Writing help

Before taking a week off for the holidays, we'd like to offer a selection of writing resources; guides, tutorials, and other websites designed to help improve writing, style, or usage. We will resume regular posting the first week of January.

The OWL at Purdue : Free Writing Help and Teaching Resources
Purdue University offers teaching and learning resources for better writing. Covers professional, academic, technical, and job search writing, as well as grammar, research, citing sources, creative writing, internet literacy and much more.

The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing
Tutorials and quick facts on academic writing, with a detailed site index offering solutions for commonly-encountered problems and questions.

Writing Center at Colorado State University
Very well-designed and interesting site for writing problem solving, tutorials and guides. Offers 150 guides on the writing process, types of writing, and how to research. Also provides interactive activities (these require a free registration with email address).

A+ : Research and Writing for High School and College Students
A basic guide to selecting a research topic, researching, and writing a paper.

Citation Style Guides / Citing Sources
Links to resources on citations and citing. Major categories include: APA (American Psychological Association), MLA (Modern Language Association), Turabian, Chicago Manual of Style , CBE (Council of Biology Editors), Government Publications, Legal Citations, Medical Citations, and Film Resources.

OttoBib
Enter a book's ISBN to generate a bibliographic citation in MLA, APA, or Chicago/Turabian style. Best used with some knowledge of said citation formats to ensure correct formatting.

From the University of California Riverside Libraries:

Cite Your Sources : Social Sciences and Humanities

Creating a Reference List : Sciences

Citing Government Publications and Websites

What's New in gov info: health, taxes, Iran and more

What's New in INFOMINE's Government Information category.

Iran : Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities : National Intelligence Estimate
National Intelligence Estimate, issued December 2007, assessing the "status of Iran's nuclear program, and the program's outlook over the next 10 years." [Links to 130K PDF]

Kennewick Man Documents : U.S. National Park Service Archaeology Program
Background information and detailed reports on aspects of investigations undertaken by the U.S. Department of the Interior in the Kennewick Man case.

TreeSearch : U.S. Forest Service Research and Development Publications
Over 7,000 online full-text research and development publications (books, chapters, articles, papers, reports, etc.) written by U.S. Forest Service research scientists. Search by author, keyword, originating Forest Service station or date.

National Digestive Diseases Information Clearinghouse
The NDDIC provides publications and patient information on digestive diseases (presented in an A to Z list), clinical trials listings and directories of digestive diseases organizations for patients and health professionals.

National Institutes of Health (NIH) Celiac Disease Awareness Campaign
Resources on the symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment of celiac disease. Offers patient information, practice guidelines, examples of acceptable foods in a gluten-free diet, and a list of celiac disease organizations.

WIN : The Weight-control Information Network
"The Weight-control Information Network provides the general public, health professionals, the media, and Congress with up-to-date, science-based information on weight control, obesity, physical activity, and related nutritional issues."

SOI Tax Stats : Corporation Tax Statistics
"Numerous articles and data which provide statistics on income, deductions, tax, credits, and more as reported by corporations filing on Form 1120...returns and associated schedules...." Data is by industries in general, not specific companies.

Tax Statistics
This IRS site has data and tables on business, corporate, charitable and individual taxes. Statistics are aggregate, not specific companies, organizations or individuals.

SOI Tax Stats : International Individual Tax Statistics
This site contains "studies relating to individual taxpayers in an international context. For each of these areas, there are text articles and/or statistical tables that include both recent and historical data." Includes information on Foreign Recipients of U.S. Income, Foreign Trusts, Individual Foreign Earned Income, and Nonresident Alien Estate Tax Returns. This data is in the aggregate, not specific individuals.

IRS Data Book
The "IRS Data Book...contains statistical tables and organizational information on a fiscal year basis. The report provides data on collecting the revenue, enforcing the law, assisting the taxpayer, and managing the system, as well as lists of key officials and an organizational chart. The IRS Data Book also presents lists of principal officers and the IRS organization chart."

Image collections

A picture is worth a thousand words. Or it's nice to look at. Or maybe it illustrates a lesson or promotes creativity. INFOMINE has a multitude of links to sites with educational images. We've gone through and chosen several history, art, and nature image collections for inclusion in this week's miniguide. Search INFOMINE for images related your favorite topic by including the keyword images. Or browse the resource type Images from any of the subject pages.

PictureAustralia
Image collections from participating cultural institutions of Australia, including art, photographs, illustrations, maps, and objects. Search or browse themed albums.

