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According to a survey conducted by the Pew Internet Project in 2007,  “62% of adult Americans have either accessed the internet with a wireless connection away from home or work or used a non-voice data application using their cell phone or PDA.”  Non-voice data applications include not only texting, e-mailing, taking a picture, and recording a video, but also [...]

Libraries using the wholesaler Baker and Taylor may now purchase eBook titles from Gale through B & T’s Title Source 3 ordering system .  B & T and Gale/Cengage announced today the new partnership.  Nearly 3000 GVRL titles, the Lit Crit series, and titles in Gale’s Directory Library may all be ordered.  This is a [...]

If you are busy with the hype of Halloween you may forget that Sunday morning, November 1 is when Daylight Saving Time ends.  webexhibits.org/daylightsaving has a detailed history of this event.  It explains why we change our clocks twice a year, with the rationale, opposition, obstacles and some interesting anecdotes.  There is also a world map showing when [...]

Our main library used to have four reference desks: science/business/social science/documents; art and music; history and literature; and periodicals. As the budget cuts came, the number diminished and we now have only one. There is still a separate desk for periodicals and the local history room still exists. A single desk means that all of [...]

Gale announced the release of two new 4 volume encyclopedias – Gale Contextual Encyclopedia of World Literature and Gale Contextual Encyclopedia of American Literature.  According to a Gale Press Release, the encyclopedias discuss an authors work/s in context including: Circumstances in the authors’  lives that are reflected in their work Historical Events affecting their work [...]

In a world in which a single issue of The New York Times (October 20, 2009) can report that artificial memories have been created in the brain of a fruitfly; wild fish have learned to “discriminate among  colors, patterns, and shapes, including new ones”; and radioactive isotopes in the whiskers of Antarctic fur seals contain a [...]

Mark Moran the CEO of  findingDulcinea.com says it is a “small company with an ambitious agenda.”   Called “The Librarian of the Internet,” it was suggested as a “Site That will Matter in 2009″ by readers of  PC World.  There is something here for everyone.  The daily home page gives an idea of what Dulcinea does.  Today (10/24) continues a series [...]

Dan Kraus, Booklist Associate Editor, Books for Youth, made this video for National Library Week last year. 

There’s a very active discussion going on right now on LIBREF-L regarding proper etiquette for a reference librarian. To find it, go to the archives and search for etiquette as a subject. The discussion started with a question from a LIS student about whether a librarian should get out from behind the desk and take a [...]

People come into the library in search of information about anything that one can imagine. Often what they really want is advice. Of course as librarians, we cannot always provide it. This can be especially tricky when a patron wants medical, legal, or financial information. They want to know whether they should take a medication [...]

Featured as this month’s Reader’s Corner, the review for the 2nd edition of the Readers’ Advisory Guide to Genre Fiction appears in the October 15 Booklist. As previously mentioned, this is a classic readers’ advisory and staff development tool and the 2nd edition has been eagerly awaited by librarians and educators.

The P (print) vs. E (electronic) debate started with reference publishing, and for the past decade or so anyone  involved in publishing, writing about, and using reference sources has had to navigate a whole new territory. It’s been exciting to get immersed in this alternate universe, but at the same time I confess I’ve envied my colleagues here at Booklist who [...]

Like print encyclopedias and their online counterparts, museums run the gamut from extremely specialized to (at least as an ideal) comprehensive or encyclopedic in scope.   (I will limit my examples to art museums, although many museums straddle the boundaries of art, history, nature, and science.)  Examples of the specialized museum include New York’s Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art (limited to a [...]

With Nora, a new baby in the family, I wondered about the name.  babynamewizard.com is one of Time magazine’s  50 Best Websites 2009.  The site is an off-shoot of The Baby Name Wizard by Laura Wettenberg. In addition to the origin of names it is possible to discover related names and famous people with the name.  A graph depicts [...]

Today I was browsing through Janet Clarkson’s Menus from History, a fun two-volume reference set from Greenwood that offers, among other interesting bits of culinary lore (menus for a Medici wedding feast in 1368 and lunch on the inaugural flight of the Concorde in 1976; Pat Nixon’s meatloaf recipe) the bill of fare for an American [...]

Does correct English usage matter anymore? There’s plenty of evidence that no one cares, but for those of us who do, there’s the third edition of Bryan Garner’s Garner’s Modern American Usage.  When Garner’s was first published in 1998 it quickly became a standard guide, and the new edition continues to man the barricades against assaults on good grammar, word choice, [...]

October is both Medical Librarians’ Month and Health Literacy Month. The two are closely related. Health literacy is the ability to understand basic information about the body and health care, allowing a person to participate in his/her health care. The lack of health literacy skills is a major problem, leading to complications when patients do [...]

Gale/Cengage announced today the launch of the digital Grzimek’s Animal Life Encyclopedia.  Grzimek’s covers over 4,000 species and includes thousands of images, maps, videos, audio clips, and links to articles and real-time web sites.  According to the press release, features of the newproduct include: •    Articles written by scientists and subject experts, peer-reviewed by world-renowned [...]

With the news that President Obama has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, many people will have questions about the prize.  nobelpeaceprize.org is a good place to start.  The site describes the prize, who may nominate, prize laureates and the Nobel Institute.  It also provides a short biography about Alfred Nobel, the founder of the [...]

According to its website, “The Premium Imperiale is a global arts prize awarded annually by the Japan Art Association.  Since its inauguration in 1989 it has become a mark of the highest international distinction for achievement in the arts.”  The prize is in honor of Prince Takamatsu, and it is awarded in five categories: painting, [...]