The Friday Brain-teaser from xrefer. This week: The New EU. On 1 May 2004, ten new countries will join the European Union. They are: Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, the Slovak Republic (Slovakia), and Slovenia. Try to identify which of these countries is referred to by each of these clues. Answers here:

1. Germany invaded this country in September 1939 and it was partitioned between the Soviet Union and Germany
2. An island in the Mediterranean (capital: Nicosia), invaded by Turkey in 1974
3. Another Mediterranean island, where the apostle Paul was shipwrecked and bitten by a snake
4. It was part of Czechoslovakia until 1993 and its capital is Prague
5. Vilnius is its capital and largest city
6. Bartok and Kodaly were both composers from this country and collected its folk music
7. A republic on the Baltic Sea, its capital is Tallinn
8. Its language is sometimes called Lettish
9. This became a new nation in 1993 when it broke away from Czechoslovakia and became a separate republic. Its capital is Bratislava
10. A republic of the northwestern Balkan Peninsula, its capital is Ljubljana

The JISC, BBSRC AND EPSRC have announced funding of some £1m to establish a National Centre for Text Mining. The remit of the Centre, the first publicly funded centre in the world, is to contribute to the associated national and international research agenda, to establish a service for the wider academic community, and to make connections with industry

The April 26, 2004 update to LLRX.com is now available

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries have announce the launch of Milwaukee Neighborhoods: Photos and Maps 1885-1992. The collection presents 638 images of Milwaukee's neighborhoods from the Far Northwest Side to the Far South Side, providing a visual documentation of the development of the city

Shorlists for the CILIP Carnegie Medal and CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal have been announced

The draft of Release 2 of the COUNTER Code of Practice is now available for comment

WestCheck.com is West's premier citation research application on the Web that automatically extracts citations from a legal document or in a citations list you create manually

CrossRef(TM) has announced a new initiative that enables users to search the full text of high-quality, peer-reviewed journal articles, conference proceedings, and other resources covering the full spectrum of scholarly research from nine leading publishers. Called CrossRef Search, this new pilot program utilizes the collaborative environment of CrossRef, the reference-linking service for scholarly publishing, and Google(TM) search technologies

Eye-to-Eye - An e-newsletter dedicated to connecting Ingenta and its library communities - Issue 11 now available

The European Commission has announced details of the IST 2004 conference, 15-17 November 2004 in The Hague, Netherlands

For the celebration of World Press Freedom Day on 3 May, UNESCO has launched a new website providing background information on the events that are organized worldwide to celebrate the Day, including the main event entitled Support to Media in Violent Conflict and in Countries in Transition that takes place in Belgrade, Serbia Montenegro

TannerRitchie Publishing is the new home of what will become the largest publisher of rare and out of print historical sources and manuscripts, provided digitally in Adobe Reader (pdf) format on CD-ROM. They specialise in British History, especially Tudor and Stuart England, British Colonial history, Medieval history and Scottish medieval and early modern history. TannerRitchie's titles will also soon be available for download from their website. During 2004, they will begin publishing innovative conventional titles on history, law and literature aimed at a general and academic audience

Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large 4:6 (May 2004) is now available for downloading

The UK National Archives has a reference collection of 55,000 books, periodicals and directories on aspects of history (including local, family and military history), law, biography, genealogy and a wide range of reference material. Many publications relate to the documents held within the national archive itself. All Library holdings can now be found in a single, online catalogue

Librarians' Index to the Internet annual ten-question user survey now available

E-Resources: A Workshop for Front-Line Staff - 12 May 2004 - Kimberlin Library, De Montfort University (Leicester) - This event is aimed at Library Assistants and other front-line staff who wish to develop their knowledge and skills with electronic resources. Representatives from Gale, Proquest and the East Midlands JISC Regional Support Centre will be present to demonstrate Infotrac, KnowUK/Europe, SCRAN, the Education Image Gallery and the Resource Discovery Network

Colette Bryce has won top prize in the 2003 National Poetry Competition, beating more than 9,000 other entrants. The Derry-born poet will receive a £5,000 cheque at an awards ceremony in London on Friday for her winning effort, The Full Indian Rope Trick

