posted November 29, 2004 09:22 PM         

Does your local High School offer any Continuing Ed classes? Some are geared for helping women better themselves in the working world.

Is taking some college classes an option for you? I'm sure you'd be eligible for grants and low interest loans.

posted November 30, 2004 09:22 AM         

Thank you for the heads up.

posted December 06, 2004 03:59 PM         

Seems like there's quite a number of creative things you can do

Not sure what branch of IT you are going into. There are a lot of R&D opportunities right now in information utilization and management that use a blend of the skills you have.

posted December 08, 2004 12:32 PM         

I'm dealing with database management systems.
My type is INFP. I took the test twice with a long period of time inbetween, just to make sure my answers weren't dictated by my mood at the moment.

My first love are books. I can do almost anything that has to do with books. The problems are:

1. Need to find a job that pays me more
2. The job has to be a true labor of love where I can do meaningful things and contribute to society (10th House Sun)

Writing is something I have a hard time focusing on, so it's out of the picture.

posted December 14, 2004 09:49 AM         

Google to Scan Books From 5 Big Libraries

Tuesday December 14, 9:29 am ET
By Michael Liedtke, AP Business Writer

Google Trying to Establish Online Reading Room for Five Major Libraries by Scanning Books

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Stacks of hard-to-find books are being scanned into Google Inc.'s widely used Internet search engine in its attempt to establish a massive online reading room for five major libraries.

Material from the New York public library as well as libraries at four universities -- Harvard, Stanford, Michigan and Oxford -- will be indexed on Mountain View, Calif.-based Google under the ambitious initiative announced late Monday.

The Michigan and Stanford libraries are the only two so far to agree to submit all their material to Google's scanners.

The New York library is allowing Google to include a small portion of its books no longer covered by copyright while Harvard is confining its participation to 40,000 volumes so it can gauge how well the process works. Oxford wants Google to scan all its books originally published before 1901.

Scanning books so they can be read through computers isn't new. Both Google and Amazon.com already have programs that offer online glimpses of new books while an assortment of other sites for several years have provide digital access to some material in libraries scattered around the country.

But Google's latest commitment could have the biggest impact yet, given the breadth of material that the company hopes to put into its search engine, which has become renowned for its processing speed, ease of use and accuracy.

"It's a significant opportunity to bring our material to the rest of the world," said Paul LeClerc, president of the New York Public Library. "It could solve an old problem: If people can't get to us, how can we get to them?"

Librarians are also excited about the prospect of creating a digital record for the reams of valuable material written long before computers were conceived.

"This is the day the world changes," said John Wilkin, a University of Michigan librarian working with Google. "It will be disruptive because some people will worry that this is the beginning of the end of libraries. But this is something we have to do to revitalize the profession and make it more meaningful."

The project gives Google's search engine another potential drawing card as it faces stiffening competition for Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp.'s MSN. Attracting visitor traffic is crucial to Google's financial health because the company depends on revenue generated by people clicking on advertising links posted next to the main body of search results.

Scanning the library books figures to be a daunting task, even for a cutting edge company such as Google, whose online index of 8 billion Web pages already has revolutionized the way people look for information.

Michigan's library alone contains 7 million of its library volumes -- about 132 miles of books. Google hopes to get the job done at Michigan within six years, Wilkin said.

Harvard's library is even larger with 15 million volumes. Virtually all of that material will be off limits unless Google shows it can scan the material without losing or damaging anything, said Harvard professor Sidney Verba, who also is director of the university's library.

"The librarians at Harvard are very punctilious about protecting their great treasures," Verba said.

The project also poses other prickly issues, such as how to convert material written in foreign languages, and the issue of protecting copyrighted books.

As it does with new books already included in its search engine, Google will only allow its users to view the bibliographies or other snippets of copyrighted books scanned from the libraries. The search engine will provide unrestricted access to all material in the public domain -- work no longer covered by copyrights.

The books scanned from libraries will be included in the same Google index the spans the Web. By throwing everything into the same pot, Google risks burying the library book results far below the Web documents containing the same search terms term, reducing the usefulness of the feature, said Danny Sullivan, editor of Search Engine Watch, an industry newsletter.