How To Spot an Email Scam

I saw this in the newest edition of American Libraries Direct on-line & felt it could be of use to many of you.

The following link provides examples of visual clues on potential scams directed to your email: http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,138310-page,1-c,cybercrime/article.html.

I'm sure many of you can already identify many scams before ever opening a suspect email message. Maybe you have even been sent some of these exact same examples & deleted them.

Many of these carry a "too good to be true" vibe. However, some of these eleven examples, especially #10, the IRS refund example & the #6 Citizens Bank example, can appear to be very authentic.

My best advice would be never to trust any email message that lacks reliable contact information such as a valid address or phone number. In other words, if it does not look legitimate, then it's probably not legitimate.

Secondly, I would always be suspicious of somebody trying to contact you when you have no idea who or what they are. Almost all on-the-level email will be from a company or person you've already done business with. An email stating "Please click now ... you may have already won" (or thereabouts) would probably be more accurately described as "We are looking for another sucker ... could that sucker be you."

What these unsolicited emailers are doing is called "phishing." Phishing is, according to this website -- http://www.usnetizen.com/articles/phishing.html, a technique used by unsavory individuals and companies to try and fool you into giving out important personal and financial information. Armed with publicly available information plus what you supply, they can forge documents, set up accounts, and steal your identity. The ultimate purpose is to separate you from your money.

The site listed above, http://www.usnetizen.com/articles/phishing.html, provides excellent tips for avoiding being scammed. Here are the core guidelines this site suggests:

General guidelines for protecting yourself against phishing scams

Do not give out personal or financial information through an email request.

Always log on to your sensitive accounts by opening a new browser and typing the actual URL directly into the address bar. For example, if you receive a suspected phishing email from e-trade, open a new browser and type www.etrade.com in the address bar.

Do not click on any link in a suspected phishing email.

Only use a secure website to submit sensitive data. A secure sites’ address will begin with “https://” instead of “http://” and will show a lock or key icon at the bottom of the browser.

Another excellent source for identifying email & phishing scams is the Federal Trade Commission. Here is a link to its website: http://www.ftc.gov/.

Yet another authoritative source of common email scams is available on-line, courtesy of the State of Maine Bureau of Financial Institutions, at http://www.maine.gov/pfr/financialinstitutions/consumer/library.htm#Fraud. Click the link for Fraud on this page for specifics.

Conclusion

Living in Information Age makes many of our day-to-day communications easier & more convenient. However, in our haste to get things done, we may sometimes take the ease of doing business for granted. Many individuals are preying on our habit of quick-click solutions. The simplest advice we can take to heart in our on-line activities is this: Beware!

If you have any questions, or more importantly, email scams you'd like others to become aware of, please feel welcome in posting your experience on this blog or emailing me with your thoughts.

Patrick Layne: playne@bpl.lib.me.us

Time To Vote

Yes we are rapidly approaching the first Tuesday of the first full week of November - Election Day. One of the keys of a representative democracy is an informed electorate. Libraries have been part of that process since the founding of the republic. With that in mind I wanted to show you some of the resources and websites available to the person who wishes to go to polls on November 6 well informed.

First we have the Maine Citizen's Guide to the Referendum Election. This forty page booklet put out by the Office of the Secretary of State contains 1) Each of the five referendum questions 2) the legislation each question represents 3) a summary of the intent and content of the legislation 4) an explanation of the significance of a "yes" or "no" vote 5) an analysis of the debt service on each bond issue 6) an estimate of the fiscal impact of each referendum question on state revenues, appropriations, and allocations 7) public comments filed in support or in opposition to each ballot measure.

Copies of this booklet are available at the reference desk and are available online at http://www.maine.gov/sos/cec/elec/upcoming.html or as a pdf at http://www.maine.gov/sos/cec/elec/2007/CitizensGuide11-07.pdf

The state of Maine's Elections Division also has a lot of material for voters this election season. Their website is http://www.maine.gov/sos/cec/elec/

Once there, if you look under Upcoming Elections you will find copies of the Maine Citizen's Guide to the Referendum Election, Lists of the Ballot Questions, Absentee Ballot Applications both to mail and to file online, a complete list of candidates, and instructions for write in candidates. Under Voter Information are instructions for registering to vote and locating polling places. And finally when the polls close check out Election Results to see how it went.

As always if you need help finding information on a specific candidate or issue, no matter what, drop by or call the Reference Desk at the Bangor Public Library we will do our best to find the information you need. See you at the polls.

