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

For the past three years, we’ve been blogging here about various reference questions, web sites, sources, and more. The rapidly evolving nature of reference work means that it’s time to think about shifting our efforts away from blog posts to something new. We’ll leave this blog here as an archive of sorts, but will no [...]

Just in time for Halloween, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) presents a graphic novel, Preparedness 101: Zombie Pandemic. Follow Julie, Todd, and their dog, Max, as they encounter a strange new disease.  It is spreading rapidly and it turns people into Zombies.  (No, it is not a political campaign. ) Readers who [...]

Flu season is once again upon us. To help put things in perspective, the University of Michigan Center for the History of Medicine and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have created The Influenza Archive at http://www.influenzaarchive.org/index.html. This archive contains over 16,000 digitized primary source documents about the influenza epidemic of 1918. These [...]

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 theme of this year's National Coming Out Day is "Come Out. Vote." This annual event, now in its 25th year, was inspired by the Oct. 11, 1987 March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights that attracted 500,000 participants. For a historical perspective, check out ABC News' look back at key moments in the [...]

October is Talk About Prescriptions Month, so the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is offering important information about the safety of online pharmacies. As more people use these to save money on drugs, learning to distinguish the legitimate suppliers from the fake pharmacies can literally save a life.  Visit the FDA to find tools for [...]

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 [...]

Although Munich’s Oktoberfest is winding down there are plenty of other beer festivals to enjoy this month.    At the Home of the Beer Festival Calendar you’ll find listings for everything from Acadia’s Oktoberfest (Southeast Harbor,Maine) to Zoo Brew (Cincinnati,Ohio) as well as beer festivals throughout the year (and the world).  An important event in beer history took place on October 5, 1842 [...]

Brain Quest is celebrating its 20th anniversary so in conjunction with Dreamkind , it has released an app for the iPhone, iPad, iPod, Nook Tablet and Nook Color.  The free app has 100 questions for each of grades 1-5.  Additional questions (600 per grade) are available for $2.99 for each level.  Children may play alone [...]

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 [...]

The Wallace Foundation was created by DeWitt and Lila Acheson Wallace, founders of the Reader's Digest.  The goal of the organization is to fund "projects to test innovative ideas for solving important social problems...and then communicating the results to help others."   Their mission and vision is of bettering the lives of disadvantaged children through learning [...]

New York Fashion Week  is over.  How about a trip to fashion's more distant past? Worth & Mainbocher is an online exhibit created by the Museum of the City of New York that features the work of Charles Frederick Worth (1825-1895) and Mainbocher (Main Rousseau Bocher, 1891-1976). The Fashion Plate Collection provides online access to a [...]

In these tough economic times, scam artists are ready to take your hard-earned dollars. The Federal Trade Commission has a website to help you learn how to spot scams, fight them, and report them. At www.ftc.gov, you will find information about the most common types of fraud:  job scams, home improvement scams, credit repair, mortgage/foreclosure [...]

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.

Discover Card runs some pretty funny commercials featuring "Peggy", a customer service rep who is actually a man based in a snowy shack somewhere in the middle of Siberia. Our own Dave Tyckoson has come up with a spoof of these commercials:  "Reference as Peggy Would Do It".   Fun stuff! Even better is his spoof [...]

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.  [...]

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.  [...]

The National Baseball Hall of Fame is worth a trip to Cooperstown for anyone who loves our national pastime.  If you can't get there and are a teacher,  you will find some interesting lesson plans on the site.  The plans are for grades 2-12  in areas including math, science, social studies, the arts and character [...]

The effects of this summer's drought include wildfires, devastated corn and soybean crops, and, eventually, higher food prices. There are a number of places to find information about one of the worst droughts in more than fifty years: The National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS)'s U.S. Drought Portal provides an array of resources for forecasting, [...]

PCWorld magazine has compiled this list of resources for keeping up with the Mars Rover Curiosity, from Mission Central to YouTube to Twitter.