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Europeana is a just-released Web site that is a repository for information from archives all over Europe, including "digitised books, films, paintings, newspapers, sounds and archives from Europe’s greatest collections."... Unfortunately the demand has exceeded server supply and the site is now down and being retooled to re-open in 'mid-December'. A development site is still up, in English only. Measuring Worth gives you 'six ways to measure the relative value of a U.S. dollar amount, 1774-present.' Policy Archive , a 'a comprehensive digital library of public policy research containing over 16,000 documents'. The Bivings Report gives us The Top 10 Best Newspaper Websites . The Washington Post and New York Times, no surprise, but how about two Tennessee newspapers?

Our Vote Live tracks election problems during election day. Google Elections Gallery will show real-time elections results on maps. fivethirtyeight.com on electoral projections. Early Voting Database, 2008 . 2008 Electopedia from New York magazine. Ballot Measures Database from Natl Conference of State Legislatures. Ballotopedia . The International IDEA Voter Turnout Website . And something else in the news: Failed Bank List from the FDIC.

I hadn't heard of Google's 'In Quotes' until I saw it mentioned in the AskSam newsletter. What an intriguing idea, and hopefully useful. It's just quotes from John McCain and Barack Obama, but searchable or browsable by category. Some Biden and Palin quotes, too, I tried 'hockey mom' and and got it. Also from Ask Sam: a searchable version of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 ; the Presidential Debates transcripts ; and the Vice Presidential Debates transcripts . These available to search online, as usual, or download to use with the free AskSam reader. The Commission on Presidential Debates has lots of history, transcripts, quotes, etc. online, too. Good stuff for these final campaign days.

Not much to report here, except that I have added some new news researcher blog links to the NewsliBlog 's sidebar. And, for those of you reading the 1968 recaps and wanting a chronological version, I've taken all the blog postings so far and put them on the website: 40 Years Ago: 1968 . I'll copy the upcoming posts there, too, as they're published to the blog. There's a lot more to remember about 1968.

Sharon Clairmont, of the Orange County Register, has started the Answers. Sources. Knowledge. Blog. Lots more news researcher blogs listed at Newslib.blogspot.com .

After a slow week, a couple interesting new research blogs: Paper Trail Blog from Center for Public Integrity, links to useful and interesting public records background to stories in the news. Lisa Gold: Research Maven : she lists great tips for finding research resources, writing, and more. A couple research resources: Sports Illustrated's Vault gives access to 50 years of fulltext stories, covers, and images. State Digital Resources: Memory Projects, Online Encyclopedias, Historical & Cultural Materials Collections . The Library of Congress compiles a list of state resources. This is great. I know of a few states' encyclopedias but knew there had to be more. They're all listed here. And this: 5 ways newspapers botched the web , from Valleywag. Interesting recap of several of Knight-Ridder's online initiatives like Viewtron, Real Cities and New Century Network, along with The New York Times' Abuzz and newspaper consortium's Classified Ventures. On Knight...

After a long respite, some new research links, and a couple more references to what's going on in the world of laid-off journalists: We Were Print a blog from several "Former and Soon-to-Be Former Print Journalists". Includes a body count, and links to job listings. 42 Things I know from William Lobdell, recently bought out at LA Times, about the current state of newspapers (and the Times). The research links: News : The Newsfilm Online Digitisation Project offers selected newsfilm from ITN/Reuters archives , by subscription or free browsing. PopURLs , shows the most popular links on the Web today. Beijing Olympics News from NewsNow. Reference : A Chronology of Data Breaches , from Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. I've used this in the past but don't think I linked it. Very helpful when searching for past hacking or theft incidents. A Big List of Sites That Teach You How To Do Stuff from ReadWriteWeb. Public Records : Criminalsearches.com : this beta from People...

Seven years later, whenever the anthrax story comes to mind I remember the several weeks spent trying to learn everything there is to know about anthrax and compiling the information for reporters trying to understand the terrible death of National Enquirer photo editor Robert Stevens (whose widow is holding a news conference this morning to explain her reaction, and her suit against the government). Now The Smoking Gun has made available lots of the documents summarizing the case against army researcher Bruce Ivins: Inside the Anthrax Probe . What a strange, strange story (Washington Post profile of Ivins).

