by Fallon Bleich, Senior Assistant for and former Head Editor of, INALJ Arkansas
previously published 3/18/13
4 Sites That Every Librarian Should Know and Show
I’m a giant techie and love discovering new sites and sharing them. As a librarian in training, it is even more fun to share the findings with patrons. Below are some of my favorite, absolutely FREE websites that every librarian should not only learn and love, but should also show their patrons:
- Duolingo (http://duolingo.com/) – Duolingo is my favorite find of 2012. It is a Crowdsourcing website that teaches you a new language while also working to translate real-world content from the Internet. They started with some of the basic languages and over the past few months have slowly added new ones. I’ve had a lot of fun just learning a new language, but it is also a great feeling to be helping with something bigger.
- Coursera (https://www.coursera.org/) – Coursera is a site that is full of college level courses that cost nothing to take. What’s more, they are classes taught by real professors from schools across the country, including Ivy League schools. The classes cover a wide range of topics (including some that are perfect for librarians to be) and the site is extremely easy to use.
- YourNextRead.com (http://yournextread.com/us/#) – Your Next Read is amazing. It takes Reader’s Advisory to the next level and creates spider webs of book suggestions, when you put in a book title, author, etc. I highly recommend this for personal use, but I’ve shown a few friends, as well, and they love it.
- (As of late 2013, special note this site is now closed. You can see old versions on the Wayback Machine) Small Demons (https://www.smalldemons.com/) – Reason #599 you should go to conferences: sometimes you get shown brand new things, like this website here. Small Demons is a site that I was shown during ALA Annual 2012 and it is essentially a social media for books, people, places, and things. It links all of those things together, so if you wanted a list of all of the books that take place in Los Angeles or all of the books that mention Freda Kahlo, this would be the site to go to.