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

Which My Little Pony Are You?
Hosted By theOtaku.com: Anime