Research Blog

Word Clouds as Works of Art

Bufkinite@evpl — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 16:51:00 GMT

Noodling around on the web is great fun because in doing so, I sometimes find things that I end up being amazed by, but would otherwise never have thought interesting. The web site wordle.net is one such example. You can enter any text into it - love letters, web pages, emails, anything! - and it will create a word cloud which gives greater prominence to words appearing more frequently in the source text.

You can play around with the results, changing fonts, color schemes, the direction of the type (e.g. horizontal or vertical), and the overall layout. The results are surprising, and very often stunning.

I'm a word person - I not only love to use words, I enjoy finding just the right word, and am frequently peeved (friends say more than I should be) by the unnecessary use of words, or the incorrect use of words. (Don't even get me started on words like "digitalization" or "irregardless"!) So finding a web site that does nothing but render words into things of striking beauty is a real pleasure for me!

Just to give you an example, here is a word cloud - courtesy of http://www.wordle.net - using the text of this blog post!

Check it out!

November is National Diabetes Month

SuDocQueen@evpl — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:07:00 GMT

Considering the prevalance of diabetes in America today, I suspect the disease has touched many, many families in the Evansville and tri-state area. It is certainly a topic near and dear to my heart since I have had family members and friends afflicted with both Type 1 and Type II. For those who have never encountered diabetes, or those newly diagnosed, it can be a frightening disease. So what better time to learn more about the disease than during the month dedicated to it?

To be honest, it had slipped my mind that November was National Diabetes Month until I got an email update from www.usa.gov talking about it -- check out www.usa.gov's website to find out about all the great email updates and RSS feeds people can sign-up for. The email included a great link to their FAQ section on diabetes. That section in turn offers several ways to get information on diabetes. They include phone, address, and email for the National Diabetes Information Clearinghouse as well as several links for different websites like National Diabetes Information Clearinghouse, National Diabetes Education Program, and the American Diabetes Association.

You can find even more online information from www.usa.gov by browsing or keyword searching from the website's main page. To browse, scroll down the main page until you see "Health and Nutrition." Clicking will take you to a further breakdown of the subject. Scroll down to "Health Topics A-Z" and click. Then click on "D" and scroll down until you get to "Diabetes." You'll see about twelve different topics on diabetes from diabetes and pregnancy to diabetic diet, kidney problems or even nerve problems. Each topic leads to great information from Medline Plus that includes additional links on things like prevention, related issues, and research as well as links to videos, tutorials, and pictures where available.

You can also do a keyword search on diabetes by typing the term into the search box at the top of www.usa.gov's main screen. You'll get a results page reminiscent of Google but without all the extraneous hits from questionable websites. The neatest part of the results page is the topic breakdown on the left-hand side of the page. The topic list is a breakdown of the search results into individual topics. The numbers in parenthesis indicate how many hits your search had under that topic, and the plus button to the right indicates that the topic can be broken down even farther. Clicking on the plus button will show that further breakdown while clicking on the topic itself will change the results list to the hits for just that topic. Also, take a look at the Agencies breakdown. If you didn't know, www.usa.gov searches state as well as federal websites. Looking at "Agencies" will give you a concise picture of the places your results are coming from. For example my "diabetes" search showed that the majority of my results came from the National Institutes of Health, but if you click to see "All" results for Agencies, you can scroll down and discover that Indiana has a page on diabetes coming from the IHS Division of Diabetes Treatment and Prevention.

If you're not on information overload yet, or if you prefer your information in a more tangible format, EVPL has an amazing collection of print material on diabetes ranging from books on the disease, complications, and diet to cookbooks for the diabetic. My simple keyword search using the term diabetes then limiting to books turned up over 400 books. Or, if you'd like to see magazine articles you can go back to the computer, go to our databases, and select a general database like Masterfile Premier, (see it under our list of "Popular Databases" or find it through our "Alphabetical Sequence") and do a keyword search for articles on diabetes. You can also choose "Category Sequence" and click on Health and Medicine to see a list of databases that will narrow your search to just medical journals.

What are the odds?

googler@evpl — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:15:00 GMT

Ever wonder what the odds are that an adult planning a Halloween costume will be a cat? How about the odds of being killed by a shark? There's a new website, The Book of Odds, that does just that — it gives you odds.

