I have long enjoyed libraries. Part of the joy of summer vacations was when the library’s bookmobile came to the playground of my elementary school and I could choose the books I wanted to read. I was amazed when I learned that you could phone the public library to ask the librarian a question which you needed answered… and she would tell you what you needed to know. The librarians were so smart! My favorite volunteer activities at both my elementary school and my high school were helping in the school libraries. And while in college, one of my jobs was working in the college library. Not as a volunteer that time, though!So what brought back these good memories? A web site! LibrarySpot.com (http://www.libraryspot.com/) is a virtual library with posted sites that have been selected and reviewed by an editorial team. You can search for books, read full-text articles, and inquire about interlibrary loans as you access more than 5,000 libraries around the world. You can use law libraries, medical libraries, national libraries, presidential libraries, public libraries, and state libraries.
The Reference Desk lists sites for “business and government information, encyclopedias, dictionaries, calculators, maps, phone books, quotations, statistics and more.” From here you can research companies, look up definitions, find map directions, and even download income tax forms. You can find acronyms, almanacs, associations, experts, biographies, businesses, calculators, calendars, countries, current events, dictionaries, directories, encyclopedias, genealogy, government, grammar/style, historical documents, how to information, images, legal information, maps, medical, music, people, public records, quotations, states, statistics, thesauri, time, white pages, yellow pages, and ZIP codes.
In the Reading Room you can read more than 50,000 book reviews, 3,500 newspapers, and journals. You can look for books, headlines, journals, literary criticism, newspapers, newswires, magazines, podcasts, poetry, and speeches. The Librarian’s Shelf has information of interest to the professional librarian, including publications, associations, and relevant issues.
You Asked for It, Do You Know, and Lists provide answers to questions that librarians have helped us answer for years… "Why the sky is blue?" to "What famous men started out their career as newspaper delivery boys?" Find Answers—which takes you to You Asked for It—lists oft-asked questions such as “Where can I translate phrases and sites?” The answer, by the way, is Alta Vista World. Do You Know—or Did You Know, depending on where you access it on the site—lists more questions. Wanting to check the timeliness of the information provided, I followed the query, “What is the world population?” The answer, according to the CIA World Factbook as of July 2007, is 6,602,224,175. In Lists I found the top 100 children’s books that the New York Library’s patrons love, including one of my favorites, Shel Silverstein’s Where the Sidewalk Ends.
Exhibits highlight online exhibits from libraries and organizations around the world. I enjoyed touring a variety of virtual exhibits, including photographs of some baseball players from many decades ago. Articles provide access to additional sites. Do you know that “the bottom edge of a book, on which it rests when shelved in an upright position” is called the tail? I learned that while looking through the In the Spotlight archive.
Must-See sites include Infoplease where I found this 2008 chart (based on data from 2005-2007) of the top fifteen Internet-using countries:
Top 15 Countries in Internet Usage, 2008
Internet users (thousands)
1. European Union ... 247,000
2. U.S. .................. 208,000
3. China ................ 162,000
4. Japan ................. 87,540
5. India .................. 60,000
6. Brazil ................. 42,600
7. Germany ............ 38,600
8. South Korea ........ 34,120
9. UK .................... 33,534
10. France ............. 31,295
11. Italy ................ 28,855
12. Russia ............. 25,689
13. Canada ............ 22,000
14. Mexico ............ 22,000
15. Spain .............. 18,578
The only negative I found was that the ads can be annoying. But—just as in a bricks-and-mortar library—I enjoyed exploring. I learned some new things. And I spent more time there than I should have!
Image Location: http://flickr.com/photos/64893794@N00/2214748543/
Image License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en
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