As part of its series on "The Future of Reading," the New York Times reports on how school librarians must now be Internet experts. Read it here.

The short-form genre of Twitter (online messages of no more than 140 characters) has truly arrived: it now has its very own style guide. The New York Times Bits blog reports.

When authors come to Google to give informal talks, videos get posted for all the world to see. Here are some language-related talks you might enjoy.

Erin McKean

Tom Dalzell

Geoffrey Nunberg

Steven Pinker

Noam Chomsky

Is a picture worth a thousand words? Possibly, but if your job is to assign words to pictures, it would be good if you could reduce that number a bit, and perhaps focus on quality rather than quantity. This month in the Lounge we've been thinking about the relationship between words and pictures, while in recovery from a brief addiction to Google Image Labeler. Continue reading...

Forvo is a new website where you can find a huge array of words pronounced in their original languages. Native speakers can upload their own pronunciations — it's "crowdsourcing" at its best.

Here are social networking sites for book lovers, allowing you to create a virtual bookshelf and share recommendations with fellow bibliophiles.

LibraryThing

Goodreads

Shelfari

Here are some great online resources for getting children interested in poetry.

Poetry4Kids

Giggle Poetry

Favorite Poem Project

Scholastic Poetry