You can do a simple keyword search, an odds search (finding anything that has a 1 in 100 chance of occurring by entering the number 100), or click on "advanced search" to look for additional content (articles and blog posts). Searching all content can be pretty interesting, particularly if you're looking to spice up a speech or a research paper, but there's not a huge amount of that kind of content.

The data comes from a lot of demographic studies, much of it market-based or governmental, and because of that, you tend to see age, gender, income, and location breakdowns that many people won't find that useful and tend to pad the result list.. (They're not consistent breakdowns though, so no comparison of shark attack odds between Indiana and Florida.)

If you see something in the result list that you want to know more about or want to use in some way, click on the odds for an item and you’ll get a visual representing those odds and a list of unrelated odds that are close or exactly the same as the one you’re looking at. The detail page also has a button marked "Sources & Definitions." Click it and you’ll get information on the source, rounding information, and even an appropriate way to cite the data presented. If you don't find odds for something you think should be there, click on "suggest odds" at the bottom of the page, and they may be able to research it and add it.

If you register and create an account (it’s free) you can start your own book of odds, which allows you to track odds, send odds information to a friend, mark those that you like or those that apply to you, etc. Worth a visit! Oh, and before you leave the Book of Odds site be sure to visit the "About Us" page. I got a chuckle out of this : "Book of Odds is not a search-engine, decision-engine, knowledge-engine, or any other kind of engine…so please don’t compare us to Google(tm). We did consider the term 'probability engine' for about 25 seconds, before coming to our senses."

The Open Book Alliance, an Alternative to the Google Library Book Project.

Bufkinite@evpl — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:52:00 GMT

You've probably heard of the Google Library Books Project, a massive project wherein search giant Google teamed up with a number of large research libraries worldwide to scan their holdings in order to make digitized copies of those books available worldwide. Cooperating libraries included Oxford's Bodleian library - the oldest public library in the world - Harvard University Libraries, and the University of Michigan Libraries, giving Google a database which now numbers over 10 million books, many of which are not in the public domain, but still fall under copyright protection. As a result, it wasn't long before a lawsuit was brought against Google by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, concerned that people would access their books via Google without paying the authors or publishers of protected works the royalties they would normally be due.

The result of this lawsuit was a settlement that has become known as the Google Book Settlement, a settlement that many authors, agents, libraries, and lawyers claim gives Google a tremendously unfair advantage over any other digitizing enterprise, gives Google perpetual and exclusive rights to "orphaned works" - books that are still under copyright protection, but for which a copyright claimant has not come forward or been found - if no claim has been filed for them by June 5, 2010. Google maintains that these concerns are overblown. Co-founder Sergey Brin wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times recently essentially calling the Google Books Project the digital equivalent of the Great Library of Alexandria, but UC Berkley law professor Pamela Samuelson responded with a rebuttal, pointing out that:

Unlike any library, Google is a profit-motivated company, out to sell you a product
Libraries and library associations are lining up in opposition to the proposed settlement, something they wouldn't do if Google Books operated like a library
The settlement would put the fair use of copyright materials in jeopardy, and libraries are great believers in fair use
Rights to reader privacy are also at risk (would you like some Adsense advertisements with your book search?)

Enter the Open Book Alliance (OBA), an organization whose mission recognizes that "the mass digitization of books promises to bring tremendous value to consumers, libraries, scholars, and students. The Open Book Alliance will work to advance and protect this promise. And, by protecting it, ... will assert that any mass book digitization and publishing effort be open and competitive." The OBA was co-founded by Peter Brantley, Director of the Bookserver Project at the Internet Archive and previously Director of the Digital Library Federation, and Gary Reback, an intellectual property and trade regulation lawyer generally credited with spearheading the efforts leading to the U.S. Government’s prosecution of Microsoft.

The last sentence of OBA's Mission Statement makes it very clear: "The Open Book Alliance will counter Google, the Association of American Publishers and the Authors’ Guild’s scheme to monopolize the access, distribution and pricing of the largest digital database of books in the world. To this end, we will promote fair and flexible solutions aimed at achieving a more robust and open system."

