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

Those of us who work in public libraries deal with substance abuse issues. They unfortunately often go hand-in-hand with literacy problems. For those who need information at a lower reading level, the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) has launched a new website called Easy-to-Read Drug Facts at http://www.easyread.drugabuse.gov/index.php. Adult learners and instructors at the [...]

Freerice.com is a “game” site where users answer multiple choice questions and with correct answers,  10 grains of rice are donated to the World Food Program, a division of the United Nations.  Since October 2010 enough rice to feed 4 million people for one day has been sent to countries including Bangladesh, Cambodia, Haiti, Nepal [...]

If you are interested in health and/or medical research, The National Institutes of Health have a convenient way to keep up with the latest developments. NIH Radio is a 24-hour audio news service. You will find it at http://www.nih.gov/news/radio/. It offers NIH Research Radio podcasts, 25-minute news reports with in-depth interviews covering new scientific developments. [...]

If the popularity of the first two seasons of PBS’s Downton Abbey is any indication, there are more than a few of us (5.4 million viewers for this season’s finale) interested in the British aristocracy, if only as characters in a television drama. As we await the third series we can amuse ourselves online . [...]

Since tomorrow is President’s Day,  it is appropriate this week to feature the web site of a presidential library.  The John F. Kennedy Library is a beautiful building designed by I. M. Pei, located on Columbia Point in Boston.  For those that cannot visit the library in person, jfklibrary.org will give students, scholars and anyone [...]

The reference desk is often used as a metaphor for a library’s delivery of reference services. But for librarians at Norwich University’s Kreitzbert Library, rethinking the reference desk meant  focusing on the furniture itself. Their article “The Approachable Reference Desk” in February’s C&RL News describes how they downsized from a “monstrous” and “imposing” traditional reference [...]

For all romantics, you may now read the letters of these two famous lovers online (http://web.wellesley.edu/web/Dept/LT/Collections/SpecColl/Browning).  In collaboration with Baylor University, Wellesley College has made 573 love letters of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning available today, Valentine’s Day.  Their  story is both happy and sad.  They were married in secret because Elizabeth’s father wanted her [...]

Today is the 203rd anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth.  To celebrate this occasion Ford’s Theatre is opening the Center for Education and Leadership in a building across from the theatre and adjacent to house where Lincoln died.  The Center depicts the history of Lincoln’s life and his influence on that time.  FordsTheatre.org. provides information on [...]

If you or your patrons missed yesterday’s Super Bowl and want to see the commercials everyone’s talking about, you can stream them online–and rate your favorites–at the NFL.com website. (If you want information about the actual game, you can find it there as well.)

If you are having a Super Bowl Party and want something to fill the time when your team is losing, here is a trivia contest.  The Super Bowl Quiz has fifteen multiple choice questions.  You may answer them in order or choose them randomly.  If you answer at least ten questions you will receive a [...]

The 54th Annual GRAMMY Awards will be presented on February 12.  You can find a list of current nominees and a searchable database of past winners back to 1958, when GRAMMY’s first Record and Song of the Year was “Nel Blu Dipinto Di Blu (Volare)<” at http://www.grammy.com.  There is also information about the Recording Academy’s [...]