ProQuest Information and Learning has acquired Reading A-Z, the award-winning publisher of K-5 reading resources. Reading A-Z offers extensive and affordable reading resources for educators, parents, and home-school families worldwide by delivering downloadable, printable books, and other resources over the Internet

ScienceDirect has announced that prestigious Elsevier Book Series titles are now available on the platform. Now multiple users throughout an institution can simultaneously access this important compliment to primary research, previously only available through print subscriptions. Packages available in early 2004 include: Business, Management and Economics, Chemistry, Life Sciences and Methods in Enzymology

The Minister of Canadian Heritage, the Honourable Hélène Chalifour Scherrer, has announced that Bill C-8 has received Royal Assent. The Bill creates the Library and Archives of Canada, combining the National Archives of Canada and the National Library of Canada into one entity

Weblogs and RSS in information work - How can weblogs be used in a library and information service? Ian Winship, Electronic Services Manager, Learning Resources Department, Northumbria University, looks at some of the serious contenders

The European Geosciences Union is preparing to launch two new journals in the interdisciplinary field of biogeoscience

The American Library Association Public Information Office would like to highlight US election-related library programming and activities currently being conducted or planned by libraries that have signed up for the Register to Vote @ your library program. This might include hosting a community forum or debate, teaming up with campus or community groups to conduct a voter registration drive, setting up information displays etc.

Who’s in Charge, by Tim Coates, describes the "sorry state of UK public libraries" today using data from national sources and from the Hampshire library authority, and presents concrete proposals to rescue the service by making it relevant to the library users of today

CILIP Workshop - Writing for the net, writing for people - 8 July 2004, Birmingham - Workshop leader: Phil Bradley

Swets Information Services has announced that it has founded two new industry advisory boards to assist in their e-journal management drive. Prominent members of the library and publisher communities have agreed to serve on the newly formed International Customer Advisory Board (ICAB) and International Publisher Advisory Board (IPAB). The boards will advise Swets' senior management on how to continue adding value in the information management chain

Digital Shikshapatri provides instant online access to a treasure of the British Hindu cultural heritage that is held in Oxford's Bodleian Library. This fragile Sanskrit manuscript, called the Shikshapatri, was written by Shree Swaminarayan, founder of Swaminarayan Hinduism, and outlines moral and spiritual codes for everyday life

Emerald has announced the winners of The Golden Page Awards, made annually to those publications which have produced high-quality material consistently across a whole year, as demonstrated by their high ranking in the tables. Awards are made for Best Research Implications; Practical Usability of Research; Managerial Application; Most Original Content; General Readability; and Readability of Research across all major management disciplines

A website in support of Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss has been created. It includes a punctuation game and hall of shame

The Museums, Libraries and Archives Council has welcomed the UK Government's announcement of additional funding for museums and galleries education work

Presentations from the 2004 Search Engine Meeting, held in The Hague, Netherlands, 19-20 April, are now available

Learned Publishing - Volume 17 Number 2, April 2004 - is now available

The Directory of Open Access Journals now lists 1067 journals

Emerald's Journals of the Week for April 26, 2004 are Business Process Management Journal and Industrial & Commercial Training

Pearson Education and Safari® Books Online have announced plans to launch a comprehensive digital textbook program for college students. The program, called SafariX Textbooks Online™, will offer WebBooks as a new option to the print textbook, saving students 50% off the suggested list price of the print equivalent edition. Safari® Books Online is a Pearson Education and O’Reilly Media, Inc. joint venture

Captain James Cook (1728-1779): Celebrated North Country Navigator - Discover the story of Captain James Cook through the outstanding collections of the British Library linked with material held in institutions such as the Captain Cook Birthplace Museum in the North East of England

Links to resource writeups from the latest issue of ResearchBuzz, April 16-21, are now available

PictureAustralia, a collaborative Internet-based service hosted by the National Library of Australia, allowing users to search the online pictorial collections of many cultural agencies from the one website, has added its one millionth image