One of the ways that OBA is striving to "oppose" the Google Book Settlement is through recruiting organizational members to give weight to their mission. Current members include Microsoft and Amazon.com, groups of authors such as the American Society of Journalists and Authors and the Sceince Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, groups of publishers like the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses, and Small Press Distribution, library associations like the New York Library Association and the Special Libraries Association, and many others.

Another way OBA hopes to secure opposition to the Google Book Settlement is to educate the public about its dangers. They have published a quick guide to the proposed book settlement, "Fact vs. Fiction" in pdf format. Their web site features a news center with links to all their press releases and any stories from the mainstream media regarding the proposed settlement. And they have a resources page featuring links to video and transcripts of congressional testimony about the settlement.

Follow OBA on Twitter
Subscribe to the OBA Channel on YouTube
Subscriber to the OBA website's RSS Feed

Learn to find Government Information on the Web

Bufkinite@evpl — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 19:53:00 GMT

Interested in finding out about govenment jobs? Wonder where you can find the latest consumer product safety information? Ever wanted to look at surplus government property, and maybe bid on some of it? Want to get information on financial planning? On October 21st there will be a free workshop on how to access all of this information and more through the premier government web portal - USA.gov.

Led by Government Documents Librarian Teresa Loeffler, this workshop will help you search and find the specific information you want, by showing you some concrete examples, and then letting you search the web site yourself, with supervision and assistance.

The workshop takes place at Central Library's Tech Center, and is limited to 15 people, so that everyone will have their own computer for searching for the information that interests them. Call the library Reference Desk at 428-8218 to sign up, or IM us via the AskEVPL page and let us know that you'd like to sign up for the Finding Government Information workshop.

Changes to EVPL eNewsletters

professor.knowsitall@evpl — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 18:17:00 GMT

For several years, we've offered an assortment of eNewsletters. On our eNewsletters page, patrons have subscribed to eNewsletters and received them via email.

Unfortunately, our content providers have discontinued the following eNewsletters:

BooksTV
Chapter-A-Day
Meet the Author
Meet the Illustrator
Pearl's Picks

Email subscribers have already received the final issues of these eNewsletters and won't receive new issues in the future, as there won't be any.

On the brighter side, we have added a new eNewsletter: New DVDs. Movie buffs can subscribe to be notified of new releases every month!

Visit our eNewsletters page today to check out the changes, view current issues, and sign-up to receive future issues via email!

World Vegetarian Day & Vegetarian Awareness Month

Shh_ImReading@evpl — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:06:00 GMT

A friend just let me know that TODAY is World Vegetarian Day! It turns out the whole month of October is Vegetarian Awareness Month! Have you ever considered going vegetarian or vegan? Maybe you could try it out this month. Why not try something new? Look for vegetarian options at the Fall Festival next week, for example. Yes, there really are vegetarian options at the Fall Festival! EVPL has lots of books on making the change to vegetarianism and many, many vegetarian cookbooks. There is a whole world of meat-free options out there; it's not all tofu! Then again, don't be scared of tofu. Remember, you have to try it to know you don't like it.

Ready, set, GO VEGETARIAN!

Are you a vegetarian or vegan? Tell us in the comments what resource(s) helped you make the transition, even it's just the title of your favorite cookbook!

Happy Banned Books Week!

Bufkinite@evpl — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 22:02:00 GMT

Banned Books Week takes place this year from September 26 - October 3, and is not a celebration of banning books, but rather a celebration of the freedom to read, and the importance of the First Amendment.

The books featured during Banned Books Week have been the subject of attempted bannings, and illustrate the fact that many people attempt to ban books from a desire to protect everyone else from ideas or images which they find personally distasteful. This is in keeping with Laurence Peters's quote that a censor is "someone who knows more than he thinks you should," and underscores the position of the ALA's Office of Intellectual Freedom (OIF) that "materials should not be excluded because of the origin, background, or views of those contributing to their creation," and likewise "should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval."

The OIF releases annual lists of the most frequently challenged books, and it's always interesting reading.
Here's a list of the 11 most ironically banned books of all time.
And here's a map that shows that book bannings are a national problem.

