Traveling To Belgium?

If you are thinking of taking a trip to Belgium, you might consider navigating through the Belgium Tourist Office’s site, Visit Belgium. It has pages of information for what to do and see, how to get around, where to stay, plenty of practical information and a calendar of events.

http://www.visitbelgium.com/

Science At The Smithsonian

Spotlight On Science is a bi-weekly electronic newsletter put out by scientists working at the Smithsonian Institution regarding their cutting-edge research. Each issue begins with an introduction by Dr. David Evans, Smithsonian Under Secretary for Science and includes three articles about various research that are always interesting and written for non-experts in the specific field. One may subscribe for free to the newsletter and it is also available as a printable PDF and a downloadable Podcast.

http://www.si.edu/research/spotlight/04_19.html

Dog Tales

To tie into yesterday’s post on The Short List, “If You Liked Marley & Me…”, here’s a great site from the Palm Beach County (Florida) Library System that lists non-fiction books about dogs. To find those titles in our LION Library system you’ll have to go to our catalog at: http://catalog.lioninc.org/search and type in the title.

http://pbclibrary.org/rl-dogs.htm

Some Interesting Oil Industry Statistics

This site was created by a geologist and some-time professor who clearly wants to disseminate information. The website is simply packed with information. If you overlook some of the organization and color styles you can find out about: the largest oil-producing countries, largest oil fields in the U.S., largest oil fields in the world, sources of U.S. oil imports, world’s leading oil consumers and importers, and that’s just the tip of the derrick. See if you can find out why we export crude oil to Canada.

http://gravmag.com/oil.html

The Digital Ice Age

From “Library Link of The Day” an article in the December, 2006 “Popular Mechanics” written by Brad Reagan. His article highlights the burgeoning problem of lost information due to the evolution of media and formats. For example: information stored on floppy discs may no longer be accessible in the near future as fewer computers are made to run those discs. How are you storing your valuable digital information???

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4201645.html

Hot Christmas Toys For 5-7 Year-Olds

From About.com, a list of the hot toys for younger tots for 2006. Just what you need to start off the holiday shopping season.

http://toys.about.com/od/holidaytoysandgifts/tp/hottoys5to7.htm

Flight Tracking

Today is one of the busiest travel days for Americans with an expected 38 million people on the road…or in the air. If any of your dear ones are flying to their destinations here are 2 websites that will allow you to keep an eye on their progress-and a whole lot more.

FlightArrivals.com will give you the basics of arrivals and departures with buttons to let you know about a specific flight, all flights into or out of a specific airport, a specific airline’s flights into or out of a specific airport, and all flights by a specific airline from a specific departure city to a specific arrival city. In addition, this site will allow you to search delays at a specific airport-(into or out of), get airport status information-current weather, general delays with time allocations and reasons for the delay.

FlightAware.com also allows for tracking of specific flights and goings-on at airports but it also provides detailed information on airports for those of you who are flight fanatics. Airport information includes runway diagrams, satellite photos of the airport, cool graphics representing in-air planes, airport and operational information as well as details on businesses operating inside the airport-restaurants, retailers, etc. There is a ton of information in this site. Bon voyage!

http://www.flightarrivals.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/Flights

http://flightaware.com/

“What’s Next?” For Readers

The Kent District Library in Michigan has created a database of adult fiction series which provides readers with a list of books and their order within the series…very helpful if you want to read a series in order and the titles aren’t a giveaway like Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone series-“A Is For Alibi”, etc. Submit the author’s name (last name, first name), title or series name and the database will indicate the series information with, when possible, a genre identification as well. For example: type in “O’Brian, Patrick” and see the order of the books in the Jack Aubrey seafaring series.

http://www.kdl.org/libcat/whatsnext.asp

Adjustable Rate Mortgages

From The Federal Reserve Board, a consumer handbook on adjustable rate mortgages. The site includes answers toquestions like “What is an adjustable rate mortgage and how do they work?” Also included are cautions for consumers, ways to reduce risks, a glossary and how to find additional information.

http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/arms/arms_english.htm

Daily Med

From The National Library of Medicine and The National Institutes of Health, a website devoted to the current information on medications. Look up your medication and see the current, comprehensive and downloadable information, including the FDA approved labels (package inserts). Topics for each medication include: description, clinical pharmacology, clinical studies, indications and usage, contraindications, warnings, precautions, adverse reactions and dosage information. Although the website is not a comprehensive listing of available prescription medications, it does contain more than 1300 listings.
http://dailymed.nlm.nih.gov/dailymed/about.cfm