This has been an interesting, educational and often fun set of challenges. I'm a big proponent of online databases, and I think they're one of the most underused resources in many libraries. Seeing the effort put out by so many librarians to learn and explore these tools has been wonderful, and I know my voice will be one of many promoting these wonderful tools in the future.
While teaching students to use databases was a big part of my earliest years of a librarian, I have found that I've learned a lot by undergoing these challenges, and it will definitely have an impact on my work. One of the things I've learned will help out 'behind the desk' through the Crafts and Hobbies section we studied early on. As a Children's Librarian I'm often looking for craft projects to make the children's area more exciting and interesting as well as for craft and art projects that I can do with the children.
Another of the sections that really impressed me was the Learning Express section. There were a number of wonderful guides and practice tests there, a lot that the older students to visit my library could benefit from. I'll definitely be promoting these tools. I just wish I had known in advance of the most recent round of the SAT's!
While many of the other weeks don't find an -immediate- use for me as a children's librarian, as I'm sure is true with all my colleagues, I often end up wearing a stack of different hats at the library and I'm quite sure that the business, medical, genealogical and other databases will be useful resources, and my practice with them over the recent months will hopefully let me provide the proper answers and resources when I might otherwise have been stumped.
Friday, December 14, 2012
Thursday, December 6, 2012
Week 10 - EBSCO Databases
One of the first Databases I ever became proficient with was Academic Search Premier, back when I was in library school I used it both for assisting patrons during my internship at an academic library and also for my personal research for classes.
With that history I gave into the temptation to see another face of the Premier database line from EBSCO, and chose MasterFile Premier. I was impressed to find some of my favorite research magazines offered with many articles in full text, and largely impressed in general.
My disappointment in this process was fairly small, and was focused mostly when it came to browsing the publications included. Namely in that the browsing view, while subdivided by first letter, has no 'next page' arrow within the scope of that letter. That is to say, publications listed that begin with the letter 'D' are listed in alphabetical order up to "Dan", and then the rest are completely unbrowsable until the letter 'E' takes over. If you know the publication to search for it can be found easily through search, but I would have been a lot happier to see a fully-fledged browsing feature that let patrons discover new titles.
I used the fallback question of Zinc in Food and immediately found that there has been a wealth of information written on the topic, particularly on the divide between food-born zinc supplements versus a direct liquid supplement. There were also prominent discussions on ways to enrich foods with zinc in order to help in areas that have chronically underweight children. This is more or less exactly the sort of thing I had hoped to find. As always, EBSCO provides excellent filter options, with the after-the-search options to restrict the results to Peer-reviewed or full-text titles being of particular note and merit for students.
With that history I gave into the temptation to see another face of the Premier database line from EBSCO, and chose MasterFile Premier. I was impressed to find some of my favorite research magazines offered with many articles in full text, and largely impressed in general.
My disappointment in this process was fairly small, and was focused mostly when it came to browsing the publications included. Namely in that the browsing view, while subdivided by first letter, has no 'next page' arrow within the scope of that letter. That is to say, publications listed that begin with the letter 'D' are listed in alphabetical order up to "Dan", and then the rest are completely unbrowsable until the letter 'E' takes over. If you know the publication to search for it can be found easily through search, but I would have been a lot happier to see a fully-fledged browsing feature that let patrons discover new titles.
I used the fallback question of Zinc in Food and immediately found that there has been a wealth of information written on the topic, particularly on the divide between food-born zinc supplements versus a direct liquid supplement. There were also prominent discussions on ways to enrich foods with zinc in order to help in areas that have chronically underweight children. This is more or less exactly the sort of thing I had hoped to find. As always, EBSCO provides excellent filter options, with the after-the-search options to restrict the results to Peer-reviewed or full-text titles being of particular note and merit for students.
Week 9 - Learning Express
Well, this week's challenge certainly goes a long way to reminding me how long it has been since I've done any standardized testing. I bit the bullet and plunged into some old SAT prep materials to try a few questions. It brought back lots of memories, and I felt almost guilty for not using a number 2 pencil. :)
I also found it to be very true to what I remember of the test in format, and I encourage that to give students as much familiarity as possible going into the situation. The nicest touch of all was the review, going through afterwords not only to get my score, but being able to go question by question to identify what I had done wrong. This is exactly the approach any preparation materials need to have to be self-guiding for a student, and happily this test showed a full accounting of what was chosen and what was correct.
In the Job Searching and Resume Building section I jumped right into the latter of the two topics and invested a little bit of time investigating how the would help guide a patron in building a resume. I'm glad to say that it seems that they really thought this through, providing not only a broad array of different format types, but also including a quick questionnaire that will help guide patrons to the style of resume that best suits their situation. I didn't realize how in depth these tools were, and have been impressed enough that I will point a job-seeking friend of mine to this tool very soon.
I was similarly impressed when I did some searching and downloaded an ebook. First of all, it's a fully-fledged ebook. No onerous check out systems or delays, or DRM schemes that I could tell. It was refreshing to see a 240+ page book referenced and just as easily fully accessed. The job title I was searching under was Journalistic Research, and the top hit was a book describing how to search online. The book was even framed with a plotline about a woman who's been given a business research assignment without a clue how to proceed. Being asked for results on an unfamiliar set of search terms is something I think nearly every librarian has had to go through, and it would be easy to see a journalistic researcher being put in that same spot frequently.
Learning Express has been an even stronger resource than I had assumed, I'm quite impressed by the results I've found today, and it will certainly be a database I recommend more often!
I also found it to be very true to what I remember of the test in format, and I encourage that to give students as much familiarity as possible going into the situation. The nicest touch of all was the review, going through afterwords not only to get my score, but being able to go question by question to identify what I had done wrong. This is exactly the approach any preparation materials need to have to be self-guiding for a student, and happily this test showed a full accounting of what was chosen and what was correct.
In the Job Searching and Resume Building section I jumped right into the latter of the two topics and invested a little bit of time investigating how the would help guide a patron in building a resume. I'm glad to say that it seems that they really thought this through, providing not only a broad array of different format types, but also including a quick questionnaire that will help guide patrons to the style of resume that best suits their situation. I didn't realize how in depth these tools were, and have been impressed enough that I will point a job-seeking friend of mine to this tool very soon.
I was similarly impressed when I did some searching and downloaded an ebook. First of all, it's a fully-fledged ebook. No onerous check out systems or delays, or DRM schemes that I could tell. It was refreshing to see a 240+ page book referenced and just as easily fully accessed. The job title I was searching under was Journalistic Research, and the top hit was a book describing how to search online. The book was even framed with a plotline about a woman who's been given a business research assignment without a clue how to proceed. Being asked for results on an unfamiliar set of search terms is something I think nearly every librarian has had to go through, and it would be easy to see a journalistic researcher being put in that same spot frequently.
Learning Express has been an even stronger resource than I had assumed, I'm quite impressed by the results I've found today, and it will certainly be a database I recommend more often!
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