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NetLibrary’s August eBook of The Month:
Frommer's Irreverent Guide to Manhattan

NetLibrary has selected Frommer’s Irreverent Guide to Manhattan as its August eBook of the Month. Written by Ethan Wolff and published by Wiley Publishing Inc., the Irreverent Guide to Manhattan provides the straight scoop on attractions like the Empire State Building, as well as the skinny on new hotspots such as the sleek “neo-lounges” on the Lower East Side.

The guidebook provides insider tips such as big-name restaurants that live up to the hype, hip boutiques and shops, and the best clubs for catching cutting-edge bands.

Each month, NetLibrary, together with leading publishers, selects a new featured title and provides unlimited access to the eBook through the home pages of more than 12,000 public, academic and special libraries that offer NetLibrary eBooks.

Learn more about NetLibrary’s eBook of the Month

Do weblogs belong in libraries?

Is a library Web site the right place to host a weblog? Are weblogs simply another trendy tool for those with time to spare and something to say?

This news article in Ariadne magazine describes how weblogs are routinely used by children at Hangleton Junior School in Hove, Sussex; a project that has been so successful it has been shortlisted for a New Statesman New Media Award - an annual award for best Web development in the UK. The children, some as young as seven, participate in an after-school weblogging club, and as a result their knowledge of IT has improved beyond that expected of their age group, and literacy levels have also risen. The children use weblogs to explore subjects that interest them.

Read the article

VRD Conference: November 8-9 in Cincinnati, Ohio

The leading professional conference dedicated to the rapidly changing field of reference systems, standards and practice, the 2004 Virtual Reference Desk Conference will be held November 8-9 at the historic Hilton Netherland Plaza hotel in Cincinnati, Ohio.

“Digital reference and this conference have already changed librarianship and we’re excited to see where the community is going next,” says R. David Lankes, director of the Information Institute of Syracuse and the VRD Project. “The VRD Conference has become an exciting annual brainstorming session and the event to be at in the field.”

Announcement
VRD conference Web site

OCLC welcomes the following new member libraries

Canadian University College
Location: Lacombe, Alberta, Canada
OCLC Symbol: CN4X3
OCLC Network: OCLC Canada

Montana Bible College
Location: Bozeman, Montana, USA
OCLC Symbol: MTBCL
OCLC Network: OCLC Western Service Center

Charles B. Phillips Public Library District
Location: Newark, Illinois, USA
OCLC Symbol: ILCBP
OCLC Network: ILLINET

Membership guidelines and protocols

WorldCat update

Every 12 seconds an OCLC member library adds a new record to WorldCat, which contains more than 56 million records representing 931,482,873 holding locations as of August 7, 2004. Every 4 seconds an OCLC member library fills an interlibrary loan request using WorldCat, which has supported 137,676,176 interlibrary loan requests as of August 7, 2004. A library user searches WorldCat using the OCLC FirstSearch service every second.

See the latest WorldCat record

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