The weekly update:
An early update this week, a short week. Spent some time this week going through public records directories looking for sources I'd missed. So there are a lot of new listings below under Florida and Public Records. I'll be adding them to the directory.
Browsing the Florida sites, I came across lots of new disclaimers on the county clerks' sites, explaining that with a new law passed by the legislature this year, they can no longer make some documents available: Here's what the Escambia county's website says:
"Upon becoming law, CS/HB 1679 provides that images of the following types of documents may not be placed on a "publicly available Internet website":
Military Discharge
Death Certificates
Court files, records of paper relating to matters or cases governed by
The Florida Rules of Family Law
The Florida Rules of Juvenile Procedure
The Florida Rules of Probate.
Any "affected person" may request that the Clerk of Court/Comptroller or County Recorder remove an image of one of the above-listed documents from a "publicly available Internet website."

On another angle, BRB Publications offers an article analysing "National" criminal history databases. You may have noticed that Autotrack is now offering a search of national criminal records. It's mostly a search of the free databases offered by state corrections agencies. Rapsheets.com is also offering a similar database, as well as FlatRateInfo. This article explains these databases -- and what's necessary to really do a full criminal background check -- in depth.

It's interesting that with governments rushing to close down personal records for privacy reasons, they have no compunction about making criminal records available, and in many cases leaving them available long after a person's completed a sentence.


The Links:
Reference

A.K.A database Author pseudonyms, pen names etc.

Holiday Trends and Traditions... including business trends, this page of links put together by Journalists' Toolbox.

Comiclopedia searchable list of comics artists from a Dutch comics store.
Statistics

Censusfinder.com finds free Census searches worldwide.
Journalism

Chicago, 1902-1933 photos from the archives of the Chicago Daily News, at Library of Congress.
Florida

Alachua County marriage records from 1837-1961.

Pinellas County traffic and boating violation fines, bond estreature, misdemeanors, etc.

Okaloosa County marriage records

Sarasota County marriages
Public Records

Tax Refund Finder from Natl Taxpayers' Union, a database of uncollected refunds.

Idaho Offender search from state Dept. of Corrections.

Excluded parties listing system search for business excluded from federal contracts or financial assistance. From GSA.

Doctor disciplinary action from state Web sites from Public Citizen.

Colorado criminal histories from Colorado Bureau of Investigation, $5.50 per search.

Canadian civil aircraft registration

California Appellate Courts searchable case information.

Arizona inmates search; Arizona courts public access 137 of 180 counties.

Michigan Offender search from state dept of corrections.
Governments/Politics

Congress Track from Project Vote Smart, tracks bills, schedules, committees.
People

All-Surnames geneaology site finds surname-related websites.
Business

Pay Watch AFL- CIO's list of CEO salaries updated for 2002.

Complete Guide to Internet statistics and research looking for stats on internet use?

Holiday Trends and Traditions... including business trends, this page of links put together by Journalists' Toolbox.
News, Tools: no links this week.

Some Interesting stories/Weblogs:

AJC reporter does boot camp -- again -- 35 years later.

1997: John Ashcroft on government non-interference...at least he USED to believe in it....

Nigerian newspaper This Day News apologizes to Muslims for Miss Universe/Mohammed comment....

Bin Laden's "Letter to America" fulltext, translated, in The Guardian.
Fun/Entertaining:

Saute Wednesday a food weblog with links to newspaper food sections online.

South Florida columnist poetry slam in BPB New Times.

Boogle: a Google search with inspirational quotes and art. (Click the Boogle link to change the page).

Another Elián?
Keep an eye on this story. A thirteen-year-old boy caught between Cuba and the U.S. in a smuggling operation....On the third anniversary of Elián González' arrival in Miami.

Are you a Gumshoe Librarian?
I missed this presentation at the SLA (Special Librarians)' conference last summer, and although I'd seen notices it'd been posted online, hadn't seen it until now. For a very nice overview of how to become a research guru, this can't be beat. It's by Gary Price of Resource Shelf and Genie Tyburski of Virtual Chase. Among the good links: State court dockets online from Virtual Chase. (Note, I've often found Virtual Chase's People Finder Guide very useful for finding new public records searches.)
For a crash course in doing research, this presentation could be used by journalists, journalism students, and news researchers.

