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The Best 357 Colleges Rankings
The Princeton Review offers the 2005 version of their rankings free online. Each college has statistics and information on the student body, cost and financial aid, academics, campus life, extracurriculars, and admissions.
Alaskool provides online information for teachers and students on Alaskan Native peoples' history, languages and culture.
Information, reviews, comparisons and ratings of digital cameras from all the top companies.
A site dedicated to information on Antarctica with pictures, facts, history, and information on animals and travel.
Very cool campaign to get people reading with posters that are free for downloading. I'm considering using the posters as backgrounds on our public computers.
LibraryLaw Blog: Giveaway racks get religious
This is an important item for all of us running libraries! You must give religious groups access to your bulletin boards, your cable channels, etc. Luckily for me, we already do this.
We have been struggling with people wanting to post liberal and conservative items on our bulletin board. Not notices of meetings, but print outs from the Internet showing a specific viewpoint. We have turned those people down, saying that the bulletin board is specifically for announcements of local programs and services. That said, we do post announcements for local politicians who are having meetings.
The 2004 Booker Longlist has been announced. 22 books have been placed on the list of contenders.
A blog that focuses on Microsoft and offers information and news on their future plans and products. RSS Feed is available.
Yahoo has started blogging about its search engine. RSS Feed!
About.com's Budget Travel section offers five recommendations for good budget travel guidebooks. Though just Europe is focused on in the titles, the series are the ones that libraries want to be aware of.
The Best of British - The American's guide to speaking British...
A great site that will have you laughing and browsing for hours. If you read Harry Potter or watch BBC America, you need this translation guide, and even if you know British very well, you will have a lot of fun reading the definitions.
This search engine offers investors a way to search more than 25,000 companies in 9- countries. Searches can be limited by industry and country, and search options include phonic, stemming, synonyms, and fuzzy.
The University of Dayton offers an online celebration of Erma Bombeck featuring her writing and Good Morning America segments.
firstamendmentcenter.org: news
A 2004 survey by the First Amendment Center and American Journalism Review magazine shows that there has been a definite shift in American's opinions about the First Amendment since September 11th.
"About 65% of respondents indicated overall support for First Amendment freedoms, while 30% said the First Amendment goes too far -- a nine-point swing from last year and a dramatic change from the 2002 survey in which Americans were evenly divided on the question at 49% each."
TheBostonChannel.com - News - Chief May Refuse To Give Feds Info About Patrons
Hurrah for Bernard Margolis of the Boston Public Library, a librarian who feels that principles are worth risk and that civil liberties deserve defense from librarians! Too often I have heard local librarians either not see the Patriot Act as a concern for them or insist that those of us concerned not draw attention to ourselves. Let us all join Margolis in saying that we won't just stand by and see Section 215 used to abuse civil rights.
"Clearly, the challenge for people like me who believe in librarianship and the principles of free speech means if I were to receive such a request, I would have to give very strong consideration to going public with that," he said in an interview published in Monday's Boston Herald.
Margolis, 51, said going public with requests for information "would be appropriate in furtherance of the idea that privacy and free speech rights need a lot of defense and support."
At the annual conference of the American Library Association last week in Orlando, Fla., which Margolis attended, delegates discussed a pending Senate measure that would create severe penalties -- including a five-year prison sentence -- if librarians violate the Patriot Act."
This site is dedicated to the golden era of movie musicals. It offers sections on actresses, actors, films and the Academy Awards.
Information on money in politics from the 2004 Presidential race to Congress to local elections. The site also offeres information on special interest groups.
Banned Books Week is headed our way September 25 - October 2. This is the official ALA site giving you access to the list of most challenged books, background information, and related links.
Library Journal - Fixing the First Job
A vibrant look at the experiences of new librarians. We all need to look at embracing change and the ideas that the new generation of librarians is bringing to the profession.
Sadly, until I read the article, I had continued to see myself as a young librarian. But I have had my degree for far too long to continue view myself that way any more. I guess I will now have to be the cool veteran librarian. :)
"The new librarians know their concerns echo the experiences of more seasoned colleagues, but they also say it is very difficult to find that experience documented in print or discussed before conference audiences. The new librarians are already tired of the collective moan-and-groan session. They would remind their elders that these issues are new to them. They believe they can begin to force change by naming what is not working for them. They want to work across the lines of age, race, gender, and every other line to bring librarians together to try to fix these chronic problems of the profession."
Let's do it! This seasoned professional is right with you!
Well, I have returned from the beautiful Madeline Island in northern Wisconsin where the public library gives visitors open access to their newly automated collection. It was lovely on the cool rainy days to have a place to take the kids where they would feel immediately at home. As always, I got some new ideas about things I can try at Green Lake.
The library had these wonderful little signs all over the town. Some said when storytime is, some about high speed Internet, others about movie night. Very effective, especially because they weren't filled with tons of information so the font was huge and the sign was simple.
I am away on vacation with my family for the next week. Expect my next posting to be Monday, August 16th at the earliest.
University of Wisconsin Whitewater once again does its ranking of the most literate cities in the U.S. Minneapolis leads the way with Madison, WI coming in fourth! In order to be considered, cities must have populations of at least 200,000.
The Federal Election Commission offers a printable version the National Mail Voter Registration Form online. It is one of the fastest and easiest ways for people to register to vote.
Digital Deliverance has had a couple of posts about Google News and its odd and limited choices for their news database. This is a very important aspect for public libraries to be aware of, since so many people use Google News.
Digital Deliverance: Another Example of Google News' Odd Choices of Sources
O'Reilly is offering the full text of Dan Gillmor's We the Media online in pdf format. The book is subtitled Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People.
Via Boing Boing.
NYTimes.com 2004 Election Guide
Information for the presidential race, the Senate, the House, and Governors. One can see how states voted in the past as well as the electoral vote totals.
Netscape 7.2 Ready for August Release
Within the first two weeks of August, Netscape will be releasing its first update in a year. This is definitely one to download if you want to continue offering Netscape as an alternative to IE on public computers. I am leaning more towards putting Firefox on public computers this fall.
BBC NEWS -- Microsoft fixes big browser bug
Sigh. One of the problems with being the director of a small library is that I get to be the one to install this patch to all of our computers.
B-Feeds(sm): Web Feeds for Books and Monographs
A collection of RSS feeds about books with sections on specific subjects like architecture, science, business, and technology.
African search engine and site directory with links to news stories, Internet radio stations, and African restaurants.
The Toronto Star - Pages of the Past
Digitized (PDF) version of the Toroto Star from 1892-2001. The site can be searched or browsed.