Thing 17. ELM Productivity Tools

I love ELM. I've now used it in three different librarian environments, and each one brings new insights.

I've set up a feed from EBSCO into my Bloglines account for several tables of contents. At work, with IP verification, they work great. The EBSCO Web editing tools aren't that interesting. They seem clunky and I can do the same thing with other tools. The ProQuest My Research seems a bit more helpful. I could see taking this basic page and editing the HTML to really use it for something.

I like the NetLibrary books as an addition to our print collection. In fact, we're in the middle of purchasing the new Community College collection. These resources help us serve our distance education students. We also like that we don't have to catalog these since we can just have the MARC records loaded. We also don't have to process the physical item with stamps and call numbers, and they don't take any shelf space. I particularly like NetLibrary for subjects like computer programming, where things get dated so fast. It's really easy to weed old items.