Jim Riordan jriordan@bpl.lib.me.us

The Wonderful World of Gov Docs

As you are all probably well aware the government produces a lot of paper. And because the Bangor Public Library is part of the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) we get some of that paper. They send us reports, studies, brochures, CDs, DVDs, microfiche, and a lot more.

The FDLP was created in 1813 to keep the public informed by distributing documents from all three branches of government to libraries throughout the country. Today there are over 1,250 FDLP Libraries spread across all 50 states, the District of Colombia, and Territories. It is administered by the Government Printing Office.

So What Can You Get from Government Documents?

There is the stuff you would expect to find like the Federal Register which is the daily publication that contains notices and announcements from government agencies. There is the Congressional Record which lists the proceedings of the House of Representatives and the Senate. We also get the Monthly Catalog of United States Government Publications which lists all the government publications available for purchase.

Something to keep in mind when you are planning your next vacation the government also produces materials to promote its parks and recreation areas. To the left is an example of brochure put out by the National Park Service to promote its New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park. We also have the brochures for The Lewis and Clark National and state Historical parks, The Pony Express National Historic Trail, Montezuma National Wildlife Refuges, and many others.


The government also sends us quite a bit of historical material as well. To the right is a study produced by the Naval Historical Center on naval air operations during the Korean War. It also includes a lot of great maps and photographs.


Government Documents are also a good source for paper topics. Lets say you have to write a paper on Hurricane Katrina. All the committees created to investigate the aftermath of the hurricane produced reports. Below are the covers of the reports produced by the Office of the President (left) and the report produced by the Senate (right). Comparing and contrasting these two reports or others like them would make a great paper.








So Where Are These Gov Docs?
They are located on the second floor in the room to the right of the Stairwell Gallery near the periodical back issues and the bathrooms.

And what, you may ask, do I do if I want something produced by the government the Bangor Public Library does not have? Easy! Fogler Library at the University of Maine Orono is the Regional Federal Depository which means they get almost all the materials produced by the government. These can be interlibrary loaned. If you don't know how to do this just ask a reference librarian.

As always we love to hear from you. Any questions or comments post them to the blog or email me at jriordan@bpl.lib.me.us

See you around the library
Jim

Back from NELA

Hello All

I am back from four days at the annual New England Library Association (NELA) conference in Sturbridge MA. Ever wonder what librarians do for professional development? Well probably not but here's a chance to find out. The NELA conference brings together librarians from all over the region to attend educational programs, hear speakers, talk together, and general improve ourselves to serve you better.

I had a great time and here are some of the sessions I attended. Do-It-Yourself Technology, about incorporating blogs, wikis, and social networking software into the library. Benchmarking ILL/DD Services, which was about as exciting as it sounds. The Joy of Cookbooks, a lecture by a cookbook author on how a cookbook is made. From Johnny Tremain to the Book Thief: Trends in Historical Fiction. And many more.

Below is the link to the conferences website. There you will find the complete conference schedule, the conference blog which has the notes from a lot of the sessions, and conference photos (librarians in there natural habitat: attending educational programs, perusing book sellers, playing mini golf, and fortunately not a single one of me)

http://nelib.org/conference/2007/index.htm

If you have any questions send me an email or give me a call.
Jim Riordan
jriordan@bpl.lib.me.us

See ya around

Cures for the Common Bad Printout

Because I see folks getting frustrated with bad photocopies of Internet pages, email messages, and photos on a daily basis, I decided to put together a brief illustrated tutorial on how to avoid certain types of printing errors.

E-mail Printouts

One of the more common printing annoyances are printouts from e-mail providers such as Yahoo! which cut off the end of sentences. Here is an illustrated example:

Though the print is small in this example, you can see that on the left hand side are all the graphics from your Yahoo! screen & on the right, the text of the message has been cut off. The reason for this is that, while I had wanted to print the email message, what I have actually done is printed the screen image. This is most likely because I used the drop down File - Print option or printer icon or word "print" on the window toolbar to print.

Fortunately, most e-mail providers offer a simple solution to this problem. Yahoo! mail remedies this through a feature called printable view. Printable view is located on the far right within each e-mail message. Clicking on printable view in Yahoo! will reopen the message in another window. Reopening the message in a new window will eliminate the Yahoo! screen graphics on the left side. Example: A comparison of these type examples will show that about half of the message was printed using the File -- Print or icon print image on the windows page.

