Weekend update

This is where I post news research tools, research reports and other interesting links collected during the past week. Most of these come from lists compiled by others, like Gary Price and the Resourceshelf team, journalism sites and newsletters, but some are things found while looking up something else.

The links:

Reference:

Britannica Concise: free short entries.

WildflowerInformation.org, another site for flower identification.

MOMA collection database art works at Museum of Modern Art.

Special bibliography: Space from Air University library.

Center for Retirement Research at Boston College has studies, papers.

NaturServe has great databases of North American (Explorer) and Latin American (InfoNatura) plants, animals, ecosystems.

Reports:

building and Fire Safety Investigations from NIST, has reports on hurricanes Rita/Katrina, The Station fire, World Trade Center.

Status of U.S. Marine Fisheries for 2005

Baby Boomer Retirement: the Nightmare in our Future.

SIPRI Yearbook 2006: armaments, arms control and international security.

Fastest growing American cities in 2005, from Census.

Top Brands, survey of brand quality and equity from Harris Interactive. #1: Reynolds Wrap.

Lots more links to good reports on the new Docuticker.


Statistics:

Translations statistics database, from UNESCO.

International Energy Outlook, 2006

Refinery Capacity Reports, 2006

State electric energy profiles, 2004 data.

Governments, Politics:

Treaties and Agreements, texts from Dept of State.

Members of Congress under investigation, compiled by Congresspedia/SourceWatch.

Dollars not Sense new report from House Government Reform Minority Office, shows huge rise in dollars spent and percentage of government contracts, a 'shadow government' of private companies. Link to 110-page PDF of full report, plus a searchable database of problem contracts.

Journalism:

Newspaper Reader Engagement, report from NAA.

People:

All U.S. Censuses are now on Ancestry.com (press release from My Family). Ancestry.com is a subscription service.

Business:

Corporate Affiliations from LexisNexis.com, has corporate linkage information and company profiles on over 200,000 public companies, to 7 levels of linkage. Includes corporate officer and contact names and trademarks. Subscribe by month ($300) or by number of records.

Tools:

NY Times story on Free web-based desktop software (word processors, spreadsheets, etc.)