We seem so obsessed with productivity and efficiency these days, and so much emphasis is placed on these qualities, that in one sense the terms are overused, and the words themselves have lost a part of their meaning. However, even if the terms aren’t always used as they should be, the principles remain sound, and it’s important to know how to remain efficient and productive in your daily life, even when surrounded by distractions. Here’s how you can stay on top:

Sleep well

Regular sleep routines have been found to boost the academic performance of young students. A study by the University College of London revealed that irregular sleep patterns interfere with the cognitive efficiency of students and their study time, simply because their brains are not allowed enough time to rest and process new information and turn it into active knowledge.

The study revealed that regular bedtime schedules help students do better at math and reading, establishing the association between sleep and better productivity and cognitive performance.

Have an active brain

A mistake many of us make daily is to focus on work, while forgetting to sharpen the tools we are working with. Needless to say, how well you’re doing something depends on the tools used and your mastery of those tools.

Your mind is your most important tool. That’s why it’s important to keep your brain active and your skills up to date and sharp.

Improve your skills with educational software, play games that boost  your memory, or try role-playing games that help you hone your decision-making skills. All in all, never get complacent with your current level of skill in any area; keep working on them often, to keep your productivity levels soaring.

Have an active lifestyle

A healthy body will boost your cognitive clarity and efficiency. Study after study confirms that active individuals perform better in cognitive-based tasks when they regularly engage with physical activities, whether those activities are focused team sports or playing in the park.

A study published in JAMA Pediatrics recently revealed a link between physical activity and cognitive  performance, suggesting that physical exercise boosts cognitive sharpness and might contribute to a productivity boost due to the elevated cognitive capacity it grants the active individual.

Organize your workload smartly

The world is divided into two groups: the people who insist that sprints, or bouts of intense productivity, are the way to boost efficiency. Others feel that Parkinson’s Law applies to work, and that at any time your work will expand to fit the time you’ve allowed for it. Whichever is the case for you, there’s one tip you can apply: organize your workload in meaningful and manageable blocks.

Timing each task will ensure you are not falling behind schedule, and at the same time it will help you stay motivated and alert, allowing you to achieve your productivity milestones within your set timeframe. Another benefit of organizing your workload in smaller chunks is that you never get to feel overwhelmed, because everything has been provided its own block of time.

Squeeze breaks into your daily schedule

There’s something even more useful than a fully filled-in calendar, and that’s a calendar that contains scheduled breaks. LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner actually swears by scheduling blocks of time labeled “nothing to do” – in other words, setting aside downtime for decompressing, relaxing, and assessing day to day work and progress.

By scheduling time for doing nothing (no meetings, no writing, no errands) you enable yourself to view your life from a distance and make changes in how you handle your workload, minimize distractions, and boost your efficiency.

More importantly, scheduling downtime means you work with a plan, and you work strategically. Most of us tend to approach work with a robot-like mindset, leaving little time to just sit back and reflect on our efficiency and our approach.

Implementing these tips will help you manage your workload effectively and feel good about your ability to do so.

The continuous growth of China economically has urged many individuals and corporations to equip themselves with a 21st century must-have skill, the ability to speak Chinese. Speaking Chinese opens up many windows for Western countries who wish to establish solid and enduring relations with China.

However, anyone who thinks about languages will soon notice a paradox. If the Chinese language is rising into such prominence, why isn’t there a substantial number of words that have been borrowed from Chinese into English? After all, English is known for adopting and adapting words from many other cultures and languages.

What kind of challenges and hindrances prevent words of Chinese origin from entering the English language?

It’s too soon

Cultural, commercial, and financial interactions are still new. For years, China has chosen to exclude the outside world due to political principles and circumstances. It’s been only 35 years since Deng Xiaoping inaugurated the market-based, capitalism-oriented economy which has catapulted China into its current position as the 2nd largest economy in the world.

This economic growth and all its implications are only now getting into high gear or maturing. Given that transactions and relations with China are just starting to systematize, it is expected that in the near future, Chinese will find a way into the English language, especially with regards to cultural concepts not present in western cultures.

Thus far, Chinese has introduced many cultural notions in English, from food (chow mein) to commerce (guanxi, lose/save face) to the spiritual (feng shui, Chi). But as these interactions deepen and intensify, one can only imagine how Chinese can enrich the English language with a fresh and intriguing cultural discourse.