Article Printouts
Another potential source of bad printouts is articles from databases. Most of these databases too provide means for opening articles in separate windows, allowing a person to avoid printing the screen image rather than the article content.

Here is an example of a poor printout of an on-line Sports Illustrated article I found using Marvel! & searching under Academic Search Premier:What this printout is providing is the screen image for the record I found, not the content of the article I'm hoping to print. Again, drop down File - Print option or printer icon or word "print" on the window toolbar to print.

Most databases have solved this problem in a much similar way that e-mail providers have. On the screen of the record of which I'm looking, there is a printer image & printer (i.e. )written next to it. Clicking on this print will lead you to a print of the same record that would look like this:This print has eliminated the peripherial & irrelevant images from the previous print, focusing instead on the written content I wanted printed.

Website Printing

A quick look at a few sites I visit revealed that many approach printing of content in a similar way to databases. That is to say, the Bangor Daily News, for example, also provides a "print this article" link on the page of each major story which will either open the article in another window or will reformat the article into a printer-friendly version. ESPN.com, CNN.com, Entertainment Weekly.com ... all of these & more provide links on the screen to printer-friendly versions of on-line content.

What do you do, then, when this printer-friendly link is not available or content on a page is not well-organized or as specific as individual articles or e-mail messages? This is a little trickier.

Most webpage designers demonstrate the good sense & design to keep most of the content of a page within a reasonable left to right margin. In other words, most well-designed webpages will not have a horizontal scroll bar at the bottom of the page. This means the only scrolling a person would have to do to read content on a screen would be up & down scrolling.

Still, even with reasonable side to side margins, selecting print from the drop-down file menu or the onscreen printer icon sometimes will not be successful in making a good print. For example, this is an example of print that gets cut off on the side from a typical website:

As you can see, the image & text has been sliced on the right hand side, omitting the ends of sentences, essentially making worthless the entire print job.

To remedy this type of printing error, you will need to go into the drop-down file menu in the upper left hand corner in the screen. On this menu, select Page Setup. The default setting for most printers is to print in Portrait mode, which means the print will be on an 8 1/2 by 11 inch page with the 8 1/2 inches being the page horizon & the 11 inches being the vertical.

Too try to uncomplicate this, here's a picture of a typical Page Setup menu, with Portrait printing as the default:And here is the Page Setup menu in Landscape mode: Landscape mode turns the page on its side. This often nullifies printouts that have chopped off the end of horizontal lines.

Here is the same webpage as above, printed in landscaped mode:

Recapping & Summing Up

Opting to print an e-mail message or database or website article using the Print option within the message or article is always a more reliable means of getting a good printout.

The drop-down File - Print menu & the printer icon on the tool bar essentially only print the image on the screen, often using margins that will not match the desired area you wish to print.

Often, changing the default printer setting from Portrait to Landscape may be necessary to ensure all relevant data gets printed.

One last tip: Double-checking your print job by using Print Preview is always a good idea. Print Preview is located on the drop-down File menu in the top left corner of the screen.

If you have any questions about this information, please feel welcome to e-mail me at playne@bpl.lib.me.us or you may simply respond to this post.

New York Times Archive Goes Public

Last month the New York Times gave the public free access to part of its newspaper archive. The Times maintains two online archives of their articles, which for several years was available for purchase. The first is for articles from 1851 to 1980 and the second archive are articles from 1980 to the present. Today Times articles in the public domain, 1851 to 1922 are available for free in pdf format. Articles from 1987 to the present are available for free in transcription form. Articles from 1923 to 1980 and 1981 to 1986 are still available online for a fee. This represents a great resource for teachers and students who want to incorporate news reports of major historical events into their classes and assignments. For those who prefer a low tech approach The Bangor Public Library still keeps the New York Times from 1851 to the present on microfilm in the Bangor Room.

Here is an example of what can be found in the New York Times Article Archive

Sinking of the Battleship Maine February 12, 1898

To access the New York Times Article Archive go to:

Search the Article Archive: 1981-Present.

Search the Article Archive: 1851-1980.

How To Locate a Consumer Reports Article

How To Locate a Consumer Reports Article

Consumer Reports (CR) is one of the more popular journals Bangor Public Library owns in print. CR is used to locate comparisons of products across a spectrum of variables, from price to durability, to extra features & service plan options. So, if you're looking, for example, for the right refrigerator for you, CR is among your best bets for the information you need.

