Alfredo Covaleda,
Bogota, Colombia
Stephen Guerin,
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
James A. Trostle,
Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, USA
Marylaine Block's always informative “Neat New Stuff” [Neat New Stuff I Found This Week at http://marylaine.com/neatnew.html] tipped us to the DataWeb site and its interesting tool, the Data Feret (or “dataferet”).
“TheDataWeb is a network of online data libraries that the DataFerrett application accesses the data through. Data topics include, census data, economic data, health data, income and unemployment data, population data, labor data, cancer data, crime and transportation data, family dynamics, vital statistics data, . . . As a user, you have an easy access to all these kinds of data. As a participant in TheDataWeb, you can publish your data to TheDataWeb and, in turn, benefit as a provider to the consumer of data.”
What is the DataFerrett? DataFerrett is a unique data mining and extraction tool. DataFerrett allows you to select a databasket full of variables and then recode those variables as you need. You can then develop and customize tables. Selecting your results in your table you can create a chart or graph for a visual presentation into an html page. Save your data in the databasket and save your table for continued reuse. DataFerrett helps you locate and retrieve the data you need across the Internet to your desktop or system, regardless of where the data resides. DataFerrett: * lets you receive data in the form in which you need it (whether it be extracted to an ascii, SAS, SPSS, Excel/Access file); or * lets you move seamlessly between query, analysis, and visualization of data in one package; * lets data providers share their data easier, and manage their own online data. DataFerrett Desktop IconDataFerrett runs from the application icon installed on your desktop.
Check it out at http://www.thedataweb.org/
Yes, call us fickle and lacking in loyalty when it comes to note-taking and research organization tools. Does anyone else remember the 5×8 cards with holes punched on all four perimeters? You entered “tags” or keywords by clipping out the outer edge of the hole, and when you needed to find a particular note card, a knitting needle-sized wire was inserted into the whole pack. Shake the cards and the desired note fell out. Sometimes.
Since going digital 25 years ago, we've tried dozens of tools to try and bring some order to what we've turned up online and need to save. Most were fine innovations and advances at the time, but there was often something that didn't quite meet all of our needs or desires. That still might be true, but a new entry in the research management derby (thanks to the cite from The Scout Report quoted below) delivers up an impressive new tool.
Zotero is a Firefox extension with rich, intuitive tools that are flexible enough to support the way YOU want/need to work. This is only version 1.0, but I think I have a new best friend.
Zotero http://www.zotero.org/ “It can be hard to keep Tom Wolfe and Thomas Wolfe straight at times, and if you are working on an academic paper that incorporates both of these august characters, you probably want to keep those research sources in good order. Thanks to Zotero, it is very easy to do just that. Zotero is a Firefox extension that helps users collect, manage, and cite their research sources. Zotero can automatically capture citation information from web pages, store PDF files, and also export these citations with relatively ease. This very helpful extension is compatible with computers running Firefox 2.0.” [KMG]
http://www.zotero.org/
“It can be hard to keep Tom Wolfe and Thomas Wolfe straight at times, and if you are working on an academic paper that incorporates both of these august characters, you probably want to keep those research sources in good order. Thanks to Zotero, it is very easy to do just that. Zotero is a Firefox extension that helps users collect, manage, and cite their research sources. Zotero can automatically capture citation information from web pages, store PDF files, and also export these citations with relatively ease. This very helpful extension is compatible with computers running Firefox 2.0.” [KMG]
From O'Reilly Radar's Publishing blog comes this interesting item. See http://radar.oreilly.com/publishing/
The Traditional Future
“A prominent U.S. sociologist and student of professions, Andrew Abbott of the University of Chicago, has written a thought-provoking thesis on what he terms “library research” — that is, research as performed with library-held resources by historians, et. al, via the reading and browsing of texts — compared to social science research, which has a more linear, “Idea->Question->Data->Method->Result” type of methodology. “The pre-print, “The Traditional Future: A Computational Theory of Library Research,” is full of insights about library centric research, including intriguing parallels between library research and neural net computing architectures; a comparison that made me think anew, and with more clarity, about how the science of history is conducted. Armed with a distinctive interpretation of library research, Abbott is able to draw some incisive conclusions about the ramifications of large repositories of digitized texts (such as Google Book Search) on the conduct of scholarship…”
“A prominent U.S. sociologist and student of professions, Andrew Abbott of the University of Chicago, has written a thought-provoking thesis on what he terms “library research” — that is, research as performed with library-held resources by historians, et. al, via the reading and browsing of texts — compared to social science research, which has a more linear, “Idea->Question->Data->Method->Result” type of methodology.