A logographic system and the lack of an alphabet

Another reason that there aren’t more Chinese words in English is that Chinese characters do not correspond to letters but whole syllables. A Chinese character matches a concrete syllable that cannot be further analyzed. A Chinese character might be a stand-alone word, a concept or abstract idea, or even a symbol signifying the tone or pronunciation of that syllable. Contrast this with the alphabet-based English, where words are formed of individual letters, and it’s easy to see why the translation and adaptation has been slow.

Because of its complex and symbolic nature, anyone unfamiliar with how the Chinese language is constituted, spoken and written will find it hard to grasp the intricacy and splendor of Chinese, something that has slowed down the incorporation of Chinese words into the English language.

Pronunciation is hard and unpredictable

For non-Chinese speakers, decoding Chinese characters can be a real struggle. Adding to this the five pronunciation tones that need to be implemented when speaking Chinese, and the endeavor already seems like a lost cause. So even if Chinese words make it into English, there will be a long time before a common, accepted pronunciation and meaning of that word are firmly established.

Cultural connotations get lost in translation

With a uniquely variegated and rich culture that spans over 4000 years, it’s impossible for Chinese words to get picked up as easily as English words do, at least for non-native speakers.

The Chinese culture is too immense and complicated for people to properly grasp the full range of meanings and connotations of its culturally charged words. Simple words like “dragon” have come to represent power and fortune and luck, but there are so many other layers of discourse behind each word, unknown and ungrasped by other cultures, that simply using the literal translation of a word leaves out the full meaning that would be understood in China.

The idiosyncrasies of the Chinese language and the Western’ world’s unpreparedness and unfamiliarity with the language are some of the reasons why Chinese words haven’t easily found their way into English, but as more cross-cultural and linguistic exchanges occur over the upcoming decades, the richness of the Chinese language will further enrich English vocabulary as well.

Chinese words can be typed on English keyboards using various input method editors that allow the typist to type a sequence of characters in order to create a single syllable or symbol. But the reality of Chinese touch typing is much more complex, partly in view of its idiosyncratic, non-alphabet based structure and partly because of the sheer number of Chinese characters (anywhere from 3000 to 5000) one needs to master to type and speak Chinese properly and sufficiently.

Input Method Editors

Phonetic-based input method editors

This type of Chinese input method editor allows the user to input Chinese words that are Romanized; that is, transliterated using the Roman (Latin) alphabet based on pronunciation. The most notable of such editors use the Pinyin system.

The typist uses the Roman alphabet to type in the letters corresponding to how a Chinese word is pronounced, and the editor then recommends various Chinese character options to choose from. By typing the transliteration of Chinese words using a standard QWERTY keyboard, the typist is spared the need for choosing each character stroke — which in some Chinese characters might mean up to 50 different strokes for one single syllable.

However, this method is not flawless. In fact, it’s a rather slow typing technique because the typist is expected to continually stop typing in order to choose from a list of various homophones to find the right one.

The Pinyin input method is best pictured as similar to the auto-correct system integrated in mobile devices texting services, which use context and the initial user input to recommend the most appropriate words.

While Pinyin editors are becoming more and more intuitive they haven’t still compensated for the slow speed they’re defined by.

Shape-based input method editors

This method of Chinese language processing lets the user input a sequence of strokes that form the character they wish to create. The typist is expected to input, using the conventional keyboard, the strokes they would normally draw if they were to draw the character on paper.

The Wubi input method editor, one of the most widely used editors, lets the user input up to 5 keystrokes. The first four are the initial strokes of a character, while the last one must be the stroke the user would normally draw last, with any other strokes ignored.

The Wubi IME divides the conventional QWERTY keyboard into five groups, with each having a particular type of character stroke based on direction: left inclined, right inclined, horizontal, vertical, and hook.

Phonetic-based and shape-based IME editors are the most popular tools people use to touch type on QWERTY keyboards and hand-held devices with a Chinese-character output. Initiatives are currently being taken to find ways these can be optimized in order to be more time-efficient and less labor-intensive for the typist.

Impressively, bloggers and mobile phone users can, through substantial practice, manage to type incredibly fast with these methods. Some Wubi method users have astonishing 150-160 words per minute records.

When do you use “I” and when do you use “myself” in a sentence? Can you tell which of the following sentences using “myself” are grammatically correct?

I found myself unable to get the teacher’s attention
The teacher asked Ben and myself to collaborate on the project
I myself saw Kathy steal Mario’s lunchbox.

The second sentence is wrong. The best way to figure out whether a sentence calls for “I”, “me” or “myself” is to see whether the sentence works with just the first-person subject case.