Nostalgia, again:
Paul McCartney, interviewed on NPR this morning, talking about loss and singing the song he wrote after John's death in public for the first time.
"Because we're two guys, you don't always say intimate things. In fact, you hardly ever do. You work together... I had this idea it would be nice to say stuff that I really wanted to say to him but somehow put it in a song, so I did this thing called 'Here Today' and it was 'if you were here today, how would it be?...'"
Hearing this song had me in tears, driving down the road....Today in Beatles History.

Moon over Miami (Beach):
Monday I noted the new Herald Webcam and advised checking it out for the beautiful view of the moon rising over Miami Beach. If you missed it, here's what it looked like: (click for larger image).
(Taken with Coolpix 885, 6 pm Monday 11/18/02)

The weekly update:
More on the Daniel Ellsberg talk by John Hopkins in the Herald. (see original posting below).
Lots of links this week, some really useful new tools. I've moved the reference links to the top and the entertainment/diverson links to the bottom. Does this make more sense?


Reference

Iraq Inspections: good links a Webliography from Gary Price.

Global Security: Target: Iraq good links for war info/coverage.

9/11 Funding Database: search the database of donations. From the Foundation Center.

AKA Kurdistan guide to the country and people.

NY Times: Standoff with Iraq nice package with links to stories, graphics, documents.

Melissa Data: Lookups Links to places to look up things you need, like ZIP codes, campaign contributions, place names and demographics.

Animal Law endangered species? Police shooting pets? A guide to the law from law prof at Detroit College of Law, Michigan State.

Priest Database from Survivors First, a database of abusive priests. Sorted by name only, but looks like it came from a sortable spreadsheet....

The Bomb Project: nuclear links.

NCAA records books online.

Limeysearch a search engine and Web directory for the UK.

Marijuana.com "The Internet's answer to the drug war".

Maryland Interactive Traffic Mapping See road construction, weather reports, traffic signs, Webcams, for points on Maryland highways.

Glossary of Energy Terms from the California Energy Commission.

Historic Cities collections of old maps for cities worldwide. This Israeli-based site will contain over 100 maps of Jerusalem.

Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month from Natl Register of Historic Places.
News

AllAfrica.com: news search searches an archive of over 400,000 articles in papers all over Africa.

Added to Nexis: Florida fictitious names filings; El Mundo of Spain, L'Express of France, Several new Dutch newspapers and journals.

LLRX Newsstand news about information.

British Pathe search the database of over 3500 hours of newsreel films.
Statistics

Statistics.com a guide to statistics sites on the Web.

Aneki.com has world rankings in many categories, and country data (from CIA World Factbook).

Human Development Indicators 2002: Database choose a country and find its ranking by lots of education/health/poverty/economic indicators. From UN Development Programme.

Tracing baby boomer attitudes then & now new report from AARP.

Health Insurance Coverage data from Census.
Journalism

LANIC: Journalism links for journalists in Latin American countries.

The Rainbow Sourcebook from SPJ; find sources from different ethnicities/cultures. Also from SPJ: The Diversity Toolbox with tips.
Florida

Florida Springs a guide to the springs and ecological info.

Miami-Dade parking ticket search look up your ticket and pay online. If you have tag you can see tickets issued to a car. No name search.
Tools

Webcrawler the old search engine still around and with a nice simple search page. This metacrawler searches using Google, Looksmart, AskJeeves, Inktomi, About, Overture, FindWhat, and FAST. Results are nicely organized with suggested Websites on top, individual links below.

Computer Sciences Resources page from U. of Albany, more than you'll ever want to know about computers.

Google Language Tools search in different languages, and a translator (beta) for text or entire page.
Governments/Politics

Public Papers of Richard Nixon now scanned and online at the Nixon Library.

GovEngine find Federal, state, and local government sites.

BNA's Web Watch monitors Federal websites to list new offerings. Every week a different topic: This week it's health care. Other topics include bioterrorism, aviation security, etc.

FedCourts.com is a nice portal to Federal and state courts nationwide, including county and municipal courts.

Find out how much political advertising your local TV station took in.