The Arabidopsis Book is an Open Access project bringing together an encyclopedic description of one of the most heavily studied plant species

International Seminars in Surgical Oncology is the latest new, Open Access ejournal from BioMed Central

The Friday Brain-teaser from xrefer - this week anagrams - Answers here:

1. Rearrange the letters of TRIPPERS to make a word for someone who takes their clothes off
2. Rearrange CRIED to make a drink
3. Rearrange OUTSIDE to make a word that means "boring"
4. Rearrange EVILS to make four words that mean: a famous singer, jeans, exists, and coverings
5. Rearrange BEARCAT to make an entertainment
6. Rearrange GENERATE to make a young person
7. Rearrange MEDALS to make a young woman
8. Rearrange REGION to make a word that means "to disregard"
9. Rearrange LISTEN to make a word that means "without sound"
10. Rearrange PRECIPITATE to make a word that means "travelling from place to place"

Museum of London presents 1920s: the decade that changed London - this exhibition takes you back to London 80 years ago, a decade some see as 'the real start of the 20th century'

This year's annual conference of the Library Association of the City University of New York, LACUNY Institute 2004, will be held on May 21, 2004, at the William and Anita Newman Conference Center of Baruch College, New York, NY

The Laser Foundation, a grant-making trust whose mission is to improve library facilities available to the public, has announced its Funding Opportunities for 2004

The Association for Computing Machinery is participating in the CrossRef Search pilot project. The project is to implement full-text interpublisher searchability. Google has indexed the full text of ACM journal articles along with several other participating scholarly publishers

School for Scanning: Building Good Digital Collections - Presented by the Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC) - Chicago, IL - June 2-4, 2004 - This conference provides current, essential information for managers of paper-based collections (including photographs) who are seeking to create, manage, and preserve digital assets

DigiCULT Technology Watch Report 2 - February 2004 - is now available

World Book and Copyright Day - April 23, 2004 - By celebrating this Day throughout the world, UNESCO seeks to promote reading, publishing and the protection of intellectual property through copyright

Facet Publishing has announced its new books for April 2004

Spalding Base Ball Guides, 1889-1939 - Spalding Base Ball Guides, 1889-1939 comprises a historic selection of Spalding's Official Base Ball Guide and the Official Indoor Base Ball Guide. The collection reproduces 35 of the guides, which were published by the Spalding Athletic Company in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Spalding's Official Base Ball Guide was perhaps the premier publication of its day for the game of baseball. It featured editorials from baseball writers on the state of the game, statistics, photographs, and analysis of the previous season for all the Major League teams and for many of the so-called minor leagues across the nation - American Memory Project, Library of Congress

A major collection of rare books, manuscripts, historic documents, maps and art of the Americas has been donated to the Library of Congress by the Jay I. Kislak Foundation of Miami Lakes, Fla. The collection contains some of the earliest records of indigenous peoples in North America and superb objects from the discovery, contact and colonial periods, especially for Florida, the Caribbean and Mesoamerica

Loughborough University Library is currently piloting the use of a weblog to support the Information & Enquiries Team, and is keen to discover if other academic libraries are using weblogs to support their work. They would appreciate you completing their web-based questionnaire by 10 May 2004

Digital Library Architectures: Peer-to-Peer, Grid, and Service-Orientation - First International Workshop of the EU Network of Excellence DELOS on Digital Library Architectures - S. Margherita di Pula (Cagliari), Italy - 24-25 June, 2004

The Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture (AIfIA) has announced the opening of the Information Architecture Library, an international collection of the best articles, books, blogs, guides, reports, and other resources related to the field of information architecture

Reflecting the web's ever-increasing impact on everything from pop culture to politics, Howard Dean, Al Jazeera, and Martha Stewart are among the 150 eclectic nominees competing for The 8th Annual Webby Awards

Journal of Neuroinflammation is the latest addition to BioMed Central's constantly expanding universe of Open Access journals

The Canadian Library Association has announced the week of April 16 to 23, 2004 as Information Rights Week. This year the theme is "You Have the Right to Remain Private"

