WorldCat and OAIster

There are a variety of different ways to search WorldCat in the Advanced Search Tab. When I help out with interlibrary Loan I thought using the advanced search was a great help - I would typically search by ISBN or ISSN numbers.

I searched for the book Sophies Choice. I came up with 192 records - record number one had 3089 libraries attached to in including Black Hills State University. There is a lot of good information from this full record: LC and Dewey Numbers, author, descriptors, year of publication, etc.

In using the OAIster feature I looked at A Brief history of South Dakota by Doane Robinson. I was directed to the full text version of this book found at the HathiTrust Digital Library. Well I have never used this resource before - I will definitely use this in the future to access full text contact. It is true you learn something new every day!!!

NetLibrary

1. I did a Keyword Search for cookbooks and retrieved 18 results. I then did a full text search for cookbooks and retrieved 433 results while not all of them were actually cookbooks some were - I was impressed with the variety of cookbooks available. I clicked on "Cooking the Russian Way" and found an excellent recipe for beet salad - I love beets. I show every class I present to the Net Library - including the reference collection and the e-audio book collection. I also use numerous e-reference books in my online reference class I teach. I just wish the titles were a bit more current.

2. I looked at "The Complete idiots Guide to Yoga" - I think adding Yoga to a fitness routine is a great idea - and this title would give my leader some back ground information about Yoga and some beginning techniques.

3. I retrieved 88 titles published by the University of Oklahoma Press. I then reviewed the book "Nothing but Prairie and Sky - Life on the Dakota Range in the Early Days." This book is basically a memoir about life on the prairie.

Gale Virtual Reference Library

1. I clicked on the title "Endangered Species" - then I clicked on the "Table of Contents" - and finally on "Grizzly Bear" - thought the article provided a basic overview of grizzly bears and I also liked the view other related articles, however I wish they would have provided hyper links this would make it easy to navigate to other sections of the e-book. I also looked at the wolf article. I think this book could provide the college student with great back ground information on endangered species and might spur them on to check out more in depth sources.

2. Typed in "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" and clicked on the first link. Lots of great information about the book with overviews broken down by chapter. The criticism's were towards the end of the article. I also tried the "read to me" feature and I thought the voice to be very pleasing and not too choppy. I will have to recommend this resource to our literature students - they might be able to use it as a starting point for research.

Proquest

I show proquest to every class that I present to....it really is a great multi-disciplinary database that is very easy to use. I like that the search screens are clean - I did a search for ecotourism - and came up with around 1800 results - so I went back and added national parks I then came up with 150 results - looks like some great articles. I then did the publication search and searched for the word library - 26 journals appeared. I clicked on Library Journal and browsed this title for a bit. I really like proquest - the students and the professors do too - lots of full text - and like I said above easy to use.

SIRS Issues Researcher

I chose the issue of Global Warming - I show this resource to our speech classes - I think it is a great way to get them thinking about both sides of an issue.

I looked at Fine Arts then Dance...directed to a wonderful collection of websites - I checked out the Ballet Dictionary - kind of fun and certainly a good reliable link. I have never looked at Curriculum Pathfinders before so I learned something new tonight. Which is great!!

SIRS Discover Exercise 2

Maps of the world is a great resource for students who are learning about geography - I also looked at the pathfinders and the photo essays - the pathfinders could be used to get more information on a topic while the photo essays are a nice way to look at infomation - meaning you don't have to read a lot of text - I chose garbage and looked at a picture of a recycling plant.

SIRS Discover Exercise 1

I looked up Shaun White - loved watching him during the olympics - very talented indeed - so it was nice to find articles and pictures about him -

World Book Foreign Language Edition

For this one I am going to have to let our Spanish professor know about this - it could perhaps be useful to her students. Since I don't speak a foreign language it was nice to have the pictures to guide my way. Listening to the article would be helpful to students so they could hear correct pronunciations.

World Book Public Library Edition

World Book Public Library Edition: I searched for penguins and I watched a short video featuring a penguin colony. I then looked at the Online Info Finder lots more information compared to the online kids version. I read the entire article about penguins and looked at the pictures. I also watched several videos about Titanic from the World book Explores Series. These were amazing. I searched for Poland using the World Book Online Reference Center - quite an extensive article. I think our Geography students could use the reference center to complete their country reports.

World Book Online -- Encyclopedia and More

OK I think I finally figured it out - I am now officially blogging - Hurray!! Ok Lesson 1A
I looked for information on owls - clicked on a link to a website - owls of the world...thought the kids version was very user - I looked up spotted owls in the student version and I learned something new about this awesome owl - it is not afraid of humans - this version offered a lot more detailed information. I have used World Book advanced before and I show it to the Geography classes - they use it to prepare their country reports - I played them the Finnish National Anthem during my presentation - it was a big hit!! The World Book Discover would be very helpful for our foreign exchange students - it can translate pages into different languages....overall I am very impressed with worldbook as a research tool....