It's hard to believe we've reached the end of the Resource Challenge! I guess it's true when they say "Time flies when you're having fun!"
I didn't have many surprises when working on the Challenge this year, but it's been a great review. I especially liked having specific questions to answer each week. I was able to keep my focus better, and not get distracted and off on some unrelated tangent. This Challenge has gotten me to think more about going to the databases first to answer some of our patrons' questions.
I have been using World Book each week to find information about various animals for Story Time. The "compare" feature has been fun as well as helpful. We have learned the differences between crocodiles and alligators, and lions and tigers!
We will be sure to highlight the databases when we do our school visits this spring. Since the kids can access most of them from either the library or home, these are great resources for those year-end reports and projects (especially if they've waited 'til the last minute and the books are checked out or the library is closed...). The "How to Cite this Article" feature is a bonus! I'm not sure today's tech-savvy kids appreciate this feature as much as us "older" folks do!
Thanks for putting this Challenge together and for your encouraging comments. It's been both challenging and fun!
Monday, March 25, 2013
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Challenge 9: AncestryLibrary, HeritageQuest and Sandborn Maps
AncestryLibrary
Everyone seems to be fascinated by the Titanic, and I am no exception. So searching for her sister ship was a fun challenge. In AncestryLibrary I went to Immigration & Travel, then selected Ship Pictures and Descriptions. I typed the word titanic in the "More" box and got six results listed for passenger ships and images. I clicked on "passenger ships and images" and got the names and tiny pictures of six different ships. I selected Titanic and at the end of the description, it listed a sister ship: Olympic. The Olympic was in service from 1911 until 1934, serving as a troopship during World War I.
One thing I found interesting is that the Titanic was not the only ship to be involved in a collision. The Olympic had two (1911 and 1934), and the Republic, another ship from the White Star Line sank after a collision with the liner Florida in 1909. The Carpathia, which rescued survivors of the Titanic, sank after being torpedoed by a German submarine in 1918. I think what fascinates us so much about Titanic is that the ship was supposed to be unsinkable, and the tragic loss of so many lives.
Finding information on the Hindenburg was more time consuming and less successful. I began by doing an Advanced search. I typed hindenburg in the keyword box under "More." I limited the results to Newspapers & Publications, and ended up with 362. However, some of the articles appeared more than once, so there were not 362 unique results. Most of the results were obituaries for people whose name was Hindenburg or articles about World War II from Stars and Stripes, so they were not very helpful. I did find an article by a survivor of the 1937 crash of the Hindenburg, which appeared in Stars and Stripes on April 4, 1957. Searching for the terms hindenburg and dirigible gave 523 results, but once again, many of them were not applicable.
Depending on what sort of information this student is looking for, he may want to search other sources.
HeritageQuest
To find information about Brown County, I searched in Books. I searched for Places: Brown County, South Dakota with limited success. There were 30 results, but not much information in any of them. Many listed names of people who were born or died in Brown County. This could be helpful if someone was interested in early settlers in Brown County. There were also two history books about South Dakota, which might be possible resources.
Next I searched PerSI (Periodical Source Index) for Places: South Dakota [state] and Brown [county]. There were 248 results. Some of these look pretty interesting, but the articles are not in the database. Articles must be ordered, and it can take up to eight weeks to get them. There is also a charge to order articles. [Our library does have copies of Tree Climber, so if the patron comes to the library, they could read the articles here rather than ordering copies....]
Everyone seems to be fascinated by the Titanic, and I am no exception. So searching for her sister ship was a fun challenge. In AncestryLibrary I went to Immigration & Travel, then selected Ship Pictures and Descriptions. I typed the word titanic in the "More" box and got six results listed for passenger ships and images. I clicked on "passenger ships and images" and got the names and tiny pictures of six different ships. I selected Titanic and at the end of the description, it listed a sister ship: Olympic. The Olympic was in service from 1911 until 1934, serving as a troopship during World War I.
One thing I found interesting is that the Titanic was not the only ship to be involved in a collision. The Olympic had two (1911 and 1934), and the Republic, another ship from the White Star Line sank after a collision with the liner Florida in 1909. The Carpathia, which rescued survivors of the Titanic, sank after being torpedoed by a German submarine in 1918. I think what fascinates us so much about Titanic is that the ship was supposed to be unsinkable, and the tragic loss of so many lives.
