Week 11: Wrap-Up

Phew!  It's all over.  I got behind as time went on, but I caught up in the end.

I didn't read as many other blogs as I probably should have.  I got too overwhelmed by the entire list.  I would have liked to have known who was blogging near me, so that maybe we could get together in person and talk about something.  As it was, I chose to look at blogs that were by people I knew.

I think I enjoyed looking at the Health-related databases the most, since those are the ones that I might have a use for now and again.  I also enjoyed just looking again at all the different services that MARVEL offers.  Sometimes I feel like I don't do a lot of reference work here other than book recommendations.  However, I am currently planning a post to our website about Learning Express and what it does.  I also might do something about the Hobbies and Crafts database, since we have an active knitting group here at the library.  I myself am not very crafty but this may change my mind.  

I did enjoy going through all the databases week after week.  I don't know how it would be structured, but it would be great if there was something similar going over social media or website creation for librarians too!  Thank you so much for all your hard work, consultants!

Week 10: EBSCOHost

I decided to look at MasterFile Premier as my EBSCO database of choice.  This is stepping a little outside of my box, because normally I go to Academic Search Premier for everything.  Consumer Reports is included, which is the magazine I get the most questions about.  I also looked for "Fine Gardening" which was not included, but "Architectural Digest" was.

Even though it's a medical term, I decided to search for information about ear infections, since I'm currently suffering from a few.  I read an article from 2010 about alternative cures for ear infections from antibiotics.  

Here is what it said:
If it feels like> AN EAR INFECTION

Use mullein and garlic eardrops "Mullein flower is anti-inflammatory and garlic is antibacterial," says Wilson. Drop garlic in the ear, as it's sensitive to stomach acid. BEST BUY Herb Pharm Mullein/ Garlic Compound (Ear Drops) ($12; herb-pharm.com)

Take quercetin "Like vitamin C, quercetin relieves the histamine-induced swelling that jams fluid [a breeding ground for bacteria] in the ears, but unlike C, higher doses of quercetin won't cause loose stool," Wilson says. BEST BUY Natrol Quercetin ($10; natrol.com)

Chew xylitol gum "This sugar alcohol is antibacterial specifically against the pathogens that cause ear infections," says Earl Mindell, R.Ph., Ph.D., author of 2009's Prescription Alternatives. BEST BUY Spry Green Tea Gum ($9; xlear.com) or Jarrow Formulas XyliPure Xylitol powder ($10 and up; jarrow.com).

Pop a protease "Taken on an empty stomach, the same enzymes that digest protein can break down mucus and slow its production, helping clear the ears of bacteria," says Crain. Bromelain, in particular, has promising antibacterial and antiviral properties. BEST BUY Enzymedica Repair Gold ($50; enzymedica.com)

I can't imagine putting garlic in my ear.  I'll let you know if I get that far.  I'm sticking to Western medicine for now.

I had no idea the Idiots Guides were available via NetLibrary (or EBSCO Ebook Collection)  I scanned the list of children's nonfiction.  It's sort of an interesting collection. I wonder if there is a way to add it to our library catalog.  The fiction selection is even smaller, but I suppose the point of this guide is to increase the state's nonfiction.  Maybe my search skills need to be brushed up, but it seems to me that there are only three Idiot's Guides in the database.  For me, it doesn't appear that Full text is the default.  I did a search for alternative medicine as well and saw there was a few titles that looked like they might be interesting to flip through.

I got better results for Constitution Day when I searched within the results as well as the titles.  When I first did the search, I got a lot of Asian titles.  When I searched within the results, I got more books about the US Constitution in American culture.

When I do a search with Oklahoma as the publisher, I get titles printed by the University of Oklahoma Press.  These do not necessarily have anything to do with the state itself.  The University of Oklahoma Press seems to have more to do with ancient Greek culture than Oklahoma.  I suppose if they were doing something on very ancient Western history, that might be appropriate.

Week 8: Ancestry Library Edition

Did anyone else encounter that the first Ancestry tutorial on the MSL page had no audio?  I found that a little weird, and got distracted wondering what was supposed to be going on, or was I supposed to just be staring at the screen?  Strange.

I wasn't expecting to find too much information about myself in Ancestry.  After all, I've never been married.  Sure enough, I don't seem to exist at all.  I'm not sure whether or not I should be disappointed by this.  I can't find my birth certificate no matter how specific I get.  Oh well.  I was able to find my grandmother in the census results, but it took some finessing.  I had to use her maiden name rather than her married name.  Funnily enough, my grandmother was still not a US citizen in 1935, which I never knew.

