Blogs and Websites
From Pop Goes the Library
Ain’t It Cool News, http://www.aintitcool.com Get information, reviews, and gossip about everything related to the film, television, and comic book industries.
AllMovie.com, http://www.allmovie.com This database is dedicated to movies, their directors, stars, and connections.
AllMusic.com, http://www.allmusic.com This database and review site is related to, as the name would suggest, all types of music. Exhaustive and comprehensive.
Blog Carnival, http://blogcarnival.com/bc This site gives a round-up of blog posts on a particular topic, usually done periodically. A great way to find up-to-date information, news, and posts on a particular topic.
The Book of Zines, http://www.zinebook.com Find out everything you need to know about zines (self-published magazines).
Bookslut, http://www.bookslut.com “Bookslut is a monthly web magazine and daily blog dedicated to those who love to read. We provide a constant supply of news, reviews, commentary, insight, and more than occasional opinions.”
BuzzFeed, http://www.buzzfeed.com This site combs the Web to track, compile, and promote what bloggers, journalists, and fans are discussing online right now. A great jumping-off point for trendspotters everywhere.
Chasing Ray, http://www.chasingray.com Read this literary blog by Colleen Mondor, with interviews, blog tours, and reviews.
The Edge of the Forest, http://www.theedgeoftheforest.com “A monthly online journal devoted to children’s literature.”(Disclosure: Liz is on the Editorial Board.)
The Elegant Variation, http://marksarvas.blogs.com/elegvar Check out this literary blog by Mark Sarvas.
ESPN Sports, http://espn.go.com This vast, comprehensive sports website incorporates text, podcasts, and video. Some coverage in Spanish.
The Futon Critic, http://www.thefutoncritic.com This television resource has all the news about TV shows: what pilots are being shopped, what got picked up, what is a midseason replacement, information on past shows, reviews, and an A-to-Z guide to TV.
ICv2.com, http://www.icv2.com “The top source for information on the business of pop culture products in five important categories: Anime and Manga; Graphic Novels and Comics; Games; Movie/TV Licensed Products; Toys.” While ICv2 is targeted at pop culture business-owners, its reports and interviews are very useful for librarians. Additionally, the magazines it publishes include reviews written by librarians.
IGN.com, http://www.ign.com Find games and reviews of games, along with cheat codes and walkthroughs; a “broad and deep offering of videogame, entertainment and lifestyle content and resources with some of the largest message boards on the web.”
Internet Movie Database, http://www.imdb.com This site is more famous than AllMovie.com, but more basic than its competitor. Go here if all you need to know is who was the third point in the Demi Moore–Robert Redford love triangle in 1993’s Indecent Proposal. (It was Woody Harrelson, by the way.)
Lifehacker, http://www.lifehacker.com One of the 14 blogs under the umbrella of Gawker Media (this list includes New York gossip blog Gawker, Los Angeles gossip blog Defamer, science fiction blog io9, electronics and gadgetry blog Gizmodo, and car culture blog Jalopnik), Lifehacker is a wonderland of productivity tools and advice. All Gawker Media blogs feature solid, often witty writing and up-to-the-minute (these team-written blogs are updated upward of 10 times each day) tracking of what is going on in an impressively broad range of niche interests. Lifehacker won over Liz when she found the answer to fixing scratched DVDs: Pledge (http://www.lifehacker.com/software/macgyver/macgyver-tip—smooth-a-scratched-dvd-with-pledge-190634.php)!
LISNews: Library and Information Science News, http://lisnews.org Get library news from around the world. Helps you keep on top of what is going on with libraries, both good and bad.
Newsarama.com, http://www.newsarama.com “Daily comic book news, previews, reviews and commentary.”
No Depression, http://www.nodepression.net This bimonthly magazine focused on the alt-country music scene but went out of print in mid-2008. However, a fair amount of every back-issue’s content is available to read (click “Browse Our Back Issues”), and every back issue going back to 1995 is available for purchase. The site also includes blogs written by co-editors Grant Alden and Peter Blackstock.
No Flying, No Tights (NFNT), http://www.noflyingnotights.com Robin Brenner’s masterful, comprehensive comics and graphic novels review site, written by and for collection development librarians, is notable not only for the quality of its reviews, but also for its division into three audience-specific subdomains: NFNT is for teens, the Lair is for teens and adults, and Sidekicks is for kids.
