Google Books

I was browsing around on one of my favorite sites this morning – Lifehacker - and a came upon a piece about Google Books now offering full-text magazines. Wow – what a find! A few of the titles I saw; Popular Mechanics, Jet, Ebony Jr., New York, Baseball Digest, Vegetarian Times, Popular Science, American Cowboy and Black World (1960’s and 1970s editions).

Go to Google Book Search and just hit the refresh button in your browser. New titles will appear with each refresh.

Once you select a title, the magazine will come up and you can scroll through the issue. On the right side of the screen is a link to Browse All Issues.  I spent some time browsing through American Cowboy; a magazine I have never even heard of, as I’ve always been an urban-girl. It was fascinating. Even the ads are Cowboy-related.

I love browsing through magazines – and now Google Books has given me a fun, easy and free way to do this!  Check it out. – Jill

Web Site Maintenance

I spent most of the morning working on the DCL website checking links, cleaning up old information and updating our A to Z  Guide.  As the webmaster I spend a whole lot of time on our website, but I’m usually fixing things. Today I really spent time going through all of our links and it occurs to me that we have some really GREAT information on our website.

We have your typical informational stuff to help you use the library, but we also have some wonderful content that has been created by our staff. Our reading lists our full of treasures, we even have lists for teens and kids. Our online resources are amazing! Information in there covers everything from car repair, learning a foreign language, practice tests for SATs, help finding a job, consumer and financial information.  It is worth your time to just browse through the list and select the different resources to see what they offer.

We have an up-to-date list of new acquisitions in the AV category and our North Carolina Collection is FULL of wonderful pictures and stories about Durham.

So, take some time and browse through our website.  I’m sure you will be pleasantly surprised by all of the excellent content our staff has compiled. — Jill