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.