“Mary and myself went to see The Lion King last Friday.”

“Myself went to see The Lion King last Friday.”

It doesn’t sound right in that second sentence, does it?

The correct sentence should read as follows:  “Mary and I went to see The Lion King last Friday.”

“Just between you and myself, do you think Peter deserved that award?”

Here the correct sentence should say,

“Just between you and me, do you think Peter deserved that award?”.

“Me” is an object pronoun, part of the phrase “between X and Y” and so not a subject. However, in the first example, the phrase “Mary and I” stands in for the single subject in the sentence. If you’re confused, you can test out whether you’re dealing with a subject by replacing the word with “me” instead. The sentence “Me went to see The Lion King last Friday” doesn’t make sense either, as you’ll quickly see.

Myself is a reflexive pronoun

Let’s see one more example,

“Tired of waiting for Ben to do it, I did the laundry myself.”

In this sentence you cannot apply the tip above. This sentence in as example of the reflexive noun usage.  We use this when the action described in a sentence is directed back to you. This is so because myself is a reflexive pronoun; it reflects the action back to the subject (myself, yourself, himself).

Myself for added emphasis

Let’s see a third example, with the sentence “I myself saw Kathy steal Mario’s lunchbox.”

The word “myself” is grammatically redundant here, but it does serve a purpose: it emphasizes that the act of robbery was happening in front of my own two eyes. You can omit it and still have a grammatically correct sentence, or you can include it for emphasis.

To sum up, whenever you’re in doubt, use the this trick of stripping the sentence off of all other subjects and just keep the first person subject. If it still makes sense, you’ve got it right.

The most common misuse of “myself” and “me” is when there are other subjects in the sentence, as in the case of sentences like this:

“John, Natalie, and myself went for a picnic.”

You’d never say “Myself went for a picnic” or “Me went for a picnic” – you’d naturally say “I went for a picnic.” Use the single-subject test, and you’ll have the singular right answer.

4­year­old children are efficient tablet users before their reading skills are even fully developed. Pen and paper correspondence is becoming obsolete. Is today’s society ready for technology’s dominion over all aspects of our lives?

Being human is defined these days not so much by our biology as by technology and how technology is gradually becoming a part of us, just as our eyes and hands are part of us. For example, take the technological “prosthetic device” most of us have attached to our hand constantly: the smartphone. It’s with you everywhere, even in the most intimate of moments. It’s an incredibly useful tool, but it also satisfies your craving for connection, providing the reassurance of being present in the ever-growing and constantly changing online community, calming your fears of missing out on the next big news item broadcast on Twitter. But is technology inversely proportional to society? Have we lost the race over who controls who?

Technology might be advancing faster than we care to admit or have the perception to realize, but this doesn’t mean it’s bad for society. Today more than ever, technology is changing education, making it decidedly affordable, democratic, and fun. From vocabulary improving software to speed reading improvement mobile apps, technology has never been a more faithful servant in the cause of advancing education.

With technology and its tools now affordable for and accessible by more and more people, society can finally take steps towards achieving a more fair and democratic status quo. People who otherwise couldn’t get into college can now enroll in one of the thousands of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) that universities from around the world offer. Fifteen years ago you had a 6­digit debt by the time you finished a four­year undergraduate program. Today you can enroll in undergraduate courses free or for a fraction of the cost.

To consider technology as evil and the onset of the loss of human agency is to ignore the numerous ways technology helps us on a daily basis. It boosts our productivity, hones our skills, and helps us become better in small and large ways. These modern tools take learning out of the classroom and let us take new knowledge everywhere. They allow us to read on an e-­reader while on the subway, or practice our spelling skills on a spelling bee app while waiting for the bus to school. Technology is what we make of it. It’s not all bad, but it’s not all good either. It takes responsibility and conscious decisions to use technology to benefit yourself in particular, and society more generally, but no one can deny the potential for today’s technology ­ and tomorrow’s innovations – to promote learning and education.

Technology and the Internet have made home-based businesses a tangible reality for many stay-at-home mums. If the cut-throat corporate world doesn’t quite fit with your personality and sensibilities, you can create your own job opportunities from home.

Whether it’s a home-based start-up catering business, or a freelance typing job, there are currently plenty of options to choose from.

Call Center Agent

The requirements are usually limited but generally include verbal fluency, a headset, and a quiet home office or room. The working hours are flexible and pay can be weekly or monthly. Also, the pay can be either per hour or per talk minute depending on your contract.

