resource of the week: affordable care act resources

The State Library of North Carolina has put together an excellent guide for the Affordable Care Act, which is now available from our homepage or by clicking here.  This guide features videos about the act, health insurance basics, brochures and pamphlets, applications, and more.  And thanks to Edward and Gretchen, the guide has been customized to include local resources for Rowan County.  WebJunction also produced an excellent free webinar back in July, which is archived for viewing here.  Additionally, Larry Ferlazzo has created a list of the best interactives showing how the new healthcare act works here.

new kindle titles

From Melody--
Two new titles have been added to the Kindles (two short stories by Lee Child).

Please synch all Kindles when they come in so that these will be loaded.

I have updated the list of Kindles in our procedures; we currently have 13 working Kindles.  All others have been withdrawn.

new features added to Overdrive

Two exciting new features are now available on Overdrive (NC Digital)... 

Users can now renew a borrowed title if no other users are on hold for that title. The renew option becomes available on a user’s Bookshelf three days before the title is scheduled to expire. Users may only renew a title one time.

A high-contrast option for visually impaired users is now available.

 

 

resource of the week: free OCR

Free-OCR.com is a free online OCR (Optical Character Recognition) tool. You can use this service to extract text from any image you supply.

This service is free, no registration necessary.  Just upload your image files. Free-OCR takes either a JPG, GIF, TIFF BMP or PDF (only first page).  The only restriction is that the images must not be larger than 2MB, no wider or higher than 5000 pixels and there is a limit of 10 image uploads per hour.

Free-OCR can handle images with multi-column text and also supports more than 25 different languages.  Thanks to Edward for sharing this great resource!

convert PDFs to Kindle format

PDF4Kindle is a neat little free service that will convert PDFs into .mobi format for reading on Kindle devices.  To use the service all that you need to do is upload a PDF and let PDF4Kindle do the rest.  When the conversion is complete you can download the .mobi file.  The converted file will let you resize the text as you would with any other Kindle document.

Originally from Richard Byrne's blog, Free Technology for Teachers (07/17/13 post).

resource of the week: Forvo

Ever wondered how to pronounce otorhinolaryngological?  Or maybe something a little shorter but equally as baffling, like macabre?  If so, check out Forvo.com, the largest pronunciation guide in the world with audio pronunciations in more than 200 languages.  Forvo is used by the staff at RecordedBooks to help narrators correctly pronounce words in their audiobooks.

resource of the week: digital citizenship toolkit

Working with patrons of all ages, we are aware of the need for internet safety and awareness.  In his August 2013 "Cool Trends" column in School Library Journal, Richard Byrne highlights the following resources to help support our patrons on the path to good cyber citizenship:

ThinkB4U - a series of web safety videos and tutorials from Google in partnership with other nonprofit outfits; has sections for students, parents, and educators.

Admongo - a game designed to educate preteens about forms and methods of advertising.

Teaching Copyright - five comprehensive lesson plans on copyright of pictures, text, and other media; printable worksheets, reading material, and suggested activities accompany each plan.

Common Craft - a series of videos that educate on how to avoid computer viruses and phishing scams; also includes advice on creating strong and memorable passwords.

Google Alerts - a method of performing a social media audit on yourself; alerts will e-mail you any links that include your name.