Finding information on the Hindenburg was more time consuming and less successful. I began by doing an Advanced search. I typed hindenburg in the keyword box under "More." I limited the results to Newspapers & Publications, and ended up with 362. However, some of the articles appeared more than once, so there were not 362 unique results. Most of the results were obituaries for people whose name was Hindenburg or articles about World War II from Stars and Stripes, so they were not very helpful. I did find an article by a survivor of the 1937 crash of the Hindenburg, which appeared in Stars and Stripes on April 4, 1957. Searching for the terms hindenburg and dirigible gave 523 results, but once again, many of them were not applicable.
Depending on what sort of information this student is looking for, he may want to search other sources.
HeritageQuest
To find information about Brown County, I searched in Books. I searched for Places: Brown County, South Dakota with limited success. There were 30 results, but not much information in any of them. Many listed names of people who were born or died in Brown County. This could be helpful if someone was interested in early settlers in Brown County. There were also two history books about South Dakota, which might be possible resources.
Next I searched PerSI (Periodical Source Index) for Places: South Dakota [state] and Brown [county]. There were 248 results. Some of these look pretty interesting, but the articles are not in the database. Articles must be ordered, and it can take up to eight weeks to get them. There is also a charge to order articles. [Our library does have copies of Tree Climber, so if the patron comes to the library, they could read the articles here rather than ordering copies....]
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Challenge 8: ArchiveGrid and CAMIO
ArchiveGrid
Library patrons who are serious about their research and willing to spend extra time and effort to gain results will really like ArchiveGrid.
I had never heard of Theodore Schultz before doing this assignment, so I learned something new today! Schultz was an agricultural economist born in 1902 in South Dakota. He taught at Iowa State College, but resigned in 1943 because of the "oleomargarine controversy." [Researchers at Iowa State had recommended the used of oleomargarine during war time, but when dairy associations protested, the college administration backed down and did not support the Iowa State researchers. Schultz and others resigned in protest.] Schultz then taught at the University of Chicago. His early papers, including publications, newspaper clippings, letters, biographical information, and information about the "oleomargarine controversy," are housed at Iowa State University.
I found these records by searching for "theodore schultz" (in quotation marks). There were four results, two from his years at Iowa, and two which are at Cornell University (Ithica, New York) and deal with the Dairymen's League Cooperative Association Records 1916 - 1961. These records contain correspondence from Schultz. The collections at Iowa State University seem to be more relevant, so perhaps a road trip to Ames is in order.
CAMIO
I did several different searches to answer the question about clothing and dress in Charles Dickens' day. First I searched for Charles Dickens. [I found out he lived from 1812 - 1870.] There were seven results, including two portraits and one photograph. Looking at these will show how Dickens himself dressed. Next I searched for Victorian dress, and got two results: one was a bronze cast of a lady's profile, and the other was a daguerreotype of a family. These are helpful, but I knew there had to be more.
I did two more searches, for Victorian clothing, and Victorian fashion, but got zero results.
So I broadened my search to fashion, and had over 300 results. Scanning down through these results, I found fashion drawings from the 1840s, 1850s, 1860s and beyond. The drawings were very detailed and colorful. Another search for clothing resulted in 161 items, including prints from Harper's Weekly of ladies hats.
Using CAMIO to answer this question resulted in great finds. But this was one time when using a broad search, rather than a narrow one, yielded better results!
Library patrons who are serious about their research and willing to spend extra time and effort to gain results will really like ArchiveGrid.
I had never heard of Theodore Schultz before doing this assignment, so I learned something new today! Schultz was an agricultural economist born in 1902 in South Dakota. He taught at Iowa State College, but resigned in 1943 because of the "oleomargarine controversy." [Researchers at Iowa State had recommended the used of oleomargarine during war time, but when dairy associations protested, the college administration backed down and did not support the Iowa State researchers. Schultz and others resigned in protest.] Schultz then taught at the University of Chicago. His early papers, including publications, newspaper clippings, letters, biographical information, and information about the "oleomargarine controversy," are housed at Iowa State University.
I found these records by searching for "theodore schultz" (in quotation marks). There were four results, two from his years at Iowa, and two which are at Cornell University (Ithica, New York) and deal with the Dairymen's League Cooperative Association Records 1916 - 1961. These records contain correspondence from Schultz. The collections at Iowa State University seem to be more relevant, so perhaps a road trip to Ames is in order.