Typist/Transcriptionist

A typing business is a surefire start when it comes to building any home-based business. Skills required are good English skills, typing accuracy and speed, sound research skills, and experience if the transcription project is technical (e.g. medical, financial).

Writer/Editor

Why not put your exceptional English language skills to good use? Freelance and telecommute jobs for technical writers, resume writers and other writing niches abound. The more specialized your knowledge is on a specific issue, the higher the pay.

Over the last decade or so, the Internet has been creating a parallel world and an unprecedentedly vast discourse in virtually every industry, so it’s rather easy to help small businesses jump on the Internet bandwagon and increase visibility and sales.

Blogger/Freelance Professional

Blogging is another home-based option that’s still a robust trend in the home-run business industry. Let the world know of your passion, skill or talent through a blog or website. If your talent or skills are worthwhile, before you know it companies and other bloggers will be asking you to guest blog at their blogs or give you opportunities to financially take advantage of your expertise either through advertising or other marketing opportunities.

Web designers, web programmers, graphic designers, and translators are but a few of the skilled professionals who are putting their skills and expertise in good use by starting their own home-based business collaborating with small businesses, institutions and other organizations.

Tutor/Teach

Whether you’re a teacher of English as a Second Language, a Math instructor with a PhD, or a Yoga trainer, you can use your hobbies, knowledge and education to make money from home.

Advertise your services in a blog or a job board online, detailing your expertise, experience and other technical aspects such as the learning medium you use (online, face to face), the class location (your home, a public park) and so on.

Virtual Assistant

Another service you can offer to other businesses is becoming a virtual assistant, taking over a wide range of administrative tasks including handling correspondence and calls, updating business social media and website content, managing appointments, and data entry.

Creative Services Business

Art, photography, catering, vintage e-stores, crafts, and “green” products are ways you can earn extra money without leaving the comfort of your home. Utilize a talent or art you’ve learned by promoting it through an e-commerce site, or a third party promotional marketplace.

These are time-tested home-based business ideas that you can consider for yourself, and they can allow you to earn a substantial monthly income. Perseverance, willingness to improve and professionalism are the three aspects of home-based businesses that will get you to a competitive, high-quality service level.

Twitter has astonishing potential that most of us never even think about. Used correctly, it can be your tool for growing into a better person. When you take advantage of its networking potential, it can contribute in advancing your career, too.

Friendly, Democratic, Interaction-Based Model Of Communication

Twitter lets you initiate or participate in trending discussions. What’s extraordinary about Twitter is that everyone can equally participate in a discussion and get back an assortment of different perspectives and interpretations on any given matter.

This plurality of voices is a crucial aspect of self-development. By exposing you to different views, including those that are often contradictory to your own opinions, these exchanges nurture your empathy and cultivate your tolerance. This is a type of emotional intelligence we often overlook.

Critical Thinking And Learning

Twitter is used for sharing what’s considered “share-worthy” – whether “worthy” means funny, inspirational, educational, or relevant. By following experts, self-improvement professionals and anyone else you admire or find helpful, the items that appear on Twitter will give you instant access to worthwhile resources for advancing your professional life and enhancing your personal one.

For instance, if you wish to learn HTML you can follow on Twitter professionals in the field to find your way to the best HTML classes and online courses and get recommendations on the best course of action. You can use Twitter to access virtually any type of learning, no matter if that’s a skill, a language, or an art.

Inspiration, Motivation, Support

Self-growth and goal realization requires a constant flow of inspiration, positivity, and support. Twitter is a potentially unlimited venue of pick-me-up resources. Follow a personal growth coach, a successful entrepreneur in the industry of your interest, anyone who already has what you’re after. They will offer you valuable insights and advice on how you can make your own dream come true.

Expand Your Learning Network

Why limit yourself to the friends, colleagues, family and extended network of acquaintances, when Twitter can offer you a chance to connect with experts and individuals who’ve made it to the top in their field?

Use Twitter to reach people you’d probably never meet in person. Ask them questions and benefit from a chat with them. Learn about their success habits and see how their wisdom can help you avoid certain risks, make smarter moves, and ultimately achieve your goals.

Develop Self-Awareness

Social media can become a tool we abuse in order to satisfy our needs for acknowledgment and applause. With Twitter, however you can concentrate on inspection and introspection, and re-focus.