Jamaican National Heritage Trust
People

WW II Nominal Roll a database of Australians who served, about a million individuals.
Business

EDGAR IQ a new free service for searching SEC EDGAR database of public company filings. Has a keyword search and you can limit or browse by industry.
Public Records

Added to Nexis: Florida fictitious names filings.

Some Interesting stories/Weblogs:

Highest rated news sites include many newspapers from E&P.

Bush at War the Bob Woodward series excerpted from the book.
Fun/Entertaining:

When they were young a Library of Congress exhibit of photos of children. This is lovely.

Seattle Waterfront 1907-2002 this is fascinating. See modern image of Seattle imposed over the 1907 view.

Doctored photos making the rounds of the Internet: story in Wired.

GW Bush's email....

It's deja vu all over again...
And as I get older this happens more and more. Today Daniel Ellsberg is in Miami for the Book Fair, and is talking about how the Tonkin Gulf Resolution got passed, and its relevance in the current situation. He worries that American soldiers may be sacrificed as bait to lure Saddam into war, in which he believes there is high support for our use of nuclear weapons. He fears, from information he's been given, that we will go to war soon -- before UN inspections can be done. He discusses these things in a Salon article out three days ago. Thirty years ago when I helped research Vietnam files for the Post's publication of the Pentagon Papers I had no idea I'd be sitting in a room in Miami with Ellsberg talking about another possible war. Life is strange. But as Ellsberg says, world leaders -- and human nature --don't change.

And, other developments...
Poynter has restored the left-hand column to Jim Romenesko's Media News page, one of the bones of contention about the remodeling....The explanation.

Search Systems, the great public records directory, has been redesigned for much easier navigation. Check it out.

And more:
Recommended Reading: put in URL and find related Weblogs. Similar to Waypath, mentioned earlier, but this one provides a bookmarklet to run from browser's links toolbar.
Catalogblog: a librarian Weblog with lots of cataloging links.

Weblogs and blog directories:
I added a few things to the Weblog links , mostly found in the WSJ story below:

The Pepys Project lists blogs by region.

Globe of Blogs another geographical locator.

Weblogs Compendium a directory of Weblog directories.

Blogroots links to articles about blogging.

Photoblogs a directory and weblog.

Also noted: three blogs that I will check regularly:

Metafilter (this is one of the classics but I'd just missed it before).

Lightningfield.com David F. Gallagher's blog with daily photos from NYC. This one partly satisfies my desire for "Cornwallcam"-type sites from the US. I'd seen this before and liked it, but hadn't listed it.

A Foodie by Nature weblog on food and cooking from The Keys. Two interests satisfied!

Librarians in the movies:
This is a frequent topic in the Newslib list for some reason, and people never get tired of adding their movie memories. So found on Metafilter today, this list from a librarian at BYU. Maybe next time this comes up again someone can just post this address. "My" scene in All the President's Men is not described but at least it mentions that Post librarians are listed in cast...

Heraldcam:
The Miami Herald has one of the best views in Miami, and today the Website launched a Webcam:
If you're online tonite, check the view of the full moon over Miami Beach.

Random browsings:
"Find-a-blog", a Wall St. Journal story, discusses various ways to search/browse for weblogs. Available on site only by subscription, but a copy is stashed here.

Nice stories on George Harrison’s new album and son Dhani at LA Times and at The Times.

Art comes to life in this beautiful animation, Kunstbar, at www.flash-award.com.

Fotofeed: I've run across links to this site a couple of times. It features occasional scenic photos of Northern New Mexico: a US version of the British cams? The recent photos are especially beautiful, this one ran Nov. 11:

Hidden City a Weblog from South Miami Beach with flora/fauna photographs, found on the Pepys Project, thru the Find-a-Blog article above.

Jim Morin's still thinking...
...About alternatives to war in Iraq. This one from The Herald's editorial cartoonist involves the Miami cops who've been investigated for too much shooting...

Escape from stress:
While away some time with the digital color-by-numbers from Segmation. Choose from dozens of images, from paintings by Monet, O'Keeffe, Grant Wood and lots more (along with a lot more popular images). This could be addictive.
Need to make PDFs?
You can sign up with Adobe to do the conversion on a website: Create a PDF. Cost is $9.99 a month or $99.99 a year. If you register you can get 5 conversions free. A useful alternative for those of us who need to make a PDF once in awhile but don't want to pay to buy the full Acrobat program.

