State of America's Libraries- report from ALA

Released in April 2007, The State of America’s Libraries report from the American Library Association offers users a wealth of information about current trends over the past year. Within the 19-page report visitors will learn that investment in e-books at academic and research libraries rose 68 percent from 2002 to 2004 and that school library media centers were hard hit by funding cuts in 2006. The report contains a number of charts that track library use over the past year and the different types of materials contained within the nation’s libraries. Moving on, the report also contains brief summaries of the expansion of Google’s book digitization project and scholarships awarded to minority librarians. Overall, it is an impressive report, and one that will be of great interest to those interested in the policy issues surrounding libraries and those working in the fields of library and information science.

Google Universal and New Navigation

At Google’s Searchology event on May 16, 2007, Google announced several major changes at the search engine, all of which have now begun to appear in Google results. The introduction of universal search, a new universal navigation bar, contextual navigation links, more related search suggestions, experimental search, and cross-language searching may not jump out to the casual searcher. Yet the aggregate effect of these changes is one of the more substantial rewrites that Google has done. http://newsbreaks.infotoday.com/nbReader.asp?ArticleId=36281