dec07c.indd I n t e r n e t R e v i e w s Joni R. Roberts and Carol A. Drost Inter Press Service: News Agency. Access: http://www.ipsnews.net. Inter Press Service (IPS) is a “non­profi t, international, non­governmental” news ser­ vice that would benefit a variety of academic disciplines, including, but not limited to journalism, political sciences, global studies, etc. The site would be appropriate for any academic audience from freshmen to faculty members. In general, the IPS audience is journalists, academics, political scientists, and global citizens who are interested in underreported international news stories. The Web site is conveniently divided into regional news from Africa, Asia­Pacifi c, Caribbean, Europe, Latin America, Mideast and Mediterranean, and North America as well as a section on “Global Affairs.” The site offers information organized by broad topics, such as “Devel­ opment,” “Civil Society,” “Globalisation,” “Environment,” “Human Rights,” “Health,” “Indigenous Peoples,” “Economy & Trade,” “Labour,” “Population,” and “Arts & Entertain­ ment.” Included on the IPS site is coverage of daily news events and analysis, interviews, and abstracts from a global columnist service. Much of the information on the site is updated daily and can be accessed in 13 different languages. Other communication mediums include RSS feeds, e­mail notifi cations, mobile device downloads, and links to social book­ mark manager sites, such as del.icio.us. According to the site, IPS was established in 1964 to increase communication about media events between Europe and countries in the southern hemispheres, initially with South America. It is not evident, how long IPS has maintained a Web presence. The site’s major weakness is the sheer density of its Joni R. Roberts is associate university librarian for public ser vices and collec tion development at Willamette University, e-mail: jroberts@willamette. edu, and Carol A. Drost is associate university librarian for technical services at Willamette University, e-mail: cdrost@willamette.edu news coverage. Couple this with small print and readers can easily get overwhelmed. The non­English pages seem cleaner and more streamlined. The site map allows for easy navigation of the mission, history and other collaborative projects that the agency supports. The search feature locates static information on the Web site, but has some difficulty searching current news articles on a variety of topics. IPS is devoted to non­commercialism and supports other agencies that share similar philosophies of promoting unbiased and ungoverned news coverage of events of global importance. — Molly Susan Mathias, University of Wiscon­ sin­Milwaukee, mathiasm@uwm.edu Nationalatlas.gov. Access: http://www. nationalatlas.gov. Nationalatlas.gov is the U.S. government’s official atlas of the United States, representing the most recent edition of the national atlas last published in 1970. Produced by the U.S. Geological Survey with contributions from a host of federal agencies, the national atlas is an online combination of static and interactive maps, articles, and downloadable spatial data. It offers a number of map services: printable maps, wall maps for purchase, dynamic maps (animated maps that show changes over time), and an interactive map viewer. With the inclusion of articles on the topics covered by the data and thorough descriptions of each map layer, the site provides ample context for its spatial content. The selection of data and contextual con­ tent will serve students of all levels, though coverage of any one theme is unlikely to be deep enough to support upper­division dis­ ciplinary inquiry. Students looking for spatial data to explore online or to download for use with a GIS (Geographic Information System) will find a range of data from both social sci­ ences statistical sources, including the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the U.S. Census, and the Federal Elections Commission, and sci­ C&RL News December 2007 754 http:Nationalatlas.gov http:nationalatlas.gov http://www http:Nationalatlas.gov mailto:mathiasm@uwm.edu mailto:cdrost@willamette.edu http:del.icio.us http:http://www.ipsnews.net ence data from the likes of the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Weather Service, and the USGS itself. The map viewer excels in providing na­ tional and state­scale views of data. Some spatial themes, such as the distribution of diseases, can be meaningfully explored with this tool—again at the national or state scale, where county­level data could reveal patterns. Neither the viewer nor the avail­ able spatial data are robust enough to make nationalatlas.gov more than a reference tool and potential data source for those on the hunt for more comprehensive data. Citation information is included for the content types included on the site. general public, who may search for art using different terms and language than curators and museum organizers. The primary objec­ tive for this project is to break down the walls between online museum information and the general public. Art students and their professors will find this project useful. It allows the user to develop a more personal relationship with a collection. When users are allowed to “tag” art, they have created a description of a work using language that describes what they see and feel. Although the project is dedicated to allowing the general public to tag art with their own terms, scholars and experts often have descriptive terms for work that galleries often miss or do not include. Launched in September 2005, there currently are more then ten museums involved in the Steve Nationalatlas.gov has been online since 1998 and is frequently updated. The interactive map viewer is currently in its ninth release (2006), and the majority of the spatial data files were created within the last eight years. As for the dates of coverage for the data itself, the demographic data ex­ tend back as far as the 1980s for some themes, with the majority being from 1990 to the present. The natural science data cover a vast range of dates, depending on the layer. A FAQ answers the most important ques­ tions about using the site, its tools, and its data. The map viewer provides instructions for first­time users as well as offers help with specifi c functions.