She's only gone and done it!

"Guess what Nelly’s done now. She’s only gone and started using computers… I know, at her age! She popped down the library, and they gave her some sort of taster… yeah, I know, just like it was jam or something!

"Then after they’d given her a quick session round the houses, they sat her in front of a computer, and some woman from the BBC came on the screen and told her how to use all the gubbins – you know, the keyboard and the other thing… What? Yeah, that’s it – the mouse.

Apparently you can look at this woman anytime on the BBC website. Oh come on, you must have heard of the BBC website, they never stop talking about it on the telly.

"The woman told Nelly to press one of the letters on the keyboard, and when she did it right, the woman told her ‘well done!’ How does that work? Gave Nelly a bit of a turn.

"Anyway, Nelly says they went on to numbers and moving the mouse around and before she knew it she was playing games – on the computer! With the BBC woman talking to her all the time, saying ‘terrific’ and ‘great’ and stuff like that. You know what Nelly’s like, she likes being told she’s doing the right thing. The bloke in the library told her she was a natural… Nah, he wasn’t being fresh, he means she’s good at computers. Who’d have thought it?

"Turns out Nelly’s going again tomorrow to learn all about the Internet… yeah, that’s all the websites, ‘www’ this, that and the other. The library bloke will set her off, and then she’ll pick up the rest from somewhere else on the BBC… I know, they’re into everything. Pity they can’t get a bit more football.

"I’ll tell you how Nelly gets on. She reckons she’ll be ‘surfing the Web’ like all the youngsters. She’s a dark horse, my Nelly."

(From the Gateway to websites, select "Computers & the Internet". Computer Tutor and Webwise are both under "Learning resources".)

Picture credit: geert/morguefile.com

What's in a (silly) name

Now here’s the thing: somebody at Xreferplus thought the name Xreferplus didn’t quite cut it as a catchy title for a great product. Right so far. Instead they went for Credo Reference. Nah…you’re right, it isn’t any better. Which is a pity because the product was great and has just got better.


Watch it grow

Credo Reference aims to be a one-stop shop for online reference sources, covering subjects from Art to Technology. In its previous guise as Xreferplus, Westminster Libraries subscribed to a mix of 100 titles covering all the main categories. Pretty impressive, hein?
Well, as you know we don’t like to let the grass grow under our mousemats, so we increased the subscription to all 250 titles on the Credo list. This means that Art, for instance, now consists of 15 titles, ranging from a biographical dictionary of artists to a dictionary of fashion, not forgetting – no really, don’t forget it, it’s truly great – the Bridgeman Art Library Archive.
I must go on a bit about the Bridgeman. I first came across the name on arty postcards and underneath the illustrations on book covers. They have a vast range of reproductions of famous paintings and drawings, ancient and modern.

Stuff for philistines, too

Not interested in art? OK, how about the Directory of Publishing and Printing? Or Collins German Dictionary? Or the Cambridge History of Food? If these titbits don’t tempt you, there are 247 more where those came from.
Credo comes equipped with what has become the standard search facility for quality online resources – you can either specify which reference work or category you want to search, or you can just bung in your terms and search the lot together. I always try "sausages" (I’m just that sort of guy); from Credo Reference I got 323 hits, including some rather tempting recipes. I’ll let you know how they turn out.

(From the Gateway to websites, select "Quick reference" at the top. Credo Reference is under "Dictionaries & encyclopaedias".)



Picture Credit: paulabflat/morguefile