Road Trip: Taking a trip to Googletown

Photo of Alesund, Norway from Library of Congress' photostream.

I revelled in this latest excursion through Google. Have ventured on some of its streets before, but noticed some other attractions on its roundabouts. There was much to see & learn and I took pleasure in the deviations off my regular path. Highlights included:

Google Translate return trip

Have spent a lot of time at this site in the past – for multicultural clients mainly, for example there’s a backpackers’ hostel close to the library and I have often suggested they use it to translate websites to assist them in their visit, especially government websites.
Played a bit by translating a range of salutations & phrases.
Had tons of fun translating websites. Best of all was seeing our libraries' website in everything from Russian, Korean, Finnish and German.
Like Google translate for its simple and instantaneous features – making it handy in a library environment for multicultural clients as well as those who need something translated - from old family letters to huge amounts of text or websites.

Google Books lengthy stopover

This is another destination I had been to before – mainly for demonstrating to clients features like seeing a table of contents. After spending quite a while here today I realize I had barely dipped my toes in and really didn’t want to leave.

Sometimes the pages were slow loading but were nearly always worth it. Found a few treasures amongst the visual feast, for example seeing an old New York Public Library stamp on a book on the history of ancient Greece.
I admit I wasn’t fully aware of the scope of “books” included. Was entranced by the amount of magazines included & spent ages swimming through articles on my favourite topics and performers. Outstanding!
Access and ease of use are great. Skilled search techniques would be a huge benefit to uncovering a range of useful resources. Loved finding old Australian Year Books in the results.
Definitely will return more frequently to this spot.

iGoogle sightseeing

I’ve seen iGoogle in action but hadn’t actually ever paid a visit – I love the clutter-free nature of the standard Google page.

Tripped around a bit and decided to personalise it to my interests.
So many choices on offer - the theme search was an eye-opener. I had trouble deciding and changed my mind several times.
Had all sort of gadgets from turtles, fish, tree frogs to eyes cursor.
In the end I was distracted by a lot of it and ended up streamlining my iGoogle.
Can see its appeal but it took some getting used to.

Google Calendar driveby

Didn’t know too much about this location
Found it had some useful qualities – sharing of calendar with others for organisation purposes, having reminders, ability to invite people to events and get response in one spot and the integration with other email systems.
It would be a practical way for event planning by a group – having an all in one venue for sharing calendar, details of event, comments & invitations.
Not entirely convinced without seeing it in action but can see some potential.

Google Maps reading

Google maps seem so commonplace now. Almost can’t remember life before it and use it often and demo it to people all the time.
Great add-on features like reviews and comments make it a terrific resource.
It’s so easy to create and customise a map to include attractions and tours to follow.
Have seen several library services making good use of Google maps to highlight relevant locations of interest in the vicinity.

"Maybe we should have checked Google Maps first?"