This article is from the February 2004 issue of Update.
I want to find a list of all these 'weeks' that happen, e.g. British Cheese Week, Learning at Work Week, Make a Noise in Libraries Week. I often hear about them too late - it would be nice to have advance warning.
There isn't, as far as I've been able to find, a single listing of these. There are some sites that you might find useful, though.
- http://festivals.com/ was launched in 1995. Festivals.com is currently the largest resource on the internet for information about community festivals, fairs and special events. In its own words: 'With more than 40,000 community events worldwide behind the pages of Festivals.com, we are the most popular and widely used website devoted exclusively to the global festival industry.'
- Then there's www.whatsonwhen.com/ - 'Whatsonwhen was launched in 1999 to let people plan their leisure time according to their interests and to make sure they didn't miss an event they really wanted to see.'
- www.tsnn.com/ covers trade shows and similar events.
- The BBC does a monitoring service for the week ahead at www.monitor.bbc.co.uk/weekahead.shtml
However, to answer your question specifically, a search at Google that does work pretty well is: national week listing site:.uk 2004
You could also get more specific by adding in a particular month for example. As a result of doing this search I discovered that there is a National Be Nice to Nettles Week, so I've learned something as well!
Can you identify any key sites which critically appraise or review other sites -particularly government and community information? I'm trying to find some way of recommending one site over another site in these areas (and justifying the recommendation).
I've found a few sites that you might want to explore:
I hope some of these will give you a few ideas and pointers.
Site of the month
My site of the month is Whichbook (www.whichbook.net/index.jsp). It attempts to suggest various books that you might like to read, based on your own criteria. You can choose a total of four criteria from a list of 12 and move along a spectrum for each (e.g. easy to demanding, safe to disturbing, gentle to violent). So you could, for example, get a list of books that are regarded as happy, unpredictable, unusual and short. It includes audiobooks and large print. What's more, if you're based in the UK, you can find which local library stocks the title and order it. It's a lovely concept and great fun, although I'd have liked to see more choice of books (but I'm sure that will happen).