MMI 11

Along the way...
I learned that it was really neat when the name for a blog popped into my head.  Even better that I could actually start one and find it again.  The only resource that I had any depth of knowledge with was NoveList and it was only a tiny portion of the resources in Marvel.  I did enjoy looking for relevant things for children, sometimes with good success, other times with great dissapointment.  I've thought about Britannica and Hobbies and Crafts as good places to  find things for this particular age group.  There is so much in many of these databases that I will not use but I am glad to know a bit more about them through these lessons.  As I sit here in the Windham Public Library on Saturday night, December 8 (oops, it is now Sunday, December 9, 12:10am) with a troop of sleeping Girl Scouts, it's been the only time I've had to devote to Ancestry to finish up the lessons.  Hope that I haven't confused whoever reads all my posts by doing them out of order.  Thank you so much Mamie, Stephanie, and Valerie for bringing this learning opportunity to the Maine Library community.  It was fun, a challenge, and certainly a mind stretching exercise.

MMI 8

Ancestry

In doing a search on my own name I found three of my four addresses (all for the same house) listed along with the year of two of them.  I also was able to find, by using my maiden name, my marriage license number.  I did not know that ancestry contained that type of information.  I did find that the information given is definitely not accurate for one listing.  It gave me an inaccurate middle initial and my husband’s birth date.  There was a lot more information listed for my husband on the same search that I did for me.  I found our phone number listed for him but not for me and it is a dual listing with the phone company.  It was fun to play around and even saw a link to view neighbors, though it was very out of date.

I tried to find my grandfather in the census but had no luck.  However, when I searched for one of my husband’s relatives I had better luck and did find him on the 1810 census.  That was the third census that the country had taken.  I did have to zoom in quite a bit to be able to read the name and I certainly wondered what all the number columns were on the record.

I, like others, had trouble locating the “photos and maps” tab.  However, I read Feel the Learn’s blog post about this search and used the same strategy.  I was able to poke around and find pictures of gravestones and yearbooks that related to Maine.  It certainly looks like anyone could spend hours and hours with the information in ancestry.

MMI 10

Ebsco Host
I decided to use Primary Search.  I did find Highlights, Zoobooks, Ranger Rick, American Girl, Cricket, and Ladybug in the publications list.  The only one I tried and didn’t find was Family Fun but my guess is that it is somewhere else, not in Primary Search.  We happen to have it in the Children’s Room so that’s why I tried it out.  I was amazed at the people whose biographies were included.  I wanted to see what information was available on the folks so I chose one and brought it up.  Seeing an audio button I was pleased to see that the article could be listened to as well as read.  Looking up the subject Christian Science I found that article to be above and beyond an elementary school child’s ability.  It was in Mary Baker’s words and I think that the concepts she shared would be a huge challenge for an elementary student.  However, through looking that up I realized that there are articles and excerpts from writings as well as magazines and specific biographical information provided by Great Neck Publishing who seemed to have written every biography I looked at.  I did take the time to look at several other folk’s postings.  No one else had looked at Primary Search.  I would have liked to been able to compare other youth librarians comments if they had used PS.  Makes me wonder if it would be good to try and do something specifically for the Youth Services librarians so they’ll know what’s available.  Think I’ll ask the librarians in our local schools just how they use these databases.

Ebsco eBooks

I decided to look at the Children’s and Young Adult Non-fiction offerings.  Oh, my, how sad.  There were only 21 books listed and all but one of them was published in 1999.  The other one was a 2000 copyright.  That makes this database quite dated and of little help in research for the age group.  Even sadder to say is that the C&YA fiction section had only 2 books listed, one from 1998 and one from 1999.  It is quite evident that this resource for children might as well be nonexistent.

Constitution Day wasn’t a particular good search for me.  Found info on other countries.  Did read Feel the Learn’s suggestion to use a visual search and it was good to play with that again.  Need to remember I can do that with future searches. 

When I searched Oklahoma I only found a few results.  I noticed that the publication dates are really limited, from 1998 to 2000.  When I tried to change publication dates I couldn’t.  I then went poking around on the different categories listed on the left and saw that some of them are extremely limited as to the years they cover.  I was pleased to see that the health one went to 2012.  This was frustrating to me and I quickly gave up looking.

MMI 9

Learning Express

I already had an account at Learning Express so I tried accessing it and I successfully remembered my log in and password.  I chose a 4^th grade reading test.  Seemed like there was a lot of reading to do to answer 8 questions but I managed.  I did have the test scored and came out ok.  Seemed like a great way to take a test without any pressure.  In the Job Search and Work Skills I decided to take one of the WorkKeys Applied Mathematics Practice Tests.  It was a rigorous test for someone who doesn’t use some of those math skills regularly.  It did seem that if you could answer the questions on the test that you would have a good mathematical knowledge for the workplace.  I looked up public speaking for a search term and in the ebooks I found a Think You Know Your Vocabulary? choice to try out.  It gave lessons for different types of words that would relate to different jobs or conversations (music, politics, nouns, etc.) and had a good variety of puzzles to practice the words learned (crossword, matching, scrambled letters, etc.).  I just might go back and try it again since I now have it in my center.

