The OLD Top Shelf

I’m a little slow getting this posted – there’s lots going on. Hope you enjoy these sites and find them useful. They were selected by Marylaine Block for her Neat New Stuff I Found This Week site at http://marylaine.com/neatnew.html.

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 19th Century Schoolbooks

http://digital.library.pitt.edu/n/nietz/

Searchable full texts of 142 American textbooks of the 19th century offer insights into what 19th century American students were taught about history, arithmetic, art, geography, and other topics.

 

•  100 Things To Do with Google Maps Mashups – gmapsmania http://gmapsmania.googlepages.com/100thingstodowithgooglemapsmashups

I believe that the future of reference service lies not in finding information, but in helping people understand it through visualization.

These Google Maps mashups demonstrate things like finding wi-fi hotspots, a public toilet, world hostels, webcams, etc., and tracking packages or US or Canadian flights in real time.

 

•  Access Newspaper Archive Institutional Version http://access.newspaperarchive.com/InvalidIP.aspx

“a new program that gives public libraries and K-12 schools around the world FREE access to NewspaperARCHIVE.com’s historical newspaper database. Students and library patrons can browse tens of millions of newspaper pages in our archive for free through your institution. This free version of Access NewspaperARCHIVE will allow users to view, save and print full-page newspapers dating from 1759 to 1977.” For obvious reasons, I wasn’t able to try this out, but it certainly seems worth the effort for school media specialists to download the application form and send it in.

 

•  Ballot Box

http://governing.typepad.com/ballotbox/

If you can’t get enough political news and analysis, check out this new politics blog from the experts at Governing.com who routinely track federal, state and local government.

 

•  Build a Network, Not a Destination – Readership Institute http://www.readership.org/blog2/2007/04/build-network-not-destination.html

This advice for news media on building websites that attract and retain readers would apply equally well to libraries’ websites.

 

•  Butterfly Lab

http://www.naturemuseum.org/online/thebutterflylab/index.htm

Lots of information, pictures and diagrams on butterflies and their anatomy, life cycle, behavior, and interdependence. Browsable by species.

Includes an Ask the Expert feature and suggested activities.

 

•  Government Information Online – Ask a Librarian http://govtinfo.org/ Sometimes the answers you need are only available in hard-to-find government publications, so if you don’t have a government documents librarian right at hand, you can use this “free national online information service supported by nearly thirty public, academic, and state libraries throughout the United States. Participating librarians specialize in finding government information sources of all kinds, and will try to answer your questions through chat or email.”

 

•  Hairstylesdesign.com

http://www.hairstylesdesign.com/

The hairstyle galleries may help you find young men and women find a great hairdo before a visit to the stylist. Choose from men’s or women’s, short, medium, or long, formal or celebrity styles. Also check out galleries from Oscar and MTV award shows. There’s not much here for older customers, though.

 

•  The Industry Standard

http://www.thestandard.com/

If you were in on the early heady days of the world wide web, you were almost certainly reading The Industry Standard for the latest news. It folded as a print publication, but still exists online here, as a source of industry news and predictions.

 

•  Movie Toolbox: 85+ Tools and Resources for Movie Fans http://mashable.com/2007/09/16/movie-toolbox/

Includes online catalogs, recommendation engines, master indexes, encyclopedic sources, review sites, free streaming video sites, and more.

 

•  Online Collections from the Wisconsin Historical Museum http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/museum/collections/online/

The online collections provide hundreds of images of Children’s Clothing, Needlework Samplers, Quilts, Moccasins, and Dolls.

 

•  Top 25 Web 2.0 Search Engines

http://oedb.org/library/features/top-25-web20-search-engines

Engines that use Web 2.0 technologies to improve relevance. “Some offer functionality that’s slowly making its way into traditional search engines. Others further the attempt to traverse the invisible Web and index other previously unsearchable research sources.”

 

 

 

Copyright, Marylaine Block, 1999-2008.

 

 

A six-months archive is available on the web site.

 

 

 

The wiki appears to be the presentation tool of choice at TCEA this year. This session also featured a wiki to point you toward its resources.

Presenters: Dr. Mary Ann Bell, Dr. Holly Weimar, Sam Houston State University

Many teachers and librarians have not had time to explore web 2.o tools. Blogs are familiar, but other tools are not.

Web 1.0 = presented information to users

Web 2.0 = users can add their own information

ABCs of Web 2.0
gives a little more detail into what Web 2.0 is. My favorites are P -participation required and U – users are what drive the web!

How can librarians in teachers learn about Web 2.o in a filtered environment? Districts are starting to allow access to some Web 2.0 tools and using them with students.

Start out by being a blog reader. Can subscribe to blogs via e-mail, but a better way is to use a blog aggregator.

Before starting a blog, know what you will do with it and be able to commit time to it. Regular posts are required.

Another way to start is by opening a Google account and using all of the tools they have to offer.

When you’re comfortable with blogs, you might move on to wikis or join a ning, which is a community of like-minded people.

Try out a web 2.0 tutorial, like MISD’s Learning Through Play.

Some great new tools are VoiceThread and Twitter. Twitter is like blogging meets instant messaging. You can follow other Twitter users and keep up with their new ideas. Twitter posts can be no longer than 140 characters.

Other fun and free web 2.0 sites are featured at Knock Your Socks Off.

Web 2.0 organizational tools:
Ta-da list
43 Things
Remember the Milk