Did you know, however, that most CR articles are available to you on-line? As a Bangor Public Library cardholder, you have on-line access to almost all articles published in Consumer Reports since 1991. One exception to this is that the full-text of articles are "embargoed" for three months after the print issue street release. This means, for example, that currently only up to June 2007 is available on-line to our card holders in full-text or PDF.

If you are not familar with how to locate an article on Marvel! or within Consumer Reports, take a look at the following brief & illustrated guide.

1)Access Marvel! on the Bangor Public Library website (http://www.bpl.lib.me.us/) or through http://libraries.maine.edu/mainedatabases/. 2) The database providing access to Consumer Reports is Academic Search Premier. It is the first database on the alphabetical list of databases.

3) To limit your search to Consumer Reports articles, you can either electronically add Consumer Reports by

a) Selecting Publications.

b) Typing Consumer Reports in the Browse Publications box & clicking on browse.

c) Clicking the box next to Consumer Reports & clicking on Add.
d) Now, that Consumer Reports is in the "Find" box, click on Search.
e) Or, you can manually type in (JN "Consumer Reports") in one of the three search boxes.

4) Once you have limited your search to Consumer Reports, now you can add a search term, such as refrigerator into your search. Click Search or just hit "enter."5) On your results page, you may see either an Article Linker tag, PDF Full Text tag, or an HTML Text tag in the results of your search. The Article Linker results are those that are currently embargoed & are not available yet in full text on-line (but Bangor Public Library does own in print). The PDF Full Text results will provide easy links to magazine quality reproductions of Consumer Reports articles.
6) If you need further assistance with this search or for other tips on how to use this or other Marvel! databases, contact a reference librarian (reference@bpl.lib.me.us or 207-947-8336 x 130) at the Bangor Public Library.

A Handful of Great Undiscovered Websites

PC Magazine, the "independent guide to technology" (as its website claims) recently announced the Top 100 Undiscovered Websites. These sites are described by the experts at PC as "the top new or under-the-radar sites of 2007. You may not know many of the sites on this list, but you should." To access these sites (as well as PC's Top 100 Classic Websites), click here.

While I do not have time to review all of these sites, I would like to recommend a few.

1) http://www.videojug.com/: This site offers video footage on a wide variety of "how-to-do-it-yourself" topics. The tone of these videos ranges from serious (e.g. what should I wear to my job interview video) or comical (e.g. the how to be lazy in the office & get away with it video). This site has particularly strong videos related to minor car care, family and parenting issues, & cooking.

2) http://mediastorm.org/: This site features stories similar to those seen or heard on MPBN, PBS, or NPR which are told through video, audio, photography, and personal essays. One particularly compelling story is New York Reacts, a short film which catalogs the feelings of New Yorkers on September 13th, 2001.

3) http://community.livejournal.com/act_i_vate/: Act-I-Vate is, according to its website, "a laboratory for an exclusive cabal of cartoonists plugging in and giving you free serialized graphic novels as we create them ... because the very future of the medium demands it." If you are a fan of graphic novels or of art, this site will have something for you.

4) http://www.librivox.org/: LibriVox provides free audiobooks of works from the public domain. As I type this, I'm listening to a recording of Mark Twain's Roughing It. The current LibriVox catalog has 864 readings. Another interesting aspect of LibriVox is that the site offers users the opportunity to record chapters of books in the public domain & post their recording on the website. I'm not much a fan of my own voice on recordings, but this may be for you.

5) http://www.roadsideamerica.com/: PC Magazine describes this site as "your definitive resource for the kooky, nichey, and downright bizarre landmarks that help make this huge country so unique. Use this site to plan your next roadtrip and getting from here to there will be more interesting than your average game of 'I Spy'." The site is pretty amusing. What other site could you go to find out where the Kool-Aid Museaum is (Hastings, Nebraska)? For that matter, what other site would help you to know that there even is a Kool-Aid Museum?

So, those are just a few of the sites you may be interested in checking out.

Feel free to post any comments with your thoughts about these or any recommendations for other "undiscovered" websites.

You may also email me directly with any thoughts about this posting or other posts at playne@bpl.lib.me.us.

How to Find an Article or Review about a Short Story or Novel using Literature Resource Center

How to Find an Article or Review about a Short Story or Novel using Literature Resource Center

Need to find a journal article about a short story or a novel for a homework assignment or just for fun? You can find one of these articles rather easily on Marvel!, Maine's Virtual Library. Just follow this short and illustrated guide below.

