Here we are on week 2 of the Marvel Challenge. It's worth noting that I can no longer access Ebsco databases with Firefox as my browser. Marvel is kind enough to provide some reset instruction for IE, but trying to follow them in Firefox hasn't helped. Fortunately, Chrome still works just fine for it. If anyone else taking up the challenge knows a workaround, please let me know! Email can reach me at wbrown@falmouth.lib.me.us.
Britannica Public Library Edition
I did a quick look into the process known as fracking for my assignment this week. Right off the bat with Britannica through Marvel I was struck by how it returned both articles but also other media, in this case infographics of the process. A very nice touch, particularly for students.
Another nice touch was translation tools, but here I was struck by two things: Firstly, that there was a Google Translate option at the bottom, but also a separate option to "Turn on the Spanish translation" a short distance above it. There's nothing neccessarily wrong with having two translators, but I was taken slightly aback to find notification of even the spanish-only translation was written solely in English. It may be more helpful to include: "Encender el traductor Español"
An unexpected option was the use of 'workspace' to organize projects. Back when I was in library school, I was taking the vast majority of my classwork online and meeting virtually with teachers and other students. These sorts of tools would have been useful for me alone, but invaluable when it came to group projects.
The automated citations are also a lovely touch. There have been citation generators on the web for a while, but to have it built into the database is a very nice touch!
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