LINKS OF THE WEEK: the weekly update:
Another fairly slow week, catching up after the busy month of projects, beat up and worn out, and trying to get over the cold going around the newsroom. Time for some time off. The blog will continue the 2nd week of October.

This week some interesting new things, and some changes in major vendors' offerings. Nexis continues to add new Gannett newspapers, some that have never been online before (like my hometown paper, the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle), and Dialog is removing some important papers. What's up with that? One of Dialog's pluses has been that their archives of some papers go back much further than Nexis', including two papers we use all the time, the Orlando Sentinel and the Sun-Sentinel. Losing those 4-5 years of back archives will force us to use the papers' website archives, a less convenient solution.

Interesting stories/Weblogs:

The Internet goes to college Pew report on students and technology.

The Spanish papers sometimes outdo everyone on graphics presentations, and here are two very nice examples: Objetivo Sadam beautiful graphic project from El Mundo, España, on coming war with Iraq. And, in the same paper, Zona Zero, Año 1.

The Witness, by Nick Spangler: Nick, an intern at the Herald this summer, was reporting at the school near the WTC on 9/11. His story ran in CJR last fall. If you haven't read it yet, it's worth a read.

Blogbib an annotated bibliography of literature about weblogs.

And the useful links:
Reference

ClassicOL.com classical music directory online.

Nations online nice guide to websites about countries around the world, including government websites, local news, etc.

Seashells.org guide to shells and shelling has an identification guide.

World Almanac September Almanac dates in September history, etc.

Driving regulation fact sheets from Highway Loss Data Institute, has factsheets on state laws, other driving issues (like teen driving, alcohol, daytime running lights).

Palmbooks.org free (public domain) books to read on your Palm.

News

CNN World Report archive searchable back to 1987, from Texas Tech University.

FACSNET Annotated AP News Digest Check this one out: links and tips on today's top news stories. (If this link doesn't work for today's news, go to main FACSNET page.)

Google News groups stories related to major issues on one page, has search for more. According to Tara Calashain, the news search is getting better, and several bloggers have remarked on a new more graphic version which only some users see when they go to the URL....

New on Nexis: Another Florida paper, never archived before: The Fort Myers News-Press, from April 2002. And, my hometown newspaper: The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, from April 2002. Also: The Times Herald, Huron MI, April 2002; The Journal News (Westchester Co, NY), January 1999; The Greenville News (SC), Jan 1999; Fort Collins Coloradoan, April 2002; Des Moines Register, April 2002; Clarion-Ledger (Jackson, MS), Jan 1999; Battle Creek Enquirer, April 2002. Also: Faston Company, Farm Industry News, Novelles tele-radio, several more. Another from Florida: Barry Law Review, from Summer 2000. Illinois Boat Registrations.

Files removed from Dialog: The Washington Post, no longer available. Also, the Chicago Tribune. Still there but removal announced: The Sun-Sentinel and Orlando Sentinel. Also: Books in Print.

Statistics

Child Trends Databank get data on over 70 indicators of child health, education, income, demographics, etc. Includes news alerts on latest reports available.

Religious congregations and membership, 2000 Glenmary organization releases its regular survey, last done 1990. A wonderful resource for religion statistics. This links to the release: the database is at The American Religious Data Archive.

Historical Census stats on race and Hispanic origin, 1790- new release from Census. (down to state level only.)

TranStats a new transportation stats database from BTS, pulls together lots of databases previously available at different sites. Includes everything from Airport congestion to boating accidents to highway fatalities.

The world in statistics downloadable stats on 28 indicators (like GDP, health, transport, geographic data) for all countries. From Statistics Finland.

Governments/Politics

"E-government" survey (at insidepolitics.org); press release from Brown University (Florida comes in 12th). The survey also finds that states are increasingly charging for data online (including a charge to see a legislative bill in Kansas).

Our Documents from National Archives, nice site for students highlighting historic documents from the collection.

Public Records

Georgia voter registration database (poll locator)

Florida

FBI Miami the local unit has its own website...including history.

People

Forbes 400 newest list of richest Americans.

Tools

AlltheWeb advanced search this search engine giving Google a run; new advanced search allows for lots of flexibility.

