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This morning I went to the Comcast site to check my e-mail, and right there along with  headlines about the cost of the Michael Jackson memorial and the bottled vs. tap water debate was Webster Adds New Words.  In the article, Merriam-Webster president and publisher John Morse talks about some of the decision-making behind introducing new [...]

Among the most requested of all books, and by far the most popular of reference books, in my Hamilton Middle School Library is Guinness World Records 2009 (published by Guinness World Records Limited in 2008).  Hamilton has about five copies of the dazzling hardcover edition that you might have seen prominently displayed near a checkout [...]

We are in the midst of a large weeding project in our reference collection here at the Wright State University Libraries.  We have about 19,000 volumes and need to decrease this by 1/3 in order to accommodate some new computers in our information commons.  I’m sure this is a common practice in libraries today.  As [...]

Every year the Reference Books Bulletin Editorial Board presents a standing-room-only program at the  ALA Annual Conference.  For this year’s program,  “Rethinking the Reference Collection,”   Editorial Board Chair Sue Polanka will moderate a Q&A with Barbara Bibel (Oakland Public Library in Oakland, CA), Sara Johns (Lake Placid Middle/High School), and David Tyckoson (California State University, [...]

Apart from the even more distant twitters of certain insects and birds, I was introduced some forty years ago to a variant of the newly popular word in the form of Paul Klee’s 1922 painting Twittering Machine (in German Die Zwitschermaschine, in French La Machine a gazouiller).  Is it merely whimsy or does it echo the horrors of the First [...]

Catherine Ross, Kirsti Nilsen and Marie Radford are the authors of the just released (June 30, 2009) 2nd edition of Conducting the Reference Interview: A How to do it Manual from Neal-Schuman.  Since I’ve used the first edition every time I’ve taught a reference services class, I’m quite excited to see the new edition.

Most reference librarians probably check the Internet Scout Project’s Scout Report on a regular basis to find out about new, mostly free, online resources. The Internet Scout staff has just released its Best of 2008-2009, a highly select list of  favorite sites. See if you agree. Smithsonian’s History Explorer Academic Earth Chronicling America: Historic American [...]

If you’re looking for definitions of terms like Baling out (as in Christian Bale’s major tantrum on the set of Terminator Salvation), Blago (someone who ruins something beyond repair, like former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich), Madoffing (to knowlingly swindle someone), and Spitzer’d (getting caught in a major act of hypocrisy), you won’t find them in a [...]

You can usually find a particular recipe by googling it, but cookstr.com provides a weekly newsletter with recipes specific to the week.  The current newsletter provides “Ten Dishes for the 4th of July.”  The recipes are from chefs and authors of cookbooks and include Marcella Hazan’s Grilled Bread with Olive Oil, Garlic, and Tomato, Steven Raichlen’s Mango Grilled [...]