For a fascinating read:
Don't miss the legendary Edna Buchanan's tales of the Miami-Dade morgue, in The Herald today.
And, from earlier this week....
Posted some photos from the Miami International car show, and Coconut Grove's Dinner Key......on my home page.

Better links page?
If you're coming to the site to find the links page, recommended to a KR writing seminar earlier this week, note that the page has been reformatted for better printing. Also several links have been updated and added, including news media source list links and WHOIS links. Hope these help.

Blows against the Empire:
Lots of reaction to the posting of the newly redesigned Poynter Website yesterday; generally the site seems to be a decent redesign with nice color, graphics and fonts; especially useful are the new weblogging features with allow for comments and permalinks. But for readers of Jim Romenesko's MediaNews, the change is devastating. It started out a few years ago as an independent Weblog (one of the first in journalism) called Media Gossip, and the site's fans were not unhappy when Poynter added the site to their lineup. Nice to see someone get rewarded for a lot of work creating something useful. But now the site no longer looks like a personal weblog. It's formatted to look just like the other Poynter pages. Longtime fans are up in arms. And here. To add insult to injury, some of the links to Poynter columns no longer work, so bloggers and site managers now have to change their pages. Bummer.

The weekly update:
NEWS LINKS: Not a lot of new links this week, but for some reason, lots of new sites cataloging international news sources. For years we relied on sites like Newslink, which started on the AJR website and is now independent, and the CJR Newspaper and Magazine Finders, and NewsDirectory (which is still great because it has an easy search); then added newer sites like Kiosken, ABYZ and Gebbie; recently I've liked the news directory from The Guardian. But new ones keep popping up; I listed one last week and a couple more this week (see News below).
I guess there's value in creating one of these things, and it's nice to have a variety to choose from; although I've tried several I usually go back to the first ones I started with. Another one I've used faithfully for years is PrensaLatina, which started out as the news links page of MundoLatino.org. Interestingly, there's now a MundoLatino.com, with its own media guide, which looks pretty good too. It's hard to keep track as sites change hands, are incorporated into others, etc. Even harder when two sites show up with virtually the same name.

Some Interesting stories/Weblogs:

The Rhetorica Network by a professor of rhetoric who is also a former journalist: contains his comments on politics, a weblog about the 2004 presidential campaign, a nice list of media websites, and political links.

MSNBC: Weblog Central finds some of the best weblogs out there.

Seattle Times creates a Spotlight Team; profiles of team members and I-team members in this column from editor Mike Fancher.

Philadelphia Inquirer: 5-part series on developing the waterfront.

URL's: A cautionary tale Jonathan Dube continues his "how to use URLs to find information" tips with a story of how to identify faked URLs (like a fake NYT story). At Poynter.

Fun/Entertaining:

Indian Foods a beautiful Indian cooking site.

And the useful links:
Reference

Merck Manual Home Edition available as interactive or original text version.

Medline Plus Health Information: Gay and Lesbian health.

Old Testament Gateway

History of Minneapolis compiled by public librarians. Very nice.

African American Inventors

PCWebopedia In the dark about computer or internet terms? Want to know more? Check here. This page also has some good Reference files, including ASCII tables, data format file extension list, timeline of the Internet...

Monticello lots and lots of Jefferson history at this site.

Oklahoma City National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism has a database of terrorist incidents by date.

Black and Christian "a Voice for the African American Religious Community". Has church directory, history, etc.
News

Paperball searches German language newspapers. Seems to be just most recent couple of days' stories.

Clarín: Edición Electrónica. Get fulltext images of all pages of today's edition. Available free for now.

MediaWorld.info: Newspaper links another place to go for international news links.

Headline Spot I've highlighted several of the "Spot" sites before but this one is a pretty neat news portal, worth mentioning again. Check the "SpotNetwork" pulldown list for more Spots.
Statistics

Mapping Census 2000: Atlas of Diversity lots of maps have been added to this....
Journalism

The Times Style Guide from Times of London.
Public Records

Journalist's Toolbox: Public Records a good directory.

