Academic and Scholar Search Engines and Sources – An Annotated Link Compilation

This new guide by research guru Marcus P. Zillman focuses on the latest and most significant academic and scholar search engines and sources. With the addition of new and pertinent information continually released online from every sector, it is very easy to experience information overload. A real asset in responding to the challenges of so much data is to apply techniques to identify and locate significant, reliable academic and scholarly information that resides in both the visible and invisible web. The following selected academic and scholar search engines and sources offer a wide range of actionable information retrieval and extraction sources to help you accomplish your research goals.

Read more

Subjects: Competitive Intelligence, Features, Information Mapping, Search Engines, Search Strategies, Technology Trends

FOIA Facts: Things Requesters Should Know

FOIA expert Scott A. Hodes shares his professional experience working with FOIA Analysts, and their perspective on how they make the FOIA process smoother in regard to their relationships with requesters. This however is a double edged coin – FOIA requesters can also take specific steps and make efforts to assist with the satisfactory and timely completion of a request when communicating with government FOIA personnel.

Read more

Subjects: FOIA Facts, Government Resources, Legal Research

Pet Overpopulation Infographic

Spencer Belkofer’s Infographic documents the critical importance of spaying and neutering cats and dogs to saves lives, promote health and to facilitate adoption. For all the readers who are involved in “rescue”, and those who are considering this option, Spencer brings us key facts to help support our decision to become involved in making a difference in the lives of companion animals.

Read more

Subjects: Features

Opening Government: On the Limits of FOIA and the Metaphor of Transparency

Professor Annmarie Bridy discusses the use of “transparency” as a metaphor for openness in government, the use of FOIA as a mechanism for ensuring such openness, and the ways in which proponents of greater public involvement in policy-making may disserve the cause by focusing too single-mindedly on access to information and the right to know, both of which are operationalized through FOIA.

Read more

Subjects: Features, Freedom of Information, Government Resources

SOPAs Evil Twin Sister CISPA

Well known graphic artists Jake O’Neil and Spencer Belkofer created this infographic out of a sense of urgency to visualize the salient information with as many communities as possible. This bill, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011, has not garnered the media coverage of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), but its high impact implications target key legal issues involving privacy and intellectual property.

Read more

Subjects: Congress, Cyberlaw, Cyberlaw Legislation, Features, Intellectual Property, Privacy

Fiction is harder than fact, but the Web helps

Nicholas Pengelley’s wide ranging global career spans law librarian, lawyer, law professor and analyst for a major international NGO. Now as the author of a new political thriller he explains why writing fiction is much harder to write than fact, based on comparison to work accomplished to publish academic articles in his fields of expertise, and opinion pieces on political issues. He attributes the success of aspects of this project to effective and expansive Web research for sources and information to facilitate fact checking and information gathering, as well as to the use of a manuscript editing software, AutoCrit.

Read more

Subjects: Features, Internet Resources, Writing Skills

New Economy Resources

Marcus P. Zillman’s guide is focused on current web sites, blogs and database sources targeted to researchers whose goal is the discovery and effective use of specific, reliable resources to track the New Economy. These sources assume added importance with the expansion in U.S. government transparency, the rise in prominence of “big data” and the public release by agencies, NGOs, public interest groups and media, of diverse databases of analytics, reports, statistical releases, and customized charts.

Read more

Subjects: Blogs, Congress, Data Mining, Features, Legal Research, Legislative, United States Law

FOIA Facts: FOIA as Golf

Recent reports of both the Department of Justice and others about the administrations FOIA overall program have led FOIA expert Scott A. Hodes to imagine FOIA as golf. President Obama is currently on the fairway of the ninth hole. Voters will let him know in November if he gets to play the back nine.

Read more

Subjects: FOIA Facts
➤