The photos and maps search for Maine I found to be not particularly useful.  I noticed that there were a lot of other images that came up, rather than historical images of Maine.  If I were using it for a project, I would try to get more specific and look for specific cities to try to narrow down the search.

Week 9 Learning Express

I am skipping week 8 for the moment, which is Ancestry.com.  Since you have to be in your local library for that to work, and I am home sick with multiple infections and bronchitis, I think everyone will be happier with that solution.  So obviously, while one is home sick, catching up on Marvelous Maine is the best option.  So here it is:  LearningExpress.  I think this is a great resource.  I haven't recommended it to many patrons yet, since I don't have a lot of patrons coming in asking questions that these resources would speak to yet.  However, I can see myself using some of them.  There are programs that I would like to learn how to use better, like Microsoft Access.  Also, I have always wanted to take the U.S. Citizenship Test, to see if I would pass.  I am pretty sure I would not.  I mean, who doesn't take a Citizenship Test when sick?  I was reading the Youth Literature National Book Award nominees, but I got a little depressed (the Killing Fields of Cambodia, conflict in Democratic Republic of the Congo, now I'm reading about a race to build and steal the atomic bomb.  Good thing I had Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Third Wheel to shake things up a bit.)

So I thought the US Citizenship Test would be one of those scored tests, and it wasn't, but I took it anyway.  I think I could become a citizen, which encouraged me.  I didn't get a perfect score (Phooey!) but I feel pretty confident that I could become a citizen if I had to take the test tomorrow.  So to look at the testing aspect like I was supposed to, I'm going to take a 4th grade Algebra exam.  Mix it up a little.  I got 14/15 right.  The test was pretty easy, but I wish the answers were all available on one page.  I think the one I got wrong was at the end, and I didn't want to have to scroll through all my right answers to get to that one.

For a job search course, I looked at one about writing cover letters, one of my least favorite parts of the job search process.  It seemed pretty straight forward.  I liked that they showed a layout of a sample cover letter and I like that they walk you through making a cover letter on your own.  I think that I would use it in my next search for a job.

Originally I wanted to look for a book about Microsoft Excel, which, other than Access, is my least favorite Microsoft Office program, but they only had ecourses.  So I looked at an ebook on Green Careers instead.  I flipped through it quickly.  I liked it.  I would definitely move it to my e-reader though.  It is 254 pages long.  

Week 7: Consumer Health Resources

Health Source, Consumer Edition:  Wow!  There are a lot of magazines included in this resource.  I am intrigued that I see a magazine dealing with LSD in the first few resources.  I'm sure it's for true medical reasons, but the inner middle schooler is tee-hee-hee-ing over drugs.  (And AHA News probably isn't about the band, either.)  No resources start with Q, in case you were wondering.  I picked fibromyalgia as my disease, since my best friend suffers from it.  I was able to sort the results by date, but they looked like they were mainly about drugs.  I scanned a report on fibromyalgia by RelayHealth.  I could understand everything in the article as a layperson.

MedlinePlus: I don't like MedlinePlus as much as Mayo Clinic personally, but that's not the point of this exercise. :)  The right-hand column of MedinePlus has health news.  Current topics include that flu season is hitting early this year (and hard), most teens with mental illnesses are not on medication, and a study finds a pattern in brain injuries and contact sports.  Popular searches on the left side today include diabetes, hypertension, acetaminophen, aspirin and Vitamin D. To practice the drug search, I looked up Lexapo, or escitalopram.  You can find out why the drug is prescribed, how it should be taken, side effects, any special precautions or dietary restrictions, what you should do if you forget a dose and what to do if there is an emergency overdose.  Fibromyalgia information is organized in a way that I would find easier to show to a patron.  I have to say, I think Medline Plus has undergone a website redo since I last used it, because it's much easier to use now.  I watched a short video on allergies.  It gave a short overview of what causes allergies.  I'm not sure how useful it was, but maybe if I had just been diagnosed, I would find it more helpful.

Week 6: Business Resources

Business resources, wooo!  Honestly, this is not something I've ever looked at too closely, considering I am not a business owner myself and most of my experience at the library has been with children, who generally aren't looking for business tips (but may surprise me!)  Anyway, onto the Discovery Exercises.

Business Source Complete:  This comes up with an EBSCOhost screen, so I feel like I should be pretty good at navigating it.  I consider EBSCO to be my specialty.  Or, I thought I would be.  Apparently no information was found searching for FM radio, but they did turn on SmartSearch results for me.  Why, thank you EBSCO.  I see that trade publications, academic journals, magazines, newspapers, product reviews and market research reports are available as sources.  The Visual Search feature is okay but not my favorite.  I wonder if that is because I'm too attached to traditional search methods though.  It is pretty though.

