Selected Links from the Internet Librarian 2011 Conference in Monterey, California

Conference information and access

• Conference program
• Videos of selected sessions (but beware of the ads), including the excellent keynotes by Lee Rainey and John Seeley Brown.
  (The other two keynotes are covered in blogs: Liz Lawley on Gamification and the Internet 2020 Trend Watch and Smackdown
• Selected presentation slides

Websites worth checking out

• Gary Price's Desert Island Databases
  Some highlights:
  • Document Cloud: Primary documents in the news. Current, free, full-text keyword searchable.
  • Journal Tables of Contents: Awareness tool; alerts.
  • lib-web-cats: Direct links to library catalogs worldwide.
  • Microsoft Academic Search: A growing resource, may have different content than Google Scholar, and has value-added features.
  • morgueFile: Freely available images (check it out despite the name).
• Cost-effective recommendations from Marcy Phelps, including the frequently updated Directory of U.S. government portals.
• Qwiki: Not always on the mark, but an interesting on-the-fly video creation on whatever topic you search for.
• Doing Business: From the World Bank, information organized by "economy" (by country).
• 20th Century American Leaders Database: Maintained by Harvard, biographical information in the context of the era.
• According to Gary Price, the CSPAN Video Library is the most important research tool to come online for historical research. Every word ever spoken on CSPAN, keyword searchable.
• Lots of great ideas emerged from the Great Web Tools Face-Off:
  • Overview and amusing photos
  • Web tools served up by the Red Team
  • Web tools doled out by the Blue Team

Search engines that aren't Google

• Metasearch engines
  • Zuula.com: One search box; results in different browsers via separate tabs.
  • Make your own Google Custom Search.
  • Blekko.com: Use "slashtags" to customize search; a different database than Google or Bing. View demo here.
• Wolfram-Alpha: Great for calculations, fast facts. View demo here.
• DuckDuckGo: Unfiltered search results; no personalization. "Zero-click" info.

Readings recommended by IL 2011 speakers

• Mary Ellen Bates conducted an experiement to observe how Google filters our search results. Read about it on her blog.
• James Werle argued that high-performance broadband is essential for libraries of the future.
  He encouraged everyone to read Connections, Capacity, Community: Exploring Potential Benefits of Research and Education Networks for Public Libraries.

Opportunities for advocacy

• Library Renewal: Provides a community space for orking toward innovative solutions by, for, and with libraries.
• unglue.it: "Pledge drives" for books. Crowd-sourced fundraising pays authors and publishers, freeing popular content for all.