No need to put your trousers on

We’ve added two new sub-categories to the Computers section of the Gateway to Websites. So I will waffle on about these rather than pick individual sites.

Give us the tools and we’ll conquer the Web

It’s not good enough to surf the Net these days, you have to be interactive. That’s b******s of course – you can have a great time just drifting about the Internet, but using interactive tools can be useful and fun.
Our new sub-category "Online tools" highlights a few of the cyber-gadgets you can use to organise your life, and other people’s lives as well if you manage to get them hooked. Del.icio.us (how stupid to clutter up a perfectly good word with full stops!) is like a set of portable favourites. Once you have set up your own list of links, you can reach it anywhere with Internet access, not just on the machine you asked to "add to favourites".
Birthday Alarm does far more than birthdays. You tell it your important dates (anniversaries, holidays, days in court…) and Birthday Alarm sends you a reminder.
Google tools include calendars and online documents (which you can share with others), and a simple way to set up your own blog (which we used to set up the WTH blog).
As for Zoho, I read an article the other day advocating getting rid of all your Microsoft Office software and keeping your entire electronic office on Zoho. You don’t download anything – you just use their word processor or spreadsheet or presentation tool online. It’s all free, and as with the other tools we’ve mentioned, you can share all your stuff with friends. You can even conduct exams online using Zoho!
Whatever next? Well don’t ask me, I’m reeling from that lot.
(From the Gateway to Websites, select "Computers". The Online Tools link is towards the bottom of the page.)

Where are they now? (in front of a screen)

If you want to find long-lost chums, keep up with the chums you never lost, or make new ones, there’s an online community to help you. We are featuring just a few of these in our "Online communities" sub-category.
Myspace has got a name for enabling kids to pretend they’re being sociable without actually meeting anyone, or even bothering to get dressed. But of course it’s what you make of it. You can keep in touch, arrange to meet, or invite all and sundry to listen to your latest music recording; they can join in or not…
Facebook does a similar job, I read at the weekend that 150,000 people a day are joining up. The mind (mine anyway) boggles.
Friends Reunited is another modern legend. You need to bear in mind that you cannot do very much with it unless you register (which is free), and that to use it to re-establish contact with all the spotty oiks in Year 10, there will come a time when you will have to pay.
Gumtree is a community for some, while for others it is just a place to find a job or a flat or a cheap holiday. It’s vast and sprawling, free to read and cheap to advertise on. It’s the nearest thing I know to the notice board in the corridor with news, immoderate opinions and small ads jostling for space, and a couple having a snog as they lean against the bit you’re trying to read. Happy days…
(From the Gateway to Websites, select "Computers". The Online Communities link is towards the bottom of the page.)

A Good Read (and so's this)

I was feeling a bit retro, so I thought I would do books.

Beebooks

It’s great fun to knock the BBC, so don’t let me put you off. But I have to say that their website is more awesome every time I look. Try to name a subject for which they haven’t got an in-depth collection of web pages. It’s not easy. Their books pages are exemplary.

If the first page of BBC Books is a bit crammed – actually it’s very crammed – this is because they’ve got so much content to present. Factual writing, fiction writing, films about writers, DIY poetry, a Dickens game, a feature about Joe Orton… the list goes on and on.

The BBC obviously sees its job as being to stimulate reading and writing rather than to flog particular books, which is refreshing. The clever thing is that they use their own resources – sound recordings, video, interactive programmes – to reinforce the attractions of curling up with a good book.

Of course relevant BBC programmes and campaigns get a good mention, but all emphasis is on helping people to read, to read more adventurously, or to write. An ace website.

(From the Gateway to Websites, select “Books”. BBC Books is a Key Link.)

Put your trust in a book

Booktrust is “an independent national charity that encourages people of all ages and cultures to discover and enjoy reading. The reader is at the heart of everything we do.” Sounds like another good bet for readers? - it certainly is.

They administer prizes for literature, baby books, teenage fiction, women and several more categories. They promote reading by giving out books to babies, appointing a Children’s Laureate (presently mega-bookstar Jacqueline Wilson), running the National Short Story competition, and sending writers into schools.

They could do all those laudable things without having a decent website. But they don’t – they use the site to suggest and review recently-published books, list author events and other news, and provide “best book” guides in different formats.

It’s not the most intuitive site on the web – you have to drift around it a bit to find the nuggets. But it’s well worth the time spent.

(From the Gateway to Websites, select “Books”. Booktrust is a Key Link.)

Late arrivals at the Biography Ball

This week a big beast which just keeps getting bigger.

