Lesson 10

My biggest discovery would be either the program Mango or Learning Express Library. I liked both of them because of the opportunities they provided to continue learning. Both were easy to navigate and use.  I will use both of these programs in the future. I have already recommended Mango to several library patrons and will continue to do so when people express a desire to learn a new language. I have recommended Learning Express Library to a patron who needed to do a new resume. She found it helpful and easy to use. The many different tests and subjects make Learning Express Library an excellent tool for a wide range of people like we get at the library.  

Lesson 9

                I typed in my name and birth date, it pulled up more than 400 results. I tried narrowing it by where I was born and gender and I got zero results. I tried several different ways and got nothing! I also searched for my brother and got nothing. I was able to find my parents with some searching. I next searched for my great-grandfather and was able to find him and the whole family on the 1940s census. I clicked a link to “find a Grave index” and was able to look at some pictures of him and the family. Overall, I was frustrated by the site, it was hard to find things and hard to navigate.

                During my search for South Dakota, I clicked on historical postcards and checked out some local ones of the Hot Springs area like a picture of the VA and the Evans Hotel. There was a big selection of post cards. It showed the name of what was illustrated on the post card and where in South Dakota it is located.

                I went into research aids, then clicked beyond basics, then on the link to “Black Sheep: 10 things to know.” It looked interesting and it was. The picture of the census record describing a man as having the occupation of “drunkard” made me laugh. A good resource if you know you have a black sheep in the family.

                In the maps section, I selected Hot Springs 1923-1942. Even when I clicked on the maps, they were tiny! I could not get them big enough to look at streets. On the first map, on the bottom was a bigger abstract of the South Dakota State Soldiers Home, which is still in use today.

Lesson 8

                I searched for “Radium Girls” because it is a book I want to read. The number one result was “Body toxic; an environmental memoir” with 605 libraries having the book. The top library was Augustana College. The call number was 615/.902/09749. The author is Susanne Antonetta who has five other books. The book I was looking for “Radium Girls; women and industrial health reform, 1910-1935” is the sixth result. I typed in Radium, 326 results were presented with only about 80 in English. The book on “Radium” had a several links to books and internet sources and even a few links to Marie Curie.

                I selected “census snapshot” the link took me to a Williams Institute page on the census from 2008, I thought it would be an older one. The article was about the statistics of same-sex couples and unmarried couples, comparing the two. The author’s names were at the bottom. It looked like a good article that was backed up by facts and it appeared nonbiased.

                I clicked on “Star Pattern Quilt” not sure what it had to do with the term other than the creator was of the Sioux tribe. It gives you the title, creator, publisher, date started and ended, type, medium, format, identifier, and who owns the rights. You can view a small piece as a larger image, download it, print, rotate, fit to option, lie, full, and window. The community could use this site to learn about art, teach it, and obtain ideas for their own art like the quilt pictured. There are also many costumes that would be a great resource for local plays. I searched for “Rococo” because it’s the only art term I could think of. I exported the images I selected to PowerPoint. I brought them up as slides with rococo objects. The slide had the objects name, place it was found (website) and a description. It would be helpful if I was doing a presentation. And like the “Star Pattern Quilt” it had all the important information like type, creator, publisher and the information necessary for citing the image.

Lesson 7

I searched for owls and it brought up a ton of results. Both fiction, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” and non-fiction “Owls: A Wildlife Handbook.”Only the first three results were relevant. It runs like EbscoHost. I then searched “Constitution Day” first and it only brought up one relevant thing, so I changed it to just constitution and it brought up additional pertinent articles. I would recommend “AP U.S. Government and Politics” it looked the best. For the next search I choose Oklahoma and it produced 80 results. I thought it would be books about Oklahoma but it was books published by the University of Oklahoma. There were a variety of books, mostly about the West. One about Egypt caught my eye mostly because it was different from the others. It would be a good way to search if you knew who published the book you wanted but not for any other information about the book.

Lesson 6

               When in the table of contents various important pages are shown such as cover, title page, etc. There are tabs for different subjects. I clicked lifestyle and social trends which gave me a chapter number and breakdown of the main topics in the chapter. The page number jumps you to the section that you select. The multi-volume one I selected was “novels for students”.  The table of contents lists the book title, author biography, plot summary, characters, themes, style, historical context, critical overview, and criticism. These are very good tools for teaching/ learning about a book. When on a book, the left side bar provides the user related subjects. It would be a good way to start a book report or an in-depth paper on a book.

                I searched for why is melatonin important for sleep, it didn’t bring up anything. I had to just search for the term melatonin. It brought up several articles about melatonin and several more where it is mentioned. I tried the listen feature, turned it way up on the box and on my computer, but nothing worked. I could tell that it highlights the text being played. The second term I searched for was insomnia. The search brought up articles about it, specifically, drugs associated, diseases, disorders, and medical conditions. The articles look good but again, the listen feature did not work. I could limit my search by document type, publication type and subject.

Lesson 5

My search for Langston Hughes brought up numerous results. To the right of the screen the options allow the user to narrow by full text, peer reviewed, source type (scholarly journals, magazines, trade journals and newspapers), publication title (for a specific publisher), document type, subject (related to searches like his poetry or literary criticism), classification, company/organization, location, person (people he is compared to), tags and other languages, databases and publication date.  In the publication date graph it is interesting to see the changing opinion over time and how many articles are published over time. There is a choice of citation/abstract, full text, PDF, images, title, author and highlights of some of the search terms in the article. The articles appear to be well written. I was impressed. Of course, there is the usual option to save for later tools for research, email, print, save and export.

I searched “library” and twenty-nine different publications popped up.  I selected “The Electronic Library,” selected year, issue and so on to get to an issue and eventually to a list of articles. I selected from 2014 and it only gave me an abstract for the article. The full text is unavailable for a year, which disappointed me. It does, however, make sense so the publisher can make money from the article. It was very easy to navigate.

Lesson 4

In SIRS Discover, I typed in otter and the results page pulled up many articles in a range of reading levels. The little colored book icon indicates the level. The icons next to the article might also include a camera for graphics, and an “a” for activities (ones that would be helpful in preparing a good lesson plan), the small apple if clicked on will display what subjects are discussed in the article. The “f” is for fiction and when I clicked on one, it brought up a cute story about what otters do in winter. The “p” is for people, and a PDF icon is for things in this format.  The “country facts” allow you to find a country by region or alphabetically. There is a breakdown of basic facts, capital, language and major historical events; the essential details about a country.

SIRS Issues Researcher provides a pro and con table with links to the articles, newspapers, magazines, references, graphics and multimedia sources, all have ways to narrow the search results. The research tools, topic overview, timeline, global impact, and stats all took me to a wider view of the subject. It went from antibiotic resistance to medical reform and other related topics.  The pro and con organizer lists- reason one and reason two along with supporting evidence which makes notes easier to organize. The “my analysis” tab links to resources that help one organize and write a paper or power point. It’s a good guide for students. The course subjects under “curriculum pathfinders” were pretty standard subject divisions; math, science, social studies etc.  I selected American Literature as my subject after flicking though the various subjects. The search brought up newspapers, magazines, government documents, references, and a graphics/ multimedia selection.  There was a summary of resource and the subjects discussed in the article, there were also links to other related subjects like culture in literature.