Booklist Online: Book Reviews from the American Library Association

All the Banned Books Week talk makes me wonder if any reference titles have been challenged or banned.  Rolf Janke from Sage Reference said the 2002 Encyclopedia of Terrorism, Edited by Kushner was on the list when it was first published.  I noticed a variety of Joy of Sex titles on lists as well.  I’ve [...]

Many of us work in libraries serving diverse populations. Our patrons come in seeking information about matters that are important: health, education, social services, visas and citizenship. Their English-language skills may be limited. Knowing how to find good information in other languages, especially when dealing with a language that you do not speak, is useful. [...]

Reader’s advisory icon and action figure model Nancy Pearl has started her own review blog, Booklust Forever. Pearl reviews new titles and occasional roundups of older works. Recent post include:
“Tough Good Storytelling”  is about Tim Gautreaux’s newest novel, The Missing  (Knopf, 2009) and mentions librarian and bookseller favorite Beat the Reaper.
“Coming of Age” is about [...]

Encyclopedia of Life was first funded by a MacArthur Foundation grant in 2007.  The goal of the site is to have a webpage for all 1.8 million organisms on earth.  After two years there are now more than 150,000 pages of  “expert-verified”  text and images.  A search for the domestic cat returned Felis catus Linnaeus,1758, accompanied by [...]

It’s an interesting time to be getting a MLIS.  I already feel as though I’m sailing through uncharted waters as I “log in” to my first day of online library school and join in on the week’s discussion board. Shortly after the friendly introductions, the conversation turns to questions like: “Is print reference dead?” “Will e-books [...]

Barbara’s post earlier this week about reviewing reference reminded me of an outline that I had created to help my students in writing a review, a required assignment in all my classes. Below is the complete outline and question list, and while a few of the questions are for readers’ advisory reference books, most [...]

We all rely on reviews when choosing new resources for our collections. As a longtime reviewer with a pile of new titles on my desk, it struck me that the act of reviewing really helps me as a librarian. Examining a work and thinking about how it would fit into my collection, whether it is [...]

Steven Hofman from ALA Publishing has sent me a link to a short survey being conducted by the staff of Guide to Reference.  They are surveying LIS professors who teach reference courses to better understand instruction needs and how the Guide can be used most effectively in LIS programs. To participate in the survey, go here. 
Guide [...]

In a field where no Nobel Prize is awarded, the Pritzker Architecture Prize has often been likened to that honor.  The prize, according to the official website, is intended “[t]o honor a living architect whose built work demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision, and commitment, which has produced consistent and significant contributions [...]

This week Goggle introduced Fast Flip which attempts to recreate print reading online.   Google has partnered with three dozen diverse publications including the Atlantic, New York Times, Cosmopolitan, Christian Science Monitor, Washington Post, Slate, Seventeen and Good Housekeeping .  The publications will get revenue from ads on the site which will hopefully help the struggling industry. Searching by key word, publication, [...]

Everyone wants free full text, but , as Mick Jagger said, you can’t always get what you want. There are some places to find it. The Public Library of Science http://plos.org  publishes seven peer-reviewed science and medical journals. It has just added a new feature PLOS Currents, where researchers can share and discuss their latest [...]

For several years, one of my favorite websites has been Arts Journal: Daily Arts News.  I would spend an hour a day on it if I had the time (and frequently I have).  In the left column are Arts Journal’s titles–usually different from the actual title–and a few lines of  new and interesting articles selected by the [...]

On the anniversary of 9/11 we all reflect on that day.  re-constructions is a unique site created by the MIT Comparative Media Studies community in the days following 9/11. It  was designed as a study guide to stimulate discussions and reflections about how the media covered the event and its aftermath.  Through broad headings such as communications, [...]

If there’s an older surviving reference work than The Annual Register,  I  haven’t come across it.  Founded by Edmund Burke in 1758 (and written and edited by him through 1765), The Annual Register is celebrating “250 years of uninterrupted publication” with the 2009 edition. For the anniversary volume,  there is a speculative preface to the 300th, [...]

When someone reads the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica or Oxford English Dictionary, it is so exceptional that it often seems to be the occasion for a book about the experience.  Nobody should be surprised, then, that when I reviewed Britannica for Reference Books Bulletin about ten years ago, I did not read every word.  I did not read [...]

With health care reform all over the news, people have questions. It is difficult to find objective information, but it is available if one knows where to look. The Kaiser Family Foundation has a Web site with a wide range of information:history of  health reform efforts, state variation and health reform, financial consequences of medical bills, [...]

I recieved so many wonderful responses from my post last week about my essential reference websites that I wanted to share them all.
Here the are the 4 favorite sites of Points of Reference Readers:
Mariann says: “As a law librarian, I love http://thomas.loc.gov/ and http://www.gpoaccess.gov/CFR/INDEX.HTML

Laura uses the free version of Hoover’s - http://www.hoovers.com/free/ and says it [...]

An article in the Boston Globe  today reported that a private school, Cushing Academy,  has eliminated the books in the library.  The collection of 20,000 books will be given away and will be replaced by a digital library. The “learning center” will have lap-top friendly carrels  and where the reference desk was there will be a coffee shop [...]

There are now a number of web sites that give information on flights so you (or your friends and relatives) can see where you or they have been.  These sites also provide departure and arrival times, weather conditions, and of course, delays.  Tracking flights has become an avocation for me and I have found that each site [...]

A few days ago, during a library orientation of 6th graders, the subject of pink dolphins came up.  A teacher had asked her students to produce evidence that they did or did not exist.  (The teacher had turned a student’s question into an assignment for the class.)
On the big screen, we searched the phrase “pink dolphin” in [...]