ResearchBuzz

I am not a big fan of arbitrary capitalization. You know what I’m talking about; when a company name just sticks a capital letter in there for no particular reason. However, I like eXtension enough that I’m willing to make an exception. eXtension, at eXtension.org , is a project brought to you by over 70 universities (list here) which provides expertise in sixteen topics.

These topics are divided into five categories: Community, Disaster Issues, Family, Farm, Pest Management, and Youth. A couple of these categories only have a couple of topics, while Farm and Community each have five. The topics contain articles, advice, and questions-and-answers. (There will be more topics added over time.)

I’m really surprised at some of these topics and how extensively they’re populated. Let’s take one of the Community topics, “Imported Fire Ants”. Its page is http://www.extension.org/fire+ants. There is a ton of information here — a management plan, a whole raft of publications and case studies, a video, and a hundred questions-and-answers about imported fire ants. There’s even a calendar listing Fire Ant-related events (granted, there are only two of them, but…) The page has an RSS feed as well as a tag cloud. (Whoever planned out all the extras along with the content, like the search and the RSS feed and the tag cloud, did a great job.)

If you’re interested in lots of content from this site, you can also browse all the news, all the Q&As, the full calendar of events, and all the self-learning lessons.

The site is actively soliciting questions in all its topics and has plans to expand past the sixteen topics currently being covered. Absolutely worth a browse.

Thanks to Novalawcity for the pointer to UNData, a search tool for UN Statistics. It’s available at http://data.un.org/ aaaaand it’s in beta.

It looks like a regular search engine, with different tabs for searching data and glossary. (A “more” tab has additional options: going to an advanced search, browsing available statistics, looking at information by country, and reviewing available sources.) Suggested searches are shown along with a list of databases (the front page notes that more databases will be added “in due course” and that over 55 million records are currently being searched.)

I did a search for “south africa” exports. I got 118 results. Results look very Googly except for the left nav which allows you to filter by data type — in this case key indicators, MDG, National Accounts Official Country Data, and Trade. The results themselves allow you to preview a sample of the data, download the data (sometimes just in one format, like XML, and sometimes in multiple format, like tab- or comma-delimited), or explore similar data sets. You can click on the name of the data set to explore it and filter by various data points. The data set pages also contain the source name, source’s home page, and contact information.

There’s a FAQ available for this tool but it doesn’t say how often the database of records is updated. You can also get a little more information about the project here.

Hey! Check Amazon for books on demographics.

Thanks to Infomancy for talking about the Obsolete Skills Wiki, available at http://obsoleteskills.wikispot.org/ .

It’s just what it sounds like - a wiki devoted to skills that are no longer useful or necessary. The skills list is at http://obsoleteskills.wikispot.org/Skills and includes things like “Adjusting the rabbit ears on your TV set” (actually that’s still being done at my mother’s house), “Clamping roller skates onto hard-soled shoes with a skate key”, “Harness a team of oxen”, and “Using a 16 mm film projector”. Some of the skills are more ironic — I know that people still send letters and some unfortunates still have to thread paper into dot-matrix printers.

Some of the skills listed have merely “seed articles” — basics in preparation for a larger article — while some of them are extensive. You too can learn the whys and wherefores of adjusting the tracking on a VCR, or the finer points of parking with curb feelers.

There’s not a lot here yet, but I look forward to it filling out. We obsolete so quickly…

Hey! Check Amazon for books on Wikis.