The Google Librarian website and blog is back, and better than ever. After about a one-year hiatus, we’ve returned. All of our information and tutorials have been updated to reflect the changes over the past year. Have a look around, and you may even discover some new things.

We’re excited to announce that the first issue of the Chinese edition of the Google Librarian Newsletter has been released. So that our English-speaking members are not bothered by extra email, the Chinese edition will have its own mailing list. Click here to sign up for the Chinese edition.

I apologize for any inconvenience there may have been when the Chinese edition was sent out on the English mailing list. They are now separate.

We’re working on trying to get the newsletter and site out in other languages as well…. stay tuned for further information.

The January 2006 Google Librarian Newsletter was published this past weekend. If you have subscribed to the list and have your notification preferences set to receive email, you should have received the newsletter in your inbox. If you have not yet subscribed, sign-up today. There’s now a handy sign-up form right here on the blog in addition to the one on the website.

The Chinese version of the newsletter is expected to be out this week. In the future we will try to coordinate our efforts so that they will be released at the same time. Our translator got the newsletter the same time everyone else did, and in the future he will be getting it in advance of publication so that it may be translated.

Thanks for reading, and enjoy! If you have any suggestions for the February newsletter, let me know.

As you may know, Google Librarian has a feature that allows you to view the site in the language of your choice utilizing Google Translate. Google Translate is a very nice feature, however, it is not always entirely correct. Words in the English language are not always translated perfectly over to another language because the computer often can’t understand the context in which the English version of the word is being used. As I understand, the Googlers are constantly working on the translations service to make it better, but there’s still nothing quite as good as a real live human translation.

We are constantly striving to make your experience here at Google Librarian a pleasurable , informative, and useful one, and we’ve now enlisted the help of Rong Wu from the University of Toronto to handle our English to Chinese translations. The January newsletter will first be available in English and Chinese, and then he will move on to translating the entire website. Once the site is translated, the Chinese flag on the site will link to Rong’s translation of the site instead of the Google translated version. I know that this will be a very useful feature for our members, and greatly appreciate Rong’s willingness to help make this site even better.

If your first language is one other than English and you’d be interested in helping to translate Google Librarian, please contact us. We’d love to make you a part of the team! We are interested in translations of all the currently available languages on the site, as well as any others that you have to offer.

Here’s to a happy and prosperous 2006 for all!

Our first newsletter was released on December 20th. I hope that you have found it to be informative and useful.

January’s newsletter will be released on January 20th. Subsequent newsletters will be published on or around the 20th of each month.

I’d like to include member input in the next newsletter, if possible. So if you have anything you want to say, let me know.

It seems to be the question on everyone’s minds - Who is the Google Librarian? And what makes him/her the Google Librarian? Wouldn’t you like to know?

The Google Librarian is half superhero, and half librarian. She has superpowers that makes others envious - she can search the web at lightning fast speeds, plucking out even the most obscure information with a few simple keystrokes. Unfortunately, the Google Librarian has one fatal flaw - she is rendered powerless without a a Blackbery or computer at hand. And so this is why the Google Librarian never leaves home without an internet connection, whether it be through her phone, a PDA, or a laptop.

Now, seriously… my name is Julie and I am employed by the Cleveland Public Library in Cleveland, Ohio. A lot of people have asked who made the website because I didn’t include that information in the site. The reason the information wasn’t included was because I wanted to make the information the focus of the site - not who I am. So there you go, mystery solved.

The reason I made the website is because I have seen a need for something like this. Internet search engines are becoming a huge part of our jobs, and not everyone understands the finer details of them yet. There are ways to fine-tune your results, and methods to employ that can help you find what you need faster. Plus there are also a lot of really cool tools that Google offers that I think librarians would find interesting. My goal is to share my knowledge and expertise with fellow librarians and information professionals.

Tune in every day for more sneak peeks into the mind and life of the Google Librarian. And if you haven’t done so already, get Mozilla Firefox. It will help you in your quest to become a Google Librarian yourself, and its available right on this blog or www.googlelibrarian.com. To read more about Firefox and the handy dandy Google Toolbar, visit the Google Librarian’s guide to firefox.

Next up: What makes her the Google Librarian, A day in the life of the Google Librarian and An actual photograph of the amazing Google Librarian herself.