EconLit looks like an EBSCO database too (so why are we skipping Academic Search Complete?  I'm confused).  Fun fact: I took many economics courses in college, yet I remember little of it now.  Sorry Professor Bartlett.  I know you tried.  My initial instinct is that this would not be my first choice of resource to use with small business owners, because to me, EconLit sounds like it deals more with broader economic interests, rather than something the average small business owner.  I wasn't that impressed with the results of searching for "resources for small business owners."  It's nice to see that there are lots of different types of resources though, including working papers.  I did a search for EPA and small business and only got one result, which I'm not sure will be too relevant for our owners ("Land Recycling, Community Revitalization and Distributive Politics: An Analysis of EPA Brownfields Program Support.")  I had slightly more success with tax policy, although the second article was in Japanese.  Maybe my search skills are rusty, but I think this one might be better for people more interested in broader economic issues rather than the nitty-gritty everyday realities of running a small business.

Regional Business News:  I'm supposed to pick a nationally known company.  I'm going to try "Banana Republic" because I flitted across a "Mad Men" picture earlier and I know they have a collection of clothes based on the show. (A collection of clothes, I will let you know, I would be more than happy to have, should anyone feel like treating me :) ).  Anyway, the first few results actually do have something to do with the company (and the Mad Men collection even--Score!) but after that it starts talking about 'banana-republic tax schemes', which isn't really about clothing.  I was able to find two articles that had both Maine and Banana Republic in them, but they were more about parts of Maine that don't have designer retail stores.  There were plenty of articles about Banana Republic and New York, which makes sense to me.  As for a local Maine business, I decided to cheat a little and look up "Linda Bean",  as she is sort of a polarizing figure in my neck of the woods.  I found articles about her restaurants and about her politics.  I found this one to be one of the easiest to use, and may use it to look up information about companies in the future.

ValueLine:  Wow, I got in!  I am amazed, and a little afraid to be taking up one of six valuable slots for this resource that I probably will not understand. After looking at it though, it wasn't as bad as I thought.  A lot of stock information, that's all.  One of the reports give the value of each company, as well as alerts to whether or not the company is doing well.  I looked at a few different companies: The Gap, Chipotle, Best Buy, and DSW to see how they were doing.  The Std. R & R Supplementary feature had information about companies in more detail, which I liked.  I'm not sure I would use it a lot, but I can see why it is popular with others and a highly valued resource.

Wall Street Journal:  Our patrons bring us the book section of the Wall Street Journal on a regular basis, so I'm sure they would love this!  On the subject of health care, I'm sure that the small business owner would be very much interested in the cost of health care.  I could see it being useful for them to set up alerts on whatever field their small business was in.  I might set up a few myself.

NoveList

The first thing I notice (because I'm being a bit anal and clicking every link) is that the link for the tutorials doesn't bring me to the NoveList tutorials, but to the Mariner UMS Campus website.  This seems off to me, since I'm currently sitting in a library.  If I was at home and got that message, I would assume it was because I needed to log-in with my account to get access to MARVEL.  Oh well.  I mean, I can find them myself, right?  I can find "Help" in a toolbar.  I'm a librarian.  

I just found out that it connects to GoodReads.  I never knew that!  I'm more of a GoodReads girl than a LibraryThing user (this is from when I was more interested in price than buying locally.)  If I spend too much time on this, though, I'm going to want to get Koha hooked up into all these things to see if people will leave reviews.  I also want to make sure I know what the wildcard (? or #) and truncation (*) symbols are, since I use those a lot.

For my series, I decide to look up "The Last Apprentice" by Joseph Delaney.  It was simply the first series that popped into my head.  I've never read it.  Apparently the series is actually called "Wardstone Chronicles" as well.  I used the different view functions, especially the ones that show the cover.  I mean, then you can find that book with the blue cover you've always been looking for!

Also, now that I have reached step two, I have to switch versions of NoveList because I didn't read ahead to see that we would have to use authors whose books are aimed at an adult audience.  Always the assumptions with adults on these things.

Anyway, back to David Baldacci (and I suppose I really could have been a rebel and done the same process with any children's author.)  I think this would be a good idea for some of the more popular authors.  I mean, perhaps you could get the Diary of a Wimpy Kid or Percy Jackson fans hooked on something else.  Oooooh or those Warrior books.  C'mon kids!  Life beyond Erin Hunter I swear! (And yet, I hear my 9 year old self saying that there is nothing better than the Baby-sitter's Club. Oh honey.)

