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

“Hold the world in your hand” begins the description of this app and that is what happens.   Google Earth is  available on desktops but walking with the world in your hand is amazing. The app will zoom into the street view of your current location as well as in many other parts of the world.  [...]

Today is “Dictionary Day,” celebrating the “achievements and contributions of Noah Webster, the father of the modern dictionary.”  My favorite online dictionary is still Merriam-Webster.com but another good source is the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th edition, a part of Yahoo/reference.  This is a clean site devoid of flashing advertisements, etc. which [...]

The Drudge Report has been around since 1997 and the simple design of the site has changed very little.  It is described as a “news aggregation” website.  The originator  is Matt Drudge who is considered a conservative but there are links to articles that provide a variety of news and opinions from around the world.  [...]

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City has just updated their web site.  There are now over 340,000 entries for paintings, sculptures, costumes and photographs in the museum many with images.  For the prospective visitor, floor plans of over 375 galleries  are clickable and zoomable.  There are suggested itineraries for a half day, [...]

After reading David Tyckoson’s recent blog on “Reference Sources That We Once Loved…,” it reminded me of one of my favorites, Taking Sides. For those of you who don’t remember or are new to reference (before the internet),  TS is a multi-volume set arranged by broad topics and then includes popular issues of the day [...]

Battery Go! Plus is an updated version of Battery Go.  It was free, but at the present time is $1.99. It is well worth the money for those who worry about battery life of their  iPhone, iPad, etc.  The app has questions about the device and usage habits of the owner – type of devise [...]

WQXR and WNYC, public radio stations in New York City, have asked listeners to think about what happened 10 years ago and what music they would like to share. Listeners also have the opportunity to comment on what the music means to them.  For the last week there has been a special web stream playing [...]

FEMA.gov (Federal Emergency Management Agency) has been in the news in the eastern US during the last week.  First there was the earthquake in Virginia which was felt  along the coast from Georgia to Massachusetts.  Then over the weekend hurricane Irene came up the coast devastating towns and cities in New Jersey, New York and [...]

Worldometers.info displays real time statistics on broad topics – world population, health, energy, food, water, environment, government and economics and society and media.  It might be called a real time Statistical Abstracts plus.  Using Society and Media as and example there are real time statistics on new book titles published this year, newspapers circulated today, [...]

eBird.org was developed in 2002 by Cornell University Lab of Ornithology and the Audubon Society. It is a database of  bird distribution and now accepts sightings throughout the world.  What makes it unique is that amateur birders are encouraged to report sightings of birds.  This provides scientists and researchers information for the study of the [...]

Fooducate – “eat a bit better,” will help those who want to eat healthier.  After taking a picture of a bar code of a product, the app displays the food’s value for health – rated from A to D. It also analyzes the nutritional information and notes if there is lots of sugar, trans fats, [...]

Recently, Booklist received an e-mail from a teacher regarding her tenth grade summer history class. The class was doing group projects on influential people and events. In researching the best resources to use for their projects and final presentations, several of the students came across the Booklist Online feature  “Reference on the Web: The Civil War.”  The teacher [...]

Although the Space Shuttle Program ended this week, there will still be photographs of other NASA projects.  NASAimages.org is a partnership of NASA and the Internet Archive. It contains photos and video of all aspects of NASA’s work both current and historical.  You may search for images by keyword or broad subject headings – earth, universe, [...]

Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs spent five years testing over 1,400 recipes for the revised edition of The Essential New York Times Cookbook (Norton, 2010). They discovered that home cooks have the best recipes,  so started Food 52 to showcase recipes from those who love to cook.  Each week the site offers two themes and gives [...]

TripAdvisor.com claims that they are the largest travel site with more than 50 million monthly visitors through 18 brands including Airfarewatchdog.com, Cruisecritic.com, Smartertraveler.com, etc.  I find that TripAdvisor is best for discovering what travelers say about specific hotels.  In researching hotels I read the reviews on the site, then click on the hotel website and [...]

A Google a Day was launched by Google in April 2011 in partnership with  the New York Times.  A question is asked online each day, Monday – Friday and is also in the Times adjacent to the daily crossword puzzle.  The difficulty of the question increases each day.  It is an excellent way to increase [...]

Petfinder (Petfinder.com) is a large database of homeless pets which has placed over 15 million adoptions.  You may search by dogs, cats and “other” including rabbits, horses and pigs.  There are limits by breed, age, sex and size.  A paragraph details the life of the homeless pet and where they are located.  The site also [...]

OpenTable.com is the major player in online dining reservations with more than 20,000 restaurants participating in the US, Canada, Germany, Japan, Mexico and the UK.  Restaurants pay a start-up fee to join and then pay OpenTable for every reservation plus a per head charge for reservations via the reservation’s own website.  For diners there is [...]

Salem Press has announced the 2011 Library Blog Awards. The winners are: General Library Blog:  Librarian in Black Public Library Blog: Swiss Army Librarian Academic Library Blog: Information Tyrannosaur School Library Blog:  The Unquiet Librarian Local Library Blog:  Cecil County Public Library Quirky Library Blog: A Librarian’s Guide to Etiquette Newcomer Library Blog:  Hack Library School Commercial [...]

Although I will not be in New Orleans for the Annual Conference of ALA, I was perusing the program and noticed two programs related to Wikipedia.  Sue Gardner, Executive Director of  the Wikimedia Foundation will speak at the President’s Program on Sunday, June 26 from 3:30-5:30.  On Monday,  June 27 from 10:30 to noon, Reference [...]