news & notes Library Reliability At Your Own Computer (NAPSA)—Libraries are where all sorts of people, from junior high school students to respected authors, traditionally do their research. Now, however, with computers growing more and more ubiquitous and computer literacy more and more common, people are turning to the Internet. The growing reliance on search engines among traditional information seekers represents a clear departure from long-standing research patterns that usually involved thelibrary. However, there’s a big difference between conducting online research using authoritative information scrutinized by experts— such as that found in libraries— and data found surfing the open Web. In the past, when you needed information on a particular subject or an answer to a specifie question, whether for school, business or pleasure, you'd simply visit your neighborhood library, where a librarian could point you in the right direction. Thanks to a new initiative, libraries need no longer be concerned about the possibility of becoming irrelevant, ignored or worse, extinct. In fact, they view Internet search engines not as a threat, but as important portals connecting consumers to the highquality content found not in random Internet searches but in the library’s holdings. Called AccessMyLibrary.com, the system helps expose library information within major search engines such as Google and Yahoo to remind users of its availability, while providing an easy means to access it. With more than 20 million up-to-date newsarticles, ency- i You can access reviewed, trustworthy articles on thousands of topics right from your own home. clopedia excerpts and reference materials, as well as a wealth of archives, the system provides free access via the library to professionals, students and consumers looking for vetted content they can trust. “By partnering with the Web’s most popular search engines, AccessMyLibrary.com gives people one more visible means of getting to the information they most want to see,” says Nancy R. Robertson, Michigan’s State Librarian. “Especially deep-Web resources they often didn’t even know existed.” Because major search engine “crawlers” and indexers are now able to view portions of content in a particular library’s collection, once you conduct a search that generates a results list, you can get the article free from yourlocal library. In fact, with just an e-mail address, you can get a virtual library card on the spot. For more information, visit AccessMyLibrary.com or call (800) 877-GALE.
