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.

How does your library's website rate?

Here's a great blog post about the importance of the library's website from the reDUX blog from the Libraries of Indiana University.  In "The Library Website as Place," author Anne Haines explores the idea that "... our website serves as our front door for a rapidly increasing percentage of users, and it needs to be at least as welcoming, as professional, and as helpful as our physical entry points are."