World Book Encyclopedia and More Lesson 1

World book-Kids:
1. My mammal of choice was polar bear.  The World BK Kids was elementary, but informative enough so a report could be given.  It showed a picture, description of the animal, and habitat, food source, and appearance.  Right side of screen click on map to see where the bear live.

The Student World book gave more detailed information in a similar format.  The cool thing was the "sound".  You could hear what a growling polar bear sounded like.  That feature was in both Kid and Student.  The left side of the screen had an introduction, bear on land, body, habits and VIDEO.  The right side of screen had "related information"

Advanced:
South Africa was my country - left side had 935 articles, primary sources, e-book, literary criticism maps and pictures.  The main section was South Africa, sections included:  SA -history, Government, flag and university.  The right side of the screen had other SA topics such as Union of South Africa, the Boer War, and Presidential Public Papers.

Discover:
This is interesting.  Again I typed South Africa and it brought up a number of articles.  I used the generic "South Africa" and the article could be translated into 30 different languages.  This would be useful to a literate person that struggles with English as a second language - provided he/she spoke one of the 30 included languages. 

The visual dictionary could be useful to schools more than public library in our little town.  (Our town is not ethnically diverse.)  I think it could be useful for students studying a foreign language or the curious mind.

2. Spanish language article audio - I'm not sure how it could be useful.

Lesson 10 - Wrap Up

Basic Exercise:
1. What was your biggest discovery?  There is so much More information and ;many possibilities for information then I realized.  My best discovery was in AncestryLibrary  - "South Dakota" going to Yearbooks and finding a photo of my father in college.  I also enjoyed ProQuest because there is so much information and it was easy to maneuver through. 

2. How will you promote /use these resources?
I think all staff should spend some time looking at these resources.  In addition, when students come to the public library to do research the staff should point students in this direction as another "source" of credible information. 

Lesson 9 - History and Genealogy Resources

Basic Discovery Exercises:

1. AncestryLibrary - (search own name)  I searched for my name.  A few  people have the same name I do - surprise!  I found my name and address but the wrong birthdate and no marriage record. 

2. AncestryLibrary - search grandparent.  I was able to find my paternal grandfather.  He was born February 17, 1894 and died January 15,1958.  There was a death record as well as the marriage record for him.  It listed 3 of his 4 children. 

3. AncestryLibrary "South Dakota" - The first time I did this I had more results, but unfortunately I had not taken notes that day.  The page looked different when I typed it in today.  Picture results were: Professional baseball, Civil War, Historical Catalogs of Sears, Roebuck, and  US Historical Postcards.  I hit Yearbooks and typed my dad's name, there was a photo of him in the Augustana Yearbook (1948).  He was a German and music major.  That was a good find and a great picture.

4. HeritageQuest -I did not think this site pulled up as much information.  I tried the PERSI with no results, the people area - no results and finally the census which was basic compared to the other information I had gleaned from AncestryLibrary. 

5. Sanborn map - I selected my town, Canton and chose April 1917.  I knew my house was built in 1915 so I hoped I could find it on the map and I did!  The Canton Lutheran Church was on that map.  I looked for the Carnegie Library, but had trouble pulling the map to that street.  I really enjoyed the Sanborn maps.

Lesson 8 - WorldCat, Camio and OAIster

1. Basic Discovery:
I use WorldCat  quite a bit to check marc records, book summaries and proper titles.  One is able to search by ISBN, Title Phrase, Author, Accession number, Material Type, and Subject among other possibilities. 

2. I typed  Fly Away (by Hannah Kristin) with  a hit of 1693.  Alexander Mitchell Library  was the top library.  Listed South Dakota libraries as top 7 then Iowa libraries then MN. 

3. The Class descriptor is LC PS3558.A4763  Dewey 813/.54.  Clicked on author's name - Hannah has written at least 10 other books.  Six subjects were listed. Clicked on female friendship - many, many titles came up.  Then clicked on life changing events: many titles came up here as well.

Discovery Part 2: OAIster
I chose # 6 HIV/AIDS surveillance report.  At this point I was directed to the SD State Library - Digital Collections - then All Collections.  The South Dakota Health Bulletin would be where I would look information on HIV/AIDS.  There is a lot of information in this area.

 Common Core Connections:
I  looked at this - clicked on # 4 Understanding Common Core State Standards - I don't think this would be useful for me other than learning about Common Core Standards.  There were 250 books worldwide.

