1. Go where it is
   
2. Corollary: Who Cares?
3. The answer depends on the question
   
4. Research is a multi-stage process
   
5. Ask a Librarian
   
6. Information is meaningless until queried by human intelligence
7. Information can be true and still wrong
8. Pay attention to the jokes

1. Tara Calishain
2. Jenny Levine, part I
3. Jenny Levine, Part II
4. Reva Basch
5. Sue Feldman
6. Jessamyn West
7. Debbie Abilock
8. Kathy Schrock
9. Greg Notess
10. William Hann
11. Chris Sherman
12. Gary Price
13. Barbara Quint
14. Rory Litwin
15. John Guscott
16. Brian Smith
17. Darlene Fichter
18. Brenda Bailey-Hainer
19. Walt Crawford
20. Molly Williams
21. Genie Tyburski
22. Patrice McDermott
23. Carrie Bickner
24. Karen G. Schneider
25. Roddy MacLeod, Part I
26. Roddy MacLeod, Part II
27. John Hubbard
28. Micki McIntyre
29. Péter Jacsó
30. the "It's All Good" bloggers
31. the "It's All Good" bloggers, part 2

NOTE: The manuscript for my book is due May 31. ExLibris will return after I've mailed it to my publisher.

HOLES IN THE INFORMATION UNIVERSE

by Marylaine Block

After creating Best Information on the Net <http://library.sau.edu/bestinfo/default.htm> and publishing Neat New Stuff <http://marylaine.com/neatnew.html> for the past eleven years, I figured that pretty much every kind of web site people would have a need for would have been created by now. But sadly, we aren't there yet. Here are a few sites I've been looking for. Perhaps they exist, but I haven't been able to find them:

• A chart for clothing sizes. What does size 12 really mean? What measurements does it assume? Would somebody please go through all the different clothing brands and supply this top secret information? And please keep updating it, because we all know that today's size 12 is larger than size 12 was 25 years ago. (Of course, if anybody did, the jobs of the people who handle department store returns would probably no longer be needed. Sorry about that.)

• Search by color. You can search for images by topic. You can search for birds and flowers and trees and such, to identify the one that interested you - but only if you already have some clue what it is in the first place, in which case you wouldn't need the search engine. What we DO have in our heads is a very clear recollection of the color of a flower, or maybe an insect we're trying to identify. Now, theoretically, we CAN search by color by inserting the word for the color. But as anybody who's ever spent time selecting a paint color knows, "pink" is actually about 125 different shades. Is there any technology that would allow us to search through images, first by a color we can select from a detailed color spectrum on the web site, and then by the type of image we're searching for?

• A database of low clearance bridges and overpasses. I live in a town with two truck-eating railroad bridges, each of them on a north-south highway that goes through our downtown. At least once a month, a semi loses its top and much of its contents to the 10 foot clearance the truckdriver didn't notice in time. But after multiple searches through multiple search engines I have been unable to find any database or map of these bridges. If anybody from the US Department of Transportation is reading this, please take note; if you provide this database/map, trucking companies, U-Haul renters, and truckdrivers (who thereby will not lose their jobs) will rise up and call you blessed.

• Walkshed maps. I got this idea from Worldchanging <http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/004301.html#more>. We all could stand to do a little more walking, but most of us want a destination before we set out, or something worth looking at along the way. What interesting things could people find within walking distance - say a one-mile radius - of any given site? Are there parks? Lakes or rivers or brooks? Interesting stores? Restaurants? An ice cream place or candy store? Sidewalk vendors? Museums? Farmers markets? Places to sit? Animal shelters where you could while away a few moments admiring puppies and kittens? Public restrooms, in case of a little personal emergency? Most important, are there bookstores and libraries? In residential neighborhoods, where will we find the best Christmas decorations? The best gardens? The historic houses or legendary haunted houses? If enough people compiled walkshed maps for their own immediate vicinity, somebody could aggregate them into a master database and map

  Those are the information lacunae I've noticed. How about you? What websites are you waiting for somebody to build?

  * * * * *

  COOL QUOTE:

  Does research influence policy? Certainly it does. Especially bad research.

  Yes, it would be nice to have evidence-based policy-making. But even if we can't get that, perhaps we can do away with policy-based evidence-making.

  Anonymous. Quoted by Mark Kleiman, in "Sad but True." The Reality-Based Community, November 23, 2005. http://www.samefacts.com/archives/_/2005/11/sad_but_true.php

  * * *

  You are welcome to copy and forward any of my own articles (but not those by my guest writers) for noncommercial purposes as long as you credit ExLibris and cite the permanent URL for the article. Please do NOT copy and post my articles to your own web sites, however. Instead, please copy a brief excerpt and link to the URL for the remainder of the article.

  Ex Libris: an E-Zine for Librarians and Other Information Junkies.
  http://marylaine.com/exlibris/
  Copyright, Marylaine Block, 1999-2006.

  [Publishers may license the content for a reasonable fee.]