Delicious - Get your booksmarks anywhere

Do you use more than one computer to access the internet? Ever wish you could synchronize the bookmarks on these various computers?

Delicious is the tool for you. You save your bookmarks to this free online service and once you log on you can access them from any computer. Use it as a search engine too. Search the database of all Delicious users' bookmarks to find new resources and tools.

Plus, if you find a Delicious user who list many useful tools and resources in your area, you may follow him/her and know when a new bookmark is added.

Philosophy and Innovation at the TED conference

TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is a conference bringing together people from these three worlds. "The annual conference now brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes)." It also brings innovated people to discuss their current projects, some of them very practical. View some of the major speech at the TED site.

Use Doodle for scheduling a meeting

Ever try to schedule a meeting with a couple or several people? You get emails and calls sent back and forth and it gets confusing. Well, Doodle.com "makes it easy to find a date and time for a group event. This free online coordination tool does not requires either registration or software installation." It is easy to set up and coordinate a meeting.

Compare Nations by Statistics

NationMaster.com allows users to build charts that measure and compare countries on a wide range of information, everything from "Most Taxed" to "Cotton Production." In fact, there are some 4,350 stats available for exploration, culled from sources including the CIA World Factbook, the World Health Organization, UNESCO, the United Nations and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. In addition to being informative, the site is a lot of fun to browse. -- review from Harvard Business School

Library also subscribes to OECD Economic Surveys (NSU only). OECD Economic Survey provide in-depth reviews of Member countries' economies and selected non-Member countries. A minimum eighteen surveys are issued during a calendar year. Each issue provides a solid analysis of developments in the subject country, special reports on topics of current interest, and extensive statistical information. All surveys are full text searchable and available in PDF format.

$150 student essay contest

In conjunction with the Alexander Mitchell Public Library’s “All-Aberdeen Reads” program, the Williams Library is sponsoring an essay contest. The public library has chosen the book, This I Believe: Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women. The book is a collection of essays from the NPR show This I Believe. The Williams Library student essay contest will culminate with the ten finalists reading their essays on April 7, 7pm. Judges will select the winners (first, second and third places). Contest Details

William Library presents: Big Read - Egypt

The Williams Library is participating in the Big Read: Egypt program sponsored by the South Dakota Humanities Council (SDHC). The book selected for the program is The Thief and the Dogs by Naguib Mahfouz. Mahfouz won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988.

• SDHC has provided the library with 30 copies* of the book for the NSU community to check out (three week periods). Stop by the library and get a copy. Let your students know about the program.
• On March 24, the library will host a program.

The Program:

• When: March 24
• Time: 7pm
• Where: Williams Library
• About: Professor Pen Pearson will lead the book and literature discussion. Assistant Professor Raouf Zaidan, an Egyptian, will speak on the cultural/political background of the book and author. This insight will provide not only a better understand of the book, but also of modern Egypt. He will also read excerpts in Arabic.

*The books will be returned to SDHC.
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The South Dakota Center for the Book, a program of the South Dakota Humanities Council (SDHC), has coordinated THE BIG READ for three years. For the 2008 - 2009 program cycle, SDHC is hosting The Big Read Egypt. This is a new initiative of The Big Read program designed to deepen and broaden cultural understanding through literature.

THE BIG READ is an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services designed to revitalize the role of literature in American culture and bring the transformative power of literature into the lives of its citizens. The Big Read brings together partners across the country to encourage citizens to read for pleasure and enlightenment.

Friendly US Government contracts database

USAspending.gov is a new web site that houses a database of US Government contract to private businesses. The Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 (Transparency Act) requires a single searchable website, accessible by the public for free that includes for each Federal award:

1. the name of the entity receiving the award;
2. the amount of the award;
3. information on the award including transaction type, funding agency, etc;
4. the location of the entity receiving the award;
5. a unique identifier of the entity receiving the award.

Select Contracts to perform a search. Export the data in .csv or .xml.

Isn't more transparency good?

2009 Horizon Report - Education & Technology

The annual Horizon Report is a collaborative effort between the New Media Consortium (NMC) and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI). Each year, the report identifies and describes six areas of emerging technology likely to have a significant impact on teaching, learning, or creative expression in higher education within three adoption horizons: a year or less, two to three years, and four to five years.

The areas of emerging technology cited for 2009 are:

• Mobiles (i.e., mobile devices)
• Cloud computing
• Geo-everything (i.e., geo-tagging)
• The personal web
• Semantic-aware applications
• Smart objects

European Culture online

Europeana is a "virtual European library, aiming to make Europe's cultural and scientific resources accessible for all. It will build on Europe's rich heritage, combining multicultural and multilingual environments with technological advances and new business models." It currently has 2 million items and plans to have 10 million by the end of 2009.

The database includes records from the major European libraries and museums. You will find digitized versions of original works (books, art, sheet music, audio, and more). For example, Mozart's sheet music, Da Vinci's works, photos from North Pole expeditions, etc. Most records directly link you to the item's home museum or library web site.

Great tool for citing works and formatting papers

How would you like a tool that automatically formats your citations and your paper as you write it? EndNote Web is such a tool. This web-based tool is a place to collect citations from articles, books, magazine, etc. and make personal notes. You may take this collection and export a bibliography in your prefered citation style (e.g. MLA, APA, CBE, Chicago).

The MS Word plugin, Cite While You Write, will format your paper as you write. Login to EndNote Web, select your preferred citation style, and start writing. When you need to cite a work, select it from your EndNote Web library and the work is cited in-text and place automatically in the bibliography. If you need to change the style, you do not need to rewrite the paper, just pick the new style and the paper and bibliography will be reformatted automatically. This plugin is already loaded on the computers on the first floor of the library.

MORE information on the library citation page.