“The pre-print, “The Traditional Future: A Computational Theory of Library Research,” is full of insights about library centric research, including intriguing parallels between library research and neural net computing architectures; a comparison that made me think anew, and with more clarity, about how the science of history is conducted. Armed with a distinctive interpretation of library research, Abbott is able to draw some incisive conclusions about the ramifications of large repositories of digitized texts (such as Google Book Search) on the conduct of scholarship…”
Another unique investigation by The New York Times gets A1 play in this Sunday's edition (1 Oct. 2006) under the hed “Campaign Cash Mirrors a High Court's Rulings.” Adam Liptak and Janet Roberts (who probably did the heavy lifting on the data analysis) took a long-term look at who contributed to the campaigns of Ohio's Supreme Court justices. It ain't a pretty picture if one believes the justices should be above lining their own pockets, whether it's a campaign fund or otherwise.
In any event, there seems to be a clear correlation between contributions — and the sources — and the outcome to too many cases. A sidebar, “Case Studies: West Virginia and Illinois,” would suggest there is much to be harvested by reporters in other states. There is, thankfully, a fine description of how the data for the study was collected and analyzed. See “How Information Was Collected“
There are two accompanying infographics, one (“Ruling on Contributors' Cases” ) is much more informative than the other (“While the Case Is Being Heard, Money Rolls In” ), which is a good, but confusing, attempt to illustrate difficult concepts and relationships.
At the end of the day, though, we are grateful for the investigation, data crunching and stories.
Friend Laura Soto-Bara posts the following to the NewsLib listserv:
A helpful piece posted today on LLRX.com reminding us that just throwing what we think might be appropriate keywords into a search engine isn't the mostsensible research strategy. While you might find that the title of the articleis not exactly what it is about, the content is helpful. Here are the main points:
“It's Not Rocket Science: Making Sense of Scientific Evidence,” by Paul Barronhttp://www.llrx.com/features/scientificevidence.htm
Pete Weiss sends the following helpful tip to the CARR-L listserv:
Abstracted from Genie Tyburski's TVC-Alert list:
Use the search box above to query our database of resources for finding legal or factual information or information about companies or people. Use the site search engine to expand your query to other resources available on The Virtual Chase.
Company Information Guide – find annotated resources for conducting company research
People Finder Guide – find annotated resources for conducting people research
Legal Research Guide – find annotated resources for finding legal or factual information
Regular readers know that the IAJ has long been interested in the quality of the data in public records databases. The NY Times of 12 July 2006 carries a front-page story by Eric Lipton on just how bad the data is in the “National Asset Database.” As Lipton's story points out:
“The National Asset Database, as it is known, is so flawed, the inspector general found, that as of January, Indiana, with 8,591 potential terrorist targets, had 50 percent more listed sites than New York (5,687) and more than twice as many as California (3,212), ranking the state the most target-rich place in the nation….
“But the audit says that lower-level department officials agreed that some older information in the inventory “was of low quality and that they had little faith in it.
“The presence of large numbers of out-of-place assets taints the credibility of the data,” the report says.”
Sigh. This is not a new problem, or even one that we can hang on the Bush Administration. It started with the Clinton Administration in 1998. “In 1998, President Clinton issued Presidential Decision Directive No. 63 (PDD-63), Critical Infrastructure Protection, which set forth principles for protecting the nation by minimizing the threat of smaller-scale terrorist attacks against information technology and geographically-distributed supply chains that could cascade and disrupt entire sectors of the economy.” [Source here.]
Link to the PDF of the Inspector General's Report at http://www.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/politics/20060711_DHS.pdf
Many of us have long-recognized that a top-flight team of news researchers is the marrow of any good news operation. So it is that we point you to a recent column in The Washington Post.
The Post's Unsung Sleuths
By Deborah HowellSunday, July 2, 2006; B06
The reporting that appears in The Post is supported by an infrastructure of research that readers do not see, except as credited in the occasional tag line at the end of a story.
Those tag lines don't begin to acknowledge the work done for reporters and readers by the News Research Center. The musty newspaper morgue of lore, brimming with crumbling clippings in tidy little envelopes, is now full of computers and researchers that Post journalists can't live without. Yes, there's still paper — about 7,500 books, 30 periodicals a month and 15 daily newspapers.
Center director Bridget Roeber said the researchers are “news junkies, who see themselves not just as librarians but journalists finding and analyzing original documents, tracking people down, finding leads, using obscure databases.” [more]
We're pulling together the final pieces following the Ver 1.0 workshop in Santa Fe last week. Twenty journalists, social scientists, computer scientists, educators, public administrators and GIS specialists met in Santa Fe April 9-12 to consider the question, “How can we verify data in public records databases?”
The papers, PowerPoint slides and some initial results of three breakout groups are now posted for the public on the Ver1point0 group site at Yahoo. Check it out.