Forestry Images : The Source for Forest Health and Silviculture Images
This project of the University of Georgia and the USDA Forest Service provides over 68,000 images on forest pests and diseases, trees, urban forestry, wildlife, and landscapes.

American Institute of Indian Studies and Center for Art and Archaeology : Photo Archive
From the website description: "The AIIS collection from the Center for Art and Archaeology in Gurgaon, Haryana, India, has over 125,000 photographs in the collection. The images fall into the broad categories of architecture, sculpture, terracotta, painting and numismatics."

Images of England
"Images of England is a ‘point in time’ photographic library of England’s listed buildings, recorded at the turn of the 21st century. You can view over 300,000 images of England’s built heritage from lamp posts to lavatories, phone boxes to toll booths, mile stones to gravestones, as well as thousands of bridges, historic houses and churches."

World Civilizations Image Repository
Photographs of historic sites, architecture, and people of Japan, Turkey, Ireland, India, and Thailand.

Images Canada
"Images Canada provides central search access [to over 75,000 images] held on the websites of participating Canadian cultural institutions. Through Images Canada, you can find images of ... Canadian events, people, places and things."

Insect Images : The Source for Entomology Photos
Another project of the University of Georgia and the USDA Forest Service, this resource offers more than 27,000 entomology photographs.

Wellcome Images
Images from the Wellcome Library on the history of medicine, clinical medicine, anthropology, art, and people.

Art History Image Database
Database of 4,000 images of art and architecture from prehistory through the 20th century. Keyword search or browse by cultural period. Note that the search may sometimes take a little longer to complete.

Finally some familiar photo reference, search, and entertainment sites.
Google Image Search. Try out the Google Image Labeler, a game that lets you try match image descriptions with an online teammate (anonymously) to improve Google's image search.

Flickr
View and search millions of images. Organize and share your photos.

morgueFile
Free stock and reference photography.

Using INFOMINE canned search to create custom collections

INFOMINE has tools available for you to create custom collections for posting on your own web site, library page, or educational resource. They can be found on our Customize page.

The most basic use of our tools would involve creating a search to direct anyone to a set of resources in the INFOMINE database, selected by you. It's as simple as entering some values in the form to receive a custom search query that you can provide as a link. Begin at the Canned Search Query Generator.

We'll create a set of links for a research guide on Japan and Japanese popular culture. The default fields selected in the search form are title, author, keyword, and subject. This helps to keep the search narrowed down and to return the most relevant resources. When you enter your search terms, you are given the URL specific to your query and a chance to preview the search results. We've entered Japan into the search box, which gives us this result. It may be too broad for our intended audience and purposes; there are 827 results. So let's try making a search for japan popular culture. With only eleven results, this may be a good choice to put on our research page. But let's tweak our search a little more. We've entered japanese popular culture. There are only 9 results and they seem more relevant to our purposes. By experimenting with your searches you can find the most useful or interesting results.

By using the display themes dropdown box, you can get a titles only list or a simple, unbranded layout. There are several options to explore, such as results per page, an alphabetical list instead of a relevance ranked list, and category selection.

Use our feedback page to comment or inquire about these tools, or to get more information about having a custom theme or style created for your institution. Librarians from other institutions who participate in INFOMINE can create truly customized collections using some of the editable fields within our catalogued resources. We welcome any feedback and/or comments. Also, if you ever come across broken links while searching INFOMINE, there is an option in the lower right corner of the record description to [Comment on this resource]. INFOMINE editors have been entering resources into the database since 1994, and it is inevitable that broken links will sometimes affect your searches. We appreciate our users reporting these to us so we can correct them.

What's New in government info

Today, some highlights from the INFOMINE Government Information What's New page.

Citing Government Publications and Websites
University of California Riverside Libraries page connects to guides to citing print and electronic government publications and to guides to legal citation.

ILO AIDS : Legislation and Policies
International Labour Organization's collection of "legislative texts (hard law) and soft law instruments (codes of practice, guidelines, policies) dealing, entirely or in part, with HIV/AIDS and the world of work." Documents for more than 35 countries with links to other ILO HIV/AIDS resources.

Landsat Image Mosaic Of Antarctica : LIMA
Map viewer, digital library, and datasets of new Landsat image mosaics of Antarctica, created for the International Polar Year (IPY 2007-2008). "LIMA is the most geometrically accurate (within a pixel-30 meters by 30 meters of land) mosaic of Antarctica and has the highest spatial resolution."

CBP Export Spotlight, U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border Protection
U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) information useful to exporters. Includes information about Automated Export System, export documents and requirements, and harbor maintenance fees. Connects to Blocked, Denied and Debarred Persons Lists.

