Wrap Up

My favorite discoveries were NetLibrary and Gale Virtual Reference Library.  Both are tools that would help individuals who cannot come to the Library begin researching subjects from their homes if they have access to a computer.  Working with outreach services, many of my patrons are older and not very comfortable with computers, but some of them are or have families that can help them navigate the internet.  It is wonderful to have a sense of the State Library's electronic resources to share with them.  For example, I was particularly impressed with NetLibrary's books about selecting Assisted Living facilities.  Also, in an outreach role,  I am out in the community interacting with many more people than just the patrons to whom I bring books, and it is exciting to tell them about all the great things I have learned during this challenge.  Thank you for helping us keep learning!

Lesson 8: Archive Grid and CAMIO

In searching for "Sitting Bull Autograph Card", I picked up the following information, even though I could not see the card itself :

"Sitting Bull, also known as Tatanka Iyotake or Tatanka Iyotanka or Ta-Tanka I-Yotan, was a Native American shaman and leader of the Hunpapa Sioux. He fought against the Crow Indians and was wounded in battle on several occasions. Sitting Bull greatly opposed the encroachment of the white men. He led Sioux and Cheyenne warriors against U.S. soldiers of the 7th Cavalry at the battle of Little Bighorn. After the battle, in which many were killed, Sitting Bull led his tribe into Canada, where they lived until surrendering to U.S. forces. After his capture he toured with Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show. Sitting Bull was killed while resisting arrest for his unwillingness to abandon the traditions of the ritual Ghost Dance, which had been outlawed. "

I also learned who contact to access the material.

For my own search, I typed "Lakota Treaty" and my results included pamphlets from AIM, and interestingly, the papers of James Henry Red Cloud.  His biographical information is fascinating:

"James Henry Red Cloud was born at the Pine Ridge Agency, South Dakota, in August 1879. His father, Jack Red Cloud, was the only married son of the illustrious Chief Red Cloud. His mother was Her Roan Horse. James H. Red Cloud went to school at the Holy Rosary Mission for two years. He spent most of his life on the Pine Ridge Reservation. His wife, Dealie, was the daughter of Red Feather, whose sister was married to Chief Crazy Horse. James H. Red Cloud died in 1960"

It is wonderful that his papers remain at the Nebraska State Historical Society.

CAMIO

I searched for Paul Revere and found pictures of paintings, and what excited me most, of silver items he had crafted, including one beautiful set at the Minneapolis Institute of Art.  The photographs of the paintings and drawings impressed me with their excellent quality.  When I searched for "Sioux"  there were many paintings by George Catlin, but I loved the first photograph of the mother and child.

When I looked forPaul Goble's paintings, I hit a dead end, and again for Oscar Howe and Harvey Dunn.  However, there were LOTS of Norman Rockwell paintings to look at and they were a real treat.  I can see where art teachers with large screens and projectors could really have fun sharing these images with their students.  The ability to select favorites and create a slidehow adds a lot to this process, making it much quicker to display the images just using your browser.

Lesson 9: History and Geneology Resouces

Looking through AncestryLibrary was very interesting.  I found my marriage license when I searched for my husband.  I didn't find it under my name, because my last name had been misspelled!  My husband was shown as living at an address he never resided at.  My brother's birth certificate popped up when I looked for my name.  It was also very interesting to see the census listings for my husband's grandparents. I noticed there was often a person in the home who was servant. I couldn't search for my own grandparents as they lived in India.

Searching for South Dakota in Ancestry/Library led me to lists of yearbooks with photos to view, old Sears Catologs and Family photograph collections.  I almost found a picture of my mother-in-law in a yearbook.  But it turned outo be someone else.  :(

I found searching HeritageQuest to be difficult and often had my census searches return no results, even when they had been successful on AncestryLibrary.  Looking for information about Brookings however, was succesful and I had long lists of articles that one coud request from the Brookings Area genealogical Society.  I also found several books that had been published in Brookings about the hsitory of South Dakota.

Sanborn Maps was fantastic!  The earliest years were hard to navigate with different street names and only the railroad tracks to give you a sense of things.  By teh 1928 map you could see the County Court House which is of couse still in use and you could see the then Library, which is now the Community Cultural Center.  Fourth Street was called Williams which somehow blows my mind! This was very enjoyable lesson.

