New Journal Articles: Alerts and Full-text Retrieval

I've added a new journal articles feature to the sidebar of my other blog. It works like this: As I come across articles of interest, I bookmark them in Delicious and add the tag "newjournalarticles." Each time this occurs, the list of article titles in the sidebar updates accordingly. So whenever you visit the blog, be sure to check the list for any new titles of interest.

If you forget to check, you can always 1) click on the link to go to the bookmarked titles in Delicious, or 2) subscribe to the RSS feed for the listing and peruse the updates at your leisure in your own newsreader.

One thing to note is that these journal articles are not necessarily available in full-text online. To retrieve the full-text, you have several options:

- purchase the individual article
- sign up for a free online trial for the journal you are interested in (for example, Sage Journals is offering free access to all of its journals during April)
- search Worldcat.org for libraries that subscribe to a particular journal; enter your postal or zip code to determine which library is closest to you, and retrieve the text from that library
- if you are based in a developing country, you might have access to full-text journals through one of these initiatives: Electronic Information for Libraries (EIFL); GDN Journal Services; HINARI Access to Research Initiative; JSTOR Developing Nations Initiative.

Finally, it's always worth searching online for keywords in the title of journal article you are seeking. Why?
- Sometimes journal publishers designate specific issues as free online samples: see, e.g., "A Heterotopian Analysis of Maritime Refugee Incidents," abstracted in IngentaConnect, but available at no cost by Wiley InterScience.
- Some articles are posted online in openly accessible journals: see, e.g., "The humanitarian consequences and actions in the Eastern Mediterranean Region over the last 60 years – a health perspective", which was indexed in PubMed.
- Some articles are available as preprints or conference papers: see, e.g, the abstract for "Resettling Refugees in Rural and Regional Australia: Learning from Recent Policy and Program Initiatives"; a report with a slightly different title but with the same authors was published earlier.

Wiki Article

I presented my forced migration wiki as a case study for an article in Library Hi Tech News. See "Using a Wiki to Publish a Research Guide" for more details.

ISCRAM 2009

The 2009 meeting of the International Community on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (ISCRAM) will be held in Göteborg, Sweden, 10-13 May 2009. While the window for submitting CFPs for the general programme is closed, several other opportunities for contribution are still available, including:

- a PhD colloquium (deadline 10 March)
- a student poster session (deadline 10 March)
- a pre-conference workshop on mobile information technology for emergency response (deadline 20 March)
- a practitioners' workshop (deadline 2 April)

Papers and presentations from the 2008 and 2007 ISCRAM proceedings are available on the conference site.

More Gaza Social Media Resources

An addendum to yesterday's post: Intute: Social Sciences listed various sites for monitoring news and developments in Gaza, and highlighted a posting on the Mashable blog on "How to Track the Israel Gaza Conflict Using Social Media" (the comments list additional links).

Gaza Situation

Here are various examples of how social media and Web 2.0 applications are being used to report on events in Gaza and to provide support to humanitarian efforts there.

Blogs:
- National Public Radio (NPR) recently reported on "Life must go on in Gaza and Sderot," a blog maintained by an Israeli (Hopeman) and a Palestinian (Peaceman) on opposite sides of the border.

Mapping:
- Aid Worker Daily reported on the OpenStreetMap Gaza Wiki project to "update routes within Gaza in an effort to provide better data sets for humanitarian groups."

RSS feed:
- You can subscribe to an RSS feed for all ReliefWeb updates on the situation in Gaza.

Tracking events:
- Change.org's Humanitarian Relief blog reported that Al-Jazeera is using Ushahidi to track attacks, casualties, and other developments on the ground.

Twitter:
- NPR also reported on the use of Twitter by Al-Jazeera and the Irsraeli government.

23 Things: Thoughts about Web 2.0

In general, I would say that most organizations within the forced migration community still have only a limited awareness of or familiarity with Web 2.0 technologies. But adoption of these technologies is definitely happening, slowly but surely. Witness the posts that I have written for the 23 Things program. Many of them provide examples of how various forced migration and humanitarian organizations are using blogs, RSS, Flickr, YouTube, social bookmarking, etc. to get their messages across and further their reach.

What is unclear is what impact these developments have had on their fundamental missions. To what extent does Web 2.0 help raise awareness and funds, increase advocacy efforts, influence policy, and ultimately effect positive change in the lives of the people these organizations are mandated to assist and protect? It would be interesting to know whether this relationship has been investigated or not by the individual organizations who have adopted Web 2.0.

On a related note, this series of posts on humanitarian.info delves into the question of technology innovation within the humanitarian context.

