20 iPad Apps Librarians Should Download – Part 1

Just getting started with your new iPad and wondering what to download? Here are 20 popular apps to get you going in the areas of News, Reference & Education, e-Book Readers, Productivity Tools, and Social Tools.

News

1.) Flipboard
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Cost: Free
Browse through your news and social media feeds such as Twitter and Facebook in a stunning magazine-style layout. This beautiful app lets you aggregate news, photos, videos, and updates your friends are sharing on Facebook, Twitter, Google Reader, LinkedIn, Flickr, and Instagram.

 

2.) NPR
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Cost: Free
View NPR's content in a magazine style, similar to Flipboard. All of the features of the iPhone app are available including playlist, hourly newscasts,station finder, and sharing.

 

3.) New York Times
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Cost: Free
Read the New York Times on your iPad through this app which offers enhanced material including vertical swiping between sections to help you more easily scan headlines and more content with blogs, videos and slide shows.

 

4.) USA Today
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Cost: Free
USA Today also offers a virtual newspaper view of their content.

 

Reference & Education

5.) EasyBib
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Cost: Free
Scan any book's barcode or manually type in the title to create MLA, APA, and Chicago style citations instantly. EasyBib also lets you manage your works cited and email citations to yourself. You can also export your citations to EasyBib.com's bibliography management service.

 

6.) Wikipanion
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Cost: Free
Access a beautiful view of Wikipedia's content through the Wikipanion app. This app displays a table of contents to the left of each entry, multiple search methods, bookmarking capabilities, and viewing history by date.

 

7.) The Elements: A Visual Exploration
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Cost: $13.99
This absolutely stunning app has presents ach element in the periodic table in a rotating, 3D animated view. Users can click into each element to view more detailed info including live statistics from Wolfram Alpha.

 

8.) Wolfram Alpha
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Cost: $2.99
Access the computational knowledge engine via the iPad through this easy-to-use app which allows Facebook sharing of results.

 

9.) Star Walk
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Cost: $4.99
This amazing augmented reality application allows users to hold up their iPads towards the sky and move it around while it displays information about exactly what what stars, constellations, and satellites you are looking at in real-time. You can also see what the sky looked like at any point in the past…or in the future as well.

 

10.) TED
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Cost: Free
Access over 900 TEDTalk videos from some of the world's most fascinating people: education radicals, tech geniuses, medical mavericks, business gurus and music legends. Bookmark or download your favorite TEDTalk for playback anywhere.

 

11.) IMDB
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Cost: Free
Access info about over 2 million movie and TV titles, as well as over 4 million celebrities, actors, actresses, directors and crew members with this stunning iPad app.