Pitchfork Media, http://www.pitchforkmedia.com This is indie rock review central. Pitchfork’s reviewers are hugely influential, and they know it. They’re also occasionally a little bit off the wall—reviews sometimes take the form of stream-of-consciousness ramblings. If you want to read reviews of CDs on tiny labels like Jade Tree or SpinArt, as well as larger ones like Matador, this is where to go.
The PlanetEsme Plan: The Best New Children’s Books from Esme’s Shelf, http://planetesme.blogspot.com This blog, written by Esmé Raji Codell (How to Get Your Child to Love Reading), reviews and promotes the best new books for children, combining this coverage with a retrospective look at similarly themed titles. Very useful for lesson plans, harried parents, and busy school librarians looking for the Next Big Thing from picture books to middle-grade fiction.
Pop Candy, http://blogs.usatoday.com/popcandy Whitney Matheson unwraps pop culture’s “hip and hidden treasures” for USAToday.com.
Pop Goes the Library, http://www.popgoesthelibrary.com If using our own book to engage in a little blatant self-promotion is wrong, we don’t want to be right.
Popjournalism Blog, http://popjournalism.ca/blog Read about pop culture from a Canadian perspective.
PopWatch, http://popwatch.ew.com EW.com trains its eagle eye on pop culture.
Premiere, http://www.premiere.com Premiere Magazine ended its print run in April 2007 and is now strictly an online news source for movie news, including information about films in production and DVD reviews. If your customers are movie fans, and clamoring for DVDs, this is a must-read resource.
Rotten Tomatoes, http://www.rottentomatoes.com “Created by movie-buff Senh Duong in 1998, Rotten Tomatoes has grown to become a premier destination for both casual moviegoers and film buffs alike … Over 5.4 million readers each month use Rotten Tomatoes as a dependable, objective resource for coverage of movies and videos … With more than 127,000 titles and 644,000 review links in its ever-growing database, Rotten Tomatoes offers a fun and informative way to discover the critical reaction on movies from the nation’s top print and online film critics, neatly summarized via the Tomatometer.”
Salon, http://www.salon.com This site offers classic online reporting and commentary.
School Library Journal (SLJ), http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com In addition to containing articles from its print edition, the SLJ website is a don’t-miss if you’re doing anything related to schools or children’s and YA fiction. The blogs contain news, reviews, updates, and commentary. Also check out its affiliated blogs at www.schoollibraryjournal.com/blogs.html.
Slate, http://www.slate.com Get political and cultural commentary, served up daily online. Slate also has a bit of a crossover deal going on with NPR’s daily midday show, Day to Day.
So You’d Like To … Guides by Amazon.com Music Editors, http://www.amazon.com/gp/richpub/syltguides/byauthor/AJM38DLD0P3H8/ref=cm_pdp_sylt_seeAll/002-9650225-7084037 Amazon.com’s clever, appealing, and well-informed mix of commercialism and social networking—they let anyone create these recommendation lists—is part of what makes the site useful. It’s a great model for what libraries could be doing with their OPACs using the SOPAC model discussed in Chapter 6. Liz has found these Amazon.com lists very helpful for figuring out things like the proper order to read the Civil War graphic novels, and Sophie uses them regularly to find sound- and read-alikes for her library’s music and YA collections.
Technorati, http://www.technorati.com Did we overlook your particular pop culture area of interest? Go to a blog search engine such as Technorati and find the blogs that will have the news and reviews you are looking for!
Totally Wired, http://www.ypulse.com/totallywired From Anastasia Goodstein of Ypulse, “Totally Wired (the blog) is a resource for parents, aunts, uncles, teachers, librarians youth workers or any adult trying to decode what teens are doing online and with technology.” Goodstein stopped updating this blog (which she created as a marketing device for her book of the same name) in late 2007, but the archives are excellent and well worth reading.
YALSA blog, http://yalsa.ala.org/blog This is the blog of the Young Adult Library Services Association of the American Library Association.
Ypulse, http://www.ypulse.com Anastasia Goodstein has her finger on the pulse of youth culture. If you only read one blog about Gen Y, read this one. “Ypulse is an independent blog for teen/youth media and marketing professionals providing news, commentary and resources on commercial teen media for teens (teen magazines, websites), entertainment for teens (movies, games, television, music), technology used by teens (cell phones, instant messaging, SMS), the news media’s desire to attract teens (newspapers, cable news), marketing and advertising (targeting the teen market) and civic youth media (highlighting organizations’ efforts at promoting youth voices in media).” If you don’t have time to scan your RSS feeds or visit the blog itself, Goodstein delivers the content daily via an email newsletter.