Central's anniversary celebration SUNDAY features mini-golf, Book Cart Drill Team, & more!

professor.knowsitall@evpl — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 16:59:00 GMT

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Starting with a press conference on Thursday, September 17, we've been honoring Central Library's 5th anniversary with some special events. Our Film Festival wraps up this afternoon with a showing of Citizen Kane. On Saturday, we'll be hosting a Poetry Festival.

On Sunday, party with us at Central Library's Anniversary Celebration! There will be activities & entertainment for all ages to enjoy.

How many times have you had the urge to play mini-golf in the library? Satisfy that urge on Sunday, when we'll have 18 holes of mini-golf set up in Central's stacks (on the 1st & 2nd floors)! And don't worry...there won't be any water hazards. Get your golf game on from 1-5pm.

Enjoy some food & music in the café garden from 1-4:30pm. We'll be grilling hot dogs & hamburgers!

Over 20 cakes will be on display in the lobby from 1-3:30pm as part of our Cake Decorating Contest. Vote for your favorite! Winners will be announced shortly before 4pm, and the cakes (& punch) will be served from 4-5pm.

Nothing will prepare you for our Book Cart Drill Team's first public performance at 2:30pm in the lobby! With epic choreography & drama, the team will recreate a famous battle from literature (& a recent movie trilogy). With book carts.

We'll also have a scavenger hunt & appearances by literary actors (can you guess who they are?) throughout the celebration.

There will be something for everyone at Sunday's Anniversary Celebration. Hope to see you then!

Additional Computer Basics Class Added for October First

Bufkinite@evpl — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 16:12:00 GMT

Due to the fact that all three computer basics classes filled up very quickly, EVPL has added an additional class to the fall schedule, for October 1st, from 10:00 - 11:00 a.m.

This class will teach you all you need to know to get started using a computer without fear, and includes learning to use the mouse and keyboard, how to open different programs, and how to use the Microsoft Windows operating system.

You'll also learn the difference between hardware and software, and a little of the history of how computers developed from the first machines, which took up entire buildings but had less computing power than an iPod, to the laptop and handheld computers of today.

Registration information for this class can be found here.

Information about other computer classes can be found here.

Is there a silver lining to knowing in advance that you're going to lose your job?

SuDocQueen@evpl — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 20:29:00 GMT

When faced with that imminent pink slip I would think it would be hard to see any upside to the situation, but I read an article on MSN.com a few days ago that made lemonade out of losing a job. The article was primarily pointing out the famous businesses (like Microsoft) that had been started during similar past recessions, and pointing out that a few of those very founders had been laid-off workers thanks to their recessions. Now, I'm not advocating that everyone who's lost their job go out and start their own business. That's very hard work. You can learn more about the involved process and if it's for you at www.sba.gov.

But, the article did get me thinking about another silver lining that's been pointed out regarding losing one's current career and having difficulty finding a new job in the same field, the opportunity to explore a new, possibly even more enjoyable, career. And that is the only silver lining I can see in knowing ahead of time that you're losing your job...the opportunity to plan ahead, to get those applications out, or explore other possibilities while you still have an income.

The U.S. Department of Labor's Employment and Training Administration is a good source of online resources for exploring new careers, dealing with job loss, and learning about financial support while pursuing career training. Some of the information they offer is generated directly on their website, but the majority of the information is accessed through links to other sites they are affiliated with, such as O*NET and Career One Stop.

O*NET stands for the Occupational Information Network. The service was started through a grant from the U.S. Department of Labor (learn more about O*NET's origins and the organizations behind its continued development and implementation). When you visit O*NET be prepared to spend some time. The site offers a vast array of information for job searchers and employers. The main page (O*NET OnLine) is a tad intimidating. On one hand I found the O*NET Resource Center to be a nicer place to start. It gives explanations of all the tools available through O*NET, but once you get off the introductory page there isn't a quick and obvious way back to O*NET's main page -- you have to click "OnLine" from the left hand list of links (under Products) and from there click on O*NET OnLine.

Now, I did like the Interest and Ability Profilers from the Resource Center better than the Skills Search available from O*NET OnLine. For those of us who are clueless about what we'd be good at these Interest and Ability tests are designed to give us some insight into "our work related interests." Note, when you're looking at the drop-down menu, if you want to take the tests via computer, you'll need to choose "Computerized Interest Profiler." Otherwise all you'll get are PDFs that will need to be printed out so you can take the tests by hand. Also be aware that if you want to take the computerized version, you will need to download software for it. The download was quick and painless and I thought it well worth it not to have to fill out and then tabulate the tests by hand.