Journalism, Business: no links this week.

Keeping up on the news:

I'm always looking for places to find fast info on today's breaking stories (some are linked on my resources page, under news) and today's Poynter column by Jonathan Dube points out one I hadn't seen before:

FACSNET Annotated AP News Digest has links and tips on today's top news stories. (If this link doesn't work for today's news, go to main FACSNET page).

Check out FACSNET's Covering the war on terrorism page, too, for more tips, including a nice experts list.

Herald History:
Another project comes to fruition, the Miami Herald's Centennial package, running today. The Website has the entire special sections in PDF, as well as nice text and photo packages on themes like immigration, sports, civil rights, and corruption. At bottom of the page, under Miami History, are links to sections of a huge South Florida history chronology I've been working on for months (and years). There are some events that I've found multiple dates for, and haven't resolved yet...but everything's been gone over and over and I'll keep fixing them as I find them. Enjoy.

LINKS OF THE WEEK: the weekly update:
Again, a very busy week with not much time to browse. Our primary election became another disaster, at least in South Florida. At my precinct, voting was a piece of cake. I arrived sometime after noon in the middle of a deluge so few people had braved the rain at lunch hour to vote and I didn't have to wait at all. The new machines seemed to work smoothly. Too bad other precincts had problems. Too bad the Democrats had too many good candidates for governor. Any of the three would have been a good choice. Two won't get to run. At any rate, coverage of this election, the new machines and voting procedures filled our week this week, and on Friday we had a major highway closed all day for a terrorist scare. What a week, again...This week's links include a few I posted earlier but I still like to have them all in one place:

Interesting stories/Weblogs:

Breast Cancer Blog has links to research news, from Tara Calashain.

Terrorism/Sept 11 Resources:

Sept 11, 2002: Covering the Coverage Poynter weblog linking to coverage around the country. This is interesting: 45 questions from St. Pete Times.

Another good 9/11 links directory from Librarians' Index to the Internet.

September 11th vicims database compiled by Newsday.

An Army of One Remembers.... the only site I've seen that has photos and info about each victim of the Pentagon attack .

Afghanistan and the U.S. directory of links from UC Berkeley.

Best 9/11 sites chosen by Wall St. Journal.

Wonderful story in St. Pete Times about a piece of paper from the WTC.

Victims list from Washingtonpost.com; or By site/name.

C-Span's terrorism archive

CNN Special: WTC proposals

The Smithsonian exhibition on 9/11

9/11 resources this directory was compiled by Tara Calashain soon after the event last year and is constantly updated. Includes links to latest news stories.

Iraq's weapons of mass destruction statement on the report issued this week by International Institute of Strategic Studies.

Cyberjournalist on 9/11 coverage more links to stories/packages.

Center for Immigration Studies has a report on how the hijackers entered the US; and the Employer Sanctions Database.

Just for fun:

A cute kitty: make it move and purr.

And the useful links:
Reference

Medline en español the premiere medical site from NIH.

History.UK.com huge British history site with search engine, timeline, and links.

Metacrawler the meta-search engine has been revamped and now searches Google as well as About, Ask Jeeves, FAST, FindWhat, Inktomi, LookSmart, Excite, OpenDirectory, Overture, and Sprinks, according to Tara Calashain.

Fanatic Zone site with stats, news on college football in the SEC.

News

Weird Files website for a new newspaper column by Ken Layne.

Florida

University of Florida Sesquicentennial 1953-2003. A nice timeline on this site.

Statistics

2000 State Highway facts from Federal Highway Admin.

Sprawl City "A Website about Consumption Growth and Population Growth" using Census data.

Governments/Politics

President Bush: the stats Wash Post story on stats collected by a CBS radio newsman, the numbers on vacation days, days spent at various homes, foreign leaders met, more.

Congressional scorecard State PIRGs provide this database of how members voted on issues.

Census Bureau Centennial

State Decisions, 2002 Website devoted to statewide elections.

2002 Census of Governments preliminary report on the new 5-year summary, just released. Includes employment, payrolls, finances, etc.

Center for Immigration Studies has a report on how the hijackers entered the US; and the Employer Sanctions Database.

