What was my biggest discovery? CAMIO! What a great reference for museum photos. I had no idea what this reference was or that it was even available. I also enjoyed using the SIRS Pro vs. Con topics with the students in the upper grades at the rural schools.
How will I promote or use these resources? I will continue to use the references that are appropriate for my library classes with the rural students. If any students come into the public library needing help with research, I'll be able to show them what's available for finding information and pictures.
I'm glad I took this challenge and look forward to continue looking at what else is available and going back into the ones I'd like to spend more time with.
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Lesson 9 - Ancestry, Heritage Quest, and Sanborn Maps
Looking up my name in Ancestry, I found a listing for the two residences I'd had in town. My current address is not listed. It's fun to see how many other people in SD share my name. Although I didn't see a listing for the woman in Spearfish who shares my name.
I have used Ancestry before to look up my grandfather on my Dad's side. It was exciting to find his name on the ship's passenger list when he came to New York from Holland. I had gotten a copy of it through the Ellis Island Foundation, after finding this info on Ancestry, and gave it to my Dad. I had also looked up my grandfather on my Mother's side and found out he had been married and had a daughter before he married my grandmother. I wasn't sure I had the right person until I asked my mom about it and then was told that it was him. Interesting!! I have found you have to look for all kinds of spellings for names when you are searching because both of my grandmother's names where spelled wrong. It is hard to read some of the writing.
When I did the search for South Dakota in the photos, there are over 3 million photos! I tried several different searches, but never did find a way that I thought was easy to look up a specific topic. I loved seeing the photos of the Corn Palace from 1909. What an amazing concept!
With Heritage Quest, I tried researching Rowena, SD, since I was born there. I found two listings for that small town. One was a family genealogy that listed some of the people who had lived there. The second was an article that said Jefferson Davis was the person that marked the borders of Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa and Wisconsin a short distance SE of Rowena. As I searched the books under letter D, I found some old biographies of Daniel Boone and David Crockett that were interesting.
In Sanborn Maps, I looked up both Flandreau, where I grew up and Sturgis, where I live now. It was fun to see in Flandreau that the courthouse, high school and some of the churches are still in the same place. I also recognized the gas stations and hotel that are no longer in business. The post office and armory have moved and main street wasn't called main street in 1930. 1903 Sturgis is very different from today. The elementary school building is still in the same place, although it is no longer the elementary school. There is a bank on the corner of main street that is still known as the bank corner, although it is now home to a motorcycle apparel shop part of the year. It is fun to look at the maps and see what used to be here!
There is so much information out there. For the serious genealogist, this is great. For someone like me, it's just fun to see what I see!
I have used Ancestry before to look up my grandfather on my Dad's side. It was exciting to find his name on the ship's passenger list when he came to New York from Holland. I had gotten a copy of it through the Ellis Island Foundation, after finding this info on Ancestry, and gave it to my Dad. I had also looked up my grandfather on my Mother's side and found out he had been married and had a daughter before he married my grandmother. I wasn't sure I had the right person until I asked my mom about it and then was told that it was him. Interesting!! I have found you have to look for all kinds of spellings for names when you are searching because both of my grandmother's names where spelled wrong. It is hard to read some of the writing.
When I did the search for South Dakota in the photos, there are over 3 million photos! I tried several different searches, but never did find a way that I thought was easy to look up a specific topic. I loved seeing the photos of the Corn Palace from 1909. What an amazing concept!
With Heritage Quest, I tried researching Rowena, SD, since I was born there. I found two listings for that small town. One was a family genealogy that listed some of the people who had lived there. The second was an article that said Jefferson Davis was the person that marked the borders of Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa and Wisconsin a short distance SE of Rowena. As I searched the books under letter D, I found some old biographies of Daniel Boone and David Crockett that were interesting.
In Sanborn Maps, I looked up both Flandreau, where I grew up and Sturgis, where I live now. It was fun to see in Flandreau that the courthouse, high school and some of the churches are still in the same place. I also recognized the gas stations and hotel that are no longer in business. The post office and armory have moved and main street wasn't called main street in 1930. 1903 Sturgis is very different from today. The elementary school building is still in the same place, although it is no longer the elementary school. There is a bank on the corner of main street that is still known as the bank corner, although it is now home to a motorcycle apparel shop part of the year. It is fun to look at the maps and see what used to be here!
There is so much information out there. For the serious genealogist, this is great. For someone like me, it's just fun to see what I see!
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Lesson 8 - Archive Grid and CAMIO
When I typed in Sitting Bull in the Archive Grid, I really didn't learn anything new about him, but got a refresher on what I had read in the past. I'm assuming the autograph card will be from his days with Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show. What a great piece of history that would be to have!
