The End

The biggest thing I learned doing this challenge was getting into the databases I had never even looked at before; such as, HeritageQuest, Sanborn Maps, Archivegrid and Camio. We have such great databases and they do not get the use they should! I am really going to try hard to push patrons to using our databases- especially Learning Express-I think that is my favorite. I love to study and take tests ( I know, I'm weird). I think patrons don't know these are available or are not as good as looking up something randomly on the internet (If only they knew). I do think it is sad that they Newsbank resources will be no more pretty soon-we use those more than the others. I think the best way to get patrons to use these is to get good at using them ourselves so we can help them. If were standing there looking confused-they will probably get pretty intimidated! All in all, I really liked this challenge and learned a lot-but I still don't get along with Ancestory!

Ancestory and such

I did not do so well on this one, Ancestory and I do not get along. I have tried using it for the past 5 years, and just never got it. I looked for myself and could not find anything, but I seemed to find everyone else with my name. I did find my Grandpa, which was cool-I never knew he was born in Wisconsin. I looked at the family photo collection under South Dakota-that was really neat, I love to look at old pictures. In HeritageQuest, I looked up my maiden name, Peck, in the Revolutionary War Records. There were 158 results listed. That surprised me, since it seemed like my last name us so uncommon growing up. I liked this site, I have never looked at it before. I also really liked the Sanborn Maps-I have never looked at it before. I found the spot where our library sits now and the hospital on the 1917 map. I tried looking for my house, but maybe back in 1917 the street I lived in was not named yet? After this lesson, I still feel fairly uncomfortable with Ancestory, but I liked HeritageQuest and Sanborn Maps-I want to do more messing around on them and see what I find!

Learning Express

I love this site. I actually have looked around at it own my own quite a bit. There are so many things you can do on this site. I also really like the e-books. There are so many to choose from. I looked at the "Becoming a Teacher" book, it was pretty good. I recommend this site to patrons a lot, but for some reason; people seem kind of leary of it. I don't know if they are just not computer people, or don't believe it is as good of a help as a book. I wish more people would use it-there are always people looking for ASVAB and GED books and those always seem to be ones that are missing. I really like this site!

ArchiveGrid and Camio

1. I have never looked at either of these before The information about Sitting Bull was good, it was all stuff that I learned during Native American History classes. It was a good refresher. I like how there is a link to contact an archivist if you have questions about a collection. I did a general search for the term "Lakota" and came up with 65 results. The one I chose was ""Lakota and Omaha Stories" it is held at the Nebraska State Historical Society. 2. I never realized that Paul Revere had created all those things. I saw a teaspoon, a sugar bowl and cover,tea urn, salver, Sons of Liberty bowl, teapot, and a two-handled covered bowl; that's just naming a few! There were 63 things that came up in the "Sioux" search. There are art pieces, books, jewelry, clothing, paintings, etc. It is really neat how you can see an actual picture of everything. I did a search for "Georgia O"Keeffe", I enjoyed looking at her paintings. You can also see the painting's real size and where it is housed now. I think this would be a great site for teachers showing students about history. It is neat to see the actual pictures of things. I also think it would be good for someone interested in history or art. I really liked the "Favorites" section. I looked up horses and choose all pictures of race horses. It was cool how you could compare 2 pictures side by side and move them around on the page. I really liked this site.

OCLC

I actually use this site quite a bit for doing ILLs, so I'm already pretty familiar with it. For the title search, I looked for "Never Look Away" by Linwood Barclay. There were 4 records found, with 690 libraries owning the top record. The first library that owned it was actually my library, AML. This was the class descriptor: LC: PR9199.3B37135. You can also see the OCLC Accession number, number of pages, subjects, genre, language, year written, etc.. As far as the OAIster database, I happened to pick one of the articles that was not full-text. This database was ok, I don't think I would recommend it to someone over Proquest.

Netlibrary

I have actually recommended this database to patrons and used it myself a few times, but have not gotten the change to look at it in-depth. #1 I first did a subject search for running and came up with some good books. My favorites were: "New York Running Guide" and "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Jogging and Running." I really like how you can just choose a section of the book from the left-hand side and just jump in! The only thing I didn't like was that there was not a good selection of new books. #2 For the fitness section, I chose the books "Yoga for Busy People" and "The Health Fitness Handbook". These both seemed to have pertinent information that a fitness instructor could use. #3 I got 81 results when I did this, I did not think I would get much for results by looking by the publisher; but many of them had something to do with history. I would not have thought about looking that way. I don't think I got as much as if I would have tried "Oklahoma" by keyword or subject. I definitely want learn how to use this more so I can suggest it to patrons. It would be really useful, especially for those older books no one wants to lend out anymore.

Gale

The title I chose to look up for the first question was The Gale Encyclopedia of Children's Health: Infancy through Adolescence. This was divided into four volumes. I looked up the article about toilet training. I also looked up an article about assessment in the Education book. I found a lot of good information in both books. I like how you can find really scholarly articles and also ones that are easy to read and understand. That would be good for the variety of patrons that we see. I can see telling all kinds of people about this. I typed "Reading Education" into the basic search box and it came up with 34 articles. I chose to read one entitled "School Readiness" from the Encyclopedia of Education. I thought it had good information and was easy to understand. I also liked the citation tools which shows how to cite an article a variety of ways. There is also a "search within this publication" feature which allows you to search for a keyword in an article. All in all, I really liked this site.

PROQUEST

I haven't really used Proquest much since college; I forgot how much I like it. I looked up some medical information and found a lot of articles I have never been able to find before; ranging from ultra-medical texts I could barely understand to articles in Glamour and Marie Claire. There are so many publications to pick from; I couldn't believe how many had to do with libraries! It was pretty easy to use. I like how you can choose full-text or just abstracts and that you can email the articles. This is definitely something I will recommend to more people.

SIRS Discoverer

I choose to look up information in SIRS about Apolo Ohno. I found a few articles, most were upper elementary level. There was at least one picture with most articles. I really like how you can sort by relebance, date or Lexile level. That would definitely make it easier for kids! I looked up Yemen in the Country Facts section. This was pretty cool. I liked the differendt graphic organizers that teachers could use. I like how they break up the information into sections (like government and history) instead of having a big report you have to search through for the right information. I also liked the maps, there were so many to choose from! You could use these so many ways. I looked at Spanish explorations 1513-1635. It had different colored trails for different explorers and show where Native American settlements were. It also showed a modern view of the states. It was pretty neat. I looked at the photo essays, too. I didn't like this as much. I was just expecting more pictures rather than just one picture and a short article. I thought it would be a series of photos used to tell about something. In SIRS Researcher, I looked at the pros and cons of homeschooling in the leading issues section. I liked how you can choose a topic, then it gets divided up into subtopics. The would make looking up information a lot easier for students.

World Book School Edition

I really enjoyed these, but my favorite is World Book Kids, it has so many fun things for kids! I looked up dolphins on World Book Kids and World Book Student. The difference was pretty much what I expected; longer, more in depth articles in the school edition and lots of pictures n the Kids edition. I really liked the article read aloud feature, even though it sounded strange. World Book Advanced was really cool too. I looked up Greece and there was so much that came up. I liked how on the left side you could chose just pictures or just history, etc. I also liked the print feature in the articles that you can print off each section individually. There was also links to other websites. I found World Book Discoverer pretty easy to use too. There were a lot of pictures again, which I think would make it easier for someone who is not English speaking or someone who needs differentiated instruction. I also thought the article translation feature, the article read aloud and the word definition features would be good. I also really liked the feature for teachers that brought up how the South Dakota Content Standards applied to a particular article, that was really neat.