MARY BUSHING ASSIGNMENT

One website that I use in my personal life as well as professionally is Pinterest. I know almost all of you have probably heard of Pintrest. Pinterest does require a membership however it is free. You can get tons of story time ideas, craft ideas, book suggestions etc. It always surprises me at the different information and ideas that one can get on Pinterest.  With Pinterest you can create different boards. I have separate boards for pre-school story time crafts, Summer Reading ideas, etc. I like that I can pin an idea on the board and then make a note on it, such as " Story time for St.Patricks Day 2012" I can look back at my boards when I am looking for story time ideas next year and see what I have done previously.  I know that someone probably already posted http://www.pintrest.com/ but it is really a fun website that I would encourage all librarians to have a free membership to...its networking on steroids :)

WRAP UP

One of my biggest discoveries through this electronic challenge ( this may sound silly ) was that I should not be afraid of all the databases. I had this idea in my head that some of the databases were scary and complicated. We are usually just so strapped for time that I never made myself sit down and play around with them for a longer period of time. But what I discovered was the complete opposite of scary and complicated. The databases are user friendly and have so much information to offer us. This is going to be my third year as a librarian and I am honestly kicking myself for not doing this sooner. I was also leery of creating a blog and blogging on the Internet, its not something I had done in this format before. But by being a participant in the challenge, stepping outside of my comfort zone and forcing myself to take to extra time I found that blogging is not hard, and that the resources we have at our fingertips are not only very informative, and east to use, they are fun to work with as well.

I plan on writing an article for our library news reminding the public about these resources that are available and I have also put a binder together with the South Dakota Libraries' Guide to the databases and placed it by the computers.  And anytime someone is doing a research paper, this will be the first place I tell them to go.

AncestryLibrary, HeritageQuest and Sanborn Maps

I looked up my name and over 452,000 Lindsey Hansen's came up. So I searched again using my first, middle and maiden name and I was down to less than 900 hits. The first and only hit that was me, was from the Minnesota Birth Index 1935-2002.

I had the most fun looking up my great grandmother, her maiden name was Dillinger and my husband has always wanted me to look up her history to see if there was any relation to John Dillinger. There was just a huge amount of information and links to my relatives past that I did not even know about. In my time that I spent looking I could not find anything that said that John Dillinger was directly related but I only had time to just scratch the surface. (no one in my family has really wanted to see if there was a link there before) I really enjoyed this and my mom is looking forward to coming down to the library to do some more "Dillinger Digging" with me.

I tried looking up some of the same information in HeritageQuest but I did not find HeritageQuest to be as fun. I think that if I was looking for a something about my families past in a history book this would be my route. I was able to find some local history in a publication that mentioned Centerville, SD.

In Sanborn Maps I looked up Centerville, I was able to find a map that went back to 1893. This was interesting to me because I was able to see the lots that my house is on now and the buildings that were around it. I also looked at a map of Centerville from around the time my home was originally build around 1920. It was interesting to see the building that were around at that time and the ones on main street that are still around today.

WorldCat/FirstSearch

WorldCat- I recently ILL a book titled The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. When I searched this title I found that 729 libraries worldwide had this title.  The top library listed was Brookings Public Library. I clicked into the record for this book to find that the call number is 833.9. This was a convenient assignment to do today because the patron that I ILL the book for wanted to know what other books were out there by Thomas Mann. I clicked on the authors name and found lots of records that were related to him in some way. From my finding he is listed in over 19,000 records. This author had such a wide variety of works from short stories to novels that were turned into movies well after he had passed away. This search was very useful in finding a list of books, short stories etc. that my patron interested in this author may want to read. I found much more relevant information by clicking on his name in WorldCat than if I had done a Google search for a list of his works.

FirstSearch Indexs- I found the “i” icon helpful in explaining the types of information that can be found in each database and who the information is geared towards. I played around looking at some of the other databases and did some searching in ERIC – a database for journal articles and reports in education. FYI there is some interesting articles there!

OAIster - I searched South Dakota (with selecting Subject Phrase.) I clicked into something with the title Wounded Knee Massacre in South Dakota, January 1, 1891.  I clicked on the Access tab and it led me to a very very disturbing photo of America soldiers gathering up dead Sioux Indians after the Wounded Knee Massacre. I looked at a few of the other records that came up and clicked on the Access tab, some of those also led me to historical pictures.  This is a way to find historical pictures, or pictures of historical documents that have been scanned into the databases.  

