Week 10 - Wrap Up

My biggest discovery is that I am more familiar with these electronic resources than I realized.  I use them for my college homework.  Instead of using the college's databases I head to the ones at the South Dakota State Library.

I  asked Julie Erickson to come to our library this summer for an Open House Training.  This will be in the newspaper and promoted by the library.  There are already people interested in attending.  Of course, there will be coffee and cookies, too!

I have to keep using and refreshing my memory concerning these electronic resources so I can tell our patrons what we have available.  And, I mention them in my monthly newspaper column.  But, until a person needs the information they don't always pay attention.

Thank you for providing this Electronic Resources Challenge.  I am glad I finally bit the bullet and took it.  It wasn't hard and it didn't take that much time to complete each challenge.

Week 9 - Ancestry Library, Heritage Quest and Sanborn Maps

Since I am at home finishing this challenge, I am not able to access Ancestry Library.  But, I have spent some time there when I wasn't working at the library.  I would like to do more research on my family tree.

I haven't used Heritage Quest before and didn't realize how much material is available.  I searched the census records for my maternal Great-Grandfather on my Mom's Dad's side and found him in the 1900 census along with his wife, mother and children.  But, I already know quite a bit about him and his family so I moved on to searching for my great-aunt and could not find her.  Then, I tried my maternal Great-Great Grandmother on my Mom's Mom's side.  I found her in the 1880 census along with her parents, brothers and sisters.  She is one relative I don't know much about.  Below her family information I found more relatives.  I would like to spend more time on this site now that I know what is available.  That Great-Great Grandmother really has me questioning and looking for more information.

The Sanford maps are interesting but since nothing applied to our area of the state they didn't do me much good.  I chose Rapid City and am wondering if Julie Erickson can find her house on those maps.  It would have been fun if these maps had gone back to the early days of Harding County and a person could find out more about those times.

Week 8 - WorldCat, CAMIO

I use WorldCat a lot at work.  I use it for ILL that aren't available through the SDSL site and I use it for finding the Dewey number when I am cataloging.  It is a great database that provides a lot of information.

Searching can be done in many ways.  I searched for "Norwegian by Night" by Derek Miller.  This is the book I am reading right now.  There are 767 libraries worldwide with this item.  There are three libraries in South Dakota:  Brookings Public Library, Dakota Wesleyan University and Siouxland Library.  The call number is LC: PS3613.15337 and Dewey: 813/.6  The author has written several psychology books pertaining to youth.  There are several subjects and I chose "children of murder victims" fiction and there are 216 books on that subject.  This isn't something that I usually read and know I won't read any of these 216.

I was not able to access CAMIO from home.  I haven't been to this database before and see that it is OCLC's Catalog of Art Museum Images Online.  It looks very interesting and I will go into it at the library.  My favorite glass sculptor is Dale Chihuly, so I hope I can find out more about him and his work.

I am not sure about OAIster....

Week 7 - EBooks

I can remember using ebooks several years ago when my college textbook did not arrive in time.  I was very uncomfortable having to use the computer to read the book.  I couldn't carry it with me, if I left it for too long of a time it was gone and it may be checked out by someone else.  But, technology has come a long way since then.  I still don't like reading books on my computer or even my Nook, but I can adapt much easier.

I searched for "Technical Communications".  Apparently my last fall college class has either scarred me for life or I learned an incredible amount from that class. There were several ebooks listed and I found one that I will be going back to next fall.  It is "Speak with Confidence: Powerful Presentations that "Inform, Inspire and Persuade" by Dianna Daniels Booher.  The subjects are Public Speaking and Business Presentations.  The most relevant pages from this ebook refer to Speech, Visuals and Using Precise Technical words.  I opened this ebook in full text and it looks like an item I will be able to use next fall when I take the dreaded speech class.  I like how I can:  add to folder, print, email, save, cite, export, create note, get the permalink and bookmark.

I did another search for just "Speeches" and found several other ebooks that I know I will access.

Instead of searching for Western History I searched for South Dakota and came up with 123 results. Knowing more about Ebooks on EbscoHost will help me help the Harding County students when they come to the library looking for more information for History Day.  Our non-fiction section is sadly outdated and the students always think they have to have a book in hand for their research.

Week 6 – Gale Virtual Reference Library

This post may be a little confusing.  I worked on this database a few weeks ago and took notes in pencil all around the outside of the lesson.  I am so far behind in the challenge that I don’t want to take the time to redo it, so you will have to bear with me as I try to figure out what all the cryptic scribbles mean.  But, I do remember the database as being very interesting and informative.  And, you may wonder why I didn't post it when I first worked on it.  I thought that Lesson 6 was the next one, but after I had it researched I discovered that I had missed Lesson 5.  And…other things took over my life and I didn't get back to it.

I searched for “zinc in foods” and learned that a zinc deficiency has been associated with the development of ADHD.  That may be common knowledge, but it is something I didn't know.  Foods that are rich in zinc include seafood, liver, pine nuts, cashew nuts and whole grain cereals.  I am pretty sure that the majority of people do not get the required amount of these foods.

Then, I searched the Gale Encyclopedia of Cancer 2010 and put in “Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma” and came up with a disease disorder overview on Lymphoma.  I viewed the text and see there are other articles linked to these index terms.  The article can be translated, I can get it as a pdf or save the article. 

There are also several articles under the disease overview with drug overviews.   Some are experimental medicine.  One is “Edatrexate” which is similar to “Methotrexate”.  My husband took Methotrexate in 2001, during his first chemotherapy treatment.  This new drug sounds very promising.  “Leucovorin” is also mentioned for reducing side effects.  The second time he when through chemotherapy in 2003/2004,  he was given very high doses of Methotrexate with a Leucovorin rescue.  The Leucovorin pushes the Methotrexate out of a person’s system.  If there wasn't that rescue a person’s kidneys would be severely damaged from the Methotrexate.

Another drug overview is “Rituximab”, which is another chemotherapy drug he was given during 2001.  It is used as “Rituxan”.

Week 5 - Proquest

I have used Proquest a lot in my college studies.  It is a great source of factual information for my research.

For this assignment I looked up "Library Volunteers"...and found 56508 results.  So, I narrowed it down to Libraries AND volunteers and there were only 87 results.  That is more manageable.   I revisited an article that I used for one of my library science classes.  "Voluntarily Happy" by Gretchen Rubin, Good Housekeeping, Nov 2011.  I also found a review of one of my text books, "Managing Library Volunteers", 2nd edition by Preston Driggers and Eileen Dumas, ALA 2011.

I like being able to cite all the information that I find.

In Publications I searched for Libraries and there are 14 different publications.  9 are scholarly journals, 4 are trade journals and 1 is a magazine.