Google Internet Stats

Here's an interesting new Google product: Internet Stats. In addition to tracking some major macroeconomic trends, the site also provides some media industry numbers. The site is intended to provide snapshots of consumer behavior and technology as both change over time.

You can browse, search, or ask for a "random statistic" to display.

Google's note about sources:

Data provided by the following vendors: B2Bonline.com, BARB, BusinessWeek, Coke, Commission of the European Communities, Comscore, Core Metrics, Datamonitor, Deloitte, The Economist, eMarketer, Enders Analysis, Eurostat, Film Distributors Association, Financial Times, Forrester, GFK, Google Insights for Search, Greenbee.com, Guardian, HarvardBusiness.org, Hitwise, IAB, IFPI, IMF, Internet Retailing, Internetworldstats.com, JP Morgan, KMPG, Media & Marketing, Mediascope Europe, Mindshare, Motorola, Net Imperative, New York Magazine, Nielsen, NMA, Ofcom, Ipsos MediaCT, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, QuickPlay Media Inc., Retail Week, Reuters, TGI Net, Times Online, TNS, Verdict Research, Wall Street Journal, WARC, YouTube, ZenithOptimedia, GM

Open Culture Does it Again!

This media site, which we know already as a great place for things like language-learning podcasts and free audiobooks, has compiled a Guide to Intelligent Video.  It describes (and links to) the top user-recommended sites for cultural and educational videos.   There's lots here to explore. 

Multimedia minus copyright questions

A recent post on Sean Aune's Sitepoint blog , titled 30+ Places to Find Creative Commons Media, is worth reading. For students who are doing multimedia projects, the Sitepoint list is a potential gold mine. And at the very least, it presents some interesting tools to complement our e-resource collections of audio, visual, and primary text materials.

I so wish Yahoo Image Search (which was recently touted as a superior product to Google Images) had a filter for CC materials, but I was glad to be reminded that Flickr does provide that option in its advanced search. Something I didn't know: Google Images allows a similar kind of restriction (also in advanced search mode).

Film Searching in HOLLIS: the Sequel

I've learned a few new tricks for pulling up films in HOLLIS -- something which might be useful to you when the typical search strategy -- words + format=Visual doesn't produce what you expect, suspect is out there, or need to find.

You can consider these tips authoritative: they come from master cataloger Betsy Eggleston, who serves with me on the MetaPac committee.

According to the Bib Standards Committee, films should always be given a designated form/genre. The applications are not always consistent, as the list below makes painfully clear. Some HOLLIS items carry more than one these form/genre label (e.g., DVD video discs and feature films) so the numbers under each heading do not necessarily identify unique items.

DVD (50+): actual number in catalog is 13976.
DVD-video (3)
DVD video discs (50+):13556. Limiting to Lamont registers 1452 items this way, but only Marty will know how accurate that count is.
DVD-Video disc (1)
DVD Videodiscs(50+): actually, only 80 items have this variant.

Videodiscs (50+): items entered this way currently total 805.
Videocassettes (50+): 4988 items.
Videotapes (50+): 14950.

Things get interesting when you try some other combinations:

kw DVD + format=visual retrieves 14696 items.
kw videorecording + format=visual retrieves 5825.
kw feature films + format=visual retrieves 8243.
kw motion pictures + format=visual retrieves 3448.
kw films + format=visual retrieves 13826.
kw feature + format=visual retrieves 8343.

The current (or recent) thinking among catalogers, apparently, is that since IMDB (and other online tools) do their thing so well, users should search there, find a title, and then turn to HOLLIS for local holdings.

Free Access to Online Documentaries

To add to your reference repertoire:

Best Online Documentaries

Items are not restricted by copyright and are considered high quality; most are culled from the Google Videos collection. They're classified by broad subjects.

I've also added the site to our del.icio.us links.

A Question about James Michael Curley materials

I just answered a question from the HOLLIS Comment Line. Since it had to do with media materials, I thought I'd share my response. Someone was looking for recordings of speeches by former Boston Mayor, James Curley. There is nothing in HOLLIS and I checked the "Video Encyclopedia of the Twentieth Century" index. The index is kept at the Morse Music & Media Help Desk. Though I did not find any entries for Curley, I thought it would be good to remind everyone about these video recordings and the index to them (videos in the "Video Encyclopedia of the Twentieth Century" is with the video cassettes at D 419 V53 1986x) . The videos contain speeches and short newsreel type of material.

Since we did not have any recordings here at Harvard (and I didn't find any with a Google search either), I referred them to the Boston Public Library's "Curley Collection." If there are recordings available, there may be some there--or the BPL should know where else they might find some.

