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

Alexander Street Press is offering open access to their highly acclaimed American History in Video product during the month of April.  The collection contains over 4,000 video newsreels and documentaries from PBS, the History Channel, California Newsreel, and more.  The collection was awarded a 2009 Booklist Editors Choice and given a starred review in Booklist, [...]

Libraries who subscribe to OverDrive will be happy to hear about the release of an audiobook app for Blackberry smartphones.  The app was released to the public in beta format and can be downloaded at: http://www.overdrive.com/software/omc.  The app allows users to wirelessly download mp3 audio book files from libraries and three online retailers.  OverDrive is [...]

You may be hearing the word discoverability a lot lately, either from librarians or information providers.  Discoverability, or how can students find good quality library content in this googlized world, has got all of us perplexed.  Students prefer the simplicity of a single search box, the speed of results, and the instant gratification of full [...]

I think “discovery” will be the word of 2010.  Everyone seems to be moving in this direction, an overarching discovery tool for library resources.  EBSCO is in the mix, launching their new discovery service.  The details from a press release are below.

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Whenever I see cool products for children and young adults, I’m always envious of the librarians and teachers who get to work with these tools.  What’s gotten my envy this time is World Book’s new product, Dramatic Learning.  It is a classroom tool to help with reading fluency and comprehension, based on play scripts, skits, [...]

Ths week, EBSCO Publishing and Alexander Street Press both announced that they are going mobile for patrons of subscribing libraries EBSCO has released EBSCOhost Mobile, allowing people to search EBSCOhost databases using smartphones and other handheld devices. Features include search modes, full text limiting, and date ranges,  plus limiting by peer-reviewed content or publication. Scrollable results lists have citations, Image [...]

According to a survey conducted by the Pew Internet Project in 2007,  “62% of adult Americans have either accessed the internet with a wireless connection away from home or work or used a non-voice data application using their cell phone or PDA.”  Non-voice data applications include not only texting, e-mailing, taking a picture, and recording a video, but also [...]

I spent Monday with several librarians in a discussion on the future eReference platform.  I’m referring to products like Credo Reference, GVRL, Sage Reference Online, Oxford Scholarship Online, etc.  Our discussion revolved around platform features, good features and not so good features.  I’m going to list some highlights of the discussion below, but would really [...]

Check out this video from some clever folks in Norway. It seems especially apt when so many of us are having a hard time letting go of print.

I returned home from the wonderful and productive conference in Chicago ready to post something about the exciting programs, but my DSL was dead. After three weeks of going round and round with my provider, it is still dead. I am now in the process of changing ISPs. This made me think about how much [...]

Reference on your iPhone?  Besides providing a way for iPhone and iTouch users to find their way around the Duke University campus, review the course catalog, and search for events, DukeMobile now offers 32,000 images from Duke’s Digital Library Collection. Duke is the first institution to offer access to images and materials in this way, but [...]