Information Edge

White House Blog

Deborah Hunt — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 22:13:18 +0000

Interested in the safety of Gulf seafood, relief efforts for victms of flooding in Pakistan, or the Affordable Care Act? Keep up on the latest news from the White House at the White House blog. Topics covered include the economy, education, health care, taxes and much more. There are links to other White House blogs.

Posts are updated mostly daily, often with several posts in one day. There are videos, letters, and postings from a wide variety of people, including a kindergarten teacher.

Maps of War

Deborah Hunt — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 02:50:15 +0000

I’m a visual learner, so when I recently learned about Maps of War, I was really excited. I explored this site, created by a history buff, who writes:
“I love history, and wanted to create something that showed the ‘Big Picture’ of war instead of the battle-by-battle view we always see through the narrow spyglass of the mainstream media. It’s all about the ‘Big Picture’ of history, not measured in years, but in centuries. The media does not show us this viewpoint and my hope is that Maps-of-War will help fill this gap.”

The History of Religion map is my favorite as one can see 5,000 years of religious history in 90 seconds.

There is also list of the “best multimedia war maps from the world wide web“.

What map would you like to see here?

Death by PowerPoint

Deborah Hunt — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 23:40:50 +0000

As someone who frequently teaches and makes presentations, I was intrigued by the book 101 Tips to Communicate More Effectively Using PowerPoint, authored by Dave Paradi.

If you’ve ever sat through a presentation where someone read each long bullet point verbatim, you know how boring that can be. Paradi provides lots of tips for making a presentation engaging and dynamic.

Paradi found that the top three audience annoyances are:

The speaker read the slides
Text is too small
Full sentences instead of bullet points on slides

What annoys you the most about a PowerPoint presentation? What engages you?

The U.S. 9/11 Commission Records: History, Collection Access, and Issues

Deborah Hunt — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 15:58:56 +0000

“The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (also known as the 9/11 Commission) was established in 2002 to provide a full and complete accounting of the attacks of September 11, 2001 and to provide recommendations as to how to prevent such attacks in the future. This paper discusses the workings of the 9/11 Commission, the processing, preservation and public access to the findings, and the work carried out by the Center for Legislative Archives of the National Archives and Records Administration to make the information available to the public.”

Access the Complete Paper (8 pages; PDF)

HealthCare.gov

Deborah Hunt — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 02:56:11 +0000

Recently launched, HealthCare.gov is a new consumer website that provides unprecedented transparency into the health care marketplace. Through HealthCare.gov, individuals will have more control over their health care as informed and empowered consumers. This “first-of-its-kind” website is simple and easy to use, and provides one-stop shopping access to a wealth of information, including new consumer rights and benefits under the Affordable Care Act, a timeline of when new programs under the new law will come online between now and 2014 and a new insurance finder that will make it easy to find both private and public health insurance options.

Federal Agencies Introduce Online Mapping Tool to Track Gulf Response

Deborah Hunt — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 15:51:45 +0000

“The dynamic nature of the Deepwater Horizon BP oil spill has been a challenge for a range of communities — from hotel operators to fishermen to local community leaders. And the American people have questions about the response to this crisis. NOAA has launched a new federal Web site meant to answer those questions with clarity and transparency — a one-stop shop for detailed near-real-time information about the response to the Deepwater Horizon BP oil spill. The Web site incorporates data from the various agencies that are working together to tackle the spill.”
http://www.geoplatform.gov/gulfresponse/

What’s Your Excuse?

Deborah Hunt — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 00:04:04 +0000

I subscribe to an executive book summary online service and the latest book reviewed is: No More Excuses: The Five Accountabilities for Personal and Organizational Growth. It’s by Sam Silverstein.

The review reads, in part: “No More Excuses is not a slogan. It’s a competitive choice. Whether you’re trying to hold onto your job or expand your enterprise, whether you’re trying to create a new business relationship or improve your communication with key stakeholders, or whether you’re trying to find a new customer or retain a major client, you’ll always find that personal accountability differentiates you from your competition and gives you the competitive edge.”

To stand above the crowd and achieve amazing things, we need to stop making excuses AND stop accepting excuses from those around us.

What excuses are holding you back — keeping you from being all you can be?

Decision-Making Made Easier

Deborah Hunt — Sat, 15 May 2010 01:40:02 +0000

I just finished reading Chapter 1 of Suzy Welch’s book: 10-10-10, which lays out an easy-to-use method for making decisions based on their short, medium and long term consequences.

In a nutshell, when making decisions, one needs to:

pose the question, crisis or challenge in the form of a query
collect data and given the question, explore the consequences of each of the options in 10 minutes, 10 months and 10 years
analyze the information you’ve collected and compare it to your innermost values — your goals, dreams and needs.

The answer will form your 10-10-10 solution.

You can read chapter one at: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/30192896/ns/today-today_books/

Reinventing Oneself Professionally

Deborah Hunt — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 23:44:13 +0000

Many of my clients do not know I have a Masters in Library Science degree. All they want is an information professional who can empower them to do their work better. As the quote below demonstrates, librarians are not the stereotypical dour, bun-wearing, shushing guardians of books We are much more. We provide actionable knowledge to our clients, whether they be in the corporate, government, non-profit or other sectors. We work with our clients to provide the information they need to make decisions and move forward.

“…we librarians or information professionals definitely aren’t what we once were. If we play our KM or ‘knowledge engineer’ cards right, there are very few areas in any organisation in which we won’t have significant contributions to make.”
– “Education for Changing Roles” by Gaye Colvin. Information Outlook,
Oct/Nov 2009, p. 21.

What is your impression of an information professional? If you have an old outdated one, visit a local public, university, college, specialized, or school library. I bet you’ll be surprised with what you find and what you can learn from them.

National Library of Medicine Treasures

Deborah Hunt — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 00:03:44 +0000

Many of us think of the Library of Congress when we think of national treasures in print and digital format. In addition to the Library of Congress, the United States has two other national libraries, the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and the National Agricultural Library (NAL). I will explore NLM in this post and NAL in my next one.

There is so much to explore at the NLM site, but the Historical Collections interest me. These collections include:

Books and Journals
NLM pre-1914 books and serials, pre-1871 journals, and pamphlets and dissertations.
Archives and Manuscripts
Archive and modern manuscript collections and Western and Islamic manuscripts, from the 11th century to the present.
Prints and Photographs
Images illustrating the social and historical aspects of medicine.
Films and Videos
Films and video recordings documenting the history of medicine.
Digital Collections
Selected digitized material from NLM historical collections, covering a spectrum of centuries and cultures.

Which collections do you find interesting?