Participating in Twitter chats lets you direct your gaze to things other than your immediate reality, it pushes you to challenge your views. It offers you the opportunity to critically evaluate your mindset, life approach and success plans through the simple action of hearing out what others say and believe.

Be The First To Know

The compactness and minimalism of Twitter makes it easier to be on top of new developments in the issues that concern you. Twitter is a must-use tool for announcing new releases, events, and even educational courses. With Twitter you’re the first to know about the latest approach to achieving a strong sense of self-worth or how to become more assertive professionally without putting off people.

Contribute

Most people tend to jump right into asserting their own expertise, be it a skill or profession. It’s best that you first test the scene and get something out of it, before starting to use it to teach, learn and influence others.

Use Twitter to promote your own blog or work, to show off your skills and talents and share your experiences of trying to attain professional and personal fulfillment.

People are more likely to engage with you if you are actively interested in sharing, discussing and creatively addressing issues that concern them. This will help you substantially in your efforts to become a better person and a professional.

Twitter can be your go-to social media platform for tips, techniques and insights as to how to achieve professional and personal development. No other social media platform offers such a level of instant, direct connection. Twitter, more than any other social media network, offers a greater chance of having your questions answered.

It’s there, the elephant in the room that you have to face eventually. You have to stand up and acknowledge that your self-esteem is low and find ways to improve it in a sustainable and beneficial manner.

Looking back, I realize that for me the solution was a matter of asking the right questions; finding the courage to face my fears, I gave voice to those questions that have long been haunting me.

I’ve found that in order to let yourself grow and allow your self-confidence to increase, you need to become your own best friend; to encourage growth and motivate yourself, to help generate new ideas, and support yourself in your own journey of achieving a healthy, increased self-esteem.

Responsibility

One of the questions I found hardest to verbalize and answer was this:

Why am I letting my low self-esteem control my life?

You see, when we don’t believe we have worth or power, it’s easy to brush off any personal responsibility and ignore – or avoid – thinking about we are capable of doing to change it. We refuse to assume responsibility over our lives, making up excuses, saying that “this is how things are” for us. We say to ourselves we don’t have the talent or skill to take that promotion, or don’t deserve better pay. We self-impose a limited control over what we can do in life, condemning ourselves to a mediocre, unfulfilling life.

This question helped me understand that limited self-responsibility is very convenient; you live in a no-risk, bulletproof reality where you absolve yourself from all responsibility and refuse any type of change, growth and challenge.

I realized this wasn’t sustainable, and that my so-called limited self-responsibility was an artifact I created to hide behind so that I wouldn’t have to face facts.

To turn this around, I looked for situations where I would normally, out of habit, not participate. In the past, I would generally exempt myself from putting myself forward, whether that was giving a presentation at a meeting, or speaking up against an injustice. Once I really looked at the reasons why I’d avoided those situations in the past, I started seeing things differently.

Once I started looking at things from a perspective of responsibility, those things would immediately become personal. By making things personal, by bringing in the moral factor, and by connecting my life to the event, I was capable of overcoming my need to hide away.

So for instance, when I was feeling unsure about speaking to my supervisor about my work not being duly appreciated, I would stop and say to myself that it’s my responsibility to do so. My self-esteem might be telling me I don’t deserve this acknowledgment, but self-responsibility was telling me that it was my right to have my efforts appreciated. Gradually I adopted a mindset of assertiveness and increased self-respect.

Comparisons and Self-worth

Once I became aware of how my low self-esteem was a trick to get me out of situations that made me uneasy, or preventing me from going after things I needed in my life (asking for a raise, being more confident of my skills), then the next question became clear:

How should I measure my self-worth?

The answer was simple. I had to see others as a source for inspiration and motivation, rather than using them only in ruthless, self-destructive comparison to myself.

Previously I was only comparing myself to others to remind me of how much better, prettier, richer (and on and on) I saw those others to be. It needs time and mindful effort to consciously believe you’re as capable, worthy and strong as those you’re comparing yourself to.

The secret to achieving this was realizing that people with self-worth had something I was refusing to take: risk. The assertive, confident risk-taking approach to life that I’d started exploring when answering my first question.

I realized that the people I admired had a healthy sense of self-love and self-esteem because they believed they were worthy of it. People with high self-esteem believe they deserve to have opportunities in life and so they aggressively seek them out. In my case, I had the habit of thinking that I didn’t deserve much of anything. My lack of self-worth told me I shouldn’t be allowed the same opportunities that those people with real value and skill were given. I wasn’t seeing opportunities at all.