The German Network of Expertise in Digital Preservation now has an English language website

Organic Reactions, from Wiley InterScience, is a comprehensive database of important synthetic reactions, together with a critical discussion of the reaction and tables that organize all published examples of the topic reactions

The 2002-2003 ALA Annual Report is now available

ERPANET Seminar on Persistent Identifiers - June 17-18, 2004 - University College Cork. Focus: The persistent identification of electronic resources can play a vital role in enabling long-term access and re-use and can positively impact on an object's authenticity. This seminar aims to provide an overview of current activity in the field of persistent identifiers and an understanding of the various persistent identification strategies being used and developed

Cleveland Public Library is now delivering eBooks in the Mobipocket Reader format

The 11th OnLine Audiovisual Catalogers Conference (OLAC) Biennial Conference - 1-3 October 2004 - Montreal, Canada

Dynix Institute Web Seminar Series - Five Minutes to Team Excellence in Your Library - May 19, 2004

Lithuanian National Library Week - April 23-30, 2004

City Information Group April seminar - A trip to the virtual world - 27 April 2004 - London, UK - Roger Brown from GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), will describe the dramatic transformation of the GSK libraries from physical to virtual, focussing on the implications for their information vendors. Matt Mower, partner in Evectors Software, will discuss exciting new developments in people-centred knowledge management. He will focus on "social software" including weblogs, aggregators and instant messengers

ALPSP Technology Update - Implementing ONIX for Serials - 20 May 2004, London, UK

Information Architecture & Findability Seminar - This new full-day seminar from Peter Morville covers information architecture from top to bottom, explaining how search and navigation systems can be designed to support and shape user behavior - September to November 2004

EAOLUG Spring 2004 Meeting: Impacts of changes in publisher provision of electronic journals - licensing and pricing issues - 11 May 2004 - Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge

CILIP Workshop: Managing diversity - designed for staff who already have some awareness of diversity issues, but wish to examine in more detail what diversity really means for their organisation - 1 July 2004, London

Cool Tools Update for Library Web Sites by Darlene Fichter, University of Saskatchewan - CIL 2004 presentation

Thomson Learning, a division of the Thomson Corporation, has announced the formation of Thomson Learning Labs, a research and development arm that will collaborate with professors and students to design, build and deliver digital instructional solutions

The April 2004 issue of Biblio Tech Review is now available

Dialog has announced that a new version of its Dialog Profound® service is now available for subscribers worldwide

In January 2004 Newsplan Scotland carried out the second survey of historical newspapers on microfilm in libraries throughout Scotland. This was instructed as part of the national NEWSPLAN survey as an on-going process to assess the use of newspapers on microfilm. Libraries encouraged anyone consulting newspapers on microfilm to complete a questionnaire for a 3-week period from 12-31 January 2004. The results have now been collated and are available to download

Emerald's Journals of the Week for April 19, 2004 are Development and Learning in Organizations: An International Journal and Journal of Educational Administration

PLoS Medicine, to be launched in the fall of 2004, is now accepting submissions

The Indiana University Digital Library Program has announced the initial launch of the Indiana University Sheet Music web site. The site currently provides access to metadata and some digital images from two sheet music collections from the Indiana University Lilly Library. Metadata is available for the approximately 24,000 pieces in the Lilly Library's Sam DeVincent Collection of American Sheet Music, along with digital images from over 1,000 pieces in this collection. Metadata for over 500 pieces from the Lilly's Starr Sheet Music Collection is available, as are digital images for most of the Starr items

A major £1 million pound programme to digitise 12,000 items of sound recordings from the British Library's Sound Archive, which amounts to nearly 4,000 hours of recordings, has been announced today by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC). This significant resource will be made freely available to further and higher education and will include a wide range of materials, including classical and popular music, broadcast radio, oral history, and field and location recordings of traditional music

Bridge the Jargon Divide by Roy Tennant - Library Journal - April 15, 2004

OLITA's Digital Odyssey: Make Your LIbrary's Journey a Safe One - Security and Privacy Challenges Facing Libraries Today - Hamilton Public Library - May 14, 2004