North Carolina Business Court has opinions online.
Florida

Monroe County occupational license search search by business name or owner name.

Dade County Police Benevolent Assn
Tools

I-Tools formerly "Find-It" and "Research-It", simple pages with search forms for search tools, language tools, reference tools.

Alta Vista the search service has been redesigned with a new simple front page. Searching should be improved, there's a new News section. Take the tour of what's new to find out.
Governments/Politics,People, Business: no links this week.

News that gets results:
Today Miami's police chief resigned, a few days after The Herald's series on police shootings.

At UM today:
I visited Bruce Garrison's journalism class at University of Miami today: photo on the Reporting and the Internet class page.....(along with photos of their recent visit to the Sun-Sentinel, with Research Center manager Barbara Hijek...)

Math test for journalists:
Steve Doig designed this test based on one Phil Meyer did awhile back. Think you know how to do math? Try this one out. It includes the kinds of things reporters need to be able to calculate all the time. If there are questions that give you problems, info on how to find answers is available. This is on the IRE website, posted there after a question went out on the NICAR-L listserv looking for a test for training purposes. A useful tool.

Fantastic cover on The Times today:

..
...and great photo on cover of The Independent (hands of an old soldier remembering his comrades.)

Like a blog? Find more!
Waypath is a new search tool for weblogs that finds blogs related to one you choose. Enter the full URL of a blog and it gives you a menu of other blogs. Searching mine finds Sheila Lennon's Subterranean Homepage Blues, the LA Examiner, and the blog of the Waterloo, ME library, among 87 hits. This could be useful.
Another current news portal:
Part of Alta Vista's new redesign is a new News section, which allows for quite a bit of customization (topic, place, source, time) of the search function, and listings of top stories.

The weekly update:
Lots of links, a busy week. This week marks the 2nd anniversary of the website/weblog (which I converted to Blogger format in August). Last year I celebrated the first anniversary by going to the annual Ramble at Fairchild Tropical Garden, after writing why it marked the anniversary. In the middle of the day, the festival was packed and not as much fun as it used to be. So this year I went early this morning, hoping to get some nice photos to post. No luck. Even early, it was much too crowded, so I came home. It's sad when lovely events get so popular they are destroyed for those who love them. I'd gone to the Ramble every year for many years, and always found a place to park with an easy walk through the gardens, and easy-to-reach booths and exhibits. No more. Maybe next weekend I'll go on a normal day to get those garden photos.
At any rate, here we are starting a third year of Behind the News. Hope you're enjoying it.
(The links page was also first shown two years ago this week to a journalism class at UM, and this week I'll be showing it to another class there, along with a KR writing seminar group. Hope these students find it useful, too.)

Interesting stories/Weblogs:

In case you missed it, an amazing interview with John Muhammad's ex-wife in Wash. Post. (she says it was all directed towards her....)

People need old articles despite the common wisdom that most searchers are seeking recent stories. This story in Library Journal discusses the success of older archive databases.

Lawyers mine TRACfed for data article on LLRX discusses how lawyers use this data. Good hints for journalists.

Who needs a pretty website anyway? KR's are making money, what more do you need? From Business 2.0.

AngryDems.com want to know how mad rank-and-file Democrats are at the party leadership? Read some of these messages....
Fun/Entertaining:

Sadie Hawkins Day Does anyone but me remember this?

Conelrad a history of the atomic age and culture.

California Coastline couldn't get into this after our story the other day, but available now: photographs of the entire coast.
And the useful links:
Reference

A dictionary of units of measurement

Noise pollution clearinghouse find news and answers to questions about noise.

Play Database search for a play by title, author, or search for a monologue; get basic info, including cost per performance.

Holidays coming and no time for shopping? A reminder: Google Catalogs has dozens of catalogs online and you can browse the pages directly.

Webster's Unabridged New subscription service has search of Webster's Third New International Dictionary, plus Collegiate Dictionary, atlas, and thesaurus.

Online gazetteers list from USGS has links to place names databases for several states and countries.

Eldritch Press has lots of free fulltext books online. Huxley, Tagore, WWI literature, Henry James and Henry Adams, Ring Lardner....

