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.