The CAR Report will be on vacation until Oct. 5.

The Washington Post has a "Federal Workers Lookup" that lets you search for civilian employees by name, agency and state. It gives you their name, job title or occupation, pay plan, pay grade, management role and bonuses received and is based on 2002 information, the latest available.

UC Berkeley offers a guide to declassified government documents, including help on finding them.

The Alzheimer Research Forum provides news, information and discussion about the disease.

If you haven't tried Gmail, Google's experimental new email service, here's a site that will help you try it out. To sign up for Gmail, you have to be invited by Google itself or by existing users. The site lets Gmail users share invitations. I'm a user because I also use Blogger.com, Google's free blogging service, and Google invited all Blogger.com members to sign up for Gmail. I'm now using it as my primary personal e-mail because I find it so useful and user-friendly.

The USC Annenberg School for Communication has a new "Money and Politics Blog." The school says it's the "best way to stay on top of the latest campaign finance coverage, story ideas and sources that go beyond the routine."

IRE/NICAR is offering new databases that will help in reporting on NAFTA and international trade. The databases, from the Department of Labor, "contain over 30,000 records of petitions by workers, companies and unions for assistance for those who have become unemployed because of an increase in imports or shifts in production to foreign countries. The databases include all petitions, those accepted and denied from 1993-March 2004."

Masters of Photography collects examples of photos by history's best - or at least most famous - photographers.

The AMEDEO Literature Guide was created so people in the health care industry can "easily access timely, relevant information within their respective fields." Its offerings "include weekly emails with bibliographic lists about new scientific publications, personal Web pages for one-time download of available abstracts ... and an overview of the medical literature published in relevant journals over the past 12 to 24 months. All these new information resources are free of charge."

There's also the related Golden Links for Doctors, Amedeo´s collection of "Outstanding Medical Websites."

Political Memorabilia showcases political buttons, medalets, pins and watch fobs, postcards, ribbons and sheet music from campaigns past.

Vinelink helps you find any state or local government that uses the VINE (Victim Information and Notification Everyday) system to track when criminals are released from jail or prison. It lets you search for offenders by name, date of birth or age.

Governing magazine offers links to state home pages, legislatures, major cities and counties, national associations and government-related organizations.

Poynter did a study tracking how people view Web pages and found that "Shorter paragraphs appear to greatly enhance the amount that people read on news website article pages."

That.

Will.

Be.

The.

Way.

We.

Write.

The.

CAR.

Report.

From.

Now.

On.

The National Taxpayers Union has a database that "Tracks Hundreds of Congressional Candidates' Stances on Fiscal Issues." Here's their press release announcing it. It's based on the organization's own survey, which not all candidates answered. You can search by state, chamber, Congressional district, candidate's last name, or political party.

"Avibase is an extensive database information system about all birds of the world, containing over 1.4 million records about 10,000 species and 22,000 subspecies of birds, including distribution information, taxonomy, synonyms in several languages and more."

The pharmaceutical industry says in a press release it's going to create "a central, easily accessible database to better communicate the results of clinical studies of marketed drugs. The database, which will be available at www.clinicalstudyresults.org, will contain the results of all controlled clinical trials ... both positive and negative, completed since October 2002" for participating companies. It will debut Oct. 1, be free, and contain both published articles and unpublished study summaries, the press release says.

The University of Queensland in Australia has a C.A.R. page. Several sites it mentions:

• Computer-assisted reporting.com, which is maintained by an Australian professor.
• CAR park UK, which has links for journalism resources in the UK

About.com on "Building an Access Database From the Ground Up".

The feds explain how HIPAA relates to state public record laws.

CRESST - the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing - offers information on school testing for parents, teachers and researchers.

PC Magazine on how to do advanced sorting in Word.

Plant Explorers is devoted to plants and the people who discover new ones.

ScienceDaily Magazine offers "the Latest Research News in Science, Health & Medicine, the Environment, Space, Technology, and Computers." It has science news updated every 15 minutes, via Topix.Net, and offers email updates.

Personally I dread revisiting the past but the pop culture oriented among you may appreciate Nostalgia Central. The founder began it has a hobby but now claims over 1.5 million visits a month. He said his dream is to make the site the "definitive 'one-stop shop' for everything from the 60s, 70s and 80s."

The US Climate Change Science Program says it is all about "Integrating federal research on global change and climate change." Not sure what that involves when the Commander in Chief denies any such change...

Northern Kentucky University's law school has a Web site where you can read briefs of cases before the Kentucky Supreme Court. (Thanks to Greg Hall for the heads up.)

Search Engines 2 "offers over 12,500 links to local, regional, national, and foreign internet search engines, web directories, pay per click search engines and meta search engines."

Yahoo News now has an "election blog roundup."

Walt Mossberg of The Wall Street Journal explains spyware.

Economic History Services offers discussion lists, research abstracts and databases about economic history and related fields.