aclJohn's Research/Reference Finds

The State of Wikipedia explores the rich history and inner-workings of the web-based encyclopedia and celebrates its 10th anniversary.

With more than 17 million articles in over 270 languages, Wikipedia has become one of the most visited and relied upon sites on the web today.

The video below features none other than one of the co-founders, Jimmy Wales, as the narrator.

Also available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXD1TRGafQ0.

A big thank you to Lauren Jackson for her feedback on the eMagazine (feedback is always welcome) and for her sharing this resource. In Lauren's words...

"As a thank you, I thought I would pass along this additional resource I have been using as well in case you were looking to add more to your page. I have been using material from this page, http://www.guidetoonlineschools.com/library/humanities. It has a ton of great humanities resources that you and your users may find useful! " ...

A colleague asked Chrissie (Turkington) a little while ago about the use of the Amazon Kindle eReader within academic libraries. They'd heard that there may be legal issues surrounding it's use and the use of digital content purchased from Amazon.co.uk and the UK Kindle Store.

So, Chrissie got in touch with Amazon Customer Services:

"If a library had purchased Kindle readers using their own account for loaning (on a non-commercial basis) to borrowers, are they licensed to also perm...

Why scrap a perfectly useful catalogue system if it will work with the latest advancements?

Dewey Digger is an interesting attempt to catalogue the web according to the Dewey Decimal System.

To use Dewey Digger just...

• click on a Dewey Decimal category;
• select a topic in that category; Dewey Digger presents twenty-seven sources of information;
• Click on any of the provided sources to see...
  • articles;
  • videos; and
  • images on your chosen topic.

Dewey Digger could be a nic...

Dulcinea Media, host of the academic search engine Sweet Search <http://www.sweetsearch.com/>, has a new free offering for family learning and other practitioners and learners called Sweet Search 2 Day.

Sweet Search 2 Day is a one page stop for good, up to date, web content for...

• history,
  
• language arts,
  
• science,
  
• news,
  
• culture and
  
• other topics.

Visitors to Sweet Search 2 Day will find engaging content, cartoons and image galleries, that are safe for learning envi...

Google Image Swirl is an image search tool intended to help users visually refine and alter their searches for images.

To use Image Swirl...

• enter search term;the results of the search will be displayed in a grid similar to that with which users are probably familiar.

• Click any image in the grid and a 'swirl' of more, related, images will appear

• Click an image in the swirl and another swirl of images will appear etc., until a single image is located.

On the iFaceSearch homepage users will...

• find a text bar;
• enter the name;and
• Click on the "Let's Search" button...

A percentage of the search results will be irrelevant as there is more than one person with a given name.

Note: iFaceSearch can display the data in four views:

• Image Flow,
  
• Classic,
  
• HD, or
  
• Low-res.
  

Users can se...

TinEye is a reverse image search engine.

Users can upload an image to TinEye to...

• find out where it came from;
• how it is being used;
• if modified versions of the image exist; or
  
• find higher resolution versions

TinEye claims to be the first image search engine on the web to use image identification technology rather than keywords, metadata or watermarks; it is free to use for non-commercial searching.