Library Facelift

After reading an article in School Library Journal, "The End of Nonfiction" by Christopher Harris (March 2012), I decided to give our library a facelift. First of all I thought of the students who come to the library looking for nonfiction books. I point them to the "nonfiction" section with numbers on the spines. Often they would ask about a mythology book being nonfiction or an anthology of poetry or stories. I realized how confusing it was for them. They were looking for an informational text for a class assignment and to point them to "nonfiction" did not work for some. This was my primary motivation in giving the library a facelift. As I began to sort and rearrange, I found other areas that I could change. There were books in the sociology section about teens from other countries. When a student comes in to do a report on a country they will look in the geography section and stop there. It has been a bit challenging to find a place for all of the books and stay loyal to Dewey but I think I have a fairly good start. I made a Language Arts section which includes short story collections like Chicken Soup for the Soul, mythology, poetry, language and literature analysis. Students recognize the division as all the things they learn in Language Arts class. Next is Social Sciences--sociology, psychology, economics, crime, etc. Anything doing with our society lands here--the 300's of the Dewey Decimal system. Also here are inventions, and inventors (economics). Next comes Science--earth, space, biology which includes animals, disease and health. This leads to fitness, sports, games, hobbies, then art and because of shelf space the Guiness World Record books. Biographies were in their own section as was all of the religion books so not much changed there. I grouped all of the books about geography together by region staying fairly close to Dewey on these. Last is history--ancient to modern all grouped together. General timelines and sets of books are grouped separately. i had books from sets scattered all over and now they are together.
This is a modified Dewey, somewhat like a bookstore but mostly a way for our students to find what they need and perhaps find something else on the subject they are looking for. It has been a lot of work but the shelves look so nice. I am looking forward to sharing this facelift with our students!

CAMIO

After much persistence on the part of the South Dakota State Library I am happy to report that CAMIO is accessible at my school library. What an awesome resource. I am glad we were able to get it all worked out.
I searched for Paul Revere and Sioux and found many paintings and artifacts related to both. We have some art prints that our Social Studies teachers use to display in the classroom when they are discussing certain time periods, but how much more they could do with this database! As they study each time period, photographs, paintings and artifacts are readily available.
This is an excellent way to enhance stories read in Language Arts, historical discussions in Social Studies classes or view various artists in Art class.
I am looking forward to sharing this information with our teachers as most of the classrooms have projectors which would make this a great visual display. A teacher could add a set of images to favorites and have easy access for a presentation.
This is an excellent resource for both the classroom and individuals.

Final

This challenge has been great. The databases provide so much information and this week by week approach motivated me to investigate each one--something I might not have done on my own. I have already begun to promote these resources to our students and teachers. I feel more confident in recommending these databases since I have actually used them and know how they work. I have only scratched the surface of what is available but will continue to work with them as need arises. I appreciate the work that went into this challenge and look forward to sharing the information.

AncestryLibrary/HeritageQuest/ Sanborn

All three of these databases serve to paint a picture of our past.
With Ancestry Library many documents can be found to fill out a family tree and also data about people living today. It is awesome that these records can be found to help with geneology, but also a little scary to think that I can access so much data from a computer in the library.
In searching for myself I was able to come up with addresses both current and past--the address I lived in when I was in high school.
With further searching I found information about my maternal grandfather--from a census report I found out he lived in New York when he was 3 years old, with a father, mother, brother and his maternal grandfather. His mother and grandfather immigrated to America in 1884 from England. Their neighbors were from Spain, Ireland and England. All of this info was gleaned from one census report. From there I was able to search for my great-grandmother (his mother) and found that after they moved to North Carolina she died of Typhoid fever at the age of 33. It has been fascinating following these trails of information, all so readily available.
One document I found that was particularly interesting was a census of my father whose mother died when he was an infant. He and his father and 10 siblings went to live with his cousin who had two children. All of this information was in a census report, listing all of the people living in the house. What was interesting was that his name was spelled wrong, possibly the census taker heard something different. I imagine that happened a lot in census and immigration records over the years making some research very tricky.
HeritageQuestprovided some of the same information as Ancestry library but also historical documents about places. I looked up Sioux Falls and found several histories of the area which would be quite beneficial to a researcher or someone curious about the area.
Sandborn Mapsprovides the last piece to a puzzle of our past. With this resource, maps can be found to see how a town looked in the past and how it developed over the years.
All of these resources provide a picture of the people and places of our past.

Archive Grid/Camio

I found these resources to be for the serious researcher. The ArchiveGrid gives information about collections and where they are housed. I found this to be quite interesting, finding collections at various Universities. I also found information about archives--how to handle the archives, how they are arranged. For example the Hemingway collection at Princeton University has an index of items and is arranged by box and folder. For the serious researcher this database would provide very helpful information from what is available to where a researcher would have to travel to find it.

