The Best FREE Websites!

The American Library Association has put together its eleventh annual list of the best FREE reference websites for 2009. The current list contains 29 websites that the ALA has recognized as outstanding sites. Topics include presidents, careers, countries, the Bible, books, newspapers, health, scholarships, language, hiking, gardening, science, sports, and more!

Here are a few of my favorites from the list:

Title: Business & Human Rights Resource Centre

URL: http://www.business-humanrights.org/

This site is one of the fastest ways to find information about the exploitive practices of 4000 businesses worldwide, which would be difficult to locate by other means. Users can begin searching by company name, issue, country, or topic. Balanced coverage is provided via news, announcements, and special resources while providing responses from the accused companies. By making negative enterprise behavior more transparent, the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre may help stop companies’ human rights abuses.


Title: PDRhealth (TM)

URL: http://pdrhealth.com/

Drawing on the trusted Physicians' Desk Reference (PDR®), this site provides information for prescriptions drugs, over-the-counter medications, and herbals/supplements. Included are recommended dosage, side effects, possible food and drug reactions, and in many cases pictures to assist with drug identification. It also offers excellent overviews of numerous diseases and conditions, from kidney stones and migraines to teething and Cushing Syndrome. And there is even of listing of clinical trials, searchable by region and illness, for those living with cancer or rare diseases.

Title: Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL)
URL: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/

The Writing Lab at Purdue houses 200 free writing resources and instructional materials for students, teachers, and trainers. Included are formatting and style guides, grammar and mechanics, internet literacy, ESL, job search and technical writing, and research. There are sections geared to writing for specific disciplines (e.g. experimental report writing in psychology) and forms (e.g. writing about poetry).


Title: Sports Reference

URL: http://www.sports-reference.com/

This valuable resource provides statistics for four major sports: baseball, football, basketball, and hockey, and each sport’s section is browsable and searchable in many ways. Baseball aficionados will find regular season box scores back to 1957 along with minor league stats back to 1992. Football lovers can look up draft picks and review single season and career leaders in passing, rushing, and kicking. Basketball devotees can find the top performers and award winners of the NBA and WNBA. Hockey enthusiasts will be able to find all players who wore the sweater number 25. With all of this and an additional section focused on Olympics history, Sports Reference hits the ball out of the park!

http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/rusa/sections/mars/marspubs/marsbestfreewebsites/marsbestfree2009.cfm

**Since the Web is constantly changing, readers should note that these Web sites were as annotated on the date the member reviewed the site**

Freedom To Read

September 26 through October 3 is Banned Book Week but we are celebrating the Freedom to Read!

Banned Books Week is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read and the importance of the First Amendment. All of the books featured during the week have been targets of attempted bannings. The American Library Association recorded 513 challenges in 2008 but estimates that this reflects only 20-25% of actual incidents, as most challenges are never reported. Fortunately, while some books were banned or restricted, in a majority of cases the books were not banned, all thanks to the efforts of librarians, teachers, booksellers, and members of the community to retain the books in the library collections.

There are some great resources to check out to celebrate your freedom to read:

- RRPL Adult Services Read it or Weep blog discusses favorite banned books
- The ALA co-sponsors the Banned Books Week website that offers a wealth of information
- Check out the Interactive Google Map from the Banned Books Week website to see where all the challenges and bannings have occurred from 2007-2009. You might be surprised!

The 10 Most Challenged Books of 2008
- And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell
- His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman
- TTYL; TTFN; L8R, G8R (series) by Lauren Myracle
- Scary Stories (series) by Alvin Schwartz
- Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya
- The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
- Gossip Girl (series) by Cecily von Ziegesar
- Uncle Bobby's Wedding by Sarah S. Brannen
- The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
- Flashcards of My Life by Charise Mericle Harper

Stay Informed and Stay Healthy

Concerned about the swine flu? The following resources will help you stay prepared and up-to-date.

The Centers for Disease Control: The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is the best swine flu (H1N1 is the medical classification) resource on the Web. The site provides general information as well as audio and video resources and social media like widgets, podcasts, and social networking. It also provides fact sheets, scientific background on viruses and updated surveillance statistics.

The New York State Department of Health: The state health department site provides some of the best information available on the swine flu. It features data on current outbreaks, frequently asked questions about the flu, and tips on prevention. It’s a good resource even if you don’t live in New York.

