Websites I Can't Do Without!

Asking an internet thief (I steal all of my good ideas from the internet) to choose one or two good sites is like asking a monkey to eat just one banana!

http://pinterest.com/    I love it when a site us useful for both my work and personal life at the same time.  This site has wonderful ideas for library displays, crafts, songs, games, artwork etc. as well as ideas for my family and home life.  I don’t pin on my own boards a lot yet (just browsing), but I hope to start soon!

Because in a previous life I was a Head Start teacher, I enjoy using some of the same sites from my preschool days for inspiration at the library. http://drjean.org/ is a great literacy based site with lots of fun ideas, free pintable’s, and music, music, music to go along with them.  Her CD’s are wonderful!

Some of the other great kid sites include:

 http://childmade.com/

http://makinglearningfun.com/

http://atozteacherstuff.com/

http://www.hummingbirded.com/

Week 6 – Wrap Up: Library Institute Spring 2012

I think my biggest discovery this time around was that the slightest change in my descriptions, searches, limiters etc. made such a huge impact on how much I found and how useful it was for my purposes.  Several of my searches ended in frustration while other times I found exactly what I was looking for and more. 

I plan to promote these and the other resources in our weekly newspaper column, on Facebook, on our website, and in the library in various ways.  I think that these resources are great tools for our patrons and a great addition to our library.

Week 5 Lesson 9 -- History and Genealogy Resources - Ancestry Library, Heritage Quest and Sanborn Maps

I had a hard time finding the place in Ancestry Library to search for “Ship Pictures and Descriptions”.   I finally found it under the list of more databases and then by clicking “Immigration and Travel”.  I was then able to narrow down the timeframe and search for passenger ships by the first letter of the name of the ship.  By looking at the pictures of the Titanic, I was not able to see much about a sister ship, so I type in “Sisterships of the Titanic” and looked in the results for ones that was built in 1911 by the same shipping line as the Titanic and came up with a picture and description of the Olympic.

Once again it took a little looking to find the link to Ancestry Library’s “Newspapers & Publications”.  I am beginning to understand why knowing these websites inside and out is so important.  I went to the link to more collections, clicked on all databases, and off to the left hand side found a link to newspapers and publications.  I limited the search to just newspapers, clicked on the link to “Search Entire Newspapers Categories”, and then typed in Hindenburg in the keyword search box.  I could then sort the over 300 results by category or by relevance.  Noticing that Hindenburg was also a popular name, I limited the search further by adding the word dirigible, and I got over 400 results.  When I added the word explosion, I got over 11,000 results.  I obviously wasn’t doing something right, so I started over and tried the periodicals which only resulted in 3.  But none of these seemed to have much useful information so I went back to sort through the newspaper articles.  I may not have been using the right limiters, but I never did find a useful article about the history of the Hindenburg.

Using Heritage Quest, I first clicked on the link to “Search PERSI”, clicked places, and then typed in Brule County and chose South Dakota.  I was shown 50 results with several familiar options including titles with Bijou Hills, Peterson farm, Chamberlain Register and the Lyman County Argus Leader, the history, Chamberlain, Pukwana, Red Lake, people who owned land, the cemeteries, homesteads, townships and much more.  Some of the entries included local genealogy newsletters with several volumes available while others are from the South Dakota Historical Society.  There would be plenty of items for the townsfolk to digest, but it would take a bit of time to acquire all that you would need because the articles all said, “Copies of this article may be obtained by completing the request form.”    I wonder how extensive this process is and how long it takes?  Either way, there seemed to be a lot of information.