The Miami-Dade County website wins 2nd place in local government websites, in a Best of the Web report from Government Technology magazine. (Tampa is first.) Florida does not come in top 5 in state sites, however.

Public Records

Foreclosures database search nationwide.

Journalism, Business,People, Tools: No links this week.

Another 9/11 story:

The one that touched me most was the story of Cornish-born Rick Rescorla, who fought in the battle of Ia Drang (his photo is on the cover of the book We Were Soldiers Once...and Young. See links on this LZXray site to the stories) and ended up as security director for Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, in the World Trade Center. Rick got almost all his staff out of the building but died going back looking for more. Yesterday a memorial was unveiled in Cornwall, and today Charles Winpenny, the dogged photographer of all things beautiful there, has photos on his Cornwall cam site. (BBC Cornwall covered it too.) Some days the stories all come together.

(Added Friday:) And on the topic, a new book about Rescorla has just been published. Heart of a Soldier, Simon & Shuster.

Post-911
Poynter has a Gallery of front pages from Sept 11 2001 and 2002. Some were really spectacular, like the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's (not working on the Poynter site right now; link is to the image at the AJC). Also on Poynter: links and coverage compiled by Dave Shedden, and The Weblog mentioned below.

For a fascinating look at the sites: Space Imaging: Ground Zero and Pentagon from Sept 2001-2002.


I must also mention that the election headline below was written here hours before it hit headlines in many Florida papers, from a quote from a Democratic party chief.....

It's Deja Vu all over again
Florida polls extended to 9 p.m. after problems plague polling precincts statewide: Miami Herald coverage of South Florida voting (check out the photo of Janet Reno fuming next to her red truck when she couldn't get into her precinct to vote). Stay tuned. It looks as though this is another of those stories that won't go away.

News from the World: Dave Winer says you can now get RSS news feeds from the BBC, but they may only be available to users of Userland software...

And Cooking news: Dave linked to this blogger's comment on her mother's new cooking method: Google Cooking. Put your available ingredients into Google and see what recipes pop up. Cool.

Blog Bonanza: The St. Petersburg Times tech page does Weblogs, interviewing local bloggers, linking to blogging software sites, and starting their own....

Don't want to remember, but...
Knight Ridder package on Sept 11 has good coverage of the terrorist plot, and more, including a meticulously detailed story by Curtis Morgan of The Miami Herald on the terrorists' trail through Florida. Curtis did a similar story last year, the first one I read that traced their movements in Florida. Last week the St. Petersburg Times did a similar story.

For more links to September 11 coverage, the Poynter has set up a Weblog of 9/11 coverage. One of the projects they point out is 45 Questions, from the St. Pete Times. A lot of research went into this one...(Times researcher Caryn Baird contributed, as well as two staff writers.)

Dave Barry on Sept. 11: On Hallowed Ground. I saw Gettysburg for the first time just a couple of years ago, and found it incredibly moving. Dave's story, linking the two sites in Pennsylvania, strikes that chord. As funny as Dave can be, it's his serious stuff that really gets me.

Newsday has posted a new Sept. 11 victims database. It's very much needed, as researchers have been having trouble answering victim questions from the previously available lists. This is searchable and browsable in several formats, and, since it's a Tribune Company project, should be available at the other papers too. Announced at Editor & Publisher.

A couple nice sites from Tara Calishain's Research Buzz page:

History.UK.com is a huge British history site with search engine, timeline, and links.

Metacrawler: the meta-search engine has been revamped and now searches Google as well as About, Ask Jeeves, FAST, FindWhat, Inktomi, LookSmart, Excite, OpenDirectory, Overture, and Sprinks.

Two fun links today from the USA Today Web Guide, a site I find something useful or interesting from nearly every day:


I love visiting places I've read about in books, so this site, The Literary Traveler, should become a favorite visit. It's all about those places that inspired great writers.


For some reason the story of Philo T. Farnsworth is getting a lot of attention lately. Maybe because recently two books have been published about him ( I read one of them). But maybe just because his story is so fascinating, a sad story of one man trying and failing to succeed because he trusted big corporations to look out for his interests, in the days when the American dream should have still been a reality. Here's philofarnsworth.com, a website devoted to him.

