Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Tom DiFrancesca
It’s been a busy week in “Internet Land,” lots of changes, lots of activity, and I’ve come across a lot of interesting Web sites.
I mentioned in last week’s column about all the buzz that has been generated on the Web since Google.com announced its possible intentions to go public next year. Well, the buzz this week is that representatives from Microsoft have met with the Google folks. It seems as if Microsoft is now wanting a big piece of the Internet search engine pie.
Speaking of search engines, there is a new “kid” on the block. Hop on over to
I’ll have to admit, I did find some search results that I had not found previously while utilizing Google. That’s a first in a very long time. There is one unique feature about the new search engine that stands out.
It’s called “Quick Peek.” Basically, with that feature one is allowed to open a small version of a Web site that has been provided as a search result. What does that mean to most folks? It means that a Web page can be viewed without leaving the search engine’s site — a check can be made to see if the information on that particular page is relevant or worth pursuing further.
A little closer to home, two Clovis-related Web sites have just been launched. The city police department’s Web site is now available at
http://www.police.cityofclovis.org
and it is full of valuable law enforcement and community-related links.
Another useful site is the one for the Clovis-Carver Public Library. The URL for that site is
http://www.library.cityofclovis.org
There, you have opportunities such as renewing and reserving books, searching the library card catalog, and even asking the reference librarians questions — all online.
Speaking of books, any e-book readers out there?
I’ve mentioned Project Gutenberg in the past. It’s that massive endeavor to take books from the public domain and to digitize them, and then to make them available for free to the general public to either read online, or to download and read later. When I mentioned the project in February there were around 2,000 digital books. This week it was announced there are more than 10,000 books available. So, fire up your Web browser and head on over to
You’ll have fun and be amazed just by poking through the directory of available books, not to mention reading any of >>>
“The Online Archive of New Mexico is a single, integrated source for searching and navigating finding aids to archival collections. These finding aids, usually called guides or inventories, contain descriptive information about archives and manuscript collections housed at research institutions in New Mexico.”
These are the claims made at the Web site maintained by University of New Mexico. The project is funded in part by National Endowment for the Humanities.
If you are interested in New Mexico, if you want to learn more about the state’s history, if you want to locate images related to this region, you’ll find this Web site valuable.
Tom DiFrancesca III is a freelance columnist and a resident of Clovis. Visit his website at http://www.trackertom.com