The April 2004 issue of D-Lib Magazine is now available

A public beta release of SourceOECD, the OECD's Online Library of Statistical Databases, Books and Periodicals, is now available

The Friday Brain-teaser from xrefer: "Climb every mountain" as Julie Andrews sang. Even if you're just an armchair hiker, see if you can scale the heights of these quiz questions about mountains. Answers here:

1. What is the world's highest mountain?
2. Which mountain chain of western North America runs from Alaska to Mexico?
3. What is the name of the famous South African mountain that overlooks Cape Town?
4. The Apennines are a long mountain range in which country?
5. What is the highest mountain in the British Isles?
6. The Matterhorn is on the border between which two countries?
7. What is the highest mountain in Africa?
8. In which island are the mountain ranges of Kyrenia and the Troodos Mountains?
9. In which country are the Harz Mountains?
10. In Greek mythology, which mountain in Greece is known as the home of poetry and music?

The International Society for Knowledge Organization (ISKO) will hold its 8th International Conference in London 13-16 July 2004. The theme of the conference is: Knowledge Organization and the Global Information Society, and the keynote address will be delivered by Clifford Lynch, Executive Director, Coalition for Networked Information

The National Archives presents The Secret State: A free exhibition - 2 April-30 October 2004 - Curated by Peter Hennessy. A chilling behind-the-scenes picture of the corridors of power at a time when the world teetered on the brink of disaster, this exhibition looks at different aspects of government processes in the Cold War

RLG DigiNews - April 2004 issue is now available online

Writeups from the latest issue of ResearchBuzz, April 8-14, are now available

World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee is the recipient of the first Millennium Technology Prize. The honor, which is accompanied by one million euros, is bestowed by the Finnish Technology Award Foundation as an international acknowledgement of outstanding technological innovation that directly promotes people's quality of life, is based on humane values, and encourages sustainable economic development

Free Pint Newsletter 158 - 18 March 2004 - now available

xrefer has announced that it is offering free access to its xreferplus service during National Library Week, April 18-24, 2004. Librarians are invited to sign up for free access to xreferplus

The Emerging Technologies in Instruction Committee of the ACRL Instruction Section invites you to submit your online information literacy tutorial, virtual tour, or other online library instruction project for review and possible inclusion in PRIMO: Peer-Reviewed Instructional Materials Online - Next review deadline: May 15, 2004

Information Research Volume 9 No. 3, April 2004, is now available online

DBFX Group is conducting a brief study of trends in academic journal collection development and would like to learn your opinions on the topic. They invite you to participate in a very quick (less than 10 multiple choice questions) and blind online survey

Joint Canadian Library Association and British Columbia Library Association Conference - Celebrating Our Community: Sharing our Values, Sharing our Value - Victoria, BC - June 16-19, 2004 - Complete program is now available

A team representing the British Library kicks off the second series of University Challenge - the Professionals on Monday 19 April on BBC 2 at 8.30 pm. The Library's team takes on a team representing Crossword Compilers. The team comprises Kathryn Johnson, Curator of Theatrical Manuscripts, Ron Hogg who is a Slavonic specialist, Colin Wight, editor of the Library's website and Bart Smith, captain, who works in the Library's Press Office

The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) National Conference Executive Committee invites you to submit a proposal for ACRL’s 12th National Conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota, April 7-10, 2005

Innodata Isogen has announced that it is working with Harvard Business School Publishing to digitize more than a thousand case studies in the Harvard Business School Publishing Case Collection

In celebration of National Library Week, April 18-24, Thomson Gale is offering an information Free-for-All, a program that gives everyone across the nation free access to more than two dozen reference databases by the company. (I don't know if this extends beyond the USA)

Presentations from the DSpace Federation User Group Meeting, held March 10-11, 2004 are now available

NISO presents: Metadata Practices on the Cutting Edge - May 20, 2004 - Washington, DC - As library users demand increasingly sophisticated electronic products and seamless access among them, employing the right metadata for the right product or project becomes a critical decision. If you are involved in strategic decisions for your organization, you need to know about new and developing metadata standards

