New Web Resources From Google and More

We are all pretty familiar with Google as a search engine, Google Maps, and Gmail. Not too long ago I did an article on Google Book. I'm certainly not Google's biggest fan; but I have to hand it to them, they have come out with a lot of nice products for all of us to use. You can see what's really new at Google Labs or look at some of the other services that they've already passed through their testing.

The library is using several of the Google services to inform and aid our patrons. Since last February we have been using blogger. Over the summer we moved our links over to Google custom search so that everyone could search the links by a keyword rather than by going through a list of links that may or may not have the information they need. Our custom search is available on the Research Center page of our website and was just added to the sidebar of our blog. Susan, our reference librarian, continues to add sites to our search engine as she finds useful websites for various subject areas. There is also a calendar that Google makes available. Look for this one on our site in the future. It's all ready to go, but for one little problem. The times we enter for the programs are moving to an hour earlier when we go to publish the calendar on our website. Once we get past that little problem we'll post it on our site so you can see programs, sign-up dates, library closures, etc. all on one calendar that will automatically remove past events for us. We use these tools for library needs, but each service has so many uses. If you need them for personal, family or business use; you'll find a lot of options available on Google. I love that we can use so many of these tools to enhance our website without spending a load of money to do it. There are so many more that we don't use, but that you may find very useful. Take a few minutes to see what they've got and what it can do for you.

On a side note, we have one more upcoming web service to keep your eyes out for. Soon we will post a link to our del.icio.us account. Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking web service that allows anyone to compile a list of links and categorize them by the subjects that make sense to them. The service also lets you know how popular a specific link is by how many of the del.icio.us users have bookmarked the page. Once our account is posted you'll see that some of our links are not yet very popular on del.icio.us, but remember, that doesn't mean it won't be helpful. Some of my favorite reference sites for adult fiction series had very low numbers, but they are very, very useful when I'm trying to find out what order a series should be read in or if a book is even part of a series. If you want a sneak peak at the links on our del.icio.us account just click here and take a look. It will be similar to our Google custom search, but you will search a little differently. You can only pull-up links if you use the same keyword we did. For this reason it is easier to scan through the keywords at the side to find links closest to your search. It does give another option in how to search for information. There are things I like about del.icio.us and things I like about the Google Custom Search, but you'll have to decide what you prefer. We'll let you know when we've posted our del.icio.us account.

What fun tools do you like on the web? Recommend them to us and other blog readers by making a comment.

Elizabeth