The JRL library’s SuperHOMER workstations are NOT equipped with the Microsoft Office products (word, excel, powerpoint, access). You can however save or email a word document so you can download and view the document for quick edits. Please remember to save (using a USB portable drive) or email (to another email account like Huskymail) a back up copy to your work.

The campus microlab has the Microsoft Office products. Howerver, there are some free alternatives out there. Google offer’s “Docs and Spreadsheets” (formerly called Writely).

For non-Office users who need a rough equivalent to Office should examine the Zoho Virtual Office (www.zoho.com) It doesn’t have the polish or the features of Microsoft’s offerings, but it does have similar core functionality and it’s free.

As with Google-created documents, the documents created by Zoho’s applications are stored on the web, so you can get to them from any Internet-connected computer.

The Benthic Marine Algal Herbarium of Long Island Sound Digital Collection, created, digitized, and cataloged by JRL librarians Shelley Cudiner and Nancy Gillies, has finally been completed. Professor Charles Yarish donated his collection and taxonomic expertise. This database was created to produce an identification database of collected and pressed specimens of algae from the Long Island Sound for teaching purposes while at the same time creating an image archive for UConn’s algal herbarium. Specimans from the University of New Hampshire and the Millstone Environmental Lab have also been included. There are 299 images and accompanying photographs of all 236 Long Island Sound species. Check it out. www.algae.uconn.edu

Web users can now search the collections of the world’s libraries through the new WorldCat.org site

The Center for Research Libraries (CRL) is a non-profit consortium of colleges, universities and libraries that aims at acquiring and making available important but relatively rarely used materials in support of teaching and research. Its outstanding collections include over four million newspapers, journals, dissertations, archives, government publications and other traditional and digital resources. Because the University Libraries have membership in CRL, the University of Connecticut students, faculty, and staff may borrow these collections through Interlibrary Loan. For more information, see: http://www.lib.uconn.edu/online/services/crl/crl.htm