resource of the week: ACCESS North Carolina

ACCESS North Carolina is a free, downloadable vacation and travel guide for people with disabilities that mixes text and icons to offer basic tourist site data.  Users can tell at a glance if a site is accessible or partially accessible for persons with disabilities.  It is published by the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation Services.

resource of the week: songs of america

More than two years in the making, Songs of America brings forward 80,000 digitized, curated items including maps, recordings, videos, sheet music, essays, biographies, curator talks and more to explore America’s history through the prism of song.

Users can:
• Search by time period, location and format
• Listen to digitized recordings
• Watch performance
• View sheet music, manuscripts and historic copyright submissions

Examples of the diverse content include an illustrated sound recording of "Over There," a song representative of World War I; a curator talk by the Library’s Steve Winick discussing labor songs; and sound recordings of songs reflecting such social trends as the expansion of leisure activities including sports and going to the movies.

Other highlights include the first music textbook published in colonial America (1744), Irving Berlin’s handwritten lyric sheet for "God Bless America," the Library’s collection of first edition sheet music by Stephen Foster and performances by baritone Thomas Hampson and soprano Christine Brewer.
The online resource will also offer a guide for educators, with suggestions on how to use the "Songs of America" presentation in their classroom curricula.

From Library of Congress (http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2014/14-018.html)

dancing with the carts

Samantha Stainburn writes: “What sport demands the precision of synchronized swimming and the book smarts of a librarian? Book cart drills, of course, the choreographed routines performed by librarians and graduate students in library science. The activity was popularized in the mid-2000s by Demco, the book-cart manufacturer, which sponsored a world championship competition at the ALA annual conference for several years. These days, the action is at homecoming parades and state library association conferences.” Watch the Gettysburg College team in 2010 in this video (8:07)...  ALA Direct, Feb. 12; orig. in New York Times, Feb. 7

resource of the week: Lib2Gov

Lib2Gov.org is an engagement platform for library and government agency collaboration around digital/e-government services that has been designed with four goals:

1. To provide resources that help librarians think about how best to engage in e-government services in their libraries.
2. To provide communication tools to build and deepen relationships between librarians and government agencies
3. To provide communication tools to facilitate the building of a community of practice among and between librarians to share best practice e-government engagement programs and services that meet community needs.
4. To identify selected and key government agency information, resources and services to assist librarians in meeting patron e-government needs.

Lib2Gov.org offers practical guidance to librarians about how to identify, connect with, and work with potential partners - and offers guidance for libraries as they consider how best to implement e-government services.  Topics include immigration, taxation, social security, and health care at the national level.

ALA is offering free e-government webinars including:

• 04/30 | An Introduction to Mobile Government Apps for Librarians  @ 2 pm
• 05/15 | Roles for Libraries and Librarians in Disasters @ 2 pm
• 06/12 | Beta.Congress.Gov @ 2 pm

Click here for more information.

shutting down by force

Chris Hoffman writes: “Many computer users were trained never to turn their PCs off by pressing the power button on their desktop case. This used to cause problems in the previous millennium, but it’s now perfectly safe to shut down with the power button. This is especially useful on Windows 8, where there’s no obvious power button unless you know to look in the charms bar or the hidden Windows Key + X menu. But there is a power button, and it’s on your PC’s case.” If your PC is taking forever to shut down, try these tips....  ALA Direct, Feb. 2; orig. in How-To Geek, Mar. 1, May 19, 2012; July 8, 2013; Feb. 1; MakeUseOf, Feb. 4

gale legal forms subscription

From Edward--

We will not be renewing our subscription to Gale Legal Forms.  Effective Monday, March 10th, we will no longer have access to this database (under Online Tools).

resource of the week: irfanview

IrfanView is a very fast, small, compact and innovative FREEWARE (for non-commercial use) graphic viewer for Windows.   It is designed to be simple for beginners, but powerful for professionals.  Some IrfanView features:

• Many supported file formats
• Multi language support
• Thumbnail/preview option
• Paint option - to draw lines, circles, arrows, straighten image etc.
• Slideshow (save slideshow as EXE/SCR or burn it to CD)
• Support for Adobe Photoshop Filters
• Batch conversion (with advanced image processing)
• Multipage TIF editing
• File search
• Cut/crop
• Add overlay text/image (watermark)
• Effects (Sharpen, Blur, Adobe 8BF, Filter Factory, Filters Unlimited, etc.)
• Screen Capturing
• Lossless JPG rotation

This is what the program looks like:

This would be a great alternative to some of the proprietary software, and the best feature is the ability to edit multiple images at ones (a limitation of most of its expensive counterparts).  Thanks to Paul for sharing this week's resource!