Laydeez ‘n’ gennelmen, please welcome…

What do Geoffrey de Burgh, Roger of Salisbury and John the Chanter have in common. Buzz! --- "Smartypants, Oxbridge" --- "They were all bishops!"
Smartypants is quite right, they were bishops in the 12th and 13th centuries. But their recent claim to fame is that they have just made it into the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Exactly why it took John the Chanter 816 years to receive this accolade, I have no idea. But that’s the way it is with the ODNB – they’re beavering away as I type, preparing the next batch of additions, corrections and essays on themes running through the dictionary.
Don’t run away with the idea that you normally have to wait several centuries to get into the dictionary. You do have to be dead, but not usually for very long. You have to be noteworthy, but not respectable. 202 biographies have already been added of people who died in 2003, including actress Wendy Hiller, singer and share-tipster Adam Faith, and mass-murderer Idi Amin (I told you they didn’t all have to be respectable).

A year in the life

It cost a fortune for the Oxford University Press to prepare a new edition of the Dictionary of National Biography in 2004, and it costs them a pretty penny to keep it up to date. So they are naturally quite keen to get people reading it. Themed articles may not seem like most jazzy way of getting people’s attention, but they are a great way of pulling together the material from the biographies in a readable way. Let’s look, for instance, at the Summer of Love.
40 years after the first release of Sgt Pepper, ODNB have got together with the American National Biography, woven flowers into each other’s hair, and put together a fascinating slice of 60s life. They’re all there – the Mamas & the Papas, Brian Jones, Janis Joplin, Nyree Dawn Porter (in the TV smash hit, The Forsyte Saga), and all the stars of the Monterey Festival. Celebrity deaths included Joe Orton and Brian Epstein.
You can listen to podcasts of George Harrison or Jimi Hendrix, or go to an interactive album cover for Sgt Pepper – move the cursor over each figure in the picture to find out who they are (Karl Marx and Mae West pictured together, who’d have thought it…).
After all that free love and substance-abuse, I was tempted to tell you that the ODNB also has an interesting feature on Prime Ministers, but it occurred to me that perhaps you don’t share my fascination. Ah well.

(From the Gateway to Websites, select "Biography". The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is a Key Link. It is a Westminster Libraries Exclusive Resource, which means that you will have to have a Westminster library card to access most the site, although some of the feature articles are freely-available.)

Dig up your relatives

Struggling to be friendly

I had to smile when I looked again at the National Archives home page (From the Gateway to websites, select “Family history”; the National Archives are a Key Link). I knew they’d got very cuddly, offering to help you find information rather than just salt it away. But they stick with the sub-heading, "UK government records and information management". Very approachable (not).

But ignore the vestiges of Civil Service-speak, this really is a good place to come if you are trying to find information about your ancestors, or just doing a bit of history. The home page is rather bewildering – there’s so much here. So let’s ignore all the serious stuff for a second and get a fix of scandal. Among the "Latest document releases" is Lady Chatterley's Lover – not the naughty gamekeeper in person, you understand, but documents relating to the prosecution of Penguin Books for publishing the shabby shocker.

The good thing is that they have collected, and now published, a wide selection of documents relating to the case, including press articles and letters that officials would rather you never saw. Anything involving the then Attorney General, Sir Reginald Manningham-Buller, is always good for a laugh.

If you want to see the documents, things get a bit complicated. You have to pretend that you are going to buy them. Other records cost money, so free ones like the Chatterley collection have to be added to a basket as though you were shopping at Amazon. But at the last minute your offer to pay zero pounds is accepted, and the documents are available to download straightaway or within 56 days (the instructions are emailed to you).

Perusing the privates

You will probably have got the message by now that this is not always a website for a quick flip – there is serious stuff here, so if you want to find the golden nugget for your research, you have to pay attention. But they do try to help you organise your thoughts. For instance, click on "British Army". The search screen asks you some basic questions: was the person you are tracking down an officer? When? If he or she was an "other rank", when did they leave the army?

If you don’t know what ranks counted as being officers, a pop-up list will help you. And so it goes on: the searches may be complicated, but there are research guides and explanations to ease the pain.

They suggest that you might find it worthwhile visiting the National Archives – this is code for the fact that not everything is digitised and on the website, although more is being added all the time. Inducements to visit include exhibitions and displays of the Archives’ special treasures.

