We ran across a lovely site about pop-up and moveable books the other day. Someone at University of North Texas's libraries had a brilliant idea--not just to show the collection but to make the moveable books move--, did a whole lot of work, and gave it away to the world.
Then there are all those nice firm nuggets of information, from people whose job it is to get information out, but now they can deliver it to your desktop with no sweat; examples: the new food pyramid, some demographic info from the UN about large cities around the world, a guide from New York University to U. S. Federal Legal System Web-based Public Accessible Sources, newly released country profiles for Syria and Ethiopia at the Federal Research Division/Library of Congress Country Study site.
Then there's "4", a thoughtful essay from the blog of Thom Hickey, of OCLC Research, about deliveries to our doorstep (as opposed to our desktop). I read this a couple of months ago and am still thinking about it; and also thinking about the casual web-based miracle that I can find out what the net gods are thinking about...
The link for the popups came originally from Resource Shelf, and for the UN population site and Federal legal docs from LIS News. These two resources are, like the moveable books site, both professional efforts and also labors of love, from Gary Price and Blake Carver respectively. Other reliable sources for oh-look-what-nifty-tools-are-out-there are Tara Calishain's ResearchBuzz, and LII's New This Week.
Things are nearly as fizzy out there as they were in the early days of the Web (and before; remember gopher?). A lot of people are giving away what they love as fast as they can assemble the information about it, and we are the lucky beneficiaries.
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