THE WEEKLY UPDATE:
As I predicted a couple weeks ago, we are in project hell at work so posting and updating has been slow. Expect thin posts at least for next week (we have a primary election on top of everything else). Still some very nice finds this week:

Interesting stories/Weblogs:

Who Killed Tupac Shakur? This story from LA Times, but this version at Atlanta J-C lets you read without having to register.

Engine Trouble story in Guardian about troubles with Google...good reason to keep other search engines in your repetoire.

New background checks for school employees in England causing school opening delays.

Growing up in Jail Newsday investigative series on juveniles in prison.

Bill's Content a new weblog from Bill Dennis, Peoria journalist.

Terrorism/Sept 11 Resources:

CBC: September 11 nice memorial site from Canadian Broadcasting Company.

The Sonic Memorial: database of NPR's excellent coverage of post-9/11 aftermath, and additional sound memories of the building itself from construction to destruction, contributed by listeners. A Wired story about this site and other memorial sites.

Terrorism enforcement analysis from TRAC.

Sept 11 resources from Cyberjournalist

For a compilation of all the latest links sites on terrorism plus the links from last year, check the Terrorism page.

For Fun:

City Creator like a giant lego online.

And the useful links:

Reference

Zimmerman's Research Guide "an online encyclopedia for legal researchers". Get definitions, links.
News

Guardian World News Guide link to news from all over the world, using map or links.
Florida

The Everglades Landscape Model: "regional scale ecological model designed to predict the landscape response to different water management scenarios in south Florida, USA." From South Fla. Water Management Districts.
Journalism

Cyberjournalist's Great Work Gallery links to great online packages. Mentioned this week: the Sun Sentinel's 10 Years after Andrew package....
Statistics

Agricultural production database downloadable stats from DoA, including US and other key countries. Also available in browseable pre-defined tables of popular stats, like tobacco production, imports/exports, etc.

Census Facts for Features: Hispanic Heritage Month lots of current stats on hispanics, language, immigration, from Census.

International Crime Statistics from Interpol, latest releases include 2000 data for many countries.
Tools

DocMorph free service from the Natl Library of Medicine lets you turn any file into a PDF using the Web page. Or download MyMorph: now you can convert multiple pages into a single PDF, and more.

Profusion new web search and directory from Intelliseek. The search searches using "1000 search sources".

Craig Ball's sample of informal discovery links a nice directory of useful search tools like people finders, public records databases and much more.

Access Front Ends nice tutorial from Baltimore's Mike Himowitz.
Governments/Politics

U.S. Government Manual 2002-2003 latest edition of this invaluable book.
Business

Trade with Cuba stats, reports, and FAQs from the Foreign Agricultural Service. Coming up: FIRST U.S. FOOD & AGRIBUSINESS EXHIBITION
IN HAVANA, CUBA, 26-30 SEPTEMBER 2002.
People, Public Records : No links this week.

The Journalists' Toolbox has found a sponsor, a company called Avenza. J-prof Mike Reilly, who started the site a couple years back, has been looking for a buyer to maintain the site. Nice to see a startup making money for its creator, but sure hope it retains its usefulness. I've found the business links in the sports toolbox to be particularly useful over the years.

Gary Price sends along notice that the Census "Facts for Features" on "Facts for Features" on Hispanic Heritage Month came out today. Among the fascinating facts you can find there: 42% of New Mexico's population is Hispanic (highest in nation). New York City has the highest Hispanic population: 2.2 million. 37% of minority-owned business are Hispanic-owned. And lots more.

From this week's photos, something that pops up in our yard occasionally after a rain, probably the world's ugliest fungus... :

Fantastic Labor Day package in The Miami Herald today, with photos and stories of the working poor in South Florida. J. Albert Diaz took the photos. He was a Pulitzer finalist last year for a photo package on expanding Broward County suburbs. This is even better, I think: Living on the Edge.

Also in The Herald yesterday: an update on the story of two little girls trying to survive the same rare cancer. One won't. The third story by Eleanor Brecher on Bria Brown and Chendarlyn Williams.