CAMIO looks like it would be awesome but unfortunately I was unable to access it from our school. I will have to look into how this is accessed to further complete this challenge.

WorldCat

This database was overwhelming to me, although I have to say I found a use for it. As a middle school librarian I would have very little need for this database on a daily basis. I can look for the books needed by our students at our district libraries and at the public library and that is sufficient. My husband is working on a Doctorate in Adult Education at USD. I was telling him about these challenges and we played with this one a little and found a book he wanted at the USD library. I typed in Ivan Illich Deschooling Society and found there are 1582 libraries that have this one, 9 in South Dakota (Universities). I found the call number, LA210, 370.19 and its location at various libraries. Also, there are several other books by the same author as well as books about this book.
Although I would not use this database very often I could see the advantages for academics and higher education. It was so convenient to be able to find this book so quickly. What used to take numerous phone calls now can be done with just a few clicks.
The OAIster database gives access to digital items which I could see being more useful for my purposes. As a researcher this database would provide so much information and primary source documents. I searched "South Dakota" and came across articles, letters and photographs. I have to admit I was hooked then and got sidetracked looking at pictures, on entitled "Log Shanty with flag woman and seven boys possible SD". There were photographs of landmarks, people, schools and homes which could provide an added dimension to students and teachers research.
I began this session with hesitancy and hours later finished the blog entry but just began scratching the surface of this database.

Ebsco E-Books

I'll admit that I was not looking forward to this section. Even though I have used e-books from various places I find it frustrating to figure out the format and how the e-book will open. Putting all of that aside I began to explore Ebsco E-books, not to be confused with Ebsco Host or e-library. This one, Ebsco E-books is sandwiched in between. I began the search with wind energy as our science classes work on projects researching alternative energy. One book was unavailable which means it was being used by another patron. I thought this might be a problem but the other books I looked at were available.
Most of the ones I found were available for download. I worked with the download for a time trying to figure out how to best explain the procedure to a patron. The e-books are downloaded as Adobe Digital Editions and can be read on the computer or sent to an e-reader. The Adobe Digital Edition website gives a list of supported devices http://blogs.adobe.com/digitalpublishing/supported-devices. I have used the Nook with Adobe Digital Editions and I have Bluefire Reader on the I-pad which is also on the list but I have not tried it from this site.
I found several books on the constitution but just looked at the titles and did not check any out. When looking for "western history" books with a particular publisher I chose Oklahoma. I found several books from the University of Oklahoma Press and checked out two of them, one Rapid City Indian School and the other Buffalo Soldiers and Officers of Ninth Calvary. In order to check out a book an account has to be opened which is a quick process. Once this is done the books are checked out and an option is given whether to read from the site or to download. I chose download and now have the books for 7 days. Options are given for citations, printing, emailing and saving. Limitations are set for printing with clear instructions given.
I will certainly recommend this resource to teachers and students.

Gale Virtual Reference

The first thing I noticed about this database was that I had to enter a barcode and password. That was not a problem as I had one for the school but this is the first time it has been required.
After that however I found Gale Reference to be very helpful. I know our 8th graders will soon be working on a World War II unit so I picked the WWII set from Title List on menu bar. There was a timeline and articles which I know will be very helpful as the students begin to research. One thing I liked were the inclusion of pictures. The text to speech feature and the ability to download to Mp3 is very helpful. Articles can be printed as well. This database is more advanced than others we have reviewed however it could be used by middle school students looking for a particular topic.
Our language arts classes are searching for a book to read for literature so just to see what is available for literature I typed in Huckleberry Finn in the search bar. I found several books about Huckleberry Finn as well as themes in American Literature. I read an article Race and Prejudice in American Literature which included mention of several other literary works with similar theme. I could not get the "listen" feature on this particular article but on others I have listened and found the speech to be good and not as robotic sounding as some others.

Gale Virtual Reference Library is a great addition to the library where space and funding is limited.

Proquest Publications

I found this assignment( searching publications) to be much more rewarding than the other (basic search)--perhaps it was the fact that I was searching for a keyword in a publication, in this instance" school library" was the topic. I received two options--School Library Journal and School Library Monthly, both of which provided full text articles in previous issues. A search within School Library Journal led me to articles specifically on what I chose, "technology". I could see the advantage of this process in searching for articles in archives. If the researcher knew of a particular journal and wanted articles just from that, then this would be the way to go. If however a researcher wished to find articles from various journals the best way to go would be the previous way--Basic Search.

Proquest

I am reading a biography, Margaret Mitchell and John Marsh: the Love Story Behind Gone With the Wind so as I began to investigate Proquest I thought I would research what I could find on Margaret Mitchell. What I found after just a little research were all book reviews on books about Margaret Mitchell. This was somewhat disappointing. As I researched more I found an article about Gone With the Wind--"The Book Belongs to All of Us": Gone With the Wind as Postcultural Product. This was a little more to what I was expecting. Perhaps with time and practice Proquest would provide more. I have not had much luck with it in the past and like the students I get frustrated and revert back to google. This particular site would require patience and perseverance. I do like the way the site is organized with icons indicating trade journals, scholarly journals and even wire feeds. I think this site requires more time to learn but the results are more in line with what a scholarly researcher would need.

