Newspaper map

A free resource with more than 10,000 newspapers!  What a find -- Locate a newspaper on a Google world map, click the balloon, and read -- you can even translate the newspaper to a different language.  I clicked on a Swedish newspaper and translated to English.  (The news was much the same as ours -- lots of sad stories  -- a little depressing....)

Cyndi's List -- genealogy

If you are a family history buff, then you probably have used Cyndi's List at some point.  Recently the site has been upgraded with improved navigation, custom database and other improvements.  The upgrade is supposed to be faster and smoother to use.  I will be checking it out soon.

Wikipedia -- comments from ALA Conference (follow-up)

Summary of session on Wikipedia at ALA Conference  -- The Wikipedia Effect Part 1: Paul Kobasa, World Book

Book banks

Books and wood --  great combination.   "BookBanks" by Nancy Templeton-Takota

"These unwanted, used books are now boxes.  I carefully remove the pages, make a box from oak and replace the jacket.  A small rare earth magnet keeps the box closed and the grain of the wood looks just like pages!  $40.00 each"

goodreads Best of 2010

I started gathering books to take to the beach and decided to get out of my reading rut.  Mysteries and thrillers are my favorite. I just love reading John Sandford, Joseph Finder, Karin Slaughter, James Patterson, Steve Martini, Lisa Gardner, Janet Evanovich, Lee Child, Lisa Lutz  and on and on.   Few if any non-fiction books are on my reading list except for Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt books -- I really like reading about the Roosevelts.  Then I recalled that I enjoyed reading about Frank Lloyd Wright  in Loving Frank by Nancy Horan.   So I thought I would chose a few non-fiction books for my summer reading and reviewed the goodreads list of the Best of 2010 for ideas.

This is a list of favorite books chosen by the readers on goodreads.   "More than 157,000 votes were cast for 460 nominees and thousands of write-in candidates."

I will admit that I did add a couple mysteries to my summer list after looking at the goodreads suggestions!

38 online encycyclopedias

Wow!  Who would have believed ten, or even five, years ago that 38 encyclopedias would be available on the Internet!   Though the encyclopedias are not all free, the list is impressive.   Thanks to A Media Specialist's Guide to the Internet for the list.

Self-published author sells over a million books for Kindle

John Locke, a self-published author sells over a million books for Kindle on Amazon.com.   MSN reports the "Amazon.com recently announced that Locke is the eighth author to sell over one million Kindle books — over 1,010,370 — to become the newest member of the "Kindle Million Club," and the first independently published author to do so. Using Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), Locke has made protagonist Donovan Creed a household — or at least a beach and bedside reading — presence that would probably make plenty of print-only authors envious."

I haven't read any of these books, but the last time I looked on Amazon most of Locke's the books were selling for 99 cents.  Surely an inspiration for other authors.

QR or Quick Response

You have surely seen these funny looking black and white squares.

A Media Specialist's Guide to the Internet has an explanation of what and how the QR codes work. 

"QR stands for Quick Response, and is made up of black modules in a square shape on a white background.Actually, you could call it a 3D bar code.  The encoded text in the square can represent a web address or text. Camera phones (with a QR app) or QR readers can read the encoded message."

The blog entry has links to ideas on using the QR code in the classroom.  And QRstuff.com  provides more information on the codes, a code generator and phone information.

Wikipedia -- comments from ALA Conference

Booklist Online mentions The Reference Books Bulletin program at the ALA Conference -- "The Wikipedia Effect: How Wikipedia Has Changed the Way the World Finds and Evaluates Information."

I'd like to know more -- will have to do some searching.