CAMIO
I did several different searches to answer the question about clothing and dress in Charles Dickens' day. First I searched for Charles Dickens. [I found out he lived from 1812 - 1870.] There were seven results, including two portraits and one photograph. Looking at these will show how Dickens himself dressed. Next I searched for Victorian dress, and got two results: one was a bronze cast of a lady's profile, and the other was a daguerreotype of a family. These are helpful, but I knew there had to be more.
I did two more searches, for Victorian clothing, and Victorian fashion, but got zero results.
So I broadened my search to fashion, and had over 300 results. Scanning down through these results, I found fashion drawings from the 1840s, 1850s, 1860s and beyond. The drawings were very detailed and colorful. Another search for clothing resulted in 161 items, including prints from Harper's Weekly of ladies hats.
Using CAMIO to answer this question resulted in great finds. But this was one time when using a broad search, rather than a narrow one, yielded better results!
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Challenge 7: WorldCat
I really like using WorldCat. It's like having access to the world's biggest library at your fingertips!
Martin Luther
To find appropriate books about Martin Luther, I did an Advanced Search. I searched for Martin Luther in keywords and limited the type to books and the language to English. I further limited my search by these Subtype Limits: Juvenile (audience) and Not fiction (content). There were 1252 results and many of those were about Martin Luther King. So I refined my search further by adding a limiter: not King. This cut my results down to 221, a much more manageable number to search. My library actually owns several titles listed, but this patron may also wish to borrow Martin Luther by Sally Stepanek (NY: Chelsea House, 1986). Libraries in North Dakota, Minnesota, and Iowa own this book.
Graphic Classics
I also did an Advanced Search to find graphic novels of classic titles. I searched for Graphic in Genre/Form (under subject in the drop down box), and the keyword Classic. For limiters, I selected English (language), Books (Type), Juvenile (since I am a Children's Librarian), and Fiction. I had 229 results. One title I would like to add is "The Wizard of Oz" by Michael Cavallaro (NY: Puffin Books, 2005).
I redid my search changing "classic" to "classics." This time I had 176 results.
I did my search a third time, using two of the databases: ArticleFirst and PapersFirst. [I thought there may be journal articles about classics in graphic format that would contain bibliographies.] I searched for Keywords Graphic and Classics which resulted in a list of seven articles, all from ArticleFirst. Three of the articles listed look promising. Although they are not very recent (2007 and 2009), getting copies of these articles may be a good place to see all that is available.
My Fair Lady
Finding the musical score for My Fair Lady was not difficult. I did an Advanced Search for Title Phrase My Fair Lady. I limited the language to English, the type to Musical Scores, and subtype limits to Not Juvenile and Not Fiction. There were 266 results. I chose the second in the list, which has an OCLC accession number of 26429906. This item is available at NSU, so our patron can go there to check it out.
Martin Luther
To find appropriate books about Martin Luther, I did an Advanced Search. I searched for Martin Luther in keywords and limited the type to books and the language to English. I further limited my search by these Subtype Limits: Juvenile (audience) and Not fiction (content). There were 1252 results and many of those were about Martin Luther King. So I refined my search further by adding a limiter: not King. This cut my results down to 221, a much more manageable number to search. My library actually owns several titles listed, but this patron may also wish to borrow Martin Luther by Sally Stepanek (NY: Chelsea House, 1986). Libraries in North Dakota, Minnesota, and Iowa own this book.
Graphic Classics
I also did an Advanced Search to find graphic novels of classic titles. I searched for Graphic in Genre/Form (under subject in the drop down box), and the keyword Classic. For limiters, I selected English (language), Books (Type), Juvenile (since I am a Children's Librarian), and Fiction. I had 229 results. One title I would like to add is "The Wizard of Oz" by Michael Cavallaro (NY: Puffin Books, 2005).
I redid my search changing "classic" to "classics." This time I had 176 results.
I did my search a third time, using two of the databases: ArticleFirst and PapersFirst. [I thought there may be journal articles about classics in graphic format that would contain bibliographies.] I searched for Keywords Graphic and Classics which resulted in a list of seven articles, all from ArticleFirst. Three of the articles listed look promising. Although they are not very recent (2007 and 2009), getting copies of these articles may be a good place to see all that is available.