SIRS

As I looked over the SIRS Discoverer and the SIRS Researcher databases I began to think of the topics our students usually researched for their classes each year. The 7th graders do country reports for geography and their Spanish exploratory class. The Language Arts classes just finished a Vietnam War timeline. The science classes are beginning to talk about a Science Fair. I used these databases to research these topics to see how a student would use them. I shared this information with the Spanish teacher who will use the "graphic organizer" for his project.
For the answer to the questions on the challenge I used Armadillos for the subject and liked the way the articles were labeled (easy, moderate, challenge) At a glance a student can see which articles might be more difficult to read. The citation for each article is provided at the end. The only draw back to this database is that there are no pictures to go with the articles.
On SIRS Researcher I looked at the Curriculum Pathfinders--Fine Arts and had fun with the Artopia site. It provides interactive activities regarding painting, artists, and critiquing art. On this site you can even have fun with Math!
So often our students begin their research with a "google" search of a term or phrase. This works sometimes but too much time is spent going through the thousands of articles and pieces of information.
My goal is to share this site with our students and show them that others have taken the time to find articles and organized them here for us to use.

Learning Express Library!!

I put explanation points by this title because this is an awesome resource. I used it last year at a ministry center where adult learners were coming for help on studying for a GED. Our local tech school affiliated with the public school system has a great GED prep program but some of these people were so far from school that they did not know where to go first. They came to us each Tuesday night in a small group where they felt comfortable and were able to use this resource to assess their skill levels and determine where they needed to start studying. Many of these people had been out of school for 30 or more years and wanted a GED just for themselves and others wanted a GED as a step towards more education and job training.
This resource provided study materials, pre-tests and post-tests which allowed the student to see right away how much they knew. It was exciting for them to see that they knew more than they thought they did.
I noticed that Learning Express Library has changed some and now has e-books which would have been a great addition to the scenario above. The e-books can be printed (some libraries limit the number of pages printed per day) which is nice for those who find it difficult to read from a computer monitor and for math problems that need to be figured as well as tables, glossary of terms and formulas.
With all this resource has to offer, it will be a "go to" site for the students at my middle school as well as the adult learners I encounter.

World Book Discover

Although designed for the more visual learner, World Book Discover has features for all types of learners. The test to speech feature is appealing for the visually impaired or for those who are just learning the English language. Having articles which can be translated as well as read aloud in three languages is appealing for both the ESL student or those who are learning Spanish and French. The visual category format lends itself to the casual researcher who might be beginning to find a topic and needs a spark of inspiration or for someone who is just wishing to learn more at their leisure. As with the other World Book edition, World Book Discover offers a variety of links from reference materials like dictionaries and atlases to life skills and standards for educators. This is a site that should not be overlooked!

World Book Student Advanced

As the name implies this is World book taken to the next level. Upon opening the site you will find an abundance of information, organized neatly so the researcher can easily click the links. Depending on what the researcher wishes to do, there is access to dictionary, atlas, world newspapers, today in history etc. This home page is one that easily could be used daily. This site is valuable for topical research as well. For example, our language arts classes are reading a book about the Vietnam War. The students will be making timelines of certain events. On the left side of the home page is a timeline maker. After research, students simply insert dates and events and the timeline maker does the rest. If a student signs in to World Book (creates an account) these timelines can be saved. Our geography classes research various countries and the links on the left of a particular country provide information such as maps, primary sources, pictures, videos which all can be used to enhance a country report.
World Book Advanced provides so much information and "how-to's" that a researcher could visit this site often and not find it all. A great place to begin research.

World Book School Student

In researching the same mammal, Cheetah, that was researched with the World book Kids, I found more sophisticated information which included not only information about the animal but also the habitat and survival problems. Included as well is the scientific classification of the animal. Presented in a more sophisticated way (more words, less pictures) this edition will appeal to the more advanced researcher--upper elementary and middle school. As in the Kids edition the information is easy to find and the organization lends itself easily to the student researcher.

World Book School Kids

The way this reference site is organized is very helpful. A student can browse subjects, in this case, mammals, if they are not sure which animal to choose, or, they can search by name. They are then given an option of viewing the article which is written in paragraph form or view an "exhibit" which is helpful information in a list format. The appeal of this site is the visual content--pictures in the articles as well as videos. A great reference tool for students just beginning the research process.
There are options for sharing and printing the information found as well as translating the test to a different language and text to speech. At the end of the article is a section on how to cite the source and sites for further information. What a great place to start a research project!