resource of the week: DPLA Bookshelf

At its DPLAfest on October 24–25 in Boston, the Digital Public Library of America introduced a new way to browse more than a million online books it has added to its collection. DPLA Bookshelf lets the user scroll a visual representation of a bookshelf that provides all the instantaneous power the digital world provides. DPLA Bookshelf was created by the Harvard Library Innovation Lab, based on its Stacklife project.  Featured in ALA Direct, 10/30/13.

tech tuesday: item record redesign

Bohyun Kim writes: “Almost all librarians have a love-hate relationship with their library catalogs."  Aaron Schmidt has recently put forth an alternative design for a library item record that provides a good starting point to rethink how to design the library catalog’s search results display.  One can dream, right?  Excerpted from ALA Direct, 10/16/13.

resource of the week: alternative search tools

Ref Seek is a search engine whose intention is to only serve links that have potential academic use.  Ref Seek seems to eliminate the advertising and paid links found on Google, Ask, Yahoo, and other commercial search tools.  Users can sort Ref Seek results into "links only" or "documents only" views.

Google Scholar will lead researchers to a variety of resources including abstracts, papers, books, patent records, and court opinions.  Some items may be available for free viewing (in Google Books, for example), but many link to journals contained in subscription-required databases.

Excerpted from Richard Byrne's "Beyond Google: Alternative Search Tools", featured in the February 2013 edition of School Library Journal.

tech tuesday: overdrive media stations

OverDrive announced November 12 that its OverDrive Media Station ebook, audiobook, music, and video sampling and checkout terminal is now broadly available. Launched as a pilot program earlier in 2013 with 50 public library systems in five countries, the in-library ebook kiosks enable readers to browse ebooks, audiobooks, and other media on a touchscreen monitor in libraries or other locations.  Learn more here.  Excerpted from ALA Direct, 11/14/13.

resource of the week: cookbook finder

Cookbook Finder is an experimental, works-based application created by OCLC to provide access to thousands of cookbooks and other works about food and nutrition described in library records. You can search by person, place, topic (e.g., course, ingredient, method and more) and browse related works by author and topic.

tech tuesday: death in the digital age

Joe Miller writes: “In the two years since the Eric Rash case, which led to the drafting of a US federal law concerning the data of minors, few countries have issued clear guidance on the rights of families to access their deceased loved ones’ data. And despite the fact that we put more of our lives in the cloud than ever before, few of us are preparing for our digital afterlife. As a result, it is more difficult to bequeath your iTunes library to a loved one than it is to leave your CD collection to them in a shoebox."  Read more here.  Excerpted from ALA Direct, 10/09/13.

resource of the week: NCpedia

NCpedia is an online encyclopedia created to highlight North Carolina's unique resources, people, and culture to enrich, educate, and inform. As of October 1, 2013, NCpedia included 4,620 entries and 5,371 images!

NCpedia is coordinated and managed by the Government and Heritage Library at the State Library of North Carolina, part of the NC Department of Cultural Resources. Whether you're helping a fourth grader with their homework, or looking up facts about local government for a future council member, NCpedia is a great place to find reputable information about all things NC!

free genealogy resources

The questions of who we are and where we came from can often be answered, not by looking inward, but by looking backward. While nature and nurture certainly play the primary roles in our development as individuals, it's only through the study of one's ancestry that we develop a more complete view of ourselves as how we fit into the larger scope of human history. Luckily, tracing one's roots is easier than ever thanks to the Internet. 

Family Search is a free service, operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, that focuses on the more social aspects of genealogical research. In addition to mapping your own family tree, searching the site's record archives, and uploading old family photos, Family Search allows you to share and collaborate all of these features with other users. Who knows, you might just find a long lost 5th cousin.

The USGenWeb project is a free service for genealogical researchers that collects and disseminates historical information on both the state and county level. The group's volunteer admins manage the site's expansive collection of birth, death, and marriage records. In addition, the group also provides specialized information resources for researching your African American roots as well as for finding more about specific people in history. The site and its services are both completely free to use.

DistantCousin is one of the most versatile free genealogical resources on the Internet. It offers more than 10 million records—from newspaper obituaries and census records to school yearbooks and passenger lists—from more than 4,000 online sources, all for free. While it won't build your family tree for you, as most costly sites will, it does offer a huge amount of information if you're willing to sort through census data for it.

Excerpted from Climb your family tree with these online genealogy tools by Andrew Tarantola.