My Fair Lady
Finding the musical score for My Fair Lady was not difficult. I did an Advanced Search for Title Phrase My Fair Lady. I limited the language to English, the type to Musical Scores, and subtype limits to Not Juvenile and Not Fiction. There were 266 results. I chose the second in the list, which has an OCLC accession number of 26429906. This item is available at NSU, so our patron can go there to check it out.
Monday, March 4, 2013
Challenge 6: EBooks on EbscoHost
It seems like I often work on these challenges right before lunch when I am hungry. So I chose Cooking for my search topic. I did a Visual Search and got 121 results. I did spend some time looking at the books, especially "Fast and Lean One-Dish Cuisine," and "Desserts Around the World." Then I repeated my search as a Basic Search. I must say I prefer the way the results are shown for the Basic Search. It was easier to see what the result were, easier to get into the books I selected., and even easier to read them!
For the Fairy Tale question, I did a basic search for Fairy Tales. There were 66 results, which I didn't think was too many to look through. So I began to scroll down the list, and numbers five through nine were books by Andrew Lang with colors in the titles (Violet Fairy Book, Blue Fairy Book, etc.). To determine how many titles are available, I did an Advanced Search for Fairy Tales and Lang in the Author field. There were six results, but one was not a "color" title, and one was a duplicate (Blue Fairy Book). So I found four different Fairy Tale books with colors in the titles (violet, blue yellow, and red). I know these are older titles, so I would ask Grandma if these are the books she remembers.
For the Fairy Tale question, I did a basic search for Fairy Tales. There were 66 results, which I didn't think was too many to look through. So I began to scroll down the list, and numbers five through nine were books by Andrew Lang with colors in the titles (Violet Fairy Book, Blue Fairy Book, etc.). To determine how many titles are available, I did an Advanced Search for Fairy Tales and Lang in the Author field. There were six results, but one was not a "color" title, and one was a duplicate (Blue Fairy Book). So I found four different Fairy Tale books with colors in the titles (violet, blue yellow, and red). I know these are older titles, so I would ask Grandma if these are the books she remembers.
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Challenge 5: Gale Virtual Reference Library
It's fun to look forward to spring when it's snowing! Searching for spring festivals makes winter seem shorter.
I did a basic search for Spring Festivals and had 444 results. The best ones were from a few specific sources: Junior Worldmark Encyclopedia of World Holidays and Junior Worldmark Encyclopedia of World Cultures. So went to those two resources, did my search again, and found a lot of information.
One of my new favorite spring festivals will be St. David's Day, celebrated in Wales on March 1. Daffodils are everywhere for this festival and I love daffodils! They just seem to shout, "It's Spring!" I carried daffodils in my wedding bouquet, and have planted them around my house. I don't think mine will be blooming by St. David's Day, so I will have to buy a bunch or two to celebrate.
But back to my search.... I did find some information on activities and food for various festivals in these two encyclopedias. Another source for food and recipes is the Junior Worldmark Encyclopedia of Foods and Recipes of the World.
I think this civic organization will find too many ideas for a single event. By using the Gale Virtual Reference Library, they can make "Spring Holidays Around the World" an on-going activity!
Both the Junior Worldmark Encyclopedia of World Cultures and Junior Worldmark Encyclopedia of Foods and Recipes of the World are 2012 titles. I actually did not use the Advanced Search to find them: I went to the Title List and had titles listed by publication date (descending): new titles are listed first. There were a total of nine titles listed for 2012.
Then I did an Advanced Search and limited the results by Publication Year (within 2012). There were 28,952 hits. Are these 28,952 results separate articles from the nine 2012 titles? When I look on the left side of the results page, I have the option to limit my search by publication title, and there are the same nine titles listed....
This has been an interesting database to search - it's been easy to get distracted from the topic at hand and go off on other research paths. Speaking of distractions, perhaps I should go out and buy those daffodils...!
I did a basic search for Spring Festivals and had 444 results. The best ones were from a few specific sources: Junior Worldmark Encyclopedia of World Holidays and Junior Worldmark Encyclopedia of World Cultures. So went to those two resources, did my search again, and found a lot of information.
One of my new favorite spring festivals will be St. David's Day, celebrated in Wales on March 1. Daffodils are everywhere for this festival and I love daffodils! They just seem to shout, "It's Spring!" I carried daffodils in my wedding bouquet, and have planted them around my house. I don't think mine will be blooming by St. David's Day, so I will have to buy a bunch or two to celebrate.