For my own search I chose Lewis and Clark. There were 4,587 results, but they weren't all specific to the explorers. Gotta read everything to make sure you are looking at what you want!! There were several items that I found would be interesting if I was a serious history buff - the journal of Meriwether Lewis from 1803 that is housed at the American Philosophical Society and photographs from the route of Lewis and Clark at the Wisconsin Historical Society. There is also a letter written by Meriwether Lewis to General Henry Dearborn in 1806 requesting payment for supplies used on the expedition, which is at the Montana Historical Society. I noticed that there are 3 different locations for these items, which makes sense, seeing as they traveled quite a distance and each area they were in would most likely have the historical items for their area.
When I thought of how I would use this information in our library, I thought of the people that call or stop in looking for information for history from the Black Hills. I also thought of the 4th grade classes when they do their SD famous people research. I don't think this would help them much. Poker Alice is a biggie for us and there isn't much kid-friendly info. about her. I didn't find anything that would help the kids with her. And since they'd have to go to the institution holding the items, it really isn't much of a reference tool. Just for kicks, I typed in my last name to see what would come up. There were several people that had written articles that shared my name.
CAMIO is lots of fun. I could spend all day looking at the items in the "Sioux" search! For Paul Revere, there was an item said made by him that is a Tea Urn. I guess I question whether he made it or if it was something in his possession.
Like I said, I enjoyed looking at the items by the Sioux. What a great reference tool for the teachers when they are studying the different tribes. You can show your students pictures of the actual clothing , paintings, decorative arts and photographs from each tribe. I tried a couple of other tribes then to see what I'd get. The Plains Indians Scalp Shirt gave a terrific description of the shirt along with the photo. Not that you can't already get this same information from books, but being able to put it up on a screen for the kids to look at is impressive.
I thought of the teachers again when I looked up my favorite artists. Others had already blogged that there was nothing for Jon Crane and Terry Redlin, so I went with the masters. A few summers ago the summer reading program was on being creative and I'd gotten books and did activities around Georgia O'Keeffe and Piet Mondrian. This would have been an excellent tool to use during that time to show the kids their artwork. There were 69 works for Georgia O'Keeffe, but none for Piet Mondrian. With his name I only got 3 other artists who had been inspired by Mondrian. I can see this being a tool for the teachers to use when studying art. Being able to put up two pictures to compare and contrast on artists or styles would be easy. And being able to put it in a webpage to have it right on your computer, ready when you need it is very handy!
For my own search I chose Lewis and Clark. There were 4,587 results, but they weren't all specific to the explorers. Gotta read everything to make sure you are looking at what you want!! There were several items that I found would be interesting if I was a serious history buff - the journal of Meriwether Lewis from 1803 that is housed at the American Philosophical Society and photographs from the route of Lewis and Clark at the Wisconsin Historical Society. There is also a letter written by Meriwether Lewis to General Henry Dearborn in 1806 requesting payment for supplies used on the expedition, which is at the Montana Historical Society. I noticed that there are 3 different locations for these items, which makes sense, seeing as they traveled quite a distance and each area they were in would most likely have the historical items for their area.
When I thought of how I would use this information in our library, I thought of the people that call or stop in looking for information for history from the Black Hills. I also thought of the 4th grade classes when they do their SD famous people research. I don't think this would help them much. Poker Alice is a biggie for us and there isn't much kid-friendly info. about her. I didn't find anything that would help the kids with her. And since they'd have to go to the institution holding the items, it really isn't much of a reference tool. Just for kicks, I typed in my last name to see what would come up. There were several people that had written articles that shared my name.
CAMIO is lots of fun. I could spend all day looking at the items in the "Sioux" search! For Paul Revere, there was an item said made by him that is a Tea Urn. I guess I question whether he made it or if it was something in his possession.
Like I said, I enjoyed looking at the items by the Sioux. What a great reference tool for the teachers when they are studying the different tribes. You can show your students pictures of the actual clothing , paintings, decorative arts and photographs from each tribe. I tried a couple of other tribes then to see what I'd get. The Plains Indians Scalp Shirt gave a terrific description of the shirt along with the photo. Not that you can't already get this same information from books, but being able to put it up on a screen for the kids to look at is impressive.
I thought of the teachers again when I looked up my favorite artists. Others had already blogged that there was nothing for Jon Crane and Terry Redlin, so I went with the masters. A few summers ago the summer reading program was on being creative and I'd gotten books and did activities around Georgia O'Keeffe and Piet Mondrian. This would have been an excellent tool to use during that time to show the kids their artwork. There were 69 works for Georgia O'Keeffe, but none for Piet Mondrian. With his name I only got 3 other artists who had been inspired by Mondrian. I can see this being a tool for the teachers to use when studying art. Being able to put up two pictures to compare and contrast on artists or styles would be easy. And being able to put it in a webpage to have it right on your computer, ready when you need it is very handy!