Lesson 7 -- WorldCat

I searched for "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" by Amy Chua on WorldCat and learned that 1141 libraries have the book.  When I clicked on the number, the Brookings Library appeared as the top listing, with other SD libraries listed next.  I was able to acees the Ames, Ia Public Library record, but got an error message when I clicked on the link  to the Brookings Public Library (404 - File or directory not found.)  The call number was 920 CHUA, A. 2011.  When I clicked on Amy Chua's name, no other books, (other than a sound recording of the same book) were listed.  She has written other professional books for attorneys. but these were not listed.  In looking for material related to the subject of this book, there was nothing more in which Ms. Chu was the subject, but there were books to consider about mothers and Chinese American women, including Maxine Hong Kingston's recent biography.

Searching OAIster for South Dakota was very interesting.  It produced such an odd assortment of information, from agriculture to photographs of school houses to 1912 election information.  I looked at : "Sweet Clover in Great Plains Farming" and it had a 54 page publication to  read.  It seems as though OAIster woud require careful searching to end up with pertinent information, because a rather general search about South Dakota led to oddly specific information about other subjects.  It was fun to review the older documents that this search revealed.

In looking at Gentle Reader's blog, I saw that she did no seem to have trouble accessing the BPL information on WorldCat, leaving me feeling just a touch envious...

Lesson 6: Net Library

For this lesson, I looked for books on Assisted Living facilities and the first three books were:


Assisted Living: Current Issues in Facility Management and Resident Care
Beat the Nursing Home Trap: A Consumer's Guide to Assisted Living and Long-term Care
Nursing Homes & Assisted Living Facilities: Your Practical Guide for Making the Right Decision.


I thought these were perfect resources for some one who needed information to make a decision about Assisted Living, either for himself/herself or a loved one.


As for researching about Constitution Day, I found the following NetLibrary books which could be recommended to students:


Our Elusive Constitution: Silences, Paradoxes, Priorities
The Bill of Rights: A Bicentennial Assessment 
The Constitution of the United States of America


In trying to use the Advanced Search feature using Nebraska as Publisher; I received the following error message:

A problem has occurred while processing your request. The problem has been logged so that it can be corrected. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Lesson 5: Gale Virtual Reference Library

I searched for information on desegregation in GVRL and was pleased with the results. It was a quick way to access information from a number of different legal encyclopedias and also a good way to get an overview on topics and not be overwhelmed by too many articles to choose from.

I'm not sure why, when I typed in "banana" to try and find out how much potassium is in a banana, my second  and third listings were were about "extraterritoriality" and my fourth about "S corporations"! I did learn the following from the The Gale Encyclopedia of Science:

"The cultivated banana occurs in hundreds of varieties, or cultivars, which vary greatly in the size, color, and taste of their fruits. The variety most familiar to people living in temperate regions has a rather large, long, yellow fruit. This variety is most commonly exported to temperate countries because it ripens slowly,and travels well without spoiling. However, this variety of banana has proven to be susceptible to a recently emerged, lethal fungal disease. The long, yellow banana will soon be largely replaced in the temperate marketplace by another variety, which has a smaller, reddish, apple-tasting fruit." (my highlighting)


I wondered if they found a cure.  The article is from 2004 and we still have the long bananas. So I went to Proquest and found an article, "We Have No Bananas"in the New Yorker dated Jan. 10, 2011.  The virus called Tropical Race Four wiped out the Cavendish banana (long yellow, etc.) in Asia and Australia and is expected to spread to Latin America, the source for  bananas sold and eaten in the U.S.


As to the amount of potassium in a banana, SIRS came through with an article from  the TUFTS UNIVERSITY HEALTH & NUTRITION LETTER , Aug. 2005, Vol 23, No. 6: "Bananas--A good source of magnesium, which protects against bone loss and is associated with heart health, bananas are also packed with potassium. With 422 milligrams of potassium in one medium banana, you're getting almost 10 percent of the 4,700 milligrams the Institute of Medicine says you need. Potassium helps lower blood pressure and reduces the risk of kidney stones and bone loss." 

 So this ended up being a fun way to dabble in a number of resources!

Lesson 4: Proquest

To compare the kinds of information different electronic resources provide, I once again searched for information about Dementia.  This resulted in a listing of very recent scholarly articles about research into dementia which would be very helpful in researching for college level work, but probably not as useful for most lay people.  It is wonderful that such a sophisticated resource is available for our patrons!  It provided something quite different from the other resources we have looked at so far.  It also had a generous number  of articles about Paul Farmer and Greg Mortenson that were accessible reading, and quite suitable for middle school and high school kids.

