Wrap-Up

I enjoyed using all the online resources that we covered in this Library Challenge.  It is amazing the wealth of information that is provided for us for FREE by the State Library!  We are very fortunate to have these online resources at our fingertips.  My biggest discovery probably was the additional features in SIRS Researcher and World Book Online that I was not aware of.  I just hadn't taken the time to look deeper in both of these resources, and I am so glad that this challenge lead me to find these features.  Also, the Camio resource is another great discovery for me as I was not aware of it and probably wouldn't have even looked at it since I thought it was just pictures of artwork.  Now I realize that not only my art teacher can use this resource, but also my social studies teachers can use it in their classrooms.

 I have links to several of these online resources already on my library homepage and they are used by our students in their research projects.  But, I feel they will be used even more by my teachers and students now because Jane from the State Library just recently did an inservice with my teachers and they were excited with what the online resources could provide for them.  Her inservice really helped re-enforce what I have already been trying to teach to both my teachers and students, and it ignited a new interest in these resources.  Hopefully, they all will realilze that just Googling everything is not always the best choice. 

Ancestry Library

1.  I searched for my maiden name on Ancestry Library, and I did not find me but found my grandmother who I was named after.  The record was of my grandmother's death.  I found a lot of people with the same last name as my maiden name, but they were mostly from Minnesota.  I then searched for my husband's name, and his name came up and also my married name came up.

2.  I searched for my mother's name and I found her.  It showed when she got married to my father (young--19!!!), and it also was possible to view the original copy of their marriage license.  I also searched for my grandmother, my mother's mom.  I found her death certificate and also the 1920 federal census that showed both of my grandparents and my mom and her sister.  Again, I would be able to view the original document.

3.  I searched for South Dakota under the "Photos and Maps" tab.  I then looked at the U. S. County Land Ownership Maps, 1860-1918, for both of my grandparents' farms.  I couldn't find either one of them, but I am not sure of the year that they purchased their farms in Beadle county.  I also searched in the yearbook photos for different family members with no luck.  I also looked at the U. S. and World Atlases, but when I clicked on the results for South Dakota the image was not available.

4.  In Heritage Quest I tried several different searches for family members, my hometown, and my church in my hometown; and I did not have any luck finding any of them.

5.  In the Sanborn Maps I searched for Aberdeen, SD, and I found what I think is the Brown County Courthouse on a map dated July 1929 and it was updated map from 1960.  I also found Presentation College which then was named Presentation Sisters Convent and College.

Camio

1.  I did a search for Paul Revere in the Camio database.  The results list included 35 items.  The first on the list is a beautiful silver tea urn made by Revere in 1791.  It is amazing the detail that you are able to see in the picture of this urn.  The second one that comes that Revere actually made was a Federal Style tea service that Revere made for a Boston merchant and his wife.  It is beautiful!!!  I love how you can zoom in and see the details of the tea sieve. There are several more items listed that were made by Paul Revere.  Who knew that he was such a talented craftsman and artist!!!!

2.  In my next search I searched for "Sioux".  My results list totaled 63 items which included photographs, paintings, costumes and jewelry, quilts, and objects that they used.  The George Catlin paintings are beautiful and very detailed.  The painting entitled "Scalp Dance" was one I quickly looked at, but did not dwell on!  The thought of it made I stomach turn!  I especially enjoyed the pictures of the costumes, beading, and quilts since I am also a seamstress and quilter.  I have made the star quilt that the Native Americans are known for, so it is always interesting to see the color comibinations that they use.

3.  We are to look up our favorite artist, and I confess that I am not really into the study of art, but I do love Terry Redlin as we have several of his paintings in our home.  So, I searched for Terry Redlin and I got no results.  I imagine that is because his is a more local artist, but yet I feel he is worthy to have his art also listed. 

4.  I could see our art teacher using the Camio database when he is teaching about some of the famous painters or types of artwork.  Also, for those of us that do not get the opportunity to visit famous art museums, this would be a great resource to expose us to the great works of art.  Who knows--I might become more of an art expert and broaden my knowledge past our midwest painters!!!

5.  I searched for Sioux again and then added several of the items to a Favorites list and viewed it as a slide show.  I can see again that this feature would be very helpful to our art teacher and also our social studies teachers.  They could show artwork and way of life in a slide show as they teach certain units to their students.

Archive Grid

1.  When I searched for Sitting Bull on the Archive Grid, I learned that he was very opposed to the encroachment of the white men. He led the Sioux and Cheyenne warriors against U. S. soldiers in the battle of Little Bighorn.  Many people were killed in this battle.  He then moved his tribe to Canada where they resided until they surrendered to the U. S. forces.  He was part of the Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West show, and died resisting arrest for doing the outlawed ritual Ghost Dance.

