This morning, I did something that I didn't think would ever happen. I found a NetLibrary book that I think might actually be useful to our students because it's in the NetLibrary format. The book is :
Burk, Robin. Unix Unleashed. Indianapolis: Sams, 1998. NetLibrary e-book.
Before I get to the good parts, though, I need to rant. I don't like NetLibrary. It's hard to read the books. You have to scroll to see the whole page and click the next button or use the goofy plus sign menus to work your way through the book. And, more importantly in my opinion, most libraries' NetLibrary packages include dated materials that they would never keep on the shelf but that no one's willing to "withdraw" because it's not taking up any physical space--it's just junking up students' search results.
Unix Unleashed, however, is pretty useful, despite its age. I almost always need some sort of reference guide to help me along when I'm working with Unix, and having one like this right on my screen would actually be helpful. "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" Perhaps. For "Summer's lease hath all too short a date ... / And oft' is his gold complexion dimm'd / And every fair from fair sometime declines ... "
Sticking with the UNIX theme, I moved on to Credo Reference. Concept maps can be a lot of fun, but I'm a librarian, one of those strange creatures who thinks the searching part of research is actually kind of fun. I'm not sure a student would find it terribly useful, though, in this context. It might be effective in an article database, though.
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