Google Maps swine flu outbreak map: Created by biochemist Henry L. Niman, founder of Recombinomics, the swine flu outbreak map helps you find every known instance of the swine flu around the world. The map also provides information on the current state of the person with the flu. It will be continuously updated, so you can track it each day.

HealthMap: If you want to try out another map to see where the swine flu is heading, HealthMap is for you. It provides information from a variety of sources. And it maps all the known outbreaks of sicknesses ranging from the swine flu to Typhoid.

H1N1 Timeline: The H1N1 Timeline helps you determine where the flu is and where it's going. You can track where it started and get information about its progression.

Flu.gov: Your one stop resource for government information on H1N1 and other types of flu. The site includes information for parents, caregivers, businesses, and travelers among others.

United States National Library of Medicine: The Library of Medicine has a wealth of highly organized information on state, federal, and international levels.

By visiting our website, you can access even more resources on the right hand side of our home page including:

FREE Evidence Based Influenza Information

Swine Flu Fact Sheet

Ohio Swine Flu Newsletter

Make the OPTIMAL Impression

I want to introduce you to a fantastic career resource called OptimalResume. Rocky River Public Library has subscribed to OptimalResume, the leading online service to produce resumes, letters, store portfolio documents, receive interview training, perform self assessments and create video resumes. You can access your account anywhere, anytime!

You can use this website to:

• Manage an unlimited number of career documents from one central location.


• Create high-impact, interactive career materials based on your career goals.


• Share your credentials with your network on your own professional website and across social networking sites.

Check out all the great tools OptimalResume offers:

Resumes – build your resume from a high-quality sample or create your own. Portfolios - Online portfolios document your education, work samples, and skills. They are very useful for applying to jobs and training programs, demonstrating your transferable skills, and tracking your professional development. Portfolios are made up of projects that contain files and links. The portfolio builder supports many common document, image, audio and video file types.

Interview Prep - You control all aspects of your interview practice session, including the interview type, the number of questions, your response format, and the interviewer. This is a great way to practice your answers for an interview and become comfortable

Website Builder - You can create a customized website that includes a variety of professional documents, as well as links to your social networking profiles, like LinkedIn and Twitter. You can link viewers to your blog and add a professional photo. You can even keep your website confidential and allow only certain people to see it.

The Letter Builder - The letter builder combines expert advice and high-quality samples to help you create focused, targeted letters many opportunities. Cover letters are so important because they can provide an employer with a positive impression of you and your accomplishments.

Skill Assessment - If you are thinking of entering the workforce or changing careers, the skills assessment module is a great place to start. Skills assessments can help you identify and present your transferable skills and abilities to prospective employers and are especially helpful for creating targeted resumes and cover letters, and preparing for job interviews.

Video Resume - The video resume module makes it easy to introduce yourself and highlight your professional capabilities to prospective employers. There are two ways you can create your video resume. Option 1 is to create a short script for your video resume and to use the built-in teleprompter when recording. Option 2 is to skip creating a script and to begin recording your video resume immediately.

To access this amazing resource, visit our website at http://www.rrpl.org/. Click on ‘My Research’ at the top of our homepage. On the next page you'll find a link to the OptimalResume website.

Not Too Late To Pick Up a Beach Read

NPR listeners recently voted for their favorite top 100 Beach Reads of all time. The titles run from classics to the latest bestsellers. I know many of my favorites are listed. Why not check out the list and grab a good read? Summer will be over before you know it.

Better Than Google Biographies

Biography Reference Bank from WilsonWeb offers thousands of full-text biographies all in one easy-to-use database. Available from RRPL's website with your library card, BRB now offers the ability to hear a document or translate it into several different languages, even Chinese!

This new feature is especially useful for the visually impaired or non-English speakers. At the top of any biography you are viewing, there is a link to "Listen to Document." Click this, and a pop-up window will open showing the bio, with options to listen to it (you can download the audio also if you wish).

Download and Listen UP!!

Did you know that our OverDrive download serivce now has more iPod-friendly audiobooks? Just upgrade your OverDrive Media Console and your iPod will play the windows-based files.

Even if your not in to the latest bestsellers, there's plenty to pick from. Try one of the Freeway Guides to make your drive more productive:

Nailing the Job Interview

Confident Public Speaking

Effective Networking

For more information visit http://www.digiload.org/