As for me and Mellors, we're going to repair to the shrubbery for a serious look at this Lady Chatterley stuff. My word, did he really do that? Still, it’s art, so that’s all right…

Clever stuff (with a bit of help)

Get the facts

There’s a good practical reason for mentioning TechEncyclopedia again. You’ve probably guessed why – when we were discussing blogs and RSS feeds and mysterious things like that, TechEncylopedia was my first port of call for definitions of the technical terms.
Sometimes, when you visit the site, the screen is obliterated by a huge advertisement. Don’t panic: you can either hit the "close" button, or wait a few moments for it to get tired and slink away. It’s worth persisting, just because the site is so useful. They claim to have 20,000 definitions, and I have no reason to doubt it. And here’s the killer argument – usually I understand the definition!
I’m not a "techie", and often I’ve foolishly Googled a new term and ended up more confused than when I started. I should have gone to TechEncyclopedia in the first place.

(From the Gateway to websites, select "Computers". TechEncyclopedia is a Key Link.)

Conquer the Web (Web, Web…)

I’ve admitted to being a "non-techie", but I’m keen to try new things, Having done blogs (rubs hands together, moves on), I thought I might start a website – something tasteful, a place to air ideas and opinions (mostly my own, naturally). EchoEcho will help me on my way to Web domination.
The EchoEcho home page is not drop-dead gorgeous; it’s rather mousy and understated, but it backs up its claim to be "your one stop free help site for all things web related" (phew!) with tutorials, forums, free resources and much more for the budding webmeister.
I looked at the tutorial for learning HTML (the "secret language" behind web pages, telling your computer to make the page a certain colour and make some words bold). I’ve tinkered with HTML, so it wasn’t all new, but it seemed admirably clear and – important this – encouraging.
Far be it from me to encourage you to add to the enormous weight of websites, but if you are determined to have a go, tuck EchoEcho under your arm for protection.

(From the Gateway to websites, select "Computers", then select "Website authoring" from "Other links". Here you will find EchoEcho.)

How does yours grow, Mary?

"Ooh, I wouldn’t have planted it there!"

The National Gardens Scheme is a Good Thing. People open their gardens – anything from the poshest estate to a humble cottage flower-bed – and all the money taken at the gate goes to charity. (From the Gateway, select "Home & garden". The National Gardens Scheme is under "Gardening".)
The proceeds from the guide to gardens ("The Yellow Book") also go to charity, and it has lots of gorgeous photos, but if all you want to do is find out what’s open near you, there is a very efficient search box on the website. You can search by name, by county, or by inserting your postcode, how far you want to travel, and when.
Garden visiting is a great pastime on a sunny day. If you don’t have a garden of your own, or you’ve got one but can’t be bothered weeding it, you can enjoy the results of other people’s efforts. And if you are a keen gardener, you can whisper derogatory remarks about how much better your Peaonia Lactiflora is than the one you’re looking at.
Sometimes, you can get a cup of tea and a piece of cake. How civilised.

Get some royal advice

So you’ve been round and sneered at the neighbour’s brassicas, and decided that there’s clearly nothing to this gardening lark – all you need is a bit of advice and encouragement. Why not try the Royal Horticultural Society (from the Gateway, select "Home & garden"; the Royal Horticultural Society is under "Gardening").
If this sounds a bit grand, don’t be put off. Like a lot of similar organisations, the RHS is into inclusiveness in a big way. Their flower shows may be big and their gardens magnificent, but they want as much of the shine as possible to rub off on the proud owner of a pocket-handkerchief garden or just a window-box.
They will help you to choose plants, give you advice on growing them; they will even tell you where to go to see what they should look like if you grow them properly.
You can become a member and get extra benefits – swan around the Chelsea Flower Show on special days, that sort of thing – but any visitor to the website, member or not, is made to feel welcome.
My bonsai’s looking a bit sick. I wonder if that nice Alan Titchmarsh would have a look at it…

Car clubs, jobs help and small intestines

This post has impeccable liberal credentials (you’d laugh if you knew me). The first two sites are new additions to the Gateway to Websites; the third is, for reasons which will become clear, unlikely to make it on to the Gateway.

Your car or mine
We read a lot of worthy stuff about responsible (read "less") car use, but some of the suggestions are a bit airy-fairy. CarPlus sets out to provide a practical solution to the problem. (From the Gateway select "Transport & tourism", then from the links down the page select "Road". Here you will find CarPlus).

CarPlus is a charity dedicated to encourage responsible car use in several ways, but the bit that caught my eye is their database of accredited car clubs, through which you book a car when you need one, and pick it up from a nearby parking place. The term "car club" encompasses voluntary organisations, but also commercial set-ups like Streetcar.