—Jeremy Donald, Trinity University, jdonald@trinity.edu Steve: The Art Museum Social Tagging Project. Access: http://www.steve.museum. The Steve Museum is a social tagging project created by volunteers from art mu­ seums and galleries. The main goal is to create user­generated descriptions for works of art, because we all view, experience, and describe art differently. “Steve” understands that the language often used to describe art makes the collection inaccessible to the project, including the Guggenheim Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Ar­ chives and Museum Informatics, and Think Design. Some of the issues with the Steve Project revolve around incorrect tagging of work. This is a problem that is not unique to the project; it is a common topic in the world of social tagging. In the future, museums and galleries involved will incorporate the language provided by users, but there is no general practice for this assimilation. Each museum will integrate the language to their individual collections according to their own specifi ca­ tions. “How data will ultimately be stored and how it will be deployed will be determined by local needs and priorities. We have envi­ sioned scenarios where data is either kept in local systems separately, or integrated into collections management systems. In all museum scenarios, maintaining the source of terms will be critical for evaluating the effectiveness of social tagging,” according to the Steve Project Web site. The site also includes a tutorial on how to tag art in the Steve Project, a very useful tool. (continues on page 765) December 2007 755 C&RL News http://www.steve.museum mailto:jdonald@trinity.edu http:Nationalatlas.gov http:nationalatlas.gov ies’ faculty as the first head of the new hos­ pitality management library. She has been recognized in numerous articles, including as the featured subject of “Building a Li­ brary for the Business of Fun,” in the “Job of a Lifetime” column in College & Research Libraries News (February 2007). Cheryl A. G. Mahan, university librarian, reference department, retired in early 2007 from the University of Central Florida (UCF) Libraries with 30 years of service. After several years at the Howard­Tilton Library and the internationally known Lat­ in American Library at Tulane University, she was hired in 1977 at UCF (then Flor­ ida Technological University), where she worked in cataloging, interlibrary loan, and reference. Active in the library profes­ sion, with the university, and in her com­ munity, Mahan received UCF’s Excellence in Librarianship Award and served as a mentor and championed four colleagues to win the same award. Leslie A. Manning has retired as dean of the Kraemer Family Library at the Univer­ sity of Colorado­Colorado Springs after 27 years of service and 35 years as an aca­ demic librarian. Advertisers ACM 716 ALA-APA 715 Annual Reviews Inc. 682 Antioch University 691 Archival Products 751 Association of Research 710, 756, Libraries cover 4 Bowker 708 Choice 760 EBSCO 693 Modern Language Association 681 Nature Publishing 699 Peabody Professional Institutes cover 2 Perry Dean Architects 698 Rittenhouse Book Distributors 685 Serial Solutions cover 3 Carla M. Summers, university librarian and head of the department of special col­ lections and university archives, retired in late June 2007 from the University of Cen­ tral Florida Libraries. She worked in Florida as an archivist, manuscripts librarian, and administrator for 30 years, fi rst with the State Archives of Florida and then the Uni­ versity of Florida. Summers was the found­ ing president of the Society of Florida Ar­ chivists, served two terms as treasurer of the Academy of Certified Archivists, and is currently on the Council of the Society of American Archivists, where she will contin­ ue to serve while maintaining her archives, special collections, and records manage­ ment consulting practice. D e a t h s Paul Evered Baldwin died October 7, 2007, from complications of diabetes. Baldwin worked at a number of libraries in the San Fran­ cisco Bay area and later moved Vancouver, Brit­ ish Columbia, Canada, in 1971, where he as­ sumed various library administrative roles and eventually retired as as­ sociate university librar­ ian from Simon Fraser University in 2001. Baldwin led the initiative to bring British Columbia postsecondary li­ brary card catalogs online and was among the first to recognize the potential of the In­ ternet in enhancing library services. Paul Evered Baldwin (“Reviews” continues from page 755) Art and computer science students of all education levels, educators, art enthusiasts, information architects and librarians, will all find Steve Museum a very interesting site.—Mark McBride, Buffalo State College, mcbridmf@buffalostate.edu December 2007 765 C&RL News mailto:mcbridmf@buffalostate.edu