But back to my search.... I did find some information on activities and food for various festivals in these two encyclopedias. Another source for food and recipes is the Junior Worldmark Encyclopedia of Foods and Recipes of the World.
I think this civic organization will find too many ideas for a single event. By using the Gale Virtual Reference Library, they can make "Spring Holidays Around the World" an on-going activity!
Both the Junior Worldmark Encyclopedia of World Cultures and Junior Worldmark Encyclopedia of Foods and Recipes of the World are 2012 titles. I actually did not use the Advanced Search to find them: I went to the Title List and had titles listed by publication date (descending): new titles are listed first. There were a total of nine titles listed for 2012.
Then I did an Advanced Search and limited the results by Publication Year (within 2012). There were 28,952 hits. Are these 28,952 results separate articles from the nine 2012 titles? When I look on the left side of the results page, I have the option to limit my search by publication title, and there are the same nine titles listed....
This has been an interesting database to search - it's been easy to get distracted from the topic at hand and go off on other research paths. Speaking of distractions, perhaps I should go out and buy those daffodils...!
Thursday, February 14, 2013
Challenge 4: ProQuest
ProQuest has a wide variety of articles and information, but it was hard to find exactly what I wanted.
I tried several different ways to find information for the student needing literary criticism of Les Miserables. The most successful search resulted when I used quotation marks around the title ["les miserables"]. I also did searches using the title and author's name.... I first limited the results by excluding any and everything having to do with music, theater, film, etc. in the subject option. I tried again by limiting the results to literary criticism in English. My final number of articles was 42, but not all of them would be helpful. There were book reviews of biographies of Victor Hugo, and articles that just mentioned Les Miserables in passing. This student may need to find another source of information for her assignment, but this is a good place to start. Using ProQuest provides access to journals that would not be available at the library, so it is a useful resource.
Finding information about the impact of Hurricane Sandy on libraries was even more difficult I thought. For my first attempt, I used the Advanced Search option. I searched for libraries AND "hurricane sandy." This resulted in 238 documents: the newest was February 13, 2013. However, it was an article listing who would be sitting in Michelle Obama's box at the State of the Union speech, and had nothing to do with the impact of Hurricane Sandy on libraries.
Next I limited the results by subject, including options like storm damage, library collections, displaced persons, disaster relief, etc., and narrowed the results to ten. None of these were what I wanted either.
So I tried a different search. This time I used "hurricane sandy" in the basic search box which resulted in over 9000 articles. When I searched for "hurricane sandy" impact, there were over 2000 documents. I wanted to limit either search by subject, but libraries was not an option to include or exclude.
I have spent quite a lot of time searching for relevant results with little success. What am I doing wrong? There's probably a simple way to search, and I will feel pretty silly when someone points it out to me, but at this point, I am clueless!
I tried several different ways to find information for the student needing literary criticism of Les Miserables. The most successful search resulted when I used quotation marks around the title ["les miserables"]. I also did searches using the title and author's name.... I first limited the results by excluding any and everything having to do with music, theater, film, etc. in the subject option. I tried again by limiting the results to literary criticism in English. My final number of articles was 42, but not all of them would be helpful. There were book reviews of biographies of Victor Hugo, and articles that just mentioned Les Miserables in passing. This student may need to find another source of information for her assignment, but this is a good place to start. Using ProQuest provides access to journals that would not be available at the library, so it is a useful resource.
Finding information about the impact of Hurricane Sandy on libraries was even more difficult I thought. For my first attempt, I used the Advanced Search option. I searched for libraries AND "hurricane sandy." This resulted in 238 documents: the newest was February 13, 2013. However, it was an article listing who would be sitting in Michelle Obama's box at the State of the Union speech, and had nothing to do with the impact of Hurricane Sandy on libraries.
Next I limited the results by subject, including options like storm damage, library collections, displaced persons, disaster relief, etc., and narrowed the results to ten. None of these were what I wanted either.
So I tried a different search. This time I used "hurricane sandy" in the basic search box which resulted in over 9000 articles. When I searched for "hurricane sandy" impact, there were over 2000 documents. I wanted to limit either search by subject, but libraries was not an option to include or exclude.
I have spent quite a lot of time searching for relevant results with little success. What am I doing wrong? There's probably a simple way to search, and I will feel pretty silly when someone points it out to me, but at this point, I am clueless!
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