Family Craft Night with the Royals

Craft night was a complete success; everyone had a wonderful time. Big thanks to the Royals for participating!

How the Library Changed My Life

This contest is for female patrons whose businesses were helped by using the library. To enter, simply submit your story (700 words) about how the library has helped to make your business a success.

Woman's Day magazine editors will select the winning entries, that will be featured in the March 2008 issue of Woman's Day.

ALA is collecting the stories until May 10. Go to this web link for details:

http://www.ala.org/ala/pio/campaign/sponsorship/womansdaymagazine/smallbus.htm

Books in the Public Domain

I was looking up some information on what materials are included in the public domain when I came across the article "How to Determine Whether a Work is in the Public Domain." Written by a professor of law at the University of Arizona, the article is a clear and concise explanation of the process; moreover, it is a reference for some of the more famous or familiar works both in and out of the public domain.
Within the article, there is also a link to a a listing of over 25,000 books available on the Web, called The Online Books Page. It includes materials from the Google Print Library project as well as individuals' efforts at digitization. It's quite an accomplishment and definitely worth examining.
I added it to my link list for future investigation.

Spring Forward!

Though we may not be able to start our spring planting until the middle of May (I always used Mother's Day as my green light), I'm already paging through gardening catalogs, ordering seeds, constructing complicated planting schedules, and looking through all the gardening and landscaping books the library purchased last year. So here's my list.

Adams - Art of Garden Photography
Alexander - Essential Garden Maintenance Workbook
Armitage - Armitage's Native Plants for North American Gardens
Bartley - Designing the New Kitchen Garden: An American Potager Handbook
Beck - Best Garden Plants of Pennsylvania
BH&G - Water Gardens, Pools, Streams and Fountains
Christian - Great Decks and Outdoor Living
DiSabato-Aust - Well-Tended Perennial Garden: Planting and Pruning Techniques
Freeman - Spare Time Gardener
HGTV - Curb Appeal
Miracle Grow - Instant Gardens
Miracle Grow - Beautiful Perennials
NH&G - Decks
Ortho - All About Building Waterfalls, Ponds, Streams
Ortho - All About Sprinklers and Drip Systems
Ortho - All About Garden Pools and Fountains
Rice - Encyclopedia of Perennials
Smith - P. Allen Smith's Colors for the Garden: Creating Compelling Color Themes
Stanley - Complete Patios and Masonry
Steinberg - American Green: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Lawn
Weishan - Victory Garden Companion
Wiley - Shade: Planting Solutions for Shady Gardens

A few of my favorites are P. Allen Smith's Colors for the Garden with its many photographs of fabulously lush gardens; Rosemary Alexander's Essential Garden Maintenance Workbook - not a lot of photos, but packed full of practical information; and DiSabato-Aust's Well-Tended Perennial Garden, an essential reference tool for the care of perennials, newly revised with more full color photos.

SALUD EN ESPANOL

Recently the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania added a new database to POWER Library. Salud en espanol contains all the Spanish language resources previously found within Consumer Health Complete and is a valuable health information resource.

To locate the Salud en espanol, click on the POWER Library icon, and enter your library card number. The database is in the Health/Science category.

Salud en espanol covers reports and studies relating to various issues of health and well-being, diseases, and treatments.

Family Craft Night with the Royals

Join the members of the Reading Royals Hockey Team for stories, crafts, food, and fun.

Meet the players up close and personal!

Family Craft Night will be held Wednesday, February 28, 2007 at 7:00 PM

at the Northeast Branch, 1348 North 11th Street, Reading, PA 19604.

Children under 8 must be accompanied by an adult.

Online Librarian
Carl

Google www.google.com
Founded: Menlo Park California (September 27, 1998)


What THIS SITE IS:
Google is one of many search engines available and because of its overwhelming popularity it has almost become synonymous with the Internet. Two Stanford students began the Google search engine in 1996 as a graduate research project. Soon after Google took off and now, according to Nielsen NetRatings, is used in virtually half of all Internet searches. The Google brand has expanded vigorously and now includes products far beyond a mere search engine, such as email (gmail), directory, online documents & spreadsheets, etc.

Positives: Simple interface; relatively large search results; consistent innovation and development of new and interesting products

Negatives: Search Engine results are not evaluated for quality; popularity and ease of use can obscure search limitations, see Research Beyond Google

Who SHOULD USE THIS SITE:
Those searching for common topics, those beginning an exploratory first search, or those who are looking to take advantage of Google’s specific search features (e.g. advanced search) or products (e.g. gmail). It is important to keep in mind that while Google’s coverage is broad it can lack precision for uncommon or specific topics. And like practically all search engines it does not rank sites by quality nor does it take into account the deep recesses of the invisible web (the topic of the invisible web to be covered in a future article).

Librarian Note: Library professionals will appreciate this site for its ability to quickly generate answers to ready reference questions and to be used to orientate or inform searchers about a novel topic. Other useful tools (calculator, dictionary, etc.) and multimedia search capacities (pictures, videos, etc.) can be helpful as well.

Interesting FEATURE:
One of the most powerful ways to search with Google that is often overlooked is the use of Google Syntax. Searching this way can be done using the Advanced Search or by directly keying what Google calls “search operators" in the search basic window.

For instance, say you want to use the Google Search Engine to find information about prairie dogs but you only want see what the National Geographic web site has to say on the topic.

As an example type prairie dog site:nationalgeographic.com in the basic Google search window.

The results of prairie dog site:nationalgeographic.com would be a search only within the www.nationalgeographic.com website for the subject of prairie dogs. This formula of search term(s) site:web_site_to_be_searched.com can be used for any subject and any site. Also note that these search operators can be used to limit and control searches by site, by format, and a whole assortment of other parameters and functions, see Google Syntax for more options.

Bottom LINE:
Google is simply the best freely available general-purpose search engine on the Web today. (In addition it offers a wide variety of tools, software, and multimedia)

Helpful LINKS:
Instruction/Tutorials/Features
Google Guide
Google Cheat Sheet
Google Products

Extras
20 Great Google Secrets
Official Google Blog
Unofficial Google Forum

Librarians
Google Librarian Central
Google as Ref Desk Tools (Ready Reference)

Any QUESTIONS?
Please feel free to make a comment by clicking on the comments link below or if you prefer to reach me by email.