The Sharing and Transforming Access to Resources Section (STARS) brings together librarians and library staff involved with interlibrary loan, document delivery, remote circulation, access services, cooperative reference, cooperative collection development, remote storage, and other shared library services as well as publishers, producers, and suppliers of products and services which support resource sharing activities

The Manitoba Historical Society is about half way through a major digitization project which will eventually see all of the Society's 125 years worth of publications up on the web. So far the important Transactions series, dating from 1881 to 1980 have all been digitized. This is an important resource on the web for students, both k-12 and university, researchers and the general reader. Almost any topic in Manitoba history has been covered in the Transactions. Many famous Manitobans from John Christian Schultz to Francis Beynon and W.L. Morton published work in the Transactions

The course Return on Investment for Libraries and Information Services will take place at Tilburg University, the Netherlands, from June 27-29 June 2004 . The course is a special low-cost event, organised in cooperation with the Netherlands Association for Library, Information, and Knowledge Professionals (NVB), and sponsored by EBSCO, Geac, and LexisNexis

Netskills has announced its forthcoming workshops through to June 2004

Dialog continues to build its collection of scientific, technical and medical (STM) content with the release of a new database containing scientific and technical research related to the global aerospace industry. The new AeroBase database (File 104, available through Dialog®-branded services) includes references, abstracts and controlled-vocabulary indexing of scientific and technical journal articles, preprints, conference proceedings, books, theses and unpublished literature relating to the aerospace and aeronautical industries and dating back to 1999. At its launch, the database contains more than 20,000 documents, with more added monthly

For the first time, private correspondence between former Poet Laureate Ted Hughes and his long-time creative partner, the renowned American artist and printer Leonard Baskin, is being made available to scholars and researchers through the acquisition of Baskin's Hughes Archive by the British Library

Emerald's Journals of the Week for April 13, 2004 are Journal of Documentation and International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management

The Theory & Practice of Online Learning is concerned with assisting providers of online education with useful tools to carry out the teaching and learning transactions online. It presents, in an easily readable form, the theory, administration, tools, and methods of designing and delivering learning online. Athabasca University (Alberta, Canada) has published the book as open source under a Creative Commons License, thus making it available to educators all over the world at no cost

ProQuest Information and Learning and Extenza e-Publishing Services have announced a strategic alliance to offer a broad portfolio of e-journal and database services for publishers and libraries. The agreement delivers a complete distribution and hosting solution for publishers, simplifies access for end users, and streamlines e-journal management for libraries

EOS International has announced the immediate availability of EOS.Web™ Express, a new entry-level, economical member of the EOS.Web integrated library automation solution product family. EOS.Web Express is a comprehensive Web-based ILS solution for small to mid-sized special libraries, built on Microsoft .NET technology, the SQL relational database, and the Convera RetrievalWare search engine

Google has teamed up with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and 16 other universities around the world to provide a way to search the institutions' collections of scholarly papers - Chronicle

New mailing list: TechieLibrarian - for metadata library and information science professionals

The April 12 2004 issue of Open Access Now is now available

The Friday Brain-teaser from xrefer - Can you find your way around a dictionary? Look at these pairs of definitions (all taken from dictionaries in xreferplus) and try to decide which words they describe. Each word in a pair is next to the other word in the dictionary. So, for example, if the definitions are "The young of a horse or of a related animal/A mass of tiny bubbles forming on the surface of liquids", the answer would be the words "foal" and "foam", which are next to one another in Chambers 21st Century Dictionary. Answers here:

