Weekend update: More research links from the week

After the VT disaster, a couple of routine reference sources have proved again how useful they can be:

• Timeline of School Shootings, covering 1996-present. So many. From Infoplease, another reminder of how useful this reference site can be. Here are lots more timelines.
  
• The latest on Virginia Tech, from Wikipedia: The New York Times on why Wikipedia is still relevant, especially in a breaking story:

  IMAGINE a newspaper with more than 2,000 writers, researchers and copy editors, yet no supervisors or managers to speak of. ...during some recent critical events, like the Virginia Tech killings, the Southeast Asian tsunami in 2004, and the London bombings in 2005, the site has been transformed from an ever-growing reference book into a ever-updating news source — albeit one with scant original reporting.

Did you know there was yet another major trail system being built in the eastern half of this country? I know the Appalachian, and the new Benton-MacKaye trail near us, and know about the Florida trail system, but didn't know about the Great Eastern Trail. Susan at Patchwork Reflections blog has great links: About the new Great Eastern Trail.

The other links:

Reference:

Vivisimo Medical Information Search.

New design for the CDC website. Much more user friendly (I hope all the statistics links, etc. haven't changed.)

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services: Acronyms and Glossary.

Statistics:

Transportation Statistics Annual Report, 2006 from BTS.

Governments, Politics:

Presidential Election 2008 Campaign Finance Databases, links to lots of them from ResourceShelf.

Presidential pardon and clemency recipients, covering George Bush and Clinton administrations, none from G W Bush. From Justice.

Journalism:

The End of Journalism?

Trends in Newsrooms 2007, annual report from World Editors' Forum.

Business:

Hoover's Index of most-watched companies.

Portfolio Company Profiles (500,000 public, private companies). And, Executive Profiles.

Who Called? list of common telemarketing originating phone numbers.

Public Records:

National Criminal Records Check: in The Virtual Chase, describing what's available (and negating the idea that any such thing really exists). One of many useful links here:

Legal Dockets online. Register for fee-based access to dockets, decisions, or inmate records, or find a court reporter. There's also a public records blog. Found here, something I looked for recently which wasn't available then: D.C. court dockets.

Tools:

Handbook for bloggers and cyber-dissidents from Reporters Without Borders.

Some interesting stories/blogs:

Library of Congress Blog