Vote for Your Favorite Spinescape!

posted 03/28/2009
Spinescape. You won’t find this word in the Oxford English Dictionary yet, but it actually has a quite bookish meaning. A Spinescape is World Book Encyclopedia’s trademarked method of printing a unique image across the spine of their complete 22-volume encyclopedia set.

Every year since 1999 World Book has printed a unique Spinescape. The Spinescapes are designed to draw readers into the encyclopedias to explore and discover new things about our world. Now you can vote for your favorite Spinescape design from four top finalists for the 2010 edition. World Book only started offering voting in 2007, and since then thousands have cast their votes each year. This year voting goes through April 3.

The four final finalists this year are:

Wonders of the Human Body: highlighting the incredible abilities of the human body to do things no machine can.
Precious Gems: showcasing the beauty, durability, and value of Earth's rare treasures.
Portraits of Greatness: recognizing courageous individuals that have affected human thought and deed throughout the ages.
Polar Landscape: celebrating the fragile, majestic splendor of one of the most hauntingly beautiful places on Earth.

To see these finalists and cast your vote go to: http://vote.worldbook.com/spinescape/

If you haven’t seen the World Book Encyclopedia recently, it’s time to take a look again. In the library we have the 2008 print edition for reference and the 2005 edition available for check out. The print edition is as great as ever with thousands of articles, photographs, maps, charts, and more.

Although you will miss the Spinescape design, we also have online access to World Book Encyclopedia. To get to this from home you must have a library card. Once you have your card number handy go to our website at http://www.sjlib.org and click on the “Online Databases” link on the left hand side. From there scroll down the alphabetical list of our databases until you see World Book Online.

From there, you will see four world book sites: World Book Kids, World Book Students, World Book Advanced, and Enciclopedia Estudiantil Hallazgos (the Encyclopedia in Spanish). Even without the Spinescape, the online edition contains all the articles from the print set plus much more as you would expect from an online resource. And of particular note is we pay a little extra to get online content specially designed to support Washington State Classroom-Based Assessments.

And don’t forget to vote! I’ve already cast my vote!

Laura Tretter
San Juan Island Library
360.378.2798
ltretter@sjlib.org

editor@sanjuanislander.com

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Vote for Your Favorite Spinescape!