Airline History over 650 airlines. Also has airliners.

College profiles useful for high school students, and maybe for journalists? (Not a complete list of colleges, by any means...)

FluNet Global Influenza Surveillance Network.

Drinking water information for consumers from American Water Works Assn.

America in the 1890s: a chronology

Stichguide If you're a quilter, embroiderer, tatter, knitter, etc. you may find these stitches and patterns useful...
News

FindNews a new current news search/directory.
Statistics

Government transportation financial statistics searchable database from BTS.

American Religious Identification Survey 2001 survey, good source for stats on religious membership.

Canadian economy online.

Generosity index: Giving by State, 2002
Governments/Politics

OpenSecrets.org has an analysis of the election online: proving money talks.

Ballot issues nationwide: pigs in Florida, marijuana in Nevada, bilingualism in Massachusetts...list from Stateline.org. Who's funding them? Ballotfunding.org finds out. Florida info.

Political oddsmaker from Campaigns & Elections.
People

Census of Canada, 1901 search geographic areas.

Minnesota death certificate searches now go through 1996!

Marquis Who's Who makes available a database of over a million biographies.Subscription.

Top-Biography database from India has bios of over 350 people.
Journalism

Political reporting online tip sheet from Poynter on learning to use the Web for political coverage.

Local TV study report has individual station/market reports; from Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Editors Web a reminder: you can sign up here to get a daily email listing federal government press releases, schedules etc.
Public Records

Virginia Courts case information civil, criminal and chancery courts.

Nebraska inmate lookup (this uses a port that may cause access problems through firewalls).

Missouri Casenet Civil, criminal, probate and traffic from several counties, and appellate decisions.

State of Minnesota Offender locator

Kentucky Offender/Inmates search currently incarcerated. This site was down when I tried it.

Wisconsin Circuit Courts Access criminal, traffic, forfeiture, family, and civil case information and judgments in circuit courts for most (but not all) Wisconsin counties.
Florida

Florida Confederate pension application database a great resource for finding info about people who lived in Florida in the 1860s, or vets who lived there in later years.

A Buyer's Guide to Florida Candidates Very interesting. Databases of mostly campaign contributions to candidates in Gainesville area....
Business

Llrx article: Updated list, details on corporate filings links to state websites and explanation of material available.

From CBS Marketwatch: Scandal Sheet, listing corporate misdoings; and Earnings calendar, planning tool for corporate earnings.
Tools: no links this week.

Southern Appalachian journalism resource:
Found this site on Bill Dedman's Reporter's Desktop: Fund for Investigative Reporting and Editing (NCPress.net), an organization that helps newspapers in the area with CAR workshops and archiving. So here's the useful part: small newspapers are encouraged to send their important stories to the Fund, where they will be added to the archive. You can go in and search to find stories from small papers that otherwise wouldn't have an archive at all, like the Graham Star and the Black Mountain News. I'd hoped to find stories from the Cherokee Scout, which did an enterprise project last month derived from FOIA-obtained 911 tapes, ambitious for such a small paper. But sadly, none there. There is an investigative story on the Buncombe sheriff's department which ran in Mountain Xpress last month.
A fine idea, and a worthwhile project. A site I'll be checking back on.....

Interesting blog:
Amptoons (Alas, a blog), keeps an eye on political cartoons and other things. Prominent here: Appeasement's Failure (cartoon on Democrats) from Znet (via IDO3).

"From library clippings to clickings . . .":
It's not often newspaper libraries get mentioned in the news or otherwise. So this story in the Toronto Star, celebrating the newspaper's library's history as part of a 110th anniversary report, is a big deal. Nice story about some very enterprising researchers.

Two useful business tools
(Tips from Gary Price). CBS Marketwatch has Scandal Sheet, listing corporate misdoings; and Earnings calendar, letting you plan for companies' earnings reports.

A US cam site:
I've been linking to lots of photos from England and several times I've wished for a cam site from Maine, Vermont, Oregon....but haven't found anything the equivalent of Cornwallcam or Lakelandcam or the other sites they link to. There are lots of live cam sites but none with daily scenic photographs taken by a person. Found today, though: Vermont Daily, daily photos from Vermont. There's still some leaf color, and there's an archive of postcardlike photos. (This one 11/1).

