Hurt McDermott has just published an intriguing book about an early 20th c. magician and card shark in Chicago who insisted on keeping his identity secret. Love Chicago? History? Magic? Buy Artifice, Ruse & Erdnase: The Search for One Who May Not Want to Be Found today!
Tag Archives: Books
Meet the author at Crowell Library in San Marino
Meet Irene McDermott and pick up a copy of The Internet Book of Life: Use the Web to Grow Richer, Smarter, Healthier, and Happier at a Crowell Public Library meet the author event Sept. 6 at 7 p.m.
Author Irene McDermott to speak about and sign The Internet Book of Life
Tuesday, September 6, 2011, 7 p.m.
Crowell Public Library
1890 Huntington Drive
San Marino, CA 91108
You are a working parent and you use the Internet occasionally for email and Facebook. You know that there are quality Web resources available for free that can really help you and your family. But who has time to find and evaluate them?
The Internet Book of Life is your shortcut to these treasures. Written by a working mother and front line reference librarian, The Internet Book of Life is a guide to web sites and mobile phone apps that help real people make wise decisions in so many aspects of modern living: everything from saving money, to getting homework done, to just feeling happier.
Each chapter addresses real-life family dilemmas such as whether and how to fix the car, how to find the best price for baby diapers, and even how to find a clinical trial that might save a life.
As the country climbs out of recession, this comprehensive guide to free Web services is especially welcome. It is the lively, indispensable reference that finds a home next to every household computer…or Web-enabled cell phone!
IRENE E. McDERMOTT gains insight about the web from her daily front-line experience as reference librarian and systems manager at the Crowell Public Library in San Marino, California. She writes about her discoveries in her column, “Internet Express,” which has appeared in Searcher magazine since 1997. The second edition of her book, The Librarian’s Internet Survival Guide was published by Information Today in 2006.
The Internet Book of Life is now available on Kindle!
Download it today in this handy Kindle format.
Proofread pages for Project Gutenberg.
Since 1971, Project Gutenberg has devoted itself to digitizing books in the public domain, that is, those published before 1923. At first, volunteers transcribed books, retyping them into computers. Now, machines capture text via optical character recognition (OCR.) But these texts contain errors that are best caught by human eyes.
Here’s where you come in. Register at Project Gutenberg to compare the scanned text to the image of a page. “Once all the pages have completed these steps, a post-processor carefully assembles them into an e-book…and submits it to the Project Gutenberg archive.” Project Gutenberg invites us all to join them in “preserving the literary history of the world in a freely available form for everyone to use.”
Read eBooks from the Google store
Google is not selling eReaders but is going in big to the eBook market. Here, find over 3 million eBooks at prices comparable with Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Plus, Google eBooks freely presents all pre-1923 titles and several-page samples of many current works. The Google eBooks format is compatible with almost all eReaders except Kindle.
Kobo is a low-cost eReader from Canada
The site of the new, low-cost Canadian eReader Kobo, which debuted in 2010 for about $140, promises that there are free eBooks to be borrowed from the local public library. Kobo, Inc., a company hatched by partners Indigo Books & Music, Borders Group, REDgroup Retail, and Cheung Kong Holdings in 2009, had a budget eReader ready for sale by the following year.
The Kobo eReader runs on Adobe Digital Editions, or ADE. It can indeed read files from libraries that subscribe to Overdrive or NetLibrary. It downloads eBook files from computers or over the wireless internet.
Kobo also offers free apps for all Apple devices, and Android and Blackberry smart phones, which transforms them into de facto Kobo eReaders. At this time, Kobo only supports English text. It is one of the only eReaders available in Canada.
Librivox reads you the classics for free!
Students: Do you have to read a book for school but just can’t get through it? Don’t read: listen! Librivox records books in the public domain (mainly, those published before 1923) and puts them up on the internet for free downloads. They are also available as iTunes podcasts. Queue up your Huckleberry Finn or Uncle Tom’s Cabin, then listen while you work around the house or go for a long drive.
Search all libraries at the same time with WorldCat.
Why buy when you can borrow? If an item is held in any of over 10,000 libraries around the globe, it will appear in the WorldCat online library catalog. Search for a book or a movie and then punch in your zip code. WorldCat will list the libraries near you that own the item and then link you through to the local library catalog of your choice. Browse WorldCat on your mobile phone browser [www.worldcat.org/m/]. Andriod smartphone users can download the free WorldCat app from this site. iPhone owners can scan a book barcode with the $.99 RedLaser app. It will use WorldCat data to find that book in a nearby library.
http://www.worldcat.org/
Find full-text classics online at Online Books Page
It’s all about text, baby. John Mark Ockerbloom, a digital library planner and researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, created and maintains this definitive, searchable directory to books freely readable over the Web. Nothing new here, because he only links to full text in the public domain, that is, books published before 1923. On the other hand, you can pull up a copy of any classic you might need. Search by author, title, or Library of Congress subject heading. Find your Chekhov, Mark Twain, and Edith Wharton here!
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu
The Internet Book of Life 