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

The 2012 presidential election is three weeks from today and OnTheIssues.org. may help the electorate decide which candidate they would choose for president of the US.  The site which has the subtitle "Every Political Leader on Every Issue," provides views of US elected officials or candidates on major political issues including abortion, civil rights, education, [...]

The University Idaho Library Map Room has a unique way of illustrating their collection of photographs.  Using a Google Maps interface they link over 8,000 photographs in a variety of collections to each picture's location on a map. The collections are diverse; from the Dworshak  Dam collection to football programs to the Carleton Watkins Mining [...]

The organization TED.com,  a Web Site of the Week,  is committed to "Ideas Worth Spreading."  TED now has teamed with NPR to produce 10 programs based on speakers at the TED Global Conferences.  They include "The Future of Cities,"  "The Power of Crowds," The Pursuit of Happiness" and "Food Matters."  If the programs are not [...]

On the eleventh anniversary of 9/11 let us remember that day with our own memories. There is a live webcast of the commemoration ceremony at the 9/11 Memorial which beings at 8:30am edt. today.

Converter plus appears to have more conversions than the average person would ever use.  There are the usual and useful -  gas mileage, tipping, currency, computer data, inflation, mortgages, sales tax, energy expenses, credit card payments and tipping.  But there are also  corrosion rate, chilled water tonnage calculator, gravity on planets, torque and yarn count.  [...]

This recent post by Jessica Olin of Letters to a Young Librarian has got me reflecting on the balance between "teaching our patrons to fish" and just answering their questions. Olin writes that her stance, like that of many librarians, is to walk her patrons (college students) through the process of finding the answer to [...]

For information on earthquakes the US Geological Survey Earthquake Hazards Program has an excellent web site.  There is a real-time  map depicting where quakes have occurred in the last seven days with a table showing the exact location, time and magnitude.  A simple registration will send automated e-mails when an earthquake occurs in your area.  [...]

There are a number of hurricane apps and here is the Red Cross entry.  Preparation steps, what to do during a hurricane and how to recover are suggested.  An alert system is provided for the individual's location plus adding alerts for locations of family and friends. An "I'm safe" feature lets a person report that [...]

For parents and teachers who would like to engage children in learning about the countries that are participating in the Olympics, look at burgershereandthere.com.   With the motto, "making exotic flavors un-scary, one burger recipe at a time, one country at a time," the blogger, Linda Monach began with Afghanistan in January 2011 and the most [...]

The games of the XXX Olympiad will take place this year from July 27 to August 12 in London.  Here are some Internet venues offering  just about everying you need to know about the 2012 Summer Olympics: http://www.olympic.org/uk/index_uk.asp The official website of the Olympic movement covers past, present and future Olympic games, a place to [...]

Since its origin in 1998, HowStuffWorks.com, in addition to being a website, was a public company, has published books, is now part of the Discovery Channel and has a television series.  The site may be overwhelming with too much information - videos, quizzes, games, podcasts, lots of advertising and broad topics including culture, science, auto [...]

Orbitz just unveiled a revamped app for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad which provides searching for and booking flights, hotels and rental cars.  A study showed the app was twice as fast as similar apps and a test group was able to find and book a complete trip in less than seven minutes.  Kayak [...]

With the All-Star game in July, the baseball season will be at its mid-point and fans will be interested in playoff possibilities for their teams.  Baseball-Reference.com is the site for current statistics and historic information.  The site appeared in 2000 evolving from the Big Bad Baseball Annual which ceased publication in 2000. BR is used [...]

The National Archives has a fascinating site, digitalvaults.org which contains 1,200 documents of historical records of the US.  Included are digitized photos, maps and artwork plus audio files and video clips.   "Shuffle records" is an introduction that provides examples of documents from 1800 to the present.  Keyword or searching by tag results in the [...]

Meebo, the company behind the popular chat widget used by many libraries to provide chat reference services, announced this morning that they've been acquired by Google. Meebo Messenger, widgets, and mobile apps will be discontinued effective July 11. According to the announcement, "Together with Google, we’re super jazzed to roll up our sleeves and get [...]

Ben Rattray is the CEO of Change.org which appeared in 2007.  The site is described as  a "social action platform that empowers anyone, anywhere to start, join, and win campaigns to change the world."  An individual can start a petition for change, gather support and hopefully succeed.  Popular petitions at the moment include setting up [...]

In honor of her Diamond Jubilee, Queen Elizabeth has made available the personal journals of Queen Victoria who is the longest reigning British monarch.  The diaries cover Victoria's coronation at 18, her marriage to Prince Albert and her Diamond Jubilee in 1897.  The Oxford University Bodleian Library collaborating with ProQuest put 43,000 pages on the [...]

In celebration of Booklist's  "Mystery Month", the web site of the week is honoring a great author of mysteries, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  Sherlockian.net, originated by Chris Redmond in 1994 and still edited by him, provides information on all things Sherlockian.  Of course there is a list of all the stories, with links to additional [...]

Bachtrack is a neat app for the classical music fan.  It allows the user to search for concerts, operas and ballet performances by time, location, artist or composer.  The results are listed chronologically so it is possible to find where the works of Bach will be performed in the United States in July 2012.  For [...]

As part of the sesquicentennial commemoration of the Civil War, the Terra Foundation for American Art, in partnership with the Art Institute of Chicago, the Chicago History Museum, the Chicago Park District, the Chicago Public Library, the DuSable Museum of African American History and the Newberry Library, launched a new website, The Civil War in [...]