You can also skip the Profiles and the Resource Center all together and just search O*NET OnLine. That's a good idea when you're already sure of the jobs you're interested in. You can search for a specific job; you can find out what jobs are most in demand within industries; you can broaden your search by choosing a career group ("education, training & library" rather than "librarian" for example) -- that will give you a larger results list in comparison to the specific job title search; and you can search for a job by how much preparation (training) you're willing to put in -- from a little to a lot. These aren't the only choices for searching, but they are the most obvious.

I did a search for the job title "editor." That brought up obvious choices like technical writers and editors and less obvious choices like order clerks -- I guess order clerks sometimes have to edit mistakes on orders that come into them... The breadth of the list is nice to help remind the searcher that they don't have to be locked into one interpretation of their career choice. Another of O*NET's nice touches is the "Indemand" label. It clues the searcher to which jobs are expected to grow in the coming months/years.

Once you choose a career/job to look at, you get a report that includes a summary of a dozen aspects of the career such as expected tasks, knowledge needed, and wages & employment. There's also a more detailed report of all those aspects as well as a custom version that allows the searcher to view the results depending on what aspects are important to the searcher.

Beyond that information, you can also find out about the job's prospects in each state, but that takes you to Career One Stop, and at this point I think that needs to be a separate blog.

Please pardon our mess: Parking deck repairs at Central Library

professor.knowsitall@evpl — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 18:32:00 GMT

Due to repairs to the parking deck, portions of Central Library's parking lot will be closed at varying times until mid-November or when construction is complete.

Parking is still available in Central's underground parking garage. The entrance is slightly east of the parking lot entrance on Chestnut Street.

Also, due to the limited parking availability, new meeting room reservations for the Browning Events Room will not be accepted until the repairs are complete.

Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience and intermittent noise. Please contact library administration with any questions or comments you may have.

Up-To-Date H1N1 and Flu Information Available Now!

Bufkinite@evpl — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 21:09:00 GMT

As public concern about pandemic H1N1 and the upcoming flu season continues to grow, the medical and nursing editors from both EBSCO Publishing and the Gale Group have responded by offering the latest scientifically verified flu-related information available for free.

These free flu information resources are available in the following ways:

To access EBSCO's information, click here.
To access Gale Group's information on the science and history of H1N1, click here.
To access Gale Groups up-to-the-minute global news on H1N1, click here.

This free flu information will be continually updated, so please check both of these sites often, and feel free to share, post, and email a link to this blog post to your colleagues, family and friends.

Remembering 9/11

librarianinheels@evpl — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 17:30:00 GMT

As a student of history, I am fascinated by the interactive ways in which New Yorkers (and others who were in NYC at the time the World Trade Center was attacked) are contributing to the memory of 9/11. The outpouring of personal stories, videos, photos, items from loved ones and other ephemera is staggering and impressive. The National September 11 Memorial and Museum has just launched (today) an online initiative to collect as much material on a special website as folks want to contribute. It's a browsable, real-time collection of photos, videos and audio material contributed by those who experienced 9/11 first hand. It's called Make History, and invites citizen journalists of the world to contribute to the memory of the terrorists attacks. The site contains largely unedited material, however, and may contain graphic and disturbing images and some foul language, so be forewarned. Still, this huge collection of grass-roots data is a fitting tribute to the memory of those who perished in the attacks, and it's fascinating to look at what's being contributed. (Click here for a link to the Yahoo article discussing the new site.)

Note: The site may not load right away, due to the large amount of anticipated traffic as the 8th anniversary of the terror attacks passes. Additionally, if you arrive at the site and it takes a longer than usual time to load, try clicking on the "Skip to low-bandwidth story search" option.

Do you stand in front of your closet every morning wondering what will fit, not what do I want to wear?

