Yarrr, me sea rats 'n winsome lassies - th' new books be in!

International Literary Market Place 2011 (070.50254 International)

Dictionary of the Bible, 2nd ed. (220.3 Dictionary)

The Statesman's Yearbook 2011 (305 Statesman)

TheStreet Ratings' Guide to Stock Mutual Funds (332 TheStreet)

And, probably the most important reference item we've received in years:

Pirates of the Americas (910.45 Marley, 2 volumes!!)  Resplendent with its color reproduction of the great Howard Pyle's illustration of Captain Kidd from The Ruby of Kishmoor (nice, but I might have gone with another of his paintings, or something from N.C. Wyeth's illustrations from 1911 edition of Treasure Island), Pirates of the Americas "offers hundreds of entries on the most famous - and infamous - buccaneers of the 1600s and 1700s, separating fact from fancy as it describes the men, their exploits, and the era in which they prowled the seas of North and Central America."

Includes more than 500 alphabetical entries; brief chronological timeline of events at the end of each volume; 48 images of ships, harbors and maps; select bibliography and glossary at the end of each volume; and a comprehensive index.

Enjoy, me hearties.

Proctor, Proctor - give me the news!....

Call Center customer:  "Do you [JPL] provide proctoring services?"

(Ever since this question came to me in the call center, I've had Robert Palmer's Bad Case of Lovin' You stuck in my head, but I digress.)

Of course, the answer is "no, we most certainly do not," but then I'm never sure where to refer the customer who is looking for proctoring services.

It just so happens that the National College Tester Center provides a free referral service through their Consortium of College Testing Centers, primarily to facilitate distance learning.  There are two members in our area:

• Open Campus Florida State College at Jacksonville 632-5020
• University of North Florida, Office of Academic Testing 620-2927

Note:  Both sites offer proctoring by appointment-only, and are fee-based.

If you find other local sources, feel free to list them in the "comments."

New Item in Reference - 9/7/2010

Just an FYI --

The 2010 Official Florida Driver's Handbook has been "added" to Reference.  It was left on a table unclaimed, so it was absorbed into our collection.  It has not been given a barcode or added to Workflows, but it has been labeled and will be kept beneath the desk with our other local services periodicals.

And I Thought There Were A Lot Of Books in Pre-shelving!

This has nothing to do with reference, but I though this bit of trivia was interesting.  Using an algorithm that crunches numbers from libraries, national union catalogs and WorldCat, Google estimates that there are over 129 million books in existence!

I'll try to remember this the next time I'm routing in books in Call Center and convince myself that things could be worse.

Photo from La Gatera de Beguemot.

Ask A Librarian

Hello!  If you're not one of my dozen or so regular readers who have this blog's URL emailed to them and have stumbled upon this site as you travel through Googledom, welcome!

I'm not sure what keywords brought you here - information on referees or Airplane movie quotes - but I'm glad you stopped by.  You look like you might be interested in the Ask A Librarian remote reference service.  Got a question?  We'll help you find the answer!

For a demo of how the Ask A Librarian service works, click here:  http://info.askalibrarian.org/demo/

To access the service, simply follow this link:  http://www.askalibrarian.org/jpl

We hope to hear from you soon - thanks for dropping in!