Jim Morin's cartoon:
Harvey Pitt and the Pendulum.

And some real nonsense:
Click on the horses' heads for some pasture doo-wop...

More Dead:
Finished the Garcia book (Garcia: An American Life) last night, after getting home at midnight. A sad story, culminating in the death in bed of a 53-year-old man because he didn't get regular doctor checkups and prescriptions for heart/cholesterol medications, even with diabetes and a heroin habit and past crises, good indicators of heart problems. For more information, author Blair Jackson's website has lots of material cut from the book, a complete discography, and link to Dead.net, where you can find Robert Hunter's journal, among other things. Another new book, worth reading?

Election 2002:
Voting seems to be working smoothly in South Florida so far today. It'll be a late night tonite, however it turns out.
For more coverage, Yahoo! Special Coverage: Elections; and Full Coverage: Elections; Google News; Politics1, with Live results links tonight.
On my way.....

(Later) Voting took all of about 5 minutes, including waiting for technicians to recalibrate a couple of the machines. Turns out mine was the one balloting place in Miami-Dade where some people actually had to vote paper ballots for awhile this morning...going pretty smoothly by the time I got there, though....

For a new perspective on elections and voting: Googlevote!. Note, in at least one of these steps, Googlefights, Bill McBride wins over Jeb Bush. (from Scripting News.)

I'm reminded (by Craig's Booknotes)(how could I forget?) that today is Guy Fawkes' Day. I was recently explaining the holiday to someone and suddenly realized how amazing it is that this terrorist has been cause for national celebration for nearly 400 years now, commemorated with bonfires.

The Minnesota Senate race in a nutshell from Star Tribune's Steve Sack.

Another journalist blog...
Wilson's Weekly Weblog, from news editor Carroll Wilson of the Times Record News in Wichita Falls, TX.
And this one: PowerLine, is by three attorneys, of whom one is a former journalist and two work in a think tank. It has lots and lots of links and thoughts about politics and the news, particularly in Minnesota.
(Both these blogs look like mine. Time to do some redesign work.....)

A dream fantasy of mine....
Has been to visit all the old churches in the City of London. I may have done a third of these, but this website makes if easy to find them all, so one day, maybe....
Also found here: Link to London Walks. Check the daily schedules of walks around London, and just show up at the right Tube station and pay five pounds; you get a two-hour themed walk with an expert guide. How about this one, tomorrow:
THE BEATLES "IN MY LIFE" WALK
11:20 am Marylebone Underground: Bakerloo
"There are places I'll remember all my life", sang the Beatles in one of their most evocative songs. Many of those places are in the "London Town" of this walk...so get back with Richard, "the Pied Piper of Beatlemania" (The Miami Herald), to the film locations for A Hard Day's Night and Help, the registry office where two of the Fabs were married, and the apartment immortalised by Ringo, John and Yoko. We'll also see the house where Paul lived with his glamorous girlfriend, actress Jane Asher. Those were the days...for it was in that house that John and Paul wrote I want to hold your hand. And to cap it all we'll go up to St. John's Wood to see the legendary Abbey Road studios and crosswalk. As the Toronto Globe and Mail said of the walk, "A splendid time is guaranteed for all."

Last Sunday, in the Keys:
.....more...

The weekly update:
Lots of discussion this week on the Newslib-L listserv about research budgets and how library/research managers handle access to commercial databases in newsrooms.
It's a big concern: torn between budget considerations and questions of legal use of the public records databases, and demands from staffs for access to materials they know they need, news researchers have a big responsibility. It's not getting easier, as availability of so much information over the Internet creates a thirst for more.
A far cry from the days when the job just required making sure stories got clipped and filed correctly.....and a good debate. It's been useful learning how other newsrooms handle the question. (For more on news research: SLA News Division.)


Interesting stories/Weblogs:

Many states let workers take time off to vote. Florida's not included.

Submarines of October new declassified briefing from 1962 at National Security Archive.

Making a killing: The business of war report from Center for Public Integrity's International Consortium of Investigative Journalists...10-part series.

Tony Ridder on his father in E&P.

