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Thanks to the folks at Lifehacker for pointing out a new search engine, Kosmix. Kosmix has the potential to be extra-interesting for us library-types, who have a healthy respect for browsing as an information-finding method. Kosmix tries to “organize the web so that you can explore, learn and discover.”

The Social Security Administration hosts a website that lists popular baby names by year. You can also search for your name, or look at names by state, or decade. I discovered this site thanks to Gov Gab, a government blog.

The Map of Early Modern London is a good resource from Dr. Janelle Jenstad at the University of Victoria. You can look at London through the eyes of Shakespeare through use of quotes, and there is a good listing of sources.

The Bucks County Library System in Philadelphia has hired an unusual collection agency to help them retrieve their lost and stolen materials – the Unique Management Services Inc. Unique hires people, often seminarians, who use a more gentle touch to get people to return their materials and pay their fines. A quote from the Philadelphia Inquirer’s article puts it well, “Who better than a future pastor to politely argue the moral probity of giving back what doesn’t belong to you?”

Gizmodo has some photos of an a-traditional corporate library, the Lego Secret Vault. Here they store examples of all old Lego sets in a climate controlled compact shelving. While this video is meant for Lego fans, it’s interesting to see the storage system. Now I’m wondering if it’s cataloged…

I recently discovered Xobni (“inbox” backwards), a tool that seems like it might have a particular appeal for librarians. Xobni is a sidebar that works with Outlook and offers analytics, searching, email organization, a social networking method of organization and more.

According to CNET, on March 26th, 2008, Wikipedia, the wiki that librarians love to hate, or hate to love, hit its 10 millionth article with a posting about a 16th century goldsmith.

Popgadget had post about legal resources, including the Public Library of Law, which bills itself as the “world’s largest free law library.” They claim to search content from many law sites on the web, including free links to paid Fastcase (the site sponsor) content. They offer searches for case law, statutes, regulations, court rules, constitutions and legal forms.

infodoodads pointed out this interesting website, ISBNdb.com. It currently has ISBN and basic information for over 3 million books, which it has gotten via scanning library websites, according to their FAQ. Something else mentioned on their FAQ is “‘Books on the Same Shelf’ — it allows to quickly look up similar books in the same way they would be placed in a real world library. Currently, two classification systems are supported — Dewey Decimal Classification (trademark of OCLC) and Library of Congress Classification.”

Basically, it’s a potentially helpful website, which I look forward to exploring.

There is a fun post at Boing Boing that showcases a visual map of a Choose Your Own Adventure book.