I think I could this a lot when it comes to making displays or reader's advisory with patrons.  Since we aren't on MaineCat, that won't help my library a lot.  Maybe I didn't play around with it enough at this moment in time, but I didn't really notice any way that I would use to enhance my collection. I will have to noodle on it some more.

Britannica Part 2

I work in a public library, so I thought I would check out the public library edition of Britannica briefly tonight while I was working on the other resources we had been asked to look at.  I decided to use "Darfur" as my example.  I had noticed some other librarians had used even more current examples and Britannica didn't have a lot of information in the alternate section. Even Darfur didn't have a lot of results--only one website?  Really?  And some of the media results were a little off to me, because I wasn't entirely sure how they connected with the Darfur situation.  The academic edition of Britannica seemed to have better results, but there were also more to wade through.

Hobbies and Craft Center

I am not a crafter by nature.  I was born into a family of crafters, but the urge has not yet taken hold in me.  I did, however, see a post about 43 ways to add glitter to objects in your life and THAT intrigued me.  Especially because there was one about covering a concrete floor with glitter, and there's a concrete floor in our new library.  I am tempted to see if I can make that happen.

Anyway, so another tutorial.  I know I'm writing multiple posts on the same day, but really: are these something that we'll see more of later?  I can think of patrons who could use these but I'm not sure where they are housed.  I did think it was a pretty good overview.

The first thing I notice about the Hobbies and Crafts database is the highlighted seasonal kids' craft section in the lower right.  That excites me, because as a children's librarian, I often need to do crafts, but I must admit they can stress me out too (will my craft be too complicated?  Will it be perfect? etc.)  I'm definitely bookmarking this part, since I haven't finalized my Halloween ideas yet. So I spent a long time looking at this part.

I didn't really think I would participate in anything that would be included in this blog (reading isn't on the list) but I do like to dance.  I was surprised to find that as a category.  My library does not subscribe to any of the magazines listed in the find box.  In fact, I have never heard of any of them.  I could see the knitting club being really interested in the knitting section.  As for the Projects section of the results, the only project listed was "The Joy of Foxtrot."  It claims the article was from 2004, but the images in the article looked like they were older than that.  I have to be honest and say that the foxtrot is not necessarily at the top of my list of dances to learn.

I wondered what the difference between the "Save" feature and the "Add to Folder" feature were, so I looked at the online help feature.  I don't think there is a huge difference.  It does look like with the save feature you can choose the length of time to save it for.  The folder feature also stretches across databases, because I found articles in my folder that I got from other resources (unless the Hobbies and Crafts database has articles about caring for an aging parent).  My default would be to go to the Folder search, since I feel like that one will last.  Of course, with that, you need to remember your log-in. 

Week 3: Newspapers and Maine Newstand

I don't think I have ever used this service with a patron.  I mostly stick with NoveList, and I did help a student a few weeks ago get very basic information on Da Vinci from Britannica.  I'm writing this from a local cafe while waiting for my car to have it's 90,000 check up.  

My library did Snapshot Day on Friday.  No one asked me any questions that required me to use MARVEL databases, sadly.  Most of the questions were "Is the library open?" or "Can I renew this book?" or something about the new library building that we are about to start renovating.  Most people were happy to fill out the survey, fewer were excited about having their photograph taken.  The ones that did often wanted to look at the camera and smile.  I wanted action shots! Oh well.

So, Maine Newsstand.  I thought about searching for "The List", since the person who provided some of the financial backing is from the area I currently live in and many of the clients I assume live in the area I am from.  I decided that it really wasn't any of my business though, what they did in their free time, so I decided to search for the Maine Earthquake of 2012 instead.  I mean, who thought we we would be in an earthquake?  I thought they were starting construction on the building I live in, even though 7:12 PM is a very odd time to be doing construction.  It must be too current for the auto-correct, because it kept trying to get me to fill in the blanks with earthquakes from the past.  I also had to resort the results by date, since they weren't the most "relevant" results for my search of "Maine earthquake".  (I suppose that wasn't very specific).   I tried to create an alert twice but both times encountered a server error.  Since my car is now ready, I saved the search and will try it again later.

So now that my car has survived, I've watched the tutorial on Maine Resources in MARVEL.  I enjoyed the tutorial, but wondered where it lives on the web.  Could I have found it myself?  I don't think so.  Maybe it's not live yet and it's a super secret resource we are getting first dibs on.  I was able to retrieve my search from a few hours ago, so that was good.

I don't think very many people from my library use MARVEL.  I wonder if it is because they have to create a new account rather than just use their card since we aren't part of MINERVA.  At least, I couldn't make that work today so I used a card from another library.

