I am on the move again! New place where I don't know a soul, so I decided to check and register with Meetup groups at http://www.meetup.com/ in the area. Meetup Groups are today's support groups, parent playgroups, book clubs, professional groups, ethnic group and so on. I tried Russian community, Russian language, librarians, mothers. You can send a message,post a question,find out where people meet, ask advise. There are two biggest groups of librarians in New York and San Francisco.

A group of Google alumni have created a new search engine that goes live today to compete with the mothership. It will be interesting to see how they do. The URL is http://www.cuil.com/

link to the news story

Here is the link to Time's top 10 web sites list for 2008
Ten essential site by Time Magazine.
No List (wish it was!), just click on next...

I am going to be at the NCLA Web 2.0 Roundtable on July 23. One of the presenters (with the misterious topic - Library Thing) - Marie Tretiakova from the Center for Creative Leadership.

link to NCLA upcoming activities in case any of NC russian librarians are interested.

Librarians in Russia started blogging,chatting, created few live journals and join social networking places like "Odnoklassniki". "My krug" and others. See article http://infobib.de/blog/2007/07/16/libworld-russia/and blog by Katerina Martjyanova http://rusu-library.blogspot.com/

Russia! magazine is named one of the "top new magazines" by Library Journal.

Thank you librarians!

Contemporary essays and photography reflecting Russian culture are published from New York, beyond restrictive influences by the Russian government. The design aesthetic and content reflect hip American expatriates' views of Russian society, written with affection and respect for the Russian people if not for Russian institutions. Russia! provides engaging views of the Russian experience that may be otherwise hard to find in English.

http://libraryelf.com

Great website to keep tab on your library materials. Helps you to manage your library loans and holds.

The purpose of Elf is to help people reduce your overdue fines and to consolidate your library accounts. Once you have signed up, Elf will email you before your library items are due. It also lets you know when your holds are ready and when they are about to expire. Loan information is displayed in a calendar format which gives you a quick way to see the overall status of your library accounts.

Free sign up. See if your library is supported view list of libraries .

I have to thank Olga Koz from Clearwater Public Library System (Clearwater, FL) for the great idea - to create a community of Russian-American Librarians who work in USA (or may be anywhere in the world!). Olga and i will be managing this community. Please, join and support!

My name is Natalia Tuchina, I am a librarian in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. I work in the Forsyth County Public Library. Our library website is forsythlibrary.org. You can see my picture on this website in the top left corner - i am a “virtual” librarian, i manage Ask Your Librarian box and do online reference services. You can email me through the website or post here.