When it comes to knowing print and Net-based publications on business and Internet searching, I thought I was aware of all of the usual suspects. But this past week I was pleasantly surprised to come across a new one, called, simply enough, the Business Researcher Newsletter, which was actually celebrating its 10th anniversary… You can review its free archives here.

The really nice thing about this source-filled free publication is that it focuses specifically on Canada and Canadian sources–a country regularly neglected by too many other North American information publications and analysts (mea culpa–so I’m planning an overdue round up of databases on Canadian companies in an upcoming Information Advisor). The issues even include the lastest releases from Statistics Canada.

The publication and associated links are all made available by a site called Stat Links Canada, which was launched by GD Sourcing, a site that is designed to help Canadian entrepreneurs locate good sources of market data.

Have you heard of Nings?

I hadn’t, until the word was going around on the business librarians BUSLIB -L mailing list discussion group that a new “business librarians Ning” had just been started up earlier this month.

So, I found out that a Ning is a very Web 2.0ish concept: a platform where anyone can create their own customized social network. So one has been created that is “dedicated to connecting business librarians” that work in universities, colleges and in businesses.

There’s only 58 member so far, but there’s a fair amount of activity: reference questions, job listings, features like “what blogs do you read”, posted photos taken by members–and perhaps most appealing of all–the fact that so many librarians have posted a picture of themselves along with their names, so members can get a sense of the person they’re communicating with on the Ning.

I’ve just started checking it out, but I like what I see so far: it’s kind of a MySpace for business librarians, I guess, (but whose members are much better spellers!)

As I mentioned a few weeks ago in the post on social bookmarking sites, I am posting here on this blog a link to the full March 2007 Information Advisor Knowledge Management supplement, in PDF. That 4 page article describes the use of social bookmarking services for knowledge management applications for use within the enterprise, and contains a detailed feature comparison chart of both fee based social bookmarking sites, as well as free personal ones that were determined to be suitable for enterprise use.

Products and sites compared include BlinkList, ConnectBeam, Cogenz, Delicious, Diigo, Magnolia, Shadows, and others.

The Information Advisor and the Knowledge Management supplement are subscription-only publications not normally available on the open Web; however, I am hoping to make the occasional Knowledge Management supplement available here on this blog for selected articles that relate to issues related to Web 2.0 and social media.

In doing my own research on the use of “meme trackers” as a lead for spotting emerging business trends for my forthcoming book, I came across this very good review of 8 of these, from the blog franticindustries, and thought it was worth passing along.

So far I’ve been a little disappointed in the actual capability of some of even the leading meme trackers as an effective solution to truly filter chatter and noise on the Net to identify significant trends–

…I’ll report back here shortly if I do find one that stands out from the rest, but I’m starting to conclude that social media sites like these still rely too much on technology (obviously) as the answer, and so persons who rely on meme trackers and other automated Net based solutions for finding “buzz” may neglect the softer but still much more critical trend tracking tasks. That is : paying close attention and applying our own insights and mindfulness towards a wide range of rich information resources (both on and off the Web) and immersing ourselves experientially in what we want to learn about more deeply….again, more to come….