Thanks, Texas!

I got back to work after a bit of a hiatus to discover a wonderful new resource available through my library.

The Texas legislature does get things right sometimes, and one of the things it did this session was continue to support, and indeed, increase funding to, the Texas State Library’s TexShare program. Among the functions of TexShare  is to fund a statewide consortium providing databases at reduced prices to over 700 academic and public libraries. These databases would be out of the reach of most of these institutions, including mine, if it wasn’t for these state funds. It’s one of the smartest things Texas has done education-wise in a long time.

Among other useful resources, I got back to find that a new database, Hobbies and Crafts Reference Center was added to the list of offerings this year. Now, while this is admittedly more for the public libraries, all TexShare participants get access. So I took a look this afternoon to see if there was anything related to knitting.

Only 5000 plus entries, including over 2500 patterns! What?!?! In addition to video tutorials, it has the full-text of over 40 resources. Many of them are books, all published since 2000, but several magazines are available here too, including Wild Fibers, Interweave Crochet and Interweave Knits – this last one full-text since 2010. I may not have to renew my subscription next time around.

If you have access to an academic or a public library in Texas, check and see if it’s available. I see that it’s offered through the Austin Public Library, for instance. So many more knitting resources are now available at my fingertips! The challenge will be keeping myself from perusing this at work all the time. But wait, part of my job is being familiar with the resources…