1. A child's usually small toy having the likeness of a human/A basic unit of currency in Australia, Bahamas,...United States, and Zimbabwe
2. Directions for making something, especially for preparing and cooking food/A person or thing that receives something
3. A style of rap music associated with urban street gangs and characterized by violent, tough-talking, often misogynistic lyrics/A member of an organized group of criminals
4. Feed for livestock, especially coarsely chopped hay or straw/A personal enemy
5. Opposition to war as a means of settling disputes/To allay the anger or agitation of (somebody)
6. A seat, for two or more people, with a back and usually with arms/Any of various breeds of large gun dog, having silky coats and plumed tails
7. A monastery of lamas/The young of a sheep
8. A hard outer covering, such as the upper shell of a turtle/A unit of weight for precious stones, equal to 200mg
9. Showing little energy, interest, enthusiasm, etc./Someone who does menial work
10. A cross between a horse and a zebra/A species of domestic cattle, native to S. Asia, with a light-coloured coat, large upturned horns, long pendulous ears and a prominent hump on its shoulders

First Monday - Volume 9, Number 4 - April 5 2004 is now available

The Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers, together with The Charlesworth Group, has announced six Awards which recognise significant achievement in the field of learned and professional publishing

The Ontario Library Association is sponsoring an online 8-week program, Beyond Google: Searching Faster and Smarter on the Web, led by library web search expert Rita Vine. Starts April 26, 2004

ALPSP Seminar - Understanding Libraries: how they work and what they want - 21 April 2004 - London School of Economics & Political Science

The Invisible Web: Finding Resources That Search Tools Can't Locate - Instructor: Gail Junion-Metz - May 13, 2004 - OHIONET, Columbus, Ohio

ASSIGN News from Social Science Libraries and Projects - April 2004 now available

Links to resource writeups from the latest issue of ResearchBuzz, April 1-7, are now available

The Educator's Reference Desk is seeking volunteers to help build its online collection

DigiCult eCulture newsletter from the European Commission - Volume 5, issue 2 (April 2004)- is now available

ICSTI Forum - the Quarterly Newsletter of the International Council for Scientific and Technical Information - No 45, April 2004 is now available

The Institute of Museum and Library Services, Office of Library Services, is seeking proposals for a national research study on the future of librarians in the workforce. The deadline for proposals is June 15, 2004. The maximum award is $1,000,000 for a two-year project beginning September 30, 2004 and ending September 30, 2006. IMLS anticipates making a single award for the project

The National Academies now offer free online access in more than 100 developing countries to the reports of the Academies, as well as to journal articles from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The goal is to help developing countries tackle challenges such as disease, hunger, and economic transition with enhanced scientific knowledge

natureevents.com is a free, fully searchable, multi-disciplinary scientific events database. Browse events, order brochures, register and purchase proceedings papers online.The most relevant conferences, meetings, courses, symposia, fora and programs are here at your fingertips

The first online issue of School Libraries in Canada explores the challenges of building a diverse collection that supports the needs of our school community. This collection of articles brings together research and practice about graphic novels, electronic resources, poetry, and more

WebDewey and Abridged WebDewey - April 2004 Quarterly Update

Biomedical Digital Libraries is an Open Access, peer-reviewed, online journal soon to be launched by BioMed Central. It will encompass all aspects of digital library content and usage in biomedical settings, including academic medical centers, research and development institutes, and health care institutions

MALVINE is an online search service for post-medieval manuscripts hosted by the Berlin State Library and maintained by a European consortium of libraries, archives, and museums. MALVINE provides details on the nature and location of manuscripts held by a wide range of cultural heritage institutions

Licensing Electronic Resources Part I: An Introduction to Agreements - OHIONET, Columbus Ohio - April 23, 2004 - For library managers and librarians who deal with acquisitions and electronic reference resources

The 2004 Pulitzer Prize winners have been announced

Emerald's Journals of the Week for April 5, 2004 are International Journal of Public Sector Management and The TQM Magazine

The Spring 2004 edition of EDINA Newsline is now available

The British Library celebrates spring with new woodland and garden birds CDs, in celebration of International Dawn Chorus Day on 2 May

Throughout 2004, the Library and Information Service at Manchester Business School Library is once again running its popular training course programme, covering a range of cutting edge topics of importance to librarians, business analysts, researchers and information professionals. The courses offer high quality, affordable training at a leading international business school with premium facilities

IADIS International Conference - WWW/Internet 2004 - Madrid, Spain - 6-9 October 2004