SuDocQueen@evpl — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 14:55:00 GMT

Here's my dirty little secret; I've been doing that all summer. To look at me no one would say I have a weight problem, but thanks to sports injuries and other medical issues this summer, I've been sidelined from my normal active lifestyle. Sprawling on the chaise lounge and reading instead of chasing a fuzzy green ball across the tennis court and doing yard work has been a surprisingly enjoyable change. Unfortunately, I didn't change my eating habits along with my reduction in activity and the inches have been creeping on. Every morning when I reach for the elastic waist pants I tell myself 'this is it, gotta cut back', but each night I eat my healthy, delicious, home-grown cherry tomatoes, and still reach for the French Fried Onion rings (ever get one of those big bags from one of the warehouse stores?). Since even my "fat cloths" are getting tight, it's time to get serious.

Counting calories and making a point of skipping the junk food is the best way to do that, but that can be boring (yeah, like that's an excuse -- but what can I say). Doing the right thing can be easier when it's also fun, and I know just the place to go www.mypyramid.gov. Be prepared for a near information overload. Designed and run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the site's main page has so many links to useful information that you hardly know where to start. There are waaay too many of them for me to go through here, but I do want to tell you about my favorite, www.mypyramidtracker.gov.

You start out by telling the Tracker your age, weight, and height (why fudge? No one but the computer will know and if you don't tell the truth, later you won't get an accurate breakdown of what nutrition you need). Next you're asked to list all the foods you ate for the day, then the number of servings. After that the Tracker will analyze your intake for the day and shoot you to a page where you can choice to see if you met the 2005 Dietary Guidelines -- they use cute little emoticons as well as showing you the amount you actually ate and the amount that is recommended; you can see your nutrient breakdown for the day -- you get your total calories consumed along with a breakdown of your fats, proteins, and vitamins; you get "Pyramid stats" which show you graphically whether you got your recommended daily amount of milk, meat, veggies, grains, etc; and lastly you can view your "healthy eating history by day, month, up to a year -- this is assuming you've registered and have faithfully input your eating habits for a while.

Registration is free or you can use "check it out" daily without registering. I think the benefit of registering is that you can save your information for at least a year in order to track how well you're doing. Plus, you won't be able to access your "check it out" information from the whole day if you don't use the same computer all day -- no adding breakfast and lunch at your work computer then going home and adding dinner. You'd have to start from scratch adding your entire food intake for the whole day. Frankly, I think the benefits of seeing how your eating habits change over time is well worth the registration.

Plusses and minuses of the Tracker...well, today I couldn't find Velveeta sliced cheese, so I had to compensate with the next best thing (American/cheddar cheese, processed), but I could choose one slice as my serving size. Plus, I could add plain M&M's and select as few as 10 pieces as my serving size! The Tracker strives to offer a huge range of foods to choose from, from simple foods like bananas to restaurant food like McD's Big Mac. And they have very flexible serving sizes, from a whole apple (and you can even choose large or medium) to a slice as a serving size. My only real quibble is that they don't show you the calories for your individual foods. I like to know how many calories those 10 M&Ms are verses one (or two) Hershey's Kisses so I know which food choice will be cheaper calorie-wise when I'm limiting my sweets intake.

I won't bore you with the anal way I figure that out on my own, but I will tell you about a book that I absolutely love "The Calorie King Calorie Fat and Carbohydrate Counter" (613.23 CALOR 2009). I looked up M&Ms in the book, and it actually told me how many calories there were in one M&M! Okay, okay it only told me the calories for the plain M&M. It didn't go on and do the same for the peanut, almond, or peanut butter, but I was still impressed. Plus, it not only tells you the calories, it also gives the fat and carbohydrate counts. The book covers the normal basic foods -- like meat, breads, fruits veggies, etc -- and an amazing array of sweets (like M&Ms) as well as a huge section on restaurant foods. I found the Outback, O-Charley's, Sizzler, Red Lobster along with the usual suspects like McDonalds, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell. Starbucks was even in there. Do you really want to know how many calories your favorite frappuccino are costing you?

If all our copies of Calorie King are checked out, there's always the Reference copy you can use here, or you can try any of these other calorie counting books.

I'd like to talk more about www.mypyramid.gov but if I do that, this'll become a novel rather than a blog -- it's already leaning in that direction -- so just check it out on your own. If you have any questions on using it, pipe up here or give us a call at Reference!