I read Gentle Reader's Blog, which reminded me to share that when I first used Proquest, I didn't click the "full text documents only" and was very confused about how to get to the first article, as there was no way to read it...  I also looked at Filia's "My Libary Blog" and enjoyed it. 

In the Publications area, I searched for library journals and found 24.  I was surprised when I searched for medical journals and found 38, somehow I expected many more with all their sub-specialties.  However, when I searched for "dermatology" 5 different medical journals popped up, so like in all computer searches, it may be a matter of trying different search terms to get at what you really want.

SIRS Issues Researcher

I looked up  "patriot act and libraries" to see whether there would be information provided about last night's vote in the House, but the most current information was available when looking up the Patriot Act alone, rather than narrowing the topic too much.  When I looked up "dementia" and "alzheimers", topics sometimes of interest to my outreach patrons, both searches yielded information about alzheimers.

Following the Curriclum Pathfinders led me to an interesting "Ask  Dr. Math" site which has answers from Swarthmore College math students to K-12 students' questions. 

My overall impression today is that SIRS Discoverer and Researcher would be very helpful to middle school and high school students in writing papers and when they are panicking over homework when they do not have the right notes or books at hand.

SIRS Discoverer

In exploring the different online resources, I am starting to appreciate the differences in what they offer to students.  The World Book School Edition is a great starting point for straightforward general information on a topic.  SIRS Discoverer is more open ended and lives up to its name in that it can take readers on interesting side trips about their topic. For example in looking up dolphins, one immediately encounters an article about "Cyberfin", a reality dolphin swim program!  Article 5 is about dolphin communication.  Discoverer is a nice way to surf the web about a topic and still know the information is reliable.

As a parent, I have often had to help a child who at 9:30 p.m. realizes he or she did not bring home the textbook and has an assignment to complete for the next day.  This results in a hurried search on the internet to find the right map or history article to help.  SIRS Discoverer's country facts and maps databases are a real find for this situation.  I looked up Puerto Rico, where I spent a big part of my childhood, in the Country Facts and found it to provide a good summary and description of the island and its unique political situation.

The biographies section is good but I was disappointed there were no articles on Greg Mortenson or Paul Farmer. It did a nice job with Barack and Michelle Obama.  It would have been useful if there was a built in feature to suggest closest correctly spelled name.  It showed no articles for "Michele" Obama when I misspelled her first name, which seems like the kind of error that K-9 students might make.

Lesson 2: Learning Express Library

In exploring the Learning Express Library I tried out the preparing for the ACT , as well as the GED.   I was very impressed.  The fact that the tests are timed and scored gives them an edge over the tedious scoring of paper and pencil sample tests.  Also, the explanation of each answer will help individuals who are new to the tests understand what the logic is behind the questions, especially for some of the subjective seeming reading questions.

In the Job Search area I reviewed the Interviewing Course.  While the first two Segments might seem a little dry unless you really want the information, they are well organized and specific.  I was most impressed by the Sample Interview Questions segment.  The questions were representative of real life interviews and the best part was that after answering all the sample questions, they were brought together in a format where you could print out your answers and have a study guide of sorts to prepare for your interview.

Finally, in looking at the available e-books, I selected one on Spanish/English Terms for Nurses.  I think that is a fantastic free resource and one that I  hope hospitals and clinics are taking advantage of. As a 25i page book. it is longer than the small  sheets you sometimes see in emergency rooms, and is divided by specialty, so for example, a pediatric nurse could go to that section to quickly access terms that he or she might need.

Learning Express Library has so many components that one could spend weeks exploring all  of it. I am glad for this opportunity to be expose to it.  As my daughter enters high school and begins preparing for the ACT and SAT I am sure we will have many chances to use this resource!

Lesson 1:World Book Online

Exploring World Book Online was very informative.  The foreign language versions seem like an excellent resource, especially for younger Spanish speaking patrons.  I also liked the feature that facilitated printing subsections of the articles and the correct way to cite the article.  With easy availability of online materials plagiarism does seem to be a growing problem.  The sites were easy to navigate, but the children's version seemed a little dry and in looking up animals, it seemed a though some snippets of video might have provided some interest.  Overall, I am glad I reviewed the online encyclopedia, as in working with outreach activities, I have not had too much need to refer Patron's to online resources so far.