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The idea behind the site is simple: teen users sign up for Chapter a Day's Teen Book Club. Then each weekday, they receive, via e-mail, a few pages from the beginning of a popular fiction or nonfiction book. Each section takes a typical reader about five minutes to complete. At week's end, teens have received the equivalent of two or three brief chapters, and the following week, they start all over again, receiving short selections from a new book.

Suzanne Beecher, Chapter a Day's president, is proud that more than 2,700 libraries--mostly public libraries, but also a growing number of high school libraries--offer Chapter a Day's book club to their users. Many of the participating libraries are large indeed, like the Calgary Public Library and the Brooklyn Public Library. The Brooklyn PL, says Beecher, offered the e-mail club "in a pop-up window on their home page and signed up 250 people in four days."

Chapter a Day originally focused exclusively on mainstream adult readers, offering popular novels and nonfiction--books like Carl Hiaasen's humorous novel Sick Puppy (Knopf, 2000). On the other hand, Chapter a Day's Teen Book Club began because librarians and teachers asked Beecher to create a club for young adults. "[Educators] are very concerned about reaching young readers," Beecher says. Now, she continues, "we have teenagers write the Dear Reader introductions.... One girl wrote so well, I should contact her for the rights to her first book."

Beecher recognizes that selecting titles for the Teen Book Club can be a touchy business. "I think some parents would be shocked if they saw what their teenagers really wanted to read," she says. "We take a middle-of-the-road approach. There are a lot of books that are exciting, yet they won't start an argument between parents and kids." Many of the Teen Book Club titles are older and established works, such as S. E. Hinton's That Was Then, This Is Now (Viking, 1971).

When Chapter a Day first began offering its book clubs to libraries, they were free. But the recent downturn in many dot-coms' financial fortunes have brought about price tags for services that were once free. Chapter a Day now charges libraries a $150 one-time set-up fee, but there is no subscription charge beyond that. Chapter a Day works with more than 40 publishers, including Penguin Putnam, McGraw-Hill, and Random House, and is now featuring an online digital audio book club.

Is the e-mail book club idea working? Elizabeth Lorz, the librarian at Bartlett (IL) High School, says that the online club has worked with her students--but in a round-about way. "The teachers subscribe [to Chapter a Day]," says Lorz, "and it trickles down and eventually the books in the club get read by the kids. I subscribe, and it reminds me of titles I can recommend to them."--Walter Minkel

The reason for creating the page, which includes libraries in the U.S. and Canada, was simple. "The ability to download good MARC records helps media specialists by eliminating, or greatly reducing, the need to do original cataloging for new books and other materials," notes McWilliams. The Sunlink page should be a major time-saver for librarians, she says, because it will allow them to download records right into their automation systems. Librarians outside Florida won't be able to download MARC records from Sunlink's libraries, though. The site is funded by the state legislature, so its download feature is password protected and therefore available only to its member schools.

A Global Link: "School Libraries on the Web" is a listing of libraries around the world--from Australia to Zimbabwe--and while many of the international sites are in English, others are written in the country's native language. The site also offers links to library-related resources. "I assembled all the material on the site at home in my spare time," Bertland says. "I guess it shows how much can be done when you spend a little time every day on a project."

How It Began: "I have been fascinated with search engines since I did my first search on AltaVista in 1995," says Bertland, adding that almost every site in the directory was found with the help of search tools. The "School Libraries" site includes a page (http://www.sldirectory.com/search.html) that describes and links to a long list of different kinds of search engines.

The Pros and Cons: Although Bertland continues her search for worldwide school-library sites, she regrets that she hasn't found as many as many as she'd hoped. Her site does include many school library addresses from English-speaking countries, particularly the U.K., but very few from Asia, Africa, or South America. She is impressed with such sites as the school library service units of many British city and county governments, including, for instance, the Hertfordshire (U.K.) School Library Service site (http://www.herts-sls.org.uk). "They seem to provide so many useful services, and I don't think that we have anything in the U.S. which is quite like them."

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Billy Bear's is a great resource for original clip art. Some of the images cost money, but several clip art collections are available for free. The best free images include welcome glitter, moving mouse trails, and beautiful tiled backgrounds. Created by: Loraine Wauer Ferus, Tipton, MI. Detour: For adorable and free kids' fonts, go to http://www.billybear4kids.com/fonts/fonts.htm.

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Installing Picture It! is a bit of a job. Although Microsoft says that the "typical installation" of this seven-CD set should take about 90 minutes, it took me longer to install Picture It! on my 300 MHz Pentium II PC. But don't let the longer- than-anticipated installation discourage you. Once I installed the program, it ran without a hitch.

The hub of Picture It! is a home page that features three tabs. The first tab, "Get Creative Ideas," demonstrates many of the projects and processes you can undertake. Clicking this tab can get your creative juices flowing, but when you're introduced to a tool or template that you'd really like to try, there's no direct link to it. Instead, you must return to the home page and access the tool or template through one of the other two tabs: "Show My Pictures & Designs" or "Pick a Design." The photo-editing tools include color and contrast correction, red-eye and scratch removal, and an option that lets you add shadows.

All are documents contained in JSTOR (http://www.jstor.org), an online archive of articles dating back to 1665. The aim of the not-for-profit database is to provide an Internet site where students can do in-depth research using a wide variety of peer-reviewed journals.