I've been out of town and hoped to update the blog during my trip but didn't see anything to blog anyway. I've been avoiding politics and there hasn't been much research news, but now that the political season is heating up even more, I expect it's time to start doing some politics links here. Watch for those. Some things I've noticed, though: In some really bad news, Genie Tyburski has announced she's shutting down The Virtual Chase . The website and weekly newsletter are incredibly helpful for legal researchers as well as news researchers, and it will be missed. Tyburski will keep the website open for several months, but is willing to hand it over to another legal librarian/researcher. Any takers? New from Google, a website/blog/wiki blend called Knol (for unit of knowledge). This site makes it easy for writers to post long articles on subjects they have expertise in. So far the articles have a heavy medical lean, such as this excellent guide to Type 2...

For lovers (and seekers) of statistics, Shirl Kennedy has put together a nice list at Resourceshelf of Niche Statistics . Among the unusual stats collected here, links to lots of the Department of Defense's personnel stats, a great resource that isn't easily found by searching (and plagued by occasional URL changes). But I'm most impressed by the great list of sports business statistics posted by an Econ professor at U.Mich: Sports Business Data . Directories of this sort of thing have come and gone over the years and sometimes the only things you can find are pay services, so this should be really welcome to any researcher needing sports data. Also linked on Resourceshelf today, the National Archives' collection of historical documents being shared with the new World Digital Library . Included, images of the Declaration, Constitution, and other major docs, as well as photographs by great American photographers like Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange....and, well, Nixon mee...

The question of journalists and blogging has been debated for years, and I've linked to lots and lots of stuff on the topic. There's so much now that I don't usually link to it, but once in awhile I notice something that stands out. Today, it's a posting by Roy Greenslade, Why journalists must learn the values of the blogging revolution . He raises some interesting ideas: I have tended to predict that future news organisations will consist of a small hub of "professional journalists" at the centre with bloggers (aka amateur journalists/citizen journalists) on the periphery. In other words, us pros will still run the show. I'm altogether less certain about that model now. First, I wonder whether us pros are as valuable as we think. Second, and more fundamentally, I wonder whether a "news organisation" is as perfect a model as we might think. On a related note, I noticed another journalist/blogger spat going on in Asheville NC, where a local blogge...

Some more interesting thoughts on news research and other topics... In the Wall Street Journal by Jason Fry, The Case of the Missing White Pages (link fixed). It explores the question of whether there is a directory of cell phone numbers (a question that comes up on NewsLib about once a year). A few years back there was news one was coming, but according to this story, Intelius gave up on it. Cell phone users don't want strangers getting their numbers, end of story. But it raises some interesting thoughts: That will arouse uneasy feelings that technology has once again done away with something we assumed was eternal...Those of us who remember looking ourselves up in the white pages and thinking that now we belong to a place may lament -- not for the first time -- that our real-world communities are becoming more fragmented as people spend time in online communities of their own choosing instead. (Via Resourceshelf.) Mentioned in Derek Willis' report on some sessions he attende...

I've been following the coverage of the announced layoffs at the Miami Herald , of course, and am struck by a few things: The first online version of the story, which I read right away, didn't include this part: (those leaving)...include 12 newsroom supervisors, five in the International Edition, two copy editors, three reporters, four designers and layout specialists, two on the state desk, two critics, two photographers and six in archiving and calendar. Archiving, calendar and the International Edition will be outsourced to workers in India. I'm not sure, but this may be a first. I haven't heard of another paper outsourcing library functions (the calendar staff was in the library, too). More on the Herald, of course, at Herald Watch . More at Daily Pulp . And there's good stuff at Random Pixels , where names are named here and here . I'm quite sad to hear about Phil Long, 40-year Herald employee who was my phone buddy for years when he was out on a story so...

In all the blogging and commenting this morning about last night's speeches, one stands out for me. In The Moderate Voice , by Pete Abel: Three images from last night’s TV coverage will stay with me for years. 1. McCain’s reptitious, ill-timed, and creepier-than-usual grin … like the Cheshire cat on sedatives. 2. Clinton’s defiant smirk, as her NYC supporters shouted “Denver, Denver, Denver.” 3. Obama mouthing to Michelle after his speech, “How’d I do?” — and her apparent response, “Good. Real Good.” Says Abel: ...if Americans truly do vote more on gut than on reason, then these images suggest (already) who will win in November … in a landslide. On the news research front, Al Tompkins had links to a couple new tools in his 'dozen things I'm diggin'' sidebar, things that can answer one of the most frustrating questions asked of news researchers: how big is it, and how many swimming pools/football fields/Empire State Buildings will it fill? From Nikon, Universcale ...