2.  I looked up "Carrington Civil War" since I know that I have a relative by that last name that was involved in the Civil War.  I don't remember what his first name was, so I thought I would take a shot with this general search.  I actually got 257 results with this search, which included several different Carringtons involved in the Civil War.  I looked at one of them that was about a William A. Carrington who was a medical officer in the Civil War.  The papers on him can be located through Duke University.  I am anxious to look at a book I have at home about our family history, and see what his first name actually was and if this might be the same ancestor in my family.

WorldCat

1.  I searched for the book, "Amazing Greek Myths of Wonder and Blunders" in WorldCat.  This is a new book that I have recently purchased for our school library and I am interested in knowing what call number was given to it in other libraries.  There are 514 libraries worldwide that have this library book.  The first library listed to have this book is Cedar Falls Public Library.  I was not able to click on the link to the Cedar Falls Public Library because the link was not active, so I clicked on the next library listed, COE College.  The call number they gave to this book is PZ7.7 .T76 2010.  When I clicked on the author's name, I saw that this is the only book listed for this author.  Since this book is of the graphic novel format, that might be why one book is listed in WorldCat.  When I clicked on the subject, Mythology, Greek -- Comic books, strips, etc., this book is the only one listed for this subject.  There are 6 books listed for the subject, Mythology, Greek--Drama, and one book listed under the subject, Mythology, Greek--Juvenile fiction, which might be a subject I would be interested in.  I like the format of the full record for this book.  It has the summary about the book and also a Publishers Weekly Review which would be helpful in the book selection process.

I searched for South Dakota in the OAIster database.  There were over 50,000 results that came up for South Dakota.  I first looked at the Mount Rushmore Nighttime Post Card link.  It showed what appears to be an older post card picture of Mount Rushmore.  The date is unknown and the post card is from the Charlotte County History Collections in Florida.  I then clicked on the Explorer of the Northern Plains link.  This aricle is from the Hathi Trust Digital Library and it is the actual article written about the exploration by Lieutenant Gov. Warren's exploration of Nebraska and Dakota in 1855-1857.  The OAIster database seems to be quite extensive, but I am not sure how useful it will be for our middle school students.  The reading level is more academic and I think my students will get frustrated with it.  My gifted ed. class might find this database useful though.

NetLibrary

2. I did a search in full text with Constitution Day in paratheses so it would search for it as one phrase.  I got 21 results in NetLibrary.  The first book that came up, "Representing Popular Sovereignty" appeared to be a good source for information on this day in the U. S.  The rest of the results talked about Constitution days in other countries, so students would need to be careful readers to make sure that they got the right information for their research.

3.  I did an advanced search with "history" as the keyword and "Nebraska" in the publisher box.  I came up with 20 items in my results list.  Several of these ebooks at the Lincoln University of Nebraska Press as the publisher.  The books that I looked at seemed to offer some good history on Nebraska. 

I plan to introduce this resource to my 8th grade gifted ed students next week as a possible resource for their history day projects.  Since this resource definitely contains higher level ebooks, I am anxious to see if they can find the information they need for their history day projects and if they feel comfortable using it.

NetLibrary

1.  I began by watching the videos about the use of NetLibrary, and then set up an acount for the use of NetLibrary.  Thinking of the topics that our History Day students are working on, I did a search for "bay of pigs".  I got 63 ebooks using the fulltext search.  Many of these books would not be helpful to my students, but some might be helpful with their projects.  I also tried a keyword search for "bay of pigs", but did not get any results for that search.  I liked that there is a summary of what is in the books with the search words highlighted.  Also, you can continue your search within the book for your search words by going to the "Continue Search?" on the lefthand side of the screen.

Gale Virtual Reference Library

Our 8th graders will soon be studying the American Civil War, so I decided to look at the history area of Gale Virtual Reference Library.  I then clicked on the History section, and chose American Civil War Reference Library.  This reference resource has five volumes available with a copyright date of 2000.  I looked at the eTable of Contents and chose the American Civil War Timeline.  This timeline would certainly be helpful to our students as they work on their research project and try to keep all Civil War events in the right chronological order.  I then browsed through the eIndex and look at several articles.  I can see that this reference source would be very helpful to our 8th graders for their research project because it provides ample information and illustrations on the different battles and key people of the Civil War.

I tried several different searches in "Basic Search" that had to do with Ancient China since our 6th grade students will start studying that topic this week.  I did three different searches and searched for clay army, Great Wall of China, and the Chinese New Year.  I did not find a whole lot of information for these specific topics, but I did find a lot of information on Ancient China.  Unfortunately, I think the reading level on most of the sources will be too hard for my 6th graders.  Although the Read Speaker feature would be very helpful to those students with a lower reading level.  Also, the translation feature into another language would be great for our ESL students.  Gale Virtual Reference Library is another great resource that the State Library has provided for us, and we are so fortunate to have these services available for our students!