Again, this was a self-imposed illusion that I created to make it easier for me to accept my current situation as an unchangeable fact.

When I focused on change, I choose to surround myself with people who would support and acknowledge my worth. Even more important, I decided to completely avoid anyone that I knew – whether that was a co-worker, a friend, or even a family member – who seemed to have the habit of trying to make themselves feel better by belittling me. I also made a conscious effort to accept that, without even changing a thing, I was worthy of that support, worthy of love, worthy of success. I forbade myself to compare my achievements and skills to those of other people. I only let myself be inspired by them, not intimidated.

Gradually this nurturing environment has helped me gain little bits of self-worth that gradually became stronger and more assertive. The journey to building a strong self-esteem is open-ended, there will always be more room for growth and change for the better, and I am ready to answer any other questions that come my way in a positive and life-affirming manner.

Are we putting too much pressure on the younger generation, forcing them to learn too many things in too little time? Should education become less intensive and more intuitive? How young is too young for making children aware of the responsibility for realizing their potential?

Letting Children Realize Their Potential on Their Own Time

It’s unhealthy to push children to start working towards life and professional success at a tender age. We ought to let our children play just as we had the opportunity to. Children are children, and they need play and fun, just as they need the experiences and lessons that come from the interactions they have with others in their age group, whether that’s getting (or giving) comfort for a skinned leg, becoming a leader (or an outcast), or inviting new schoolmates to join the group.

That being said, by letting children be children you help them cultivate — even unknowingly — social skills necessary for their growing up and advancement. What’s more, letting children savor their childhood enables them to become conscious of their potential on their own time. A child will come to understand he has leadership skills, when every single friend he has follows him and copies his actions, for instance.

Gradually Introducing Essential Skills to Make It A Bit Easier For Them

The most efficient way for letting children become aware of their potential is to indirectly equip them with skills, knowledge and tools they can use towards that end.

Don’t directly tell them “You’d be a good ____, you know.” Let them discover on their own what they can be in life and what they enjoy. You might think you know best, but your guess might be wrong, and you’re putting too much pressure on a child when you try to dictate their future.

Encourage Potential Discovery

So, instead of pinpointing what they should do, why not encourage them to discover it themselves? Urge them for instance to take part in a school spelling bee contest, or in the swimming club competition. This way you give them ample time and support to discover their call.

Ultimately, there’s no particular age for starting to make children aware of their potential. This is an ongoing process that can begin as young as 2 years old if you use the indirect, encouraging manner just described.

Remember to praise your child every step along the way too. Praise their efforts, even if these didn’t turn out to be sufficient. Praising them inspires them to become better spellers or swimmers, even if they seem to be terribly bad at it at first. In the end, the child will – in their own time – start to understand their potential and once they do, this is where you come in, supporting and guiding them through the hard work it takes to realize that potential.

Ever since the 1990s it’s been the case that people have less and less need to head straight for the local library to find references to use for a school report. Resources at home were usually sketchy before that time – if you were lucky enough you would have a 20+ volume encyclopedia you could browse through and find relevant but somewhat dated information. However, even the libraries had their limits, and information wasn’t always at the tips of your fingers.

Things have drastically changed today. Our access to quality information is more widespread, instant and effortless today. All we need to do is search for information online. Be it a book, video, DVD or audiobook, any type of information product can be retrieved and accessed through online libraries.

WorldCat.org

This website lets you search for titles in a number of libraries worldwide and offers you access to them online. It also has a feature for recommending nearby libraries that have the title you’re looking for. The website collaborates with a worldwide library network to ensure there are enough resources for whatever a person is looking for.

Something like the Google of libraries, WorldCat provides resources (some free, others requiring library subscription/membership) to about 71,000 libraries in more than 100 countries. WorldCat provides easy and quick access to valuable information, sparing you the need to visit local libraries.

Everybody’s Libraries

Everybody’s Libraries is a blog run by John Mark Ockerbloom, digital library planner and researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. Ockerbloom is also the developer of an online book catalogue which indexes over 1 million books available free online.

The rationale behind Everybody’s Libraries and the Online Books Page is that books and information should be easy to access online, as well as free of charge. Information access in the 21st century is gradually becoming a streamlined process that’s decidedly democratic. These two online book indexing services allow us to easily gain access to knowledge reliably, quickly, and electronically.

Libraries are no longer independent hubs of information, because the Internet makes it possible for these knowledge banks to connect with each other and form an infinite network of information people can access to educate themselves.