• Disaster Preparedness (Review Available)
• Federal Emergency Management Agency (Review Available)
• Internet For The Blind (Review Available)
• Kinetica (Review Available)
• LC Services - Distance Learning Links for Librarians (Review Available)
• LITA Top Tech Trends (Review Available)
• M25 Consortium of Higher Education Libraries (Review Available)
• Networked Services Policy Taskgroup (Review Available)
• The Information Professional's Glossary (Review Available)
• UKOLN
• Whatis (Review Available)

This web-site is a very good source for information about disaster preparedness. It has been set up primarily for the M25 group of academic librarians (the M25 is a motorway that circles London). As part of their web-site they have a Disaster Control Planning Site which is well worth a visit by librarians from all types of library. The aim is to promote best practice, provide information, and set up co-operative activities. As well as templates for preparation, preparedness, reaction etc., it has a listing of 23 references on the subject, and links to other sites concerned with disaster preparedness. Quick to download, and a very effective way to get information.

FEMA is the US government agency that is concerned with disaster preparedness and responding to disasters either natural or technological. The site provides advice of value to both organisations and individuals. As we become more aware of the impact on global warning, so more parts of the world are recognising the hazards of flood, drought, fire and water. Everyone needs to check on how prepared they are for a disaster, be it in the library or information service, or at home. This site provides practical advice, and if the emergency occurs, how to deal with it. Remember action taken immediately after a disaster determines how well, and quickly, recovery will take place. And one immediate point - do you back up the computer files you have worked with during the day? Does your organisation have duplicate files housed elsewhere?

Purdue University is to be congratulated for providing a service that allows the blind, or their institutions, to download thousands of scientific and mathematical images, print them on special paper and feed them through a heating machine that raises the dots and lines to form images and Braille characters - all at a low cost. The special paper costs US$1 a sheet and the heating unit is around $1000, subscriptions to the Purdue files cost from less than $100. Whilst voice synthesisers can read out text, images have presented problems to date.

Kinetica is the National Library of Australia's replacement of the Australian Bibliographic Network and supports co-operation and resource sharing within the Australian Library community.

This homepage is a collection of resources concerning distance education, with emphasis on the role of the library. There are links to resources concerning distance education in general.

A group of leading people in the library and information science sector meet to discuss new trends in the library and information sector. The group includes people as Karen Coyle, Walt Crawford, Pat Ernest, Dean Jue, Erik Jul, Elizabeth Lawley, Clifford Lynch, Dan Marmion, Roy Tennant, Joan Frye Williams, Tom Wilson and Milton Wolf. The results from the meetings can be seen at the Web site. There are reports from two meetings in 1999 and one in 2000.

Named for an infamous ring road around London, the consortium fosters co-operation between member libraries to improve services to users. It has a student population of 270,000, holds more than 15million books, and around 129,000 serial titles. More than 20% of the UK's total university library collections are held within the M25 area. See: www.M25lib.ac.uk/M25/

This site has been set up to assist UK public librarians make policy decisions about networked services. A taskgroup has been set up by the Library Association, the UKOLN and EARL, a major consortium. The site carries a series of issues papers prepared by the Taskgroup and will develop an archive/resource bank of policies. It will help public libraries to exchange experience and to develop informed policy. The site will be of interest to public librarians in other countries.

Maintained by Charley Seavey, faculty member at the University of Arizona's School of Information Resources and Library Science, this is one of the most complete glossaries of library and information science terms on the Web, including a large number of acronyms. Arranged alphabetically, with cross references, but not searchable, this list is a good starting point for LIS technical vocabulary.

A commercial site, providing definitions of terms related to computing, the Internet, and the social communities which have grown up alongside computers. Unlike several similar sites, this not only provides fairly detailed definitions, with explanations including graphics as needed, but also provides citations to further reading, access to commercial websites (e.g. to Intel in the Pentium entry), and other relevant sites. The site includes a rather annoying alphabetical list of all terms, but has both a simple and a more advanced search feature. It also includes access to a set of commonly sought terms, and the ability for users to suggest new terms. The annoying popup advertisements and insistence on giving the user cookies may turn off some users, but the site retains the capability of using either frames or non-frames, which will attract other users.

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