Got language tapes? One option

As we know, the HOLLIS holdings for language tapes, along the lines of Rosetta Stone or Pimsleur, are sparse. Yet questions about language tapes are common at the Reference Desk.

Next time you get this question, you might consider directing the patron to a website called Open Culture. Its aim is to provide vetted links to educational media, primarily in podcast format. Foreign language lesson podcasts figure prominently, so patrons with MP3 players/iPods can download materials and then listen and learn on the go. There's a handy RSS feed on the site, too, for Open Culture users who want to keep up with what's new.

In addition to podcasts in a variety of categories (news, technology, university, arts and culture and the like), Open Culture also links to public doman audiobooks and even to some movies and film clips (from YouTube and other places).

And lest you're wondering, Open Culture is produced under the direction of the Associate Dean of Stanford's Continuing Studies Program.

Multimedia Searching on the Web

This Web Search post may prove useful the next time you confront the stock photography conundrum, or when, as happened last week, a student asks you to identify places to get video clips of "any war."

Web Search author, Wendy Boswell, presents 20 ways to find such things as free audio clips, free image sites, and more.

Another image collection to know about

From the most recent issue of The Scout Report. [This site seems to have some "social software" features built in. It will be interesting to see how it compares with the new ARTstor functionality that Mary Clare will be showing interested librarians in October (details still being worked out].

"This year, the Smithsonian Photography Initiative (SPI), which is dedicated to promoting the use of Smithsonian photographic resources -roughly 13 million images located in approximately seven hundred collections - launched a new Web site.

"The Web site serves several purposes: an online repository of images, a gateway to exhibitions, and a community where visitors can find not only images, but can also connect with others with similar interests, ranging from experts to amateurs.

"The site also includesEnter the Frame, an interactive interface where visitors can browse images from 19 Smithsonian museums, arrange selected images into sequences, and tag, or apply descriptive keywords to images. Sequences can then be saved,and viewed by subsequent visitors. For example, a sequence entitled 'August'- submitted August 21, 2006 - included an 1855 Daguerreotype of a tree-lined street in Savannah, Georgia; a cyanotype portrait of Thomas Smillie (chief photographer for the Smithsonian from 1870 until his death in 1917) from the Smithsonian Archives; a 1992 photo of an African girl with flowers in her hair from the American Art Museum; and an 1865 albumen print taken by Julia Margaret Cameron, among its 10 selections."

AccuNet/AP: Now it's truly multimedia

In case this is also news to you: the AccuNet/AP Multimedia Archives now has audio files -- 4500 hours of clips (thus far), some as recent as 48 hours ago, some dating as far back as the 1920s.

The web site has changed slightly, too: broad, news-section type categories have been added to the front page.

The help page (and search functionality) seems to have improved. See the User Guide for specifics.

Stock Photography

Since we've gotten questions in the past about stock photography, this blog may be helpful. The author (a librarian who maintains an ACRL mailing list) has encouraged readers to add information to it, so check it occasionally for new links.

In our Reference collection, another option for tracking stock images down (albeit a bit more labor intensive) is one of the several Illustration Index volumes we have at REF.ROOM N7525 .G72. These little gems (which cover more than photography) were something I discovered while shifting (and sifting through) our Reference collection. Later editions of the Illustration Index are available in the Loeb Design, Fine Arts, and Widener Reference collections.

A Wikipedia entry on Public Domain Image Resources looks promising.

For moving images, the Internet Archive offers quite a selection and Google Videos partnership with the National Archives (which offers interesting historical stock footage).

And by the way: look at what I found searching the Creative Commons for "Harvard libraries."

Who knew?

Tonight, searching in HOLLIS for Film Literature Index, I discovered that this fine resource is available online.

Interestingly, you won't find FLI in the "e-research" portion of E-Research. It's listed a "free" e-journal instead.

I've written to my colleagues on the MetaPort committee and asked that we consider reassigning it to an E-Resource subject category and as an "index."

Am I the only one who thinks of this publication as a research tool (that just comes out serially, like Reader's Guide, e.g.)?

Anyway, FLI covers televsion, too -- so with topics for a class such as the recent one we all remember: "I Like Ike, But I Love Lucy" -- this resource will be good to add to our search repertoires.

Coverage is 1976-2001. Widener has a current subscription so for very recent topics -- like Jon Stewart's Daily Show or Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain, e.g. -- students will still need to search the print version of the index. Latest 10 years are kept in the Reading Room at RR 2971.15.