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Lesson 7 - World Cat
I had heard of World Cat. I'd never used it, but thought the cataloging librarians here used it occasionally. I'd never thought of using it for Inter Library Loans. That said, here's what I found.
I started looking for a fiction book in a series I'd started reading. I thought the next book was called Cracked. When I put that in the search, I got 21 results, none of them the book I thought I was looking for. The first book I did find was titled Sturdy Black Bridges: Visions of Black Women in Literature. 804 libraries worldwide have this book. The top listing was BHSU. The call number for this book says PN56.3.B55 Dewey 810/.9/352. This book was written by three authors and when I clicked on the first one listed, I got an erotica book by her. No thanks!!
I went back and searched using the author's name of the book I was looking for and I found her first book. I decided that was a better way for me to search. Then I played around with genre/form search and put in dystopian society with no results. I changed the search to science fiction and got 52,418 matches. I thought this would be a great way to help the students that come in looking for books in different genres to play their genre bingo game. Sometimes I'm just brain-dead when they ask me for suggestions!
In the first searches indexes, I cheated and looked at the World Almanac listing for things I was pretty sure I'd find. Then I checked the ERIC database. I've recently had a teacher asking how to get into ERIC. Now if it doesn't have the full text, I can find out which libraries in SD I could get them from. I noticed clicking on the "i" icon just let me know why I might want to use this database.
On to OAIster, I put in SD in the basic search and got 8,075 results, like other bloggers had listed. Then I switched to the Advanced search and got 764 results. It was interesting to look at what was available. There was a listing for Prints and Photographs for John C. H. Grabill Collection that in the abstract said he'd set up a studio in Sturgis, where I'm at. I was not authorized to view the page. I was curious to see what photos I'd find, since it says they are early western photos of the settlement in SD and Wyo. I also tried narrowing my search to just Sturgis and Fort Meade. There weren't many pictures available.
I'd like to explore this database more for the ERIC articles!
I started looking for a fiction book in a series I'd started reading. I thought the next book was called Cracked. When I put that in the search, I got 21 results, none of them the book I thought I was looking for. The first book I did find was titled Sturdy Black Bridges: Visions of Black Women in Literature. 804 libraries worldwide have this book. The top listing was BHSU. The call number for this book says PN56.3.B55 Dewey 810/.9/352. This book was written by three authors and when I clicked on the first one listed, I got an erotica book by her. No thanks!!
I went back and searched using the author's name of the book I was looking for and I found her first book. I decided that was a better way for me to search. Then I played around with genre/form search and put in dystopian society with no results. I changed the search to science fiction and got 52,418 matches. I thought this would be a great way to help the students that come in looking for books in different genres to play their genre bingo game. Sometimes I'm just brain-dead when they ask me for suggestions!
In the first searches indexes, I cheated and looked at the World Almanac listing for things I was pretty sure I'd find. Then I checked the ERIC database. I've recently had a teacher asking how to get into ERIC. Now if it doesn't have the full text, I can find out which libraries in SD I could get them from. I noticed clicking on the "i" icon just let me know why I might want to use this database.
On to OAIster, I put in SD in the basic search and got 8,075 results, like other bloggers had listed. Then I switched to the Advanced search and got 764 results. It was interesting to look at what was available. There was a listing for Prints and Photographs for John C. H. Grabill Collection that in the abstract said he'd set up a studio in Sturgis, where I'm at. I was not authorized to view the page. I was curious to see what photos I'd find, since it says they are early western photos of the settlement in SD and Wyo. I also tried narrowing my search to just Sturgis and Fort Meade. There weren't many pictures available.
I'd like to explore this database more for the ERIC articles!
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Lesson 6 - EBooks on EbscoHost
I almost hate to say this, but this was not my favorite search! I'm either going to have to spend a lot more time working with this resource or find someone who can use it well to help me.
It started out fun. I decided to research nursery rhymes, since that is one of the story hour topics I do. There really wasn't much that came up and was useful. But along the way I saw the book, The Idiots Guide to Scrapbooking, which I own. Then I saw some of the other Idiots Guide books, which I'll go back and look through more. There is so much diverse information that comes up with one topic that I felt like I was wasting time looking through everything, even when I searched for relevance.
The Constitution question was not fun. I came up with two titles that I might be able to use - Readers Companion to American History and The Bill of Rights: A Bicentennial Assessment. The whole time I was searching, I was thinking about a teacher I know does Constitution Day with her 3rd - 5th grade students, and there wasn't anything I thought I would even recommend to her. Maybe I'm just not searching right.