CAMIO
1. Sioux - this was a very interesting site and would be fun to "browse" through if time permitted. 
Many items came up - costume jewelry, books, sculptures, drawings/water colors and paintings. 

2.  I'm not sure how the community would use this  - perhaps a study of Norwegian folk art.  There may be historic photos of the community's beginnings or some special historical event. 

3. I typed in Danish Art and was surprised at the number of museums - Detroit, Boston, San Francisco, the Smithsonian...very cool.

Lesson 7: Ebooks on EbscoHost

1. Topic of interest - Leadership Skills

Findings and observations:  I thought there were some interesting and useful books on this topic.  One such title was The Rookie Manager: a guide to surviving your first year in management -(hit relevant pgs.) certain co-workers at the same level serve as a model for your own leadership.
In another title Words from Great Business Leaders - advice from Madame C.J. Walker, Getty and someone at Southwest Airlines.  The advice from Southwest was good - leadership said "value time one spends with your people more than anything else you do."
Then I changed the search terms to leadership development.  Several of the same titles appeared using these terms.  I thought both searches produced good information on leadership skill/development.

2. Constitution Day: 

I had trouble here.  I'm not sure if I got out of the ebook section or if there just wasn't much using the term Constitution Day.  To get something I went to Student Research Center and got a Time for Kids article.  It was okay and the article addressed Constitution Day.
I opted out of the system and went back into Ebooks on Ebsco and got a couple more titles that would be helpful to students looking for information.  This search produced more relevant information.  Titles included Proclamation 8862 - Constitution Day and Citizen Day, Celebrating constitution Day by Cathy Carpenter, Constitution Day by Bradford Wilson and finally We the People: Constitution & Citizenship Day.  It helps when you're in the right area!

3.  Western History:

Oklahoma - I felt there were many books to chose from for a report.  Some titles held unique stories or information that could set a report apart from the group.  Here is a short list with an asterisk by titles with more "interesting information." 
Guide to Oklahoma
*Oklahoma Treasures /Treasure Tales
*Oklahoma Name Places
**Two Stories of Oklahoma by Hamlin Garland - I chose this because I read some of his stuff in college, back in the day.
+

Basic Discovery Exercise - Lesson 6

Gale Virtual Reference Library
1.  Article by Table of Contents:

The College Blue Book - South Dakota
This listed the colleges in South Dakota, a description of the school - state supported, coed, when founded etc.  and entrance requirements.  This would be a great benefit for parents and students doing a compare and contrast for in-state  schools.  One would walk away knowing the physical and population size of the school and community, and student to faculty ratio.  Good information for any one interested in going to or returning to school.

2.   I used your examples zinc and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. 
zinc - I typed foods containing zinc in the search box - no results.  After a few minutes fumbling through different zinc/food combinations I just typed zinc.  Several (20 or so titles) came up.  Nothing really about food, but several interesting books  - one on ADHD pertaining to zinc and another pertaining more to the topic - Mineral Deficiency.  Still, I did not find a list specific foods containing zinc. 

I enjoyed The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn search much more.  The student could chose specific literary themes to discuss in his/her project such as race and prejudice.  Themes of the American Dream, the rise of censorship and  a more obvious one, slavery.  This would be a great help to students doing a project.  It would help to focus the project on one or two important issues or discussions.

Lesson 5 -- Proquest

1. I did a basic search on German Shepherd dogs.  There were tons of articles many dealing with physical or health related problems of this particular bred, from complex segregation analysis of hip dysplasia to the type of coat that a German shepherd should have.  There were articles on herding since a "shepherd" is a herding dog.   I was surprised by the amount of information.
1a. I read a blog about maritime shipping.  It appeared the blogger enjoyed that subject - he said he used a voice activated blog.  I assume that means he just talks and what he says is written or blogged.  I'd not heard of that until now.

2. Publications:
 I chose library as my keyword.  First I tried "in title" which did not produce much then  I used "in subject" and up popped 96 publications.  On the right side of the screen were a list of source types, such as scholarly journals, trade journals, magazines, books and other.  The "other" happened to be a BLOG which I looked at briefly.  It was the "Distant Librarian".  This blog brought up Library and Information Sciences which was more information than I wanted.

Not much for observations on this challenge - I'm starting to feel crunch time since lesson 6 came out Sunday and it's already Tuesday.