Ingenta's Integration News - April 2004 update now available

MIT's OpenCourseWare - a free and open educational resource for faculty, students, and self-learners around the world. OCW supports MIT's mission to advance knowledge and education, and serve the world in the 21st century. It is true to MIT's values of excellence, innovation, and leadership

Join DC/SLA in celebration of International Special Librarians Day (ISDL) 2004 at a special event on April 22, 360 Degrees of Information Literacy: Information Literacy Around the World and learn how information literacy programs can improve your effectiveness as a special librarian

The University of Minnesota Libraries have announced the unveiling of UThink: Blogs at the University Libraries, which is available to the faculty, staff, and students of the University of Minnesota Twin Cities

Virtual Reference Desk Conference 2004 - November 8-9, 2004 - Cincinnati, Ohio

Resource writeups from the latest issue of ResearchBuzz, March 26-31, are now available

The first annual National Library Workers Day will be celebrated on Tuesday, April 20. The theme for 2004 is: Libraries work because we do!

The Friday Brain-teaser from xrefer: Are you an oenologist or just someone who likes a glass of wine (or three) with your meals. Either way, see if you can answer these questions about wines. Answers here:

1. Is claret usually a red or white wine?
2. In Roman mythology, who was the god of wine?
3. The Barossa Valley is a noted wine-producing area - in which country?
4. Which drink of wine mixed with soda water, sparkling water or lemonade gets its name from a German word for a splash?
5. A Methuselah is a wine bottle holding the equivalent of how many ordinary bottles: eight, ten or twelve?
6. Marsala comes originally from which island?
7. Does vinho verde come from Italy, Spain or Portugal?
8. The Yquem vineyard is in which area of France?
9. The wine called Tokay comes originally from which country?
10. Which wine gets its name from a French word for a young blackbird?

Survey of the experiences of visually impaired or blind people, using electronic information services provided by UK public libraries. Andrew Lewis is a librarian conducting Masters research at The Robert Gordon University, into the use of electronic information services in UK public libraries, by people who are blind or have a visual impairment. Closing date is 16 April 2004

Current Cites - Volume 15, no. 3, March 2004 is now available

The SPARC Open Access Newsletter, issue #72 is now available

The Library of Congress has announced the release of the online collection A Civil War Soldier in the Wild Cat Regiment: Selections from the Tilton C. Reynolds Papers, available on the Library's American Memory Web site

Discover the Magic of Electronic Journals - May 21, 2004 - Mississippi State University Libraries - Co-sponsored by NASIG, EBSCO and MSU

The Scottish Library & Information Training Register is a newly formed web based initiative designed to allow local library and information organisations to co-ordinate and promote events and meetings, in order to prevent clashes and encourage attendance

New from CILIP - Selected International Events of interest to LIS Professionals

The April 2004 issues of Information Today, Computers in Libraries, and Searcher are now available

Koha 2.0 has been released - Koha is the world's first free Open Source Library System. Made in New Zealand by the Horowhenua Library Trust and Katipo Communications Ltd, the Koha system is a full catalogue, opac, circulation, member management and acquisitions package

WorldData combines the economic and industry forecasts of the Economist Intelligence Unit with updates throughout the day from EcoWin. The result is a comprehensive global database of economic and market figures and forecasts on 150 countries and 45 regions, with more than 120,000 series

The 2004 Banned Books Week Button - Libraries, schools, and individuals that would like to celebrate the freedom to read may freely save the 2004 Banned Books Week image for their Web sites

Archives Hub Collection of the Month for April 2004 - The National Cycle Archive - established in 1990 by the Cyclists' Touring Club. The archive collection is housed at the Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick Library. The National Cycle Archive comprises books, serials, and records deposited by many cycling bodies and individuals

Swets Information Services has announced that it will begin providing the NHS National Core Content collection with access to Internurse.com. Linked directly to NHS’s existing bibliographic databases, internurse.com is an online journal for nurses with a vast archive drawn from some of the UK’s most prestigious nursing and midwifery titles. Commencing on April 1 2004, this comprehensive national 2-year deal will provide access to approximately 1.2 million users from within NHS England