America still unprepared; America still in danger new report from Council of Foreign Relations.


Fun/Entertaining:

Styrogami...art from coffee cups...

Chief Moose fan club.

Ash plume from Mt. Etna from space.

And the useful links:
Reference

Original Grimms fairy tales English translation 1884. More of the tales from National Geographic (1914 translation).

Calcium; special report from Medline Plus.

NY Times travel section now has free archives search back to 1996.

The Big Database of Cartoons really need to know plot of an episode of Scooby Doo? Crew list for The Simpsons? It's all here.

America's Culinary Heritage exhibit from library at Cornell U.

Culinary history timeline. This is companion to The Food Timeline (link at bottom), compiled by Morris County NJ library.

Maritime History Administration has listings of historic ships, lighthouses and other landmarks.
News

Knight Ridder newspapers on Nexis:
The archives of the largest KR papers have been increased. Now the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News, Detroit Free Press, and San Jose Mercury News go back to 1994. The Miami Herald, Charlotte Observer, St. Paul Pioneer Press go back to 1995. The Akron Beacon Journal goes back to 1996. (were 2000).

Digital archive of the Toronto Globe & Mail from 1844 now available (by subscription) from ProQuest.

Newspaper Direct this subscription service started making front pages of international newspapers available after 9/11; you can still see the pages here daily. (note this is broadband connection page; if you're going in via dialup you should choose connection speed here.)
Statistics

Annual Energy Review, 2001 from U.S. Dept of Energy.

Fast Facts for Veterans Day interesting stats from U.S. Census.

Crime in the U.S., 2001 latest Uniform Crime Reports from FBI.

Nations Report Card: Geography "a comprehensive overview
of the state of geography education in the 4th, 8th, and 12th grades across
the United States." From Natl Center for Education Statistics.

UK Education stats: Statistics of Education Schools in England 2002 Edition; Higher Education Statistics for the United Kingdom 2000/01. From Dept of Education and Skills.
Governments/Politics

Sites for guide to U.S. elections compiled by Gary Price.

PriceGrabber: Candidates lets you get lists of candidates for governor or senator and see what they're spending. You can select by many factors, including issues (all candidates for/against gun control, for example....)

Haitian embassy in Washington and Haiti links.
People

Researching people on the Internet II 2nd part of article in OJR by Paul Grabowicz: good hints and links on looking up business, campaign contributions, and more.

Physician.info Find links to search for doctors in every state and several countries.
Journalism

ReligionSource experts and sources on religion for journalists, from American Academy of Religion.

Goodbye, Atex a fond farewell in the NYTimes' company magazine...
Tools

Free Answers search help pages for Microsoft, Adobe and Intuit computer software problem solving...

Verizon Superpages a new online phone directory that lets you search by last name only, use an asterisk to truncate a name, or search by first initial. There's also a Yellow pages search.

MyWay.com this new portal from Excite is powered by Google so has great search and news features, free email (or link to your existing email account on yahoo, hotmail and more), and best of all: no pop-ups or banner ads!
Public Records, Florida, Business: No links this week.

Pithing into the wind...
And other Pulitzer Prize-winning columns are featured on Dave Barry's new website, along with a message group, links to columns, books, and the record company, Dave's favorite bookstore (Books and Books, what else?), and schedule. (I think Dave should blog, don't you?)

Take it from an old journalist....
It's been a long, strange trip. American Journalism Review is celebrating their 25th anniversary with a special issue on how things have changed. Includes "How did I do this before Google?" in which The Miami Herald's Tom Fiedler talks about the old days of typewriters and cigarette butts.... and a wonderful story about Scott Armstrong and the Washington Post's first Raytheon computer system. Ah, those were the days....

Reading matter:
Speaking of long strange trips, I'm reading Garcia: an American life, by Blair Jackson. A study of Jerry and the Dead with emphasis on the music. For someone who experienced these years, and the Dead (although from the other coast), a nostalgic remembrance and engrossing book.
Before this, I read Will you miss me when I'm gone, the story of the Carter family. I saw mother Maybelle at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival back in the '70s and had no idea of the incredible story behind her and the rest of the family. What a tale! This one also kept me reading well into the night.