Favorite Things: Purdue OWL

One of my favorite go-to resources is the Online Writing Lab at Purdue University.  The Purdue OWL site has info on general writing, research and citations, ESL, subject specific writing issues, and much more.  Have a student with a writing question?  Check out OWL.

Favorite Things: Fantastic Fiction

Life at the Reference/Adult Services Desk can get hectic.  And sometimes we just need a little help finding the right answers. When it comes to answering: "Can you tell me if this is the first book in the series?"  Or "What else has this author written?"  Fantastic Fiction is one of my go-to resources.  With listings for over 30,000 authors and 350,000 books and counting, if it's in the library catalog, it's probably in here, too.

Search by author to find a list of everything they've published listed in series order.  It's easy to print out a list for a fan.  Search by book title and click on the link for a synopsis and Amazon purchasing info (of course).  At the bottom of an author page there may be recommendations from the author and you'll find a list of "people who searched for this author also searched for ..."  a great way to find readalikes for that "Oh, I've read all of those" patron.

You can also browse authors alphabetically or by genre or search for new listings in hardback, paperback, audio, or Kindle.

Introducing the Digital Public Library of America

 

 Someday maybe everything really will be available on the Internet. With the launch of the Digital Public Library of America the world takes another step in that direction.


What does it do? From the DPLA FAQ page:

"The DPLA contains metadata records—information describing an item—for millions of photographs, manuscripts, books, sounds, moving images, and more from libraries, archives, and museums around the United States. Each record links to the original object on the content provider’s website."


As you cruise around the DPLA site you can see images of historical artifacts and link to info about the library or museum that holds the actual item.  You can also view pictures, videos, slide shows, and document images all with descriptions and links back to the website of the institution that holds it.