ProQuest part 2

ProQuest Part2 - not sure why it did not go with the previous blog but here is the rest of my assignment : Under the publications tab i typed in "Library Journal" and then I clicked on "School Library Journal." Then within the School Library Journal I searched "Preschool Story Time" and I found a collection of articles. I did find what I wanted right away but after playing around with the advance search and using some of the search suggestions I came across a few helpful articles.

Lesson 4 - ProQuest

ProQuest- I have a friend that has Huntington’s disease run in her family. I know only the vary basics about the disease so I looked it up in proquest. I first searched “Huntington’s Disease” and came up with 6,247 results. Then I searched “Huntington’s Disease Cure” and 965 results came up.  I liked how they had a list of suggested subjects based on what you were searching for. So after I had 965 results come up under “Huntington’s Disease Cure” there was a suggestion to look at “Huntington’s and DNA”. Because there is currently no cure for Huntington’s disease I appreciated the suggested topics that got me to an article that gave me the most current information on what researchers know and what they are currently doing to cure Huntington’s.  

 Under the publications tab I typed in “Library Journal” and then I clicked on “School Library Journal.”  Then within the School Library Journal I searched  “Preschool Story time” and I found a collection of articles. I did find what I wanted right away but after playing around with the advance search and using some of the search suggestions I came across a few helpful articles.  

Lesson 2: Learning Express Library

I took a sample test for the LSAT logic games (glad I do not plan to go to law school :)) I liked how the results page gave detailed answer explanations for each question that I answered, whether the question was wrong or right- it was good to see the reasoning behind each answer. I enjoyed the test experience I thought it gave very clear directions on how an actual LSAT exam is scored and gave me a real insight to what I might expect if I were thinking of taking the LSAT. (Which thanks to being extremely happy as a librarian, I am not)

Under Job Search and Workplace Skills I got way sidetracked...because I was amazed at the range of topics and the detail that each course goes into. I see this as an excellent resource for our patrons that have not had to look for a new job in awhile (or students who have never looked for a job before). The courses are very easy to follow along and would not intimidate anyone who has not taken an online courses before. I looked at 
" Determining What You Want from Your Career "  The course took you through Sample Actions Plans, and was very detailed in helping define exactly what a person wants out of a perspective job and what types of jobs would best suit for their personality/preferences etc. While I was exploring, I kept thinking this is an excellent place for anyone who has recently lost their job, or is unhappy with their current career and is saying to themselves "Now what???"
I also looked at “Creating Great Cover Letters" I really thought it was full of great ideas and reminders for anyone who is on the hunt for a job. Again, the details that they go over may seem like common sense to some but are excellent reminders to most people who have never made a resume or cover letter or those who have not done it in a long time. It never hurts to go over this type of information, mistakes, even minor ones on a  cover letter and resume could prevent people from getting their desired job.

 I typed in "Reading Skills" in the search box and came across an ebook titled " Read Better. Remember more" . I though "this looks interesting but how long would it take to load an ebook to my not so updated PC"- But before I could talk myself out of it I found my finger clicking yes and I was pleasantly surprised to find that the ebook came up in adobe formant very quickly! I will not let my fear of waiting for a long time to download discourage me from looking at more ebooks on Learning Express Library in the future. 

World Book

Discovery Experience with World Book
I looked up information on Monkeys, I found both the world book kids and world book student to have similar information. The world book student seemed to go more into detail and I liked how both sites geared the information to certain grade levels. I really think it is neat that at the bottom of every article it shows the student how to cite the article for a works cited page. (English teachers love this!)  When I used World Book Advanced and typed in Italy, I thought it was very user friendly for anyone to just look at the left side of the page and click into more specifics about Italy. If I had an adult patron who was going on a trip to Italy, they could click on information about night life in Italy, popular places to visit and find out just about anything they wanted to know. I am a very visual learner so I appreciated the pictures, charts, and graphs that went along with the information. There was so much information there it would be easy to get sidetracked and research things that you never thought of before. World Book Discover, I looked at an article on American government and thought it was very cool that I could change the language. I was looking at the site last night when one of my Spanish speaking patrons came in and she was amazed at all of the articles that she could read in Spanish. I also thought of the Spanish classes that we have in HS, sometimes they have assignments where they need articles that are in Spanish, its an excellent resource for the Spanish class. Because we are in a public and school library I enjoyed looking at both school and public library editions. At the end of my exploration I printed out the South Dakota Libraries Guide to each one of the world book sites. I am going to put them in a binder by the computer for adults and students to look at for a quick reference.  I plan on making another binder that the teachers can check out if they need a quick refresher for when they use it in the class room.