ResearchBuzz

Next Saturday (November 3) Guardian News and Media will launch two digital archives — one for The Guardian from 1821-1975, and one for The Observer from 1900-1975. (These are both UK papers.) While this is an extensive launch, it’s not complete — the rest of the archive will launch in early 2008 and will include the Guardian from 1821-2003 and the Observer from 1791-2003.

You can learn more about the upcoming archives at guardian.co.uk/archive . The archive will be fully-searchable and viewable in full-page and individual-article levels. What I find interesting is that access to the content does not seem to be available on a per-article basis; instead, timed passes are available. A 24-hour pass is £7.95 while a one-month pass is £49.95. (There’s a sale on passes until the end of November; passes cost 50% of the prices I’ve listed here.)

The announcement of the new archive mentioned that there would be a free 24-hour access period, but the archive page doesn’t mention when that will be — I’ll keep my eyes out. In the meantime, if you want a sample of what the archive will look like but don’t want to spend the scratch, you can check out a sample issue.

I did not realize how much interest there was in gluten-free eating until I redid Cookin’ With Google and got lots of e-mails asking to expand the gluten-free option. So I know at least some of you will find this useful — a database of gluten-free eating across several countries, including the US, Canada, France, Germany, and the UK. http://glutenfreeonthego.com/ has over 3500 venues in its database.

From the front page you can search by type of venue/food — fast food, bakeries, hotels, etc. You do that BEFORE you search by location. Once you’ve specified a venue, then you specify a location — continent, country, state, or town. I did a search for pizza in the US. I got 41 results. The first results had the most description — paid insertions? You can click on the name of the restaurant for more information. The ones at the top had the very detailed pages, including logos and extensive descriptions. The ones at the bottom, like In-N-Out Burger (IN-N-OUT BURGER?) had no description at all, and very little beyond an address and phone number.)

I’m a little bemused by the fact that you have to search by venue before location — 3500 locations across nine areas isn’t that many. I think I would use this as a starting point — you’ll certain get some dining ideas here. (In-n-Out certainly wouldn’t have occurred to me while thinking about gluten-free eating….)

There’s a new Web site available for Canadians to get information on food and children’s product recall. Healthy Canadians is available at http://healthycanadians.gc.ca/pr-rp/index_e.php .

Here you can do keyword searches and get information on product recalls back to 1995. The site is also featuring photographs of recalled children’s products — very nice. I started with a search on game and got three results — from June 2006, February 2006 (”Chicken Limbo”. The commercial is rolling through my head), and May 2004.

Clicking on the product name will give you additional details including why the recall, when the item was sold, number of items sold, and the “corrective actions.” And sure enough, there are large images of the toy recalls available (I’m certain now that Chicken Limbo is going to give me nightmares.)

While there is a place to get the latest recalls for food and for toys as well as an option for e-mail alerts, I don’t see any RSS feeds available. (Grr.) It should also be noted that this recall site is not all-inclusive — gas an electrical appliances are not included in this database, for example, and neither are health products. You can get a list of other Canada recall sites at http://healthycanadians.gc.ca/pr-rp/res_e.html .