Friday, April 27, 2007

Your Alabama Tax $$$ At Work

Did you know that if you are a resident of the state of Alabama you can sign up at your local library for access to the Alabama Virtual Library? It's free, and you get access to the online Oxford English Dictionary!

There's also a bunch of databases I haven't nosed around in yet. Much of the site is meant for kids doing research papers, but it's worth a trip to the library for free access to the OED, the second greatest accomplishment in the English language after the King James Bible (suck it, Shakespeare!). That's a savings of $295 per year!

Do other states offer this? I mean, the OE-fuckin-D. How cool is that?

2 comments:

Blake Helms said...

My dad was on the Jefferson County Public Library Board for about 10 years and was one of the three members that first recommended doing this. It later went state wide. Alabama was the first state to use it and was able to prove that it would work. Most of the databases usage has been heavily discounted or given free for this project by the companies that own them.

Bitter Old Punk said...

Cheers to the whole board for having the vision to implement this. And that the companies are doing it at steep discounts and saving our tax dollars simply boggles the mind!

Don't they know that it's a state contract, and they are supposed to exorbitantly overcharge and then funnel some of their profits into the pockets of junior college golf coaches who happen to be state legislators?

Funny thing. I was talking to Tim about the AVL earlier today and he'd been talking about it with his friend Laurie, who, it turns out, is one of the library administrators responsible for the thing. Small world, hate to paint it.