I didn't know, until I noticed it in Dan Gillmor's blog, that respected McClatchy Washington reporters Warren Stroebel, Jonathan Landay and Nancy Youssef, have a blog, called Nukes and Spooks . Among other things, it monitors a good list of security and counterterrorism blogs. This is one I'll be checking in on. Gillmor brought attention to this posting, Memo to Scott McClellan: Here's what happened , in which Stroebel and Landay recap the work McClatchy (then Knight-Ridder) bureau reporters did in exposing the administration propaganda leading up to the war in Iraq. It contains a pretty damning list of administration lies and errors, which were documented long before McClellan's book. But what I really like about this blog posting is that in a list of bureau reporters responsible for the coverage, they include bureau researcher Tish Wells. We confess that here at McClatchy, which purchased Knight Ridder two years ago, we do have a dog in this fight. Our team - Joe ...

I'm intrigued with today's story about the Bill Clinton rant against the author of the negative Vanity Fair story about him, recorded by "amateur reporter" Mayhill Fowler ( at Huffington Post ), because Fowler is the same reporter who reported Barack Obama's comments at a San Francisco fundraiser about 'clinging to guns and religion'. (Dave Winer discusses .) After the first story, I pictured a young blogger, but it turns out Fowler is a 60-something former Tenneseean with a lifelong family interest in politics , who's worked her way into a position as a frequent 'Off The Bus' blogger. This is exactly what the 'Off the Bus' project was hoping for , I'd think, using bloggers to find news the major media misses. It's just one of several intriguing new ways of getting news that have been showing up this election year. They don't always last (I remember Voter.org from the 2000 election) but make things interesting while the d...

New York Times coverage of national political conventions, 1896-1996 . Agflation: The real costs of rising food prices , news and data from Reuters. KillerStartups.com reviews new Web sites. The Civil Rights Digital Library , at the University of Georgia. World Health Statistics 2008 from WHO.

Over the last few years, several newspapers have made the expensive investment of scanning their microfilm to make stories available online that are older than their text archives, started in the early 1980s or later. ProQuest has done several newspapers, as well as Olive , Heritage , and Cold North Wind. Some are available online, by subscription, or through the newspaper's Web site, downloaded for a small fee; some public libraries offer access to ProQuest papers, too. The New York Times is one of those papers, and you can search and download individual stories from their older archives in PDF ProQuest format. But now the Times has launched Times Machine , where you can actually browse scans of an entire newspaper. If you're a home delivery subscriber you can use the full service, covering years from 1851-1922. A few papers are available for non-subscribers, covering major events and '100 years ago today'. (Note the page also suggests checking if your local library ...

Combing the journalism blogs is one of the best ways to find collections of links for researching background information on news of the day. A couple good examples today: Poynter's Al Tompkins has pulled together lots of background on Sen. Ted Kennedy and brain tumors . And this Guardian Newsblog entry on Mourning China earthquake victims online is really interesting for finding sources of opinion and links on China that might not otherwise show up. Lots of links here to online blogs, tweets, and videos, with some discussion of press coverage of 'mourning day'.

UN Data : search or browse all the statistics, including latest news. DMV.org , unofficial guide to DMVs in all 50 states. VINcheck from Natl Insurance Crime Bureau, find if a vehicle is reported stolen. Canadian Police Information Centre Has a similar search for Canada. Using del.icio.us to create dynamic Web links pages : great presentation showing steps to making del.iciou.us links and feeding them to populate subject guides. Newsroom intranet editors, take note. This could be really useful and is well explained. This headline caught my eye on Memeorandum today: from the L.A. Times, Negotiating isn't Appeasement , by J. Peter Scoblic. ...if there is anything that has been discredited by history, it is the argument that every enemy is Hitler, that negotiations constitute appeasement, and that talking will automatically lead to a slaughter of Holocaust-like proportions. (updated:) And one more, from Patrick Buchanan: Bush Plays the Hitler Card . ...Eisenhower, Nixon, Gerald Ford ...