23 Things: The Ninth Tool = Custom Search

There are a number of tools available that allow you to build your own customized search engine. I posted about this earlier. I also built my own search engine using Google's Custom Search. It just searches refugee and forced migration blogs. You can also check out Humanitarian Drive (searches humanitarian web sites) and Forced Migration Search (searches refugee and forced migration web sites).

Google Book Search Settlement Agreement

The New York Times reported yesterday that Google had reached a settlement with publishers and authors over content that it displays from millions of scanned texts in its Google Book search service.

"Under the agreement, Google will now show up to 20 percent of the text at no charge to users. It will also make the entire book available online for a fee. Universities, libraries and other organizations will be able to buy subscriptions that make entire collections of those books available to their visitors."

More information about the future of Google Book search is provided on Google's settlement agreement page.

Wikis and Their Use in the Forced Migration Field

A wiki is defined as "a page or collection of Web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content." Most users of the web equate the term "wiki" with Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that can be edited by members of the public. So, for example, you can visit the "refugee," "internally displaced person," or "forced migration" pages on Wikipedia, click on the "edit this page" tab, and add to or edit the entries.

Wikis are not yet a common feature in the forced migration community, but the examples that currently exist demonstrate the diversity of uses to which wikis can be applied. Wikis are being used in the following ways:

To facilitate access to information in a structured and organized fashion:
- The Forced Migration Guide provides access to information resources relating to refugees and forced migration that can be used for reference and research purposes.
- The Gender Training Wiki provides access to information about institutions, trainings and training materials that promote gender equality and the advancement of women.

To share information and promote collaboration within a defined community:
- MIGHEALTHNET hopes to "stimulate the development of good practices by promoting the exchange of information and expertise, both within and between countries. The project will act as a catalyst in the formation of scientific and professional communities in each country concerned with migrant and minority health. It will thus help to create a ‘critical mass’ which can bring about policy changes on the basis of evidence and experience. "
- RefugeeMap gathers together "information on refugee situations, news and policy, and volunteering opportunities around the UK."

For recommendations and feedback:
- The Refugee Archives at UEL recently launched a wiki not only to share information about its services, but also to solicit feedback about its information resources and recommendations for additions to their collection.

As web sites:
- The Feinstein International Center uses a wiki application as the underlying framework for its web site.

As classroom projects:
- The Refugee Wiki Project was set up by 10th graders to raise awareness of refugee issues and to support the work of the International Rescue Committee.

Building your own search engine

Building your own search engine sounds like it would be a highly technical, and therefore difficult task. But it isn't! There are a number of tools available that allow you to customize a search engine with a few clicks of the mouse. Effectively, this means that you can select the web sites you feel are the most important for your work, and run searches just on those pages.

Here are two examples of custom-built search engines (both used Google's application):

Forced Migration Search Engine
The Humanitarian Drive

And this article describes a number of online tools that you can use to create your own engine: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue55/search-engines/

Recommended Reading Lists

The Refugee Council recently created a web page with their recommendations for novels and biographies on the refugee experience. There are a number of web tools available that make it easy to set up personalized lists of recommended readings, whether they be for the general public, friends, work colleagues, or fellow researchers.

Amazon.com
- Online seller of books and many other products. Learn how to create a list of books that you find interesting and wish to share with other Amazon users. Here's one example: "Teaching Children about Refugees."

CiteULike.org
- Described as a free online service for helping you to organize your academic papers. It works like this: "When you see a paper on the web that interests you, you can click one button and have it added to your personal [CiteULike] library." You can add tags to each entry (see the articles that have been tagged "refugees") as well as build a bibliography.

Google Books
- Google's book search engine allows you to create your own library which you can share with friends and colleagues. Read the My Library FAQ to get started.

Worldcat.org
- A database of bibliographic records from library collections around the world. A sample reading list is provided on the home page, along with instructions on how to set up your own list.

Ten Ways to Keep Up with Humanitarian News

Here are at least ten ways to keep up with humanitarian developments around the world, using RSS feeds and email alerts. In addition, both Google and Yahoo! offer options for monitoring global news.

RSS:

1. AlertNet [web site] [customize your news feed]

2. Human Security News [access] [feed]

3. IRIN News [web site] [news feed options]

4. The Other World News: Aggregated News from the Other World - The Third World [blog] [feed]

5. Pambazuka News [web site] [news feed options]

6. ReliefWeb [web site] [feed for news headlines]

7. UN News Centre [web site] [news feed options]

8. UNHCR [web site] [latest news feed]

Email:

9. IDP News Alert [access]

10. World Refugee [access]

And also...

Google News [access] [customize your news feed/other options]

Yahoo! News [access] [customize your news feed/other options]