Booklist Online: More than 130,000 book reviews for librarians, book groups, and book lovers - from the trusted experts at the American Library Association

Interesting article in today’s New York Times about a study conducted by the Wikimedia Foundation, finding that women make up only about 13% of its contributor base. Like many other librarians I’ve grown to accept, use, and even at times love Wikipedia. But it’s disconcerting that so much of the content on what so many [...]

If you have a genealogy collection, you’re probably familiar with Genealogical Publishing Company. The company has come out with some new two-sided, laminated research aids designed for heavy use. One, QuickSheet: Genealogical Problem Analysis, offers a 10-step approach to solving problems unique to genealogical research, It joins Citing Online African-American Historical Sources Evidence! Style and [...]

When it comes to fair use, the Internet has created lots of complications. The Poetry Foundation’s Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute, in collaboration with American University’s Center for Social Media and Washington College of Law, has just published Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Poetry, which “aims to better facilitate poetic innovation and distribution by [...]

The Eastern US has had lots of snow this winter and students have been busy checking Snow Day Calculator. The developer of the web site, David Sukhin, uses weather.gov and additional information provided by the user to predict the probability that a school will be closed in the next two days.  Some of the information [...]

Known as “The Father of Black History,” Carter G. Woodson (1875-1950) founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (now called Association for the Study of African American Life and History) in 1915. In 1926, he established the first celebration of black history, Negro History Week.  Fifty years later, Negro History Week became Black [...]

Check out this fun and interesting video that brings a graph to life. It animates national life expectancy and income scatterplot data, over 120,000 numbers for 200 countries over 200 years. It is a great way to introduce students to graphing techniques and the relationship of health to income. Go to http://www.flixxy.com/200-countries-200-years-4-minutes.htm to see it.

Infobase Publishing announced new enhanced features for their eBook platform.  They include: Fulltext search option New eBook viewer design HTML default format for eBooks Improved relevancy and highlighting of search terms in context New eBook navigation tools New user tools like search history, bookmarks, notes and highlighting Additional information on Infobase eBook content (from their [...]

The spring semester is now beginning for many college students and WorldCat Mobile is an app that might be useful in certain situations.   The app uses WorldCat.org  which is “the world’s largest online resource for finding information in libraries.” Reviews of the app have not been great, but for a quick check to see if [...]

In the interests of greater transparency, last year The World Bank launched an Open Data initiative, and as a result its data sets for more than 200 countries are now freely available. Most of the data was previously available only by subscription. Data can be accessed by country, by topics such as education and health, and by stitistical [...]

In addition to awarding the 2011 Dartmouth Medal to Oxford’s Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion and Berg Fashion Library this month, the Dartmouth Medal committee gave an Honorable Mention to Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, published by Yale University Press. This atlas is based on Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, a free [...]

H. W. Wilson’s WilsonWeb Service has a variety of new enhancements. Highlights include: • Record previews. Users can preview individual records without navigating away from the “brief display” search results screen, by mousing over the new “quick view” icon.  The pop-up “quick view” includes important fields such as Abstracts, Title, Author, Source, Publication Year, and Subject.  [...]

With outbreaks of foodborne illness in the news on a regular basis, learning something about the way they are investigated should be of interest. The CDC’s OutbreakNet Team at http://www.cdc.gov/outbreaknet/index.html is a collaborative network of federal, state, and local public health officials working on the detection, surveillance, and response to outbreaks of foodborne, waterborne, and other [...]

“Access to a Legacy” is the initiative to digitize and index the documents, photographs and audiovisual recordings of President Kennedy’s administration.  Last week Caroline Kennedy announced the unveiling of the digital archive.  Now available are 200,000 pages of text, 1,500 photographs, 1,250 audio recordings and moving images and 340 phone conversations.  In addition to keyword [...]

Wikipedia went live exactly 10 years ago today  Like it or not, Wikipedia seems to be here to stay, and many librarians have not only resigned themselves to it, but use it. In fact, Wikipedia has helped keep the concept of “encyclopedia” alive.

Oxford’s Encyclopedia of  World Dress and Fashion and Berg Fashion Library combo, winner of the 2011 Dartmouth Medal, is certainly the largest reference source on the subject of clothing, but it’s not the only one. Students and researchers are also well served by the 3-volume Encyclopedia of Clothing and Fashion, which was edited by Valerie Steele, Director [...]

If you have a garden with more veggies than you can use, what will you do with them? Your neighbors don’t want any more, but you don’t want to waste food. The Directory of Food Pantries http://ampleharvest.org/ offers gardeners a way to share their bounty with people in need. Food pantries are sites which distribute food [...]

While the American Library Association was meeting in San Diego last weekend and selecting winners of various book and media awards, the American Dialect Society was meeting in Pittsburgh and voting on the Word of the Year. The winner? App.

The 2011 Dartmouth Medal winner was announced at the RUSA awards ceremony at the just-ended ALA Midwinter Meeting in not-so-sunny San Diego. Oxford’s Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion, along with its online counterpart, Berg Fashion Library, was this year’s pick. Yale’s Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade was awarded an Honorable Mention. For more on [...]

With ALA on the west coast this week many librarians are flying.  Askthepilot.com may either give you confidence in commercial airlines or make you wish you could drive yourself.  The site has the sub-title “Everything you need to know about commercial flying – Questions, Answers and Reflections on Air Travel.” The author is Patrick Smith, [...]

DUBLIN, Ohio, January 6, 2011—The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has awarded $350,000 to fund researchers and developers from OCLC, the information schools of Syracuse University and the University of Washington and Zepheira LLC to continue work creating a more credible Web search experience based on the unique expertise, services and input from [...]