Ah! The Joys of Google- Thing 3ish

I have had gmail for years and love it! Google really knows how to get things right. If only they made library software...
I made a discovery - Google Caller! I had never stopped to look at this before Google made it a little popup. So you can call anywhere in the US and Canada for free using video chat?! That is pretty cool. But back to the basics:

Google Docs- this saved me so many times in grad school! Since so many of the students are commuter students, it is really hard to work on group projects using Google Docs. It spread like wildfire! After I learned how to use it, I never did a group project without it. When I went to Korea, we made all of our Korean classmates use it when we worked on our group papers. Here, the Job Shop (and now I do too) advocates getting people a gmail account so they can always have easy access to their resume for printing/editing/attaching close at hand. They can't loose it like a flash drive- nor will it get stolen. It is so much easier for the patrons (and thus us) to keep up with their needed information this way. I am a total convert and cannot speak highly enough.

Google Books- kind of useful. In instances of big name authors, links to their pages come up so you can see all thier books. We could tell patrons they could preview books on Google and then request them here but then that could lead to the question- why aren't the books in our catalog linked to Google books in the first place. Pretty neat- I had a good time playing around but in some ways it is competitive with us. Some. Great for reviewing and previewing books in the comfort of your jammies.

Google Scholar- Whoa... I was just playing around with this and typed in my name for fun. Whoa! The first thing on the results list was MY paper I wrote back in grad school about Surpass, a library automation system. I had to post it to a wiki, I think. Or else Simmons moved it. Anyway, this would be a good option for patrons looking for scholarly articles and information.

Google Patents- May be useful for patrons looking for information on what patents are already out there. I found a UV comb meant to sanitize hair and fur and a sister curling iron to keep it curly and germ free.

Google Uncle Sam- As always, using Google is easier than looking at government websites. I found a tax form pdf in less than a second. A search for "kentucky jobs" came up with OET as the 4th search result. As of January 25th the unemployment rate for the state of KY is 10.4 percent, 44th out of 51 states.

Google Sites- SO AWESOME! I want my own site now! Plus it looks pretty easy. I also encountered Google Weddings. Neat-would have been quite useful a year ago as a maid of honor. I will keep that one for the next bride.

Google Maps- I literally don't go anywhere without using Google maps. I have found it to be quite reliable and I have refused to use anything else since.

There is so much to Google!!! Hooray! (can I also say that my spell check on blogger caught that I in fact did not originally capitalize Google properly?)