1)Access Marvel! on the Bangor Public Library website or through http://libraries.maine.edu/mainedatabases/.

2)The database to access is Literature Resource Center. You may get to this database by

A. Selecting Literature from the Select a Subject list: B. Selecting Literature Resource Center from the Literature list:

C. Scrolling down to Literature Resource Center on the A-Z listing of databases:

3) Do an Advanced search.
4) Put an author's name in the first search box, using Author as the search term. Put the title of the story or novel in the second search box, using Title as the search term. Click the green Search button. 5) For journal articles and reviews, click the Literary Criticism, Articles and Work Overviews tab.

6) To view the journal articles and reviews, click Literary Criticism. 7) From this results list, you can easily read or print any articles that will be helpful for your research.

If you need further assistance with this search or for other tips on how to use this or other Marvel! databases, contact a reference librarian (reference@bpl.lib.me.us or 207-947-8336 x 130) at the Bangor Public Library.

Zoho & Web 2.0

Zoho

Some of you may already have known this, but web-based versions of Microsoft Office applications such as Word & Excel are available on-line. Zoho Writer actually is a tremendously more worthwhile version of what Word is. I'm not sure that I'll ever even use Word again. It looks like Zoho can give Bill Gates a run for his money. In fact, I predict Mr. Gates will be broke within three years.

Um ... anyway, Zoho Writer allows users access from any computer (provided it has Internet access). so they can share or edit documents. This means, if you don't want, no more discs or saving to the desktop or hard drive. You might think that creating & storing documents on-line may not be secure, but, my thinking is that it is as secure as sending emails or attaching Word files to emails.

One appealing feature of Zoho Writer is the ability to post a document you've created as a webpage. Here is an example: http://writer.zoho.com/public/c6J71Xb9695i0e061reK6S0C0b7V/Welcome-To-Zoho.

Zoho offers much more than a Word-esque program in its on-line arsenal. Zoho Sheet is Excel-like, Zoho Show is like PowerPoint (& fun to say!), & Zoho Planner is like Microsoft Outlook's Calendar feature. For a complete list of all of Zoho's programs, visit Zoho.

Note #1: If you create an account with Zoho to use one program, you have created an account to use all of the applications. Your username & password will be the same for all.

Note #2: Most Zoho applications are free. The few that are not are clearly marked.

Web 2.0

Web 2.0 is a concept co-created by Tim O'Reilly, an Irish software & technology guru. To know more of what the concept is about, visit this link: http://www.seomoz.org/web2.0/zeitgeist. (I would try to explain the concept, but, in this case, I find it better to get the goods straight from the source).

What Web 2.0 can do for Internet users, though, is really what I think will be important & exciting to you. Again, rather than explaining, I think it best to see for yourself.

A perfect place to start is to follow this link to get to a list of Web 2.0 award-winning sites. These sites cover a variety of topics which feature the best business, city guides & reviews, social networking, games, classifieds & directories, visual arts, & other sites.

A few of my favorite among these sites are:

http://www.yelp.com/: This site features customer feedback, positive & negative, about local business in towns & cities across the country. So, check this site if out-of-town on business or pleasure to see if that restaurant you have in mind for tonight's dinner is really as good as you've heard.

http://www.minti.com/: This site is a communtity in which parents around the world share ideas & advice about how to raise children.

http://www.zillow.com/: This site can help you discover what the houses you’re interested in should cost and also allows you to browse listings nationwide. There aren't that many houses in Maine listed at the moment, but what this site does, that is really cool, is that is places all the homes for sale on a map, allowing you to quickly determine the distance a home would be from work, etc.

http://www.peertrainer.com/: This site helps you reach weight loss & other health improvement goals by supplying a list of daily meal logs, workout suggestions, and goals. The key element of this site, however, may be the small, on-line support groups an individual can receive support & encouragement from.

http://www.writeboard.com/: Another site similar to Zoho Writer.

http://www.instantbull.com/: This site allows you to compare and track the stock market, access stock message boards and browse stock market blogs.

http://del.icio.us/: Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site. Social bookmarking accomplishes a few major tasks: 1) you can bookmark your favorites on a website, not to a specific computer & 2) as a user of Del.icio.us, you will be able to view the top sites on a given subject as bookmarked by "those in the know" for that topic.

These are but a few of the many great Web 2.0 themed sites available that could be of interest or usefulness to you.

If you have any suggestions you'd like to with other library users, or need help finding a good site, respond either to this blog post or email me at playne@bpl.lib.me.us.