Next time you want to check Wikipedia for basics – try Wolfram Alpha to see how much more you get! Wolfram Alpha isn’t just for math anymore, it generates word clouds of song lyrics, and is pushing the limits of computation and art and music.

Summer is a good time to up your digital game –  try new things or re-visit digital tools you haven’t used lately. Our suggestion today is Wolfram Alpha and the new cool things it can do. Wolfram Alpha is NOT a search engine. Think of it as your geekiest librarian friend.

Wolfram Alpha is an engine for computing answers and providing knowledge. [Source]

In 21 Cool Non-Math Things You Can Do With Wolfram Alpha, Evan Dashevsky explains that if you are looking for numbers, Wolfram Alpha is the place for you; but it may aid writers and social scientists, too.  Especially helpful for our summer game playing will be the ability to get scrabble scores for words; it also analyzes for anagrams and rhymes. It can determine blood alcohol levels, translate into Morse code or ancient pictographs, generate nutrition labels and Wolfram Alpha has new capability with image detection. It is experimenting with Wolfram Tones for music creation.

For use at a library reference desk, Wolfram Alpha can generate sports data and can be used for social science data. See Examples by Topic.