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In the US there will be a full moon on New Year’s Eve which means it will be a blue moon.  EarthSky.org  explains the origin and change of the meaning of the phrase.   The site which has the sub-title “a clear voice for science” is heard or seen more than 14 million times a day via [...]

Today on NPR’s All Things Considered, Fred Shapiro, the compiler of The Yale Book of Quotations, was interviewed about the best quotations of 2009. Number 1 (and my personal favorite): “Keep your government hands off my Medicare.” Click here to listen to the full interview.

As the year comes to an end and we get ready to disgard our 2009 calendars, it is interesting to look at the calendar and its history. There are approximately forty different calendars in use throughout the world today. The Gregorian calendar is the international standard for civil use, but the Hebrew, Muslim, Chinese, and [...]

As I sit at the Reference Desk, I wonder if a patron asks a question and there is no librarian, is the question really asked? With the growth in library usage throughout the semester as college enrollment grows, when the downtimes come between semesters it seems almost that the library is dead, although there are [...]

As you begin your last-minute holiday preparations, here is information that could save your life. Consumer reports has launched a new free Web site with information about dangerous products and recalls. It has news and videos about products recalled by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, and the National Highway Traffic [...]

The last few years my mother, who is 102, writes a remembrance for her Christmas cards.  This is her story for 2009. In 1918 there was a severe epidemic of influenza.  The “ditty” was :  “You opened the window and in flew Enza.”  We were living in an apartment in Chicago at the time and in mid-December [...]

The reference collection as we knew it just a few years ago (those shelves full of big books that no one could check out) is changing. What will it look like in the future? Reference Books Bulletin is hosting its first Booklist Online Webinar, “Twenty-First Century Reference Collections,” on January 12 to explore this question. I will moderate, [...]

Gale/Cengage announced last week the launch of a new iPhone app called Access My Library (AML).  AML is a free app, based on Gale’s site – www.accessmylibrary.com,  that provides a list of public libraries within a 10 mile radius of one’s geo location.  A user selects a library and the Gale/Cengage products subscribed to by [...]

Librarians traditionally sit behind the desk.  More and more we are seeing librarians leave the desk, if not physically then virtually.  Telephone a librarian, librarians going into classrooms or other locations not physically part of the library, IM or e-mail a librarian, these are all ways librarians have been reaching out to patrons wherever they [...]

When the  Encyclopedia of Urban Legends was published, reference librarians were happy to have a printed source that might answer those questions about rumors, gossip, strange news and other misinformation.  We now use Snopes.com, developed by David and Barbara Mikkelson in the early age of the Internet, which expands on the concept of urban legends.  Current news from Snopes include  [...]

Pete Cashmore, founder and CEO of Mashable (one of  Time‘s “25 Best Blogs of 2009“) has come up with his list of 10 Web trends to watch in 2010.  All of these are trends libraries need to pay attention to, but I was struck in particular by one called “content curation.”  It will come as no surprise to reference [...]

At this time of the year, everyone is attending holday parties and family feasts, to be followed by resolutions to lose the resulting pounds. The National Heart Lung and Blood Institute at the National Institutes of Health provides an alternative, a Web site with delicious healthy dishes that are quick and easy to prepare. There [...]

The Gale Virtual Reference Library (GVRL) subcollections are starting to compliment the traditional bookcart of books on a topic.  Rather than going to the physical shelves to find books for an instructor’s specific assignment, obtaining single copies of various books of a wide chronological range, I find myself turning first to the GVRL to see [...]

You see lots of “Best Books” lists at this time of year. With the number of reference books dwindling fast, I went in search of some digital “bests.” ReadWriteWeb, a blog that analyzes Web products and trends, is in the process of putting together its ”best products of 2009″  this month. There are 10 different lists, including “Top 10 [...]

Very early next year, the Internet Public Library (IPL) and Librarians’ Index to the Internet (LII), two portals reference librarians have relied on for finding good Web sites, will be reborn as a new site called ipl2: Information You Can Trust. This move began when LII’s funding was cut by half, forcing it to do less of [...]

I have to admit that I am loving EBSCO’s Mobile interface.  Not only does it work great on my iTouch, but when the server is going slow it makes the search so much faster.  While I can’t print from this interface, I’ve found myself researching without waiting for a computer, e-mailing the article if I [...]

With gift giving popular in December, both for the holidays and tax deductions,  bbb.org/charity (formerly Give.org)  is a source for philanthropy.   Part of the Better Business Bureau, the section “For Charities and Donors”  provides information on local and national charities.  Searches may be conducted by the name of the charity, alphabetically by all charities or by category (animal protection,  [...]

We tend to think of print reference materials as being bad for the environment (all those trees!), but going online has an environmental impact as well.  With the Copenhagen Climate Conference now underway, this is a good time to examine some of the costs. The average desktop computer with monitor requires more than 10 times its weight in [...]

In a news bulletin, PW has just announced the news that Kirkus Reviews will be closing as part of a media sale.  Well known for its anonymous and sometimes brutally honest reviews, Kirkus has been an important tool in library collection development for many years. This seems to be the year for the closure of [...]

As if we needed a reminder, the holidays are upon us. We can’t escape Christmas, with all of the decorations, advertisements, and music everywhere we go, but there are other celebrations at this season, too. Hanukkah begins a bit before sundown on Friday, a little earlier than usual because the candles must be lit before [...]