MMI 7

Health Source – Consumer Edition

Guy Thing: How To Be a Man Without Becoming a Father was the first title that made me take a second look.  When I went back to check it out I found that it was another pamphlet from the Do It Now website.  Imagine having Epilepsy – book – was the first book I saw.  I did not realize that books were included in this particular database.  Medicare Made Easy – book – 1997 copyright…I question how that would apply to today’s world of Medicare.  Peer Pressure & Choices: How to Think for Yourself (in a World Where Everybody Wants to Do It for You) was a pamphlet.  The particular choice listed a website so I visited and thought the site looked interesting.

When I searched for aortoenteric fistula I had no results come back.  When I changed to fistula I found out all different parts of the body that can be affected.  Several, if not treated, had the same 100% mortality rate that I knew about with the aortoenteric fistula.  In reading through a complete article I had to take the time to really slow down and ready many words by syllables to be sure what was being discussed.  If I had not background or dealings with my husband’s aortoenteric fistula two years ago I would have given up much sooner and not know what I was reading.

MedLine Plus

Dec. 2 news first article, oh boy, it says that “Women who exercise still sit too much.”  What happens to those of us who just don’t exercise?  Top searches were for aspirin, diabetes, hypertension, and lisinoprol (never head of that one for high blood pressure before).

The drug information seems incredibly comprehensive.  The page had a nice layout with all the questions one could possibly ask as well as a good block that was a warning to pregnant women.

In searching for the aortoenteric fistula I had no results again.  However, when I searched for fistula alone there were 283 entries.  I found one article that actually had a video that I could watch.

I loaded the abdominal aortic aneurysm video.  Started with the drawings, moved to several parts of the surgery, and know that someone who is having it done can have a birdseye view of the procedure.  If a person wants to know what’s going to happen it is great and completely realistic.

 

MMI 6

Business Source Complete
There were certainly many types of sources.  However, I had fun noting some of the titles of articles like “More woes for radio than Stern.”, “Radio rats fight for cheese.”, and “He who pays the piper calls the radio tune.”  Visual search is an interesting way to look at articles.  I’m not sure if it is easier or harder.  I do like having the option to try out both ways of searching.

EconLit
When doing the small business search I found that I went immediately to the visual search because I could see way more articles than with page listings.  On a search for EPA and small business I found only one article listed.  When asked to do tax policy and small business I again went directly to visual seard due to the layout and being able to see way more articles on the page.  Sure beat paging through them.

Regional Business News

I looked up Keebler for a national company and found that they have a terrific award with the Red Cross to recognize blood donors who inspire others.  I had recently learned that Keebler donates 6 million cookie packages a year to ARC and nice to know they take things even further in recognizing “good cookies”.  I put in New England and had many articles to choose from again.  Narrowing again to Maine gave a different set.  When I made the choice of a Maine company I found that several small companies here in town weren’t reported.  Going with bigger companies (L.L. Bean, CMP, B&M) I did find many articles to choose from.

Value Line

I was able to get into VL easily since it is late evening as I’m doing this.  The amount of information available makes my head swim.  Read the description, looked at the reports, and checked out both Pepsi and Coca-Cola (when I figured out how to spell it correctly).  Couldn’t find the “full research report” requested and at this point am very glad I’m a Children’s Librarian and can refer all questions about VL to our Reference Librarian.

Wall Street Journal

19,792 results popped up for me on the search for small business and health care.  Six results were in the suggested search box to start and when I chose the view all button there were 18 subjects offered.  It looked like a great way to narrow down the results and focus in on a particular subject. When I chose one of the results it narrowed the search down to 148 articles.  Much less to sift through.  It seemed very straight forward to be able to set up an alert if someone wanted to follow up on a particular subject.

MMI 5 NoveList

Sorry, I personally fail quesiton 1.  There is no series that I would like to read.  Oops, guess there is one that's coming out now that has my attention...The Guardians of Childhood.  The search for that series was interesting because it is divided into picture books and chapter books.  The view  option has been very helpful to me in the past when there is a large series of books and a patron has wanted a list.  Being able to just print out the titles of the series in order has come in handy often.

The read alike panel offering 9 choices has been a great tool to interest my young patrons in finding new authors to try.  They are very interested in the brief description because they can relate to the book they have read and know that the next one has similar content.  TheNoveList database has information about way more books than I have or will ever read which makes it so helpful.

A few years ago I attended an informational session about NoveList in Topsham.  It was a great training and spurred me on to share all that it had to offer with our patrons.  At that training we learned that you could get a link to your library's catalog so that patrons could link through and see if the book they wanted was in your collection.  Ever since that time at WPL we have had a link from our homepage to NoveList that shares our catalog. 

One of the most interesting searches I did involved a sixth grade patron who only wanted to read a book that had a murder in it.  I was skeptical about how many choices she would have and was quite surprised to find that we had at least 30 books in our Children's Room collection that fit the bill.  Sometimes we don't know what we have until someone asks.

Having read a few blog posts I hope that if folks get the chance to ever take a formal training on NoveList that they take advantage of it.  Many of the features that are surprising folks were covered that day.  NoveList also sends out monthly tips that you can sign up for that keep your skills sharp and introduce new options.