Country Profiles section features profiles of North Korea from many international organizations and a number of individual countries. If you question the impartiality of US assessments of North Korea, this section may give you a more well rounded view. One of the resources featured under "articles and databases" is the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Declassified Documents database at http://www.foia.ucia.gov/. Typing in North Korea yields 1,154 results. Some of them serious and some of them light-hearted like "Agency hosts movie premier and sneak preview" which talked about a showing of the movie In the Company of Spies at CIA headquarters. This particular document also shows the ridiculous secrecy practice by the CIA as this movie press release has a number of redactions, including this bizarre one in the following paragraph:

No visit to the agency would be complete without a trip to the [REDACTED] reports that between 9:30 and 10:55pm, guests spent 2/3 of an average day's sales, carting away cart-loads of t-shirts, caps, and infants/children's outfits.

The secret's out. The CIA has a gift shop. The redaction would look somewhat less silly and pointless if they had just redacted the gift shop manager's name. But I digress. The good librarians at the University of Colorado at Boulder have provided a wealth of resources for anyone who wants to take a peak behind the screaming headlines of this deeply insular and often confusion producing country. Are you a librarian with a handout or guide to an issue in the news? Then link it to the ALA GODORT Handout Exchange Wiki. Continue reading →

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Patent research is one of more obscure things one can do. It is hard enough to determine whether there is a US patent for a given invention, and today's globalized world often requires looking at international patents as well. Where to begin? One place to start is this week's Guide of the Week from the ALA GODORT Handout Exchange Wiki:

Patent and Trademark Information (Univ. of California--Berkeley, 1999) Last updated 2/9/2007

This guide is divided into the following sections:

• Introduction
• Pre-1872 Patent Information
• Foreign and International Patent Information
• Other Patent Collections
• Bibliography of Patent & Trademark Sources
• CD-ROM Sources
• Internet Sources
• Step by Step Patent Research

They use a mix of print and electronic resources with varying date coverage. A small set of the resources they highlight include:

• Japan Patent Office: A searchable database of Japanese patent abstracts, which includes the patent number, title, inventor, company, and abstract of the patent.
• Foreign patents: a guide to official patent literature by Francis J. Kase. 1972.
• Code of Federal Regulations, Title 37: Patents, Trademarks and Copyrights.
• Finding List for United States Patent, Design, Trademark, Reissue, Label, Print, and Plant Patent Numbers. - Gives the volume number of the Official Gazette in which a given patent number will be found for the years 1872-1993. Includes information on earlier patents.
• Google Patent Search - Access over 7 million patents from 1790-2006. Does not currently include patent applications, international patents, or U.S. patents issued over the last few months. Includes tips for advanced patent searching.

Finally, since the librarians at Berkeley realize that no one has all the answers, they end with links to several other helpful patent searching guides:

• Searching for pre-1976 U.S. patents via University of Maine
• Patent Search Tutorial and Information via University of Texas
• The 7-Step Strategy via the U.S. Patent Office
• U.S. Patent Searching via Oregon State University

To view these guides and to check out the rest of the Berkeley patent resources, go visit this guide. And if you are a librarian with a guide of your own, please post it to the Handout Exchange. Continue reading →

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Today's Guide of the Week from the ALA GODORT Handout Exchange Wiki is for people wanting history and background relating to the US intelligence community: U.S. Intelligence Community (Jerry Breeze, Columbia University, 1999) Last updated 1/29/2008 This guide starts out with an introduction worth quoting:

This is a selective guide to resources at Columbia University Libraries and on the Internet, for conducting research on U.S. government agencies involved in intelligence activities, the classification and declassification of government documents related to intelligence activities, and Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Some of the items included may also have information about commercial espionage or intelligence activities of foreign governments, but that is not the focus of this guide. Please consult CLIO [Columbia's catalog] for other materials in the Columbia University Libraries.

For a selective guide, it is chock full of print and internet resources relating to the intelligence community. The guide contains links to secondary and primary intelligence materials and is divided into the following sections:

• General
  • Background Information
  • Bibliographies & Indexes
  • Periodicals/News/Blogs
  • Intelligence Reform
  • Congressional Oversight & Budget
  • Classified/Declassified
  • FOIA (Freedom of Information Act)
  • Other Web Sources
• Agency Specific
  • Office of the Director of National Intelligence
  • Central Intelligence Agency
  • Defense Intelligence Agency
  • Department of Energy
  • Department of State
  • Federal Bureau of Investigation
  • National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
  • National Reconnaissance Office
  • National Security Agency
  • National Security Council
  • Other Agencies
  One feature I particularly like about this guide that I hope others emulate is the clear way the author distinguishes resources only available to the campus community. Anything with a key next to it can only be accessed by the Columbia University community. But that still leaves dozens and dozens of other resources for the rest of us to explore. If you have an interest in spies or foreign relations, check out this guide. And if you're a librarian with a guide of your own on this or any other subject, please link it to the ALA GODORT Handout Exchange Wiki. Continue reading →

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