See You January 3, 2006

The library staff will be on winter break until January 3, 2006. Have a happy holiday season and be sure to join us again early next year.

2005 Guide Book to Gift Books

The annual annotated list of books for children put together by the staff at the Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books is available now for $3.50 as a download or in print. Go to http://bccb.lis.uiuc.edu/gb2/ to find more details.

A Fish Story

The Chicago Tribune has an interesting series called "The Mercury Menace" running this week. There are print copies in the library and you can see the story online at http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/specials/broadband/chi-mercury-htmlstory,0,3799369.htmlstory

What kind of canned tuna is safe to eat -- albacore, yellowfin, or skipjack? How can you tell whether or not it is safe? Can you tell from the label?

Check out the story and see the acceptable quantities per week per person of various kinds of fish.

The online version has a good podcast to listen to, so make sure your volume is turned up so you can hear it.

Image Resizer and other Microsoft PowerToys

There are free downloads of "power toys," programs developers write to provide fun
and useful applications after a product is released. Here are a few for Windows XP.

Image Resizer -- will reduce the size of picture files sent as e-mail attachments or will
enlarge pictures for bigger prints
HTML Slide Show Wizard -- will help you create a slide show of your digital
pictures ready for a web page
CD Slide Show Generator -- view images burned to a CD as a slide show
Taskbar Magnifier -- enlarge part of the computer screen from the taskbar
SyncToy -- helps you copy, move, and synchronize directories from cell phones,
PDA's, laptops, camcorders, digital cameras, etc.

Read about these downloads at
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx

Working With and Sharing Photos Online

Walter S. Mossberg, my favorite technology guru, has written an article titled "Free Kodak Software Helps Find, Organize, Fix and Share Photos" in The Wall Street Journal, Dec.8, 2005 issue for his "Personal Technology" column, available online at http://ptech.wsj.com/. The product is called EasyShare and works both on Windows and Mac computers and with any digital camera.

So, if you are hoping for a digital camera for Christmas or have one with lots of pictures you need to organize or share with friends, go to http://www.kodak.com/eknec/PageQuerier.jhtml?pq-path=130&pq-locale=en_US and download this free software.

Online Social Networks

Are you keeping up with "where" your students are spending their time online? Take a look at the December 12, 2005 issue of Business Week and the article called "The MySpace Generation" by Jessi Hempel, pp. 86 --96. You will find information about three hot sites for students that illustrate how they live, buy, and play online and how "their power is growing.
Facebook.com began as a way for college students to connect
(4.2 million users; 2.4 million are 12 -- 24 years old)
MySpace.com was started as free Web space for independent musicians
(20.6 million users, 9.2 million are 12 -- 24 years old)
Xanga.com began using message-board technology to let beginning writers publish work
(6.4 million users; 3.2 million are 12 -- 24 years old

Social networking online is BIG. How do we tap into this network? And how do we understand what students are saying with their sometimes indecipherable language? Try Webopedia's text messaging reference list for starters: http://www.webopedia.com/quick_ref/textmessageabbreviations.asp