Proquest-Publications Tab

I searched for "School Library Journal" under the Publications tab in Proquest.  It came up as full text with issues available form 1996 to the current year.  I just received my February 2011 issue of School Library Journal in the mail today, so I clicked on that issue in the results list for my search.  The articles from this issue of School Library Journal are all available on Proquest.  I also searched for "school libraries" under the search option found on the right side of screen titled " Find More Documents Like This".  The results came up with many more articles about school libraries.  I think this is a great feature to have if you are looking for a certain topic.

Proquest

I searched for "The Alamo" on the Proquest database because our 8th grade students will start a research project next week on this topic.  I got 452 results in my search.  The first ten results that I looked at were book reviews which would not be helpful for our students with their research project.  I then looked at the results on the next couple of screens, and again I found more book or video reviews and one magazine article that might be helpful.  The rest of the results were not appropriate for our research project.  I then did an advanced search using "Alamo" and "American History" as search terms, but added "not book reviews" as the third search term.  I got 21 results from this search.  Again I found more book and film reviews and not much else for information that would be helpful in the 8th grade research project.  Am I searching incorrectly?  I could see my students would be quickly on Google with this type of results on Proquest.  I have used Proquest in the past, but I always found a lot of book reviews in my results list.  I also think that the reading level might be too advanced for most of our middle school students.  I have encouraged our gifted class to use Proquest for their research projects.

SIRS Discoverer

When I teach the use of the online databases to our middle school students, I find myself often telling them that SIRS Discoverer is my favorite online database!  I think it is an attractive and easy to use database for the students.  I like the little summary that comes up for each of the hits in the results list.  This is so helpful to the students because they can quickly read to find out if the article might be helpful in their research.  Of course, you can immediately see which articles have pictures and what type of informational source it is by using the tabs at the top of the screen.  I usually introduce the tabs to my students by asking how many magazines articles come up when they do a search.  They love being the first one to discover the tabs and tell how many magazine articles were found in their search.  I find that the lexile levels are really not helpful to the students, so I teach them to look at the green, blue and red book icons that indicate the reading levels of the articles.  I also teach them to use the Descriptors to give them added key word searches for more information.

The "Country Facts" and "Maps of the World" are great features that I could use more with our 7th grade social studies classes.  I didn't realize that teacher resources came up when you did a search for a country in the "Country Facts" feature.  I must share this with my teachers!

I was excited to see the "Science Fair Explorer" feature because all of our 7th and 8th graders are expected to do a science project every year.  I like the way this feature is set up, but the few experiments that I looked at were way too easy to be considered acceptable by our science teachers which was disappointing.

In SIRS Issues Researcher I looked at the topic, Cell Phones in Schools.  I am very impressed by the setup of this database.  I like the Pro/Con, Perspectives, and the Critical Thinking and Analysis features.  They truly provide the information the student need, but also guides them through the debate process.  The Additional Resources are great features to help guide the students through the whole process of gathering information and delivering their debate topics.

Under the "Curriculum Pathfinders" I chose Medical Science under the Science tab.  The information that comes up is very broad.  You can narrow your results by the type of resource or the type of medical science.  I will have to play with this feature a little more to decide if this feature would be that helpful to our students and teachers.

Learning Express: Ebooks

The ebooks on Learning Express provide a wealth of information for people from many different walks of life!  This resource is certainly a great way to prepare people for many of the exams that they will need to take in their career paths or otherwise in their life. 

As far as our students are concerned, I think the reading and math practice tests would be great to prepare them for the Dakota Step test and to evaluate what skills they need to work on.  I think our teachers already use these tests with their students, but I am certainly going to double check that they are aware of this valuable resource.

Learning Express: Job Search and Workplace Skills

I think this feature of Learning Express would be a great help for anyone looking for a job!  I did the Career Course: Interview Tips to Get the Job You Want.  I found it easy to read and concise enough that a person could easily find the tips they need before a job interview.  I also liked the feature where you could stop in the middle of the course and then later continue at the same point where you had stopped previously.

Learning Express: Taking the Test

I did the Grade 6 Reading Diagnostic 1: Informational Text test.  I thought the test was age appropriate as the test had you read about cats as pets which would be interesting to a sixth grade student.  I liked that when you viewed the answers of your test,  you are given the reason why the answer is correct.  This would be very helpful to students to help them improve their reading comprehension.

Lesson 1a--World Book School Edition

In comparing World Book Kids and World Book Student, I see advantages of both databases for use by my middle school students.  Most of the students will use the World Book Student database because the content is more for middle school children.  Also, the Related Information for the article is great because it gives them further informational sources for their research.  This includes web sites, magazine articles, and special reports.

The World Book Kids is great for my special education students as the article can be read to them and the information is more concise.

Using World Book Advanced will also be great for our students because the article is broken down on the left by topics so they can quickly go to the area of the article that will answer their questions.  Also, on the right, it has primary sources which will be helpful for some of their assignments.  Our gifted class will especially use this feature.

For our students that are just mastering the English language, World Book Discover will be a great help.  With this database they can read the article in their own native language and also hear the article read to them in their native language.