CBP Border Security Spotlight, U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border Protection
Information about the border security activities of the U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

Ports of Entry : United States
Directory of the 326 official ports of entry in the United States and 15 preclearance offices in Canada and the Caribbean. Links from each port description to Canadian and Mexican border ports of entry wait times for commercial vehicles and for passenger vehicles.

MIPT Terrorism Information Center
An extensive digital library of terrorism-related information. The eDocuments section provides free fulltext reports, studies, factsheets and website links in 90 different categories: terrorism prevention, terrorist organizations, first responder and emergency management resources, databases, government information, and more. Access to the eBooks section requires registration and personal, non-commercial use license agreement. Searching the catalog returns records for physical items in the Information Center's library as well as electronic documents.

Independent Counsel Investigations
See more info for description of the independent counsel investigations texts.

Special Focus Facilities Not Showing Significant Improvement
[PDF] A listing of nursing homes in the U.S. which have been determined by the government's Centers for Medicare and Medicaid to be among the worst in their states.

Election 2008 : NPR
Listen to NPR broadcast news stories on the U.S. elections of 2008 and connect to related information. Includes profiles of presidential candidates.

YouTube : YouChoose '08
Feature page for the CNN/YouTube 2008 presidential debates, with candidate introductions and videos of the debates, featuring questions submitted by members of the public.

Music, Native America and more

More from What's New

Wikitravel
A wiki of worldwide travel information, including places to go, how to get there, things to see, where to stay, travel phrasebooks, and more.

BBC Languages
Language resources for Spanish, French, German, Italian and Mandarin Chinese were added to INFOMINE this week. The BBC Languages homepage directs you to resources for learning these languages. It also offers resources for other languages and general tips for language study.

Classical Net
Guide to classical music, offering information on composers and a basic repertoire from medieval to modern music. Some commercial links and ads, but nothing too obtrusive.

Baker's Student Encyclopedia of Music
Dictionary and encyclopedia of musical terms, music theory, and biographical information on composers and musicians. More than 4,400 entries. At eNotes

NPR Music : World of Opera
Episodes of NPR's World of Opera, offering complete American and international opera productions (streaming audio in the Flash-based NPR Media Player), introductory material, famous arias, and plot synopses.

Moldenhauer Archives : Music History from Primary Sources
The Moldenhauer Archives at the Library of Congress contain approximately 3,500 items documenting the history of Western music from the medieval period through the modern era. The online presentation includes images of representative examples of more than 130 items (letters, music scores, portraits, etc.) from the Moldenhauer Archives.

Handbook of the Indians of California
The Claremont Colleges Digital Library presents a searchable digitized edition of Alfred Kroeber's 1925 ethnographic text on California's Native Americans.

Indian Reservations in the Continental United States
Map shows shows the location of Federal Indian Reservations in the continental United States.

Beowulf : A New Translation For Oral Delivery
Includes text, proper name glossary, metrical annotations, and an audio recording of the text by its translator. The 2007 Beowulf film by Robert Zemekis may increase interest in the original epic poem.

Expect resources for Election '08 and other government information in the next What's New update.

More What's New highlights

There have been many additions to the What's New page recently, so once again we'll highlight some of the interesting ones here. Subscribing to the INFOMINE What's New RSS Feed will let you see all new additions as they are cataloged.

USA.gov Tutorials : Help Finding Government Information Online
Tutorials for finding government information and services online using USA.gov, including government auctions, grants, and jobs. Referred by ResourceShelf.

Financial Aid Letter.com
An explanation and guide to costs of attending college and loans available. Sections include a glossary of financial aid terms, samples and explanations of financial aid award letters, how to estimate college costs and how to make college affordable.

Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics : Digital Video Library
Digital video library supporting K-12 science and math education. Videos are organized by American Association for the Advancement of Science benchmarks, National Science Education Standards, the Principles and Standards for School Mathematics, state standards, and instructional methods. More than 1,000 videos.

British Museum : Collection Database Search
Search the catalog of the British Museum's pictorial art collections. More than 260,000 records with 98,000 images as of November 2007.

Sports-Reference.com
Sports statistics and resources on teams, leagues, players, coaches, records, and awards. Covers baseball, basketball, and football.

PDRhealth
Consumer web resource of the Physicians' Desk Reference offers information on drugs (prescription and OTC), dietary supplements, alternative medicine, diseases, health conditions, treatment options, and clinical trials.

Luminaries of the Chemical Sciences
PDF publications with overviews of the lives and scientific achievements of 20th century chemists.