BBC Languages is fantastic web resource provided by the British Broadcasting Corporation, and is filled with audio language resources.  These include 12-week beginning lessons, a Quick Fix section containing “essential phrases”, and teacher’s resources.

found via Librarian in Black

So you are an author.  You check your book’s entry on Amazon.com.  You see a review.  It is not good.  Someone bought a copy of your book and it was flawed.  You want to make it right.

What do you do?  You promise the reviewer that you will send a good copy via overnight delivery.  Then you realize that it is Christmas Eve, the reviewer lives in Ontario, Canada, you live in Ohio, and there is a massive snowstorm between the two locations.  The delivery services cannot deliver, bookstores are closed, and time is running out.

Then what do you do?

Perhaps what Whittenberg University professor Dan Fleisch did : You deliver it yourself.

via LISNews

I will definitely be attending the One Big Library Unconference next month in Toronto! I am enthusiastic about this, as it has been nearly a year since I have attended a conference, and I have been very curious about the unconference format. Having worked with Reaching Forward South for a few years, experiencing a participant-organized conference will be a big change.

This (un)conference is, partly because of it’s broad theme, a close fit for much of what fascinates me these days. Unstated, but implied, is the idea that the larger and more distinguished libraries need to join the tiny, underfunded community and special libraries in a way that the world as a whole can benefit. This is a challenging concept, and one that will strongly shape the library world in years to come.

Oh, yes… they’re in Facebook, too.

Geonames is an online database of places.  Type in the name of a place, be it a town, city, geographic feature, or landmark, and you get a list of places with that name.

Want to know how many places in Colorado have the name Illinois?  Or whether Anytown really exists?  This is your resource!

The Advanced Search allow you to limit your searches by feature and continent.

from TechCrunch

Last summer I visited Daytona Beach in Florida. One of the many interesting places I visited was the Ponce de Leon Light Station at Mosquito Inlet.

They had an example of one of the “libraries” that were used by those who worked in the lighthouse service, which was essentially a wooden box filled with a variety of reading material. Supply boats would exchange the box for another with different books about every three months.

I thought I’d share a few of photos:

Neighboroo is one of the many mashups that exist using the Google Maps as the user interface.   What Neighboroo does is  give you a visual geographic layout of a variety of statistics, while doing a great job explaining those stats, and highlighting them by specific location.

Go to your chosen location, run through the categories, and see what I mean….

from Monkey Bites

Described as “Your Source for Business Knowledge”, GlobalEdge has profiles of 197 countries which include currency converters, articles and essays on a variety of topics, and an Academy section designed to let instructors to use this site as part of their classes.

This is a good addition to the CIA’s World Factbook site as a souce for international information.

from ResouceDesk

An interesting twist to the searching for airfare sites is Farecast, which maps up to one month worth of flights between selected cities to show how costs will vary based on the dates selected for travel.

Select the “Flexible Search” tab and select two cities to get started…

from ResourceShelf