Week 4 Lesson 7 - - WorldCat and More FirstSearch Indexes

There are several options in the search boxes other than the usual keyword, author, title, subject and series.  Using any one of these would be helpful, but WorldCat breaks it down even further by including search criteria such as publisher, access method, ISBN, musical composition, and more.  You are also able to type in up to three search criteria at a time.  By searching the subject of Martin Luther, limiting the language to English, limiting the type of materials to books, and setting the subtype limits to nonfiction, I would have a better chance of finding more detailed information for my patron.   Even by using these limits, I came up with 36,911 results.  The site gave recommendations at the top on how to limit my search even further.  It gave more choices to limit by author, subject heading, year, document type, and number of libraries.  I chose to go back and search from the beginning with these limiters and included the keywords “juvenile” and “religion” since this search was for a 4^th and 5^th grade Sunday School teacher.  I would recommend the book “Martin Luther : The Great Reformer” by W Norman Pittenger, and “Matin Luther” by Samuel Willard Crompton. Although the book “Martin Luther:  The Great Reformter” quite a few less libraries to choose from, the nearest libraries for both books were in Minnesota.

By typing in Graphic Novels for a keyword search, you can get several different options including ones with just “graphic” in their description, so I added more limiters including juvenile under the subtype limits, books under the limit type to and English as the language.  I also included “Classic Literature” as part of the search.  I would add several of the classics as graphic novels, but the one that I chose was “The Hobbit : an illustrated edition of the fantasy classic.  The publisher is Ballentine Books out of New York, NY.

I typed in “My Fair Lady” and chose musical composition as the limiter and then under the section of limit type to I clicked on “musical scores”.   There were no records for this search, so I went back and typed My Fair Lady as the keyword and still used the “musical scores” as the limit type.  This time I was given 1,897 results, but the results included any that had the words my, fair, and lady in them because I forgot the quotation marks.  Finally I was able to find 866 results and the one that I chose had OCLC: 26429906 as the Accession number.

After checking out some of the other blogs, I noticed that there are no right answers.  Each person used different language, limiters, and search tools yet we all came up with useful information and found resources that we could use.

Week 3 Lesson 4 – Proquest

1.       Before limiting the search for “lunar eclipse” to the full text only, I was given 1221 results.  By limiting it to full text only, it was reduced to 881 results and finally by limiting the name and date range, I was better able to find the exact information (1 result) that I would need.  This would be very useful for patrons as well as for the library staff when looking for specific information.  If the patron is not exactly sure what they are looking for, the suggested subjects at the top is a good place to help narrow the search also. 

     

I really like visiting the other blogs.  Partly to see that I am not the only one that is behind, but mostly for the wonderful ideas, insights and (of course) pictures!  I looked at most of the blogs and they are all different and all have varying ideas.  Great to see!

2.       When first typing in lottery news, I was given 51,653 results.  This is way too many for our patrons to look through.  I limited the results by the last date range available, but it still only dropped it to 16,948 results, so I chose to search under the suggested subjects at the top of the results page.  I would suggest that he narrow his search by using these subjects and by narrowing the results by source type (on the right of the page) also.  Hopefully this would help him find more of what he was looking for. 

Week 2 Lesson 2 – Learning Express Library

1.       I would show my patron the section on GED Preparation where he would be able to take practice tests and improve on GED skills.  I would also show him the section on Skill Building for Adults that includes reading, math, science, speaking, and other skills that might assist him.  Lastly I would show him the section on Job Search and Workplace Skills where he would learn skills for resumes and interviewing.

2.      The patron that wants to improve her skills before applying for an office manager’s job would benefit from several of areas on the Learning Express Library including the sections on business writing and job search, resumes and interviewing in the Job Search and workplace skills area.    Another section that may be helpful to her is the Federal Clerical Worker Exam Preparation.  After typing “office manager” in the search box, several other choices were listed including courses on organization and succeeding on the job.

3.      For the students who wants to do research on being a nurse or a pharmacist, I would show him the section of Nursing and Allied Health under the heading  of Jobs and Careers.   Under the tab of Career Guidance, it has sections on pharmacy tech, becoming a nurse, becoming a health care professional, and becoming a caseworker.  These would all be helpful for him as well as the ebook that I found called PCAT, which is the Pharmacy college admission test, that includes practice test.