ALIA West

April 2002

Net Notes: Ready reference and research websites

Distances
You can find out how far it is from one city to another using the "How far is it?" website
http://www.indo.com/distance/
This is also a way of finding out how many cities share the same name as you are prompted for the country if more than one city has that name (there are 18 Londons in the United States, for example).

Folklore/Urban Legends
Urban Legends Reference Pages
http://www.snopes2.com/index.html
This is the site to check to find out whether a particular urban legend going the rounds is true or not. It has well researched explanations of why a particular story is true or false.

Postcode search
Australia
http://www.auspost.com.au/postcodes/

United Kingdom
http://www.consignia-online.com/index.jhtml

United States
United States Postal Service
http://www.usps.com/ncsc/lookups/lookup_zip+4.html

National Address Server - input address to find the ZIP code
http://www.cedar.buffalo.edu/adserv.html

Rulers of the world
http://rulers.org/
This lists every ruler: royalty or elected rulers for all countries for the past couple of hundred years or more. It is kept up to date and has even managed to keep track of who's in charge of Argentina (a particularly difficult task at the beginning of this year). There is also some biographical information on more recent rulers.

Standards
Check these websites to find information about standards, search their catalogue of publications or order standards.

American National Standards Association
http://www.ansi.org/

IEEE standards
http://standards.ieee.org/

Standards Australia
http://www.standards.com.au/catalogue/Script/search.asp

International Organisation for Standardization
http://www.iso.ch/iso/en/ISOOnline.frontpage

Statistics
Australian Bureau of Statistics
http://www.abs.gov.au

National Statistics (UK)
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/

FedStats
http://www.fedstats.gov/
This is a gateway to statistics produced by US Federal agencies.

World Time Zones
http://www.worldtimezone.com/

Time and Date Com
http://www.timeanddate.com/
Find out what the time is anywhere in the world, calculate the number of days between two dates, check the time zones, or when daylight saving ends in particular countries.

Comic relief
For a library oriented laugh, check these sites:

The Lipstick Librarian
http://www.lipsticklibrarian.com/

Warrior Librarian Weekly
http://www.geocities.com/bibliophist/index.htm

Check out Biblia, the warrior librarian!

Librarian Avengers
http://www.librarianavengers.com/flashindex.htm
This site is a bit slow to load but it's worth the wait. The Reality 850 section "What they didn't teach us in library school" is patchy in quality but has some real gems.

IFLANET Library Humour
http://www.ifla.org/I/humour/humour.htm