Local councils and car park owners are, it seems, increasingly making spaces available for club cars, so using the interactive search map you can find a convenient parking place and book your vehicle. Of course you have to sign up with the provider – full contact details are given.

Luckily for me, somebody else drives my motor (the number 13 if I’m going into the West End), but if you prefer to drive but don’t want the hassle of your own car, CarPlus is worth a look.

Just the job and how to get one
Some of us swear by the Guardian as a newspaper, others swear at it. But whatever you think of the rag itself, the Guardian website is excellent, and no part of it is better than Guardian Jobs. (From the Gateway, select "Education and jobs", then select "Jobs and careers".)

Now, however much we want to encourage you all to apply for jobs in the meejah, we wouldn’t include Guardian Jobs because it has all the trendy job ads (which it does). What makes it Gateway material is the advice on getting a job.

A click on the tab "careers advice" takes you to some valuable tips on filling in an application form ("read the blurb"), writing a CV ("keep it on one page") and interviews ("don’t allow your mouth to do all the talking").

There is a bucketful of good advice here [I was going to put the old Guardian joke about spelling mistakes here, but spellcheckers have taken all the joy out of life].

The height (or weight) of folly
WEIRDCONVERTER probably won’t help you with your studies, and it’ll never make the Gateway, but if you’ve always wondered how many inches long was the Great Wall of China, or how many human tongues you could lay end-to-end up the side of the Empire State Building, look no further than http://www.weirdconverter.com/

A selection of ludicrous comparisons is presented on the home page, but for further madness you need to click on "weight" or "length/height", where you can, for instance, select "spider monkey" and "baby grand piano" to compare their weights. Why? – pass…

Very silly – enjoy!

Snuggle under the covers

This week, curl up with a good (virtual) book.

Once upon a time…
So you’ve just finished your first novel. You’ve read some of it to your family, and all of it to your cat. The family was enthusiastic, and the cat’s reaction has not put you off. How to get published?

What you need is the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook, available as a brick-sized paperback, or electronically via the Gateway to Websites (select "Books", where the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook is a Key Link). The Yearbook comes as part of KnowUK, that mega collection of directories, manuals and so much more, which is a Westminster Libraries subscription site – outside the library, you will need your barcode number to use it.

It is not prettily presented. What you see is a lot of headings with little crosses by them. But if you click, for instance, on the cross alongside "Books", you reach an extended list which includes "Getting started". Click the cross by that and the meat starts to appear: "Choose the right publisher or agent", "Prepare your material well", "Write a convincing letter"… and so on. Good advice from a reliable source.

Elsewhere there is testimony from successful writers in various genres. And for poets, playwrights, artists and illustrators there is equally useful advice and encouragement.

Every word from the book version of the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook is here on the website, and it should be bang up to date. Now where are my notes? Ah, here we are "It was a dark and stormy night…"

In your ear – and on your screen
Oneword is a digital radio station. OK, you say, so why include it in a roundup of useful websites?

My excuse is that Oneword radio and their website are interdependent. Words are the business of the radio broadcasts: novels, travel books, children’s books, non-fiction and books about books… eighteen hours a day of books read on the air.

Where the website comes in is to supply the schedules, alongside background articles, podcasts and - if you prefer - the broadcasts themselves as streaming audio to your computer. There are lots of opportunities to buy things: not just audio books, but also DVDs, CDs, downloads, and so on. But you don’t have to buy anything, just listen and read.

About the subscription sites

The WTH is primarily written for the staff and users of Westminster Libraries. So we often promote the use of subscription sites that are only accessible to members (with their library card) and/or in the library buildings themselves.

Find out about joining Westminster Libraries.

Apologies to those who are missing out!
But your own library might have a subscription too - why not ask them?

[You can probably find a link to your own library's website via the sites in the Libraries section of the Gateway]

Welcome to the WTH blog

Welcome to the Web Treasure Hunt blog!

A bit of history:
The Web Treasure Hunt (WTH) has been a staff-training tool within Westminster Libraries for a few years now. Just a basic email sent to all library staff, its aim has been to alert them to a website or two that they may not know, or that they may have forgotten. We (the Information Development Librarians - henceforth to be known as the IDLs or 'Treasure Hunters'...) write a bit of blurb about the site that will help them to use it - for themselves or for their customers in the library.
The sites featured are almost exclusively those that already appear within our ‘Gateway to Websites’, though we do occasionally feature other sites such as temporary local events.

Staff who leave often request that they are still sent the WTH email, and many pass it on to their friends, so we decided to make it public in this blog.

Hope you find it useful.