Encyclopedia Britannica

Once upon a time I used to flip through the encyclopedia for fun.  My personal preference was for World Book.  I loved the blue covers.  Every once in a while I would flip through a different encyclopedia, like Britannica.  I wonder if children have that same experience now.  Do they like flipping through the atlas too? (That...may have just been me.) 

Today I am going to be looking through the school edition of Britannica that is part of Maine's MARVEL database system. I started with clicking on the Britannica Learning Zone aimed at children PreK to grade 2.  The sound that came out of the computer startled me!  Just so you know, the words on the screen are also read out loud.  I liked that the lesson pointed us to the guides, but it was a little annoying that I had to log into the MARVEL system before seeing it.  I think it could be quite fun to use with children, although I couldn't find the teacher guides.  The guide didn't seem to say how to get to it specifically.  I myself enjoyed the coloring section quite a lot.  This section was not the focus of the lesson, however.

Image from Britannica online here

The animal I chose to look for was the manatee.  I love these gentle giants.  The elementary section let me either go straight to the article or look at photographs.  Manatees tend to live in rivers or along the coast.  When I think of manatees and their habitats, I think of Florida and the poor creatures getting cut up by passing motorboats.  This type of manatee is the Caribbean manatee. I forget that there is also the Amazonian and African manatees. In the section aimed at the middle school age, the photographs and other media are exactly the same, but the information in the article goes further in depth and generally is more scientific in tone.

Our instructions for the high school level of Britannica were to look up a country.  I chose Tonga, the country I did an in-depth project on in sixth grade. Next, we were supposed to look at the right-hand column on the results page and see which would be the most useful for our patrons.  With Tonga, it was easiest to see which would be the least helpful: primary sources and ebooks!  There were no results at all.  Websites and journal articles would be the most helpful, which would be my guess for what would be the most helpful for my patrons as well.  The workspace feature would also be very useful, because they could save all their information to one section without necessarily having to email it to themselves or downloading it all to their computer.  Then, they could easily switch between their home computer and school computer to work on the project at any given time.  I think that having to create another password can be difficult for people, but I chose to keep it simple and rather insecure.  I think that would work fine for most projects though.

Week 1 of the MARVELous Maine Invitational

Well, here we go.  I am attempting to blog again.  I faithfully kept a livejournal account through college (which I did everything I could to bury within the interwebs, but I'm sure it still exists out there, with my angst for everyone to read) and attempted to have a research-based one during college for a course, which was something I didn't keep up with very well.  Now, I'm attempting to blog again as I look at the resources that Maine offers within its MARVEL system.

MARVEL is free for all Maine citizens, and all you need is a library card, or to set up an account with MARVEL.  I prefer to use my library card, since I usually have that number memorized anyway and the library card is from one of the qualifying libraries.  Since I'm a youth services librarian in a small public library, I usually find myself using NOVEList K-8 and Britannica.  I'm also a fan of checking Consumer Reports, which you can do through MasterFILE premiere.  I'm looking to either brushing up on or learning how to use some of the other databases on there, and hopefully figure out how I can make my own patrons even more aware of them.

This week we watched a few tutorials about MARVEL.  The first one was an introduction to MARVEL as a whole.  I was surprised by how many different organizations contributed to the funding for databases.  I'm not really sure why I had forgotten that colleges and universities would contribute, as well as  the Public Utilities Commission, but now I know!  The second tutorial was about navigating in MARVEL.  It went over the menu bar, where to find the FAQs, how you can find databases by subject or title, and the OneSearch box. OneSearch lets you search across multiple databases.  It's not always my favorite feature, as the sheer number of results can sometimes be overwhelming, but I do see how it can be very useful if I wasn't sure where to start looking or if I was only used to using Google or Bing.  The third tutorial was about finding information in MARVEL.  This tutorial went over the home screen again, pointing out the Subjects section. It then used the Health section as an example, showing how you could use the "ABOUT" link to learn what each database was about before choosing it.  OneSearch was also discussed again, and I realized that I forgot that it searches library catalogs as well.  No wonder the results sometimes seem overwhelming to me!

I tried to watch the video about OneSearch directly from the MARVEL page and it wouldn't let me.  A colleague sent me another link (http://maineinfonet.net/marvel/onesearch/onesearch.html) and when I tried that, I finally got the video to play.  I liked the zoom in and out on the screen feature.  I want to learn how to do that!  I suppose I should also be talking about the content of the video.  Most of it was stuff I already knew based on playing around with it previously.  I did enjoy learning that I could narrow search topics by choosing what to include and what to exclude.  Maybe it will not be as overwhelming when I go to use it next time.

Obviously the most important quiz ever

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