In my previous position, I was the library's intranet and Internet webmaster. Now with my current position I am forbidden to create an intranet page. Ok that isn't entirely true the region allows me a "site" using their crummy Microsoft CMS (Content Management Server) but I am no longer allowed to "create" web pages. I can't even put a simple search box on my library's intranet page. (Stupid... I know, especially, when you consider that even though I changed jobs, I still work for the same hospital system as my previous position.) Basically, I have a glorified bulletin board serving as the library's intranet page. No blogging allowed, no RSS feeds about what is new in medicine, no IM reference....just a static page with links and no search box.

Fear not. I am still interested what the cool tools are for librarian webmasters. Fresh from the Computers in Libraries conference (CiL) Darlene Fichter and Frank Cervone have a PowerPoint presentation, Cool Tools Update for Webmasters. Fichter and Cervone present some tools for you (working smarter) and tools to help your users.

Not all of the tools might be applicable to medical libraries, for example many hospital library IT deparments probably already have a program/method for you determine the most popular pages within your site. However somethings might work great for your institutions. You will learn a lot by just going to the URL's listed on the slides.

Some things I thought might be cool for a medical library:

• If you have a library blog, adding a MultiRSS link to your site will allow visitors to add your feed to over 30 newsreaders of their choice.
• Wink is a tutorial and presentation software allwoing you to create tutorials for software or programs. Wink allows you to capture screenshots, add explannation boxes, buttons, titles, etc. You can easily create a tutorial on how to download and import citations from PubMed/Ovid (whatever) into a citation manager (RefWorks, RefMan, etc.).
• Are you a medical library that has an Internet page that you want to be used more? Google Site Map Builder helps you generate Google SiteMap XML which you can place into your root directory for Google to index your web site.
• Would you like to add interactive directions directly to your Internet page? By modifiying a little bit of code you can offer your users a personalized map and directions to your library courtesy of Google Maps.

There are a lot of other neat things in their presentation, take a look and see how it can help you and your users.