Roosevelt University Library Blog

Internet Scout Report

The Internet Scout Report is a publication produced by a team of professional librarians and subject matter specialists located at the University of Wisconsin – Madison as a part of the Internet Scout Project. The objective of the report is to keep its readers current on valuable resources available on the internet and has been doing so since 1994.

The Internet Scout Report itself is divided into 4 sections:

• Research and Education
• General Interest
• Network Tools
• In the news

The content of the Internet Scout report provides links to information in various forms of media including: videos, podcasts, software, web based services and news articles. The Scout Report is focused on providing resources and tools to help its readers better find, filter and deliver information online.

This publication is free and open to everyone. You can get the most recent publications sent straight to your inbox after subscribing to the mailing list. Also, the resources have been carefully annotated and are accessible through the incredibly easy to use Scout Report Archives which are also browseable by library of congress subject heading.

The Blago "Thing"

                                

The State of Illinois has emerged front and center on the world's radar screen, thanks to our governor, Rod Blagojevich.The buzz is everywhere - newspapers, radio, TV, on- and offline, blogs, social networking, and let's not forget the local grocery stores and coffee shops. While there is no shortage of information, here are a few resources that you may not have seen. They come from a Google search of "Blagojevich," and are dot gov sources - that is, they are government sponsored, and not opinion pieces.

 llinois Department of Central Management Services, a state entity, which provides administrative services for Illinois' governmental agencies, such as procurement, IT expertise, personnel and benefits and Illinois-owned property management. (Hmmm. . . sounds like another layer of government) CMS' mission is to free the state agencies from administrative functions, in order that they may focus on their core missions. The "Archived News" section contains links to audio proceedings of the impeachment trial.  

United States Department of Justice: Here is where you can read the 78-page criminal complaint against Blagojevich, and his chief of staff, John Harris.

A couple of other reliable sources:

Wall Street Journal Online: Believe it or not, Rod Blagojevich has his own page here! WSJ has archived articles and commentary having to do with the case.

 LexisNexis Academic : One of our databases, LexisNexis contains full-text articles for thousands of news sources worldwide. If you want to know what the French are saying about Blago, you can find it here. You can also do legal searches on LexisNexis; law review journals and all levels of court cases can be searched. 

 

Economic Crisis 2008

The Economic Crisis of 2008 is about to morph into the Economic Crisis of 2009. We are all hungry for information on the whys, wherefores and the what nexts of this steep cliff upon which we are perched.

Lexis Nexis Academic Universe, a library subscription database, has recently posted a site that provides links to lots of data. Included are:

• Suggested search strategies in the database for worldwide news articles
• 3.5 billion data points on mortgage lending found in LexisNexis Statistical DataSets (Sounds like a huge amount of information to me, but really a drop in the bucket, considering the $700,000,000,000  government bailout of the banks.)
• Tips on how to follow the government's paper trail from the Government Documents section of the database
• A widget, which contains scrolling information on the latest news developments
  

Here's hoping that you will find some information, that although may not be comforting, will enable you to stay on top of this financial roller coaster.

http://wiki.lexisnexis.com/academic/index.php?title=Economic_Crisis_2008#LexisNexis_Congressional