Again, I had trouble getting to the spot where I could search Western History. I blame that on my not understanding what I was doing. Once I got somewhere I thought I was supposed to be, I did find some interesting titles through the University of Nebraska Press. One was on Orphan Trains. Another was American Indian Women, Telling Their Lives. The one book I spent the most time looking through is titled Wigwam Evenings: Sioux Fold Tales retold by Charles A. Eastman. This looks like a good book to recommend to teachers when they are doing folk tales.
One thing that discouraged me was when I was using the computers at work, I could enlarge the page so I could read it on the screen. But when I used the Mac at home, I wasn't able to make it enlarge. Plus, it was slow to move around in with the Mac. I did like the feature that allows you to search the table of contents and see what specific page you wanted and then to put that page number in and go right to it instead of scrolling.
It started out fun. I decided to research nursery rhymes, since that is one of the story hour topics I do. There really wasn't much that came up and was useful. But along the way I saw the book, The Idiots Guide to Scrapbooking, which I own. Then I saw some of the other Idiots Guide books, which I'll go back and look through more. There is so much diverse information that comes up with one topic that I felt like I was wasting time looking through everything, even when I searched for relevance.
The Constitution question was not fun. I came up with two titles that I might be able to use - Readers Companion to American History and The Bill of Rights: A Bicentennial Assessment. The whole time I was searching, I was thinking about a teacher I know does Constitution Day with her 3rd - 5th grade students, and there wasn't anything I thought I would even recommend to her. Maybe I'm just not searching right.
Again, I had trouble getting to the spot where I could search Western History. I blame that on my not understanding what I was doing. Once I got somewhere I thought I was supposed to be, I did find some interesting titles through the University of Nebraska Press. One was on Orphan Trains. Another was American Indian Women, Telling Their Lives. The one book I spent the most time looking through is titled Wigwam Evenings: Sioux Fold Tales retold by Charles A. Eastman. This looks like a good book to recommend to teachers when they are doing folk tales.
One thing that discouraged me was when I was using the computers at work, I could enlarge the page so I could read it on the screen. But when I used the Mac at home, I wasn't able to make it enlarge. Plus, it was slow to move around in with the Mac. I did like the feature that allows you to search the table of contents and see what specific page you wanted and then to put that page number in and go right to it instead of scrolling.
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Lesson 5 - Gale Virtual Reference Library
Ok, it's just kinda fun to follow links through to other topics, which I've been doing in Gale Virtual Reference Library.
In the first assignment, to click on a book title of interest and access an article, I chose the World War II Reference Library 2000. I am in a young adult reading class and it seems like historical fiction books with families fleeing during WW II has been a hot topic in reading. I know when the kids get to that part of history, they come into the library wanting everything they can find on Holocaust. So I was curious what I'd find on this reference site. Under "Choose a Volume", the Almanac part was where I started looking. There is a great time line given on events of WW II. You can quickly see how the events unfolded. I also liked the words to know section. It's a great glossary. Then I enjoyed looking through the research and activity ideas. What a great resource for projects to do with your students to enhance what they're studying. I was really intrigued by the "Rations Recipe" activity - what an eye-opener that would be for students (and myself)!! When I started reading the parts of the article about the holocaust, I had to stop reading. It is just mind blowing to me what happened during that time. This is not a reference I'd give to Jr. High students, but High School would be able to handle it.
Another choice in "Choose a Volume" was biographies. This was another favorite part for me. If you want to know more about just one person involved in WW II, you can easily find their biography here.
When I went into the next assignment of putting a search term in the search box, I drew a blank, so decided to look up the Huck Finn assignment. I noticed in the side bar to the left there was a topic of banned books, which led to censorship. I spent some time looking through the articles there.
Next, I wanted to try something medical, so I chose "diabetes diet". I found a lot of information about symptoms of diabetes, types of diabetes, treatments for diabetes, but I wasn't finding anything I really was wanting to know. It wasn't getting specific enough for what I thought I wanted to know, which is good foods and bad foods and portion sizes. I'll have to do some more searching.
Now I'm off to see what others found in their Gale Virtual Reference Library search. And to try to catch up!!
In the first assignment, to click on a book title of interest and access an article, I chose the World War II Reference Library 2000. I am in a young adult reading class and it seems like historical fiction books with families fleeing during WW II has been a hot topic in reading. I know when the kids get to that part of history, they come into the library wanting everything they can find on Holocaust. So I was curious what I'd find on this reference site. Under "Choose a Volume", the Almanac part was where I started looking. There is a great time line given on events of WW II. You can quickly see how the events unfolded. I also liked the words to know section. It's a great glossary. Then I enjoyed looking through the research and activity ideas. What a great resource for projects to do with your students to enhance what they're studying. I was really intrigued by the "Rations Recipe" activity - what an eye-opener that would be for students (and myself)!! When I started reading the parts of the article about the holocaust, I had to stop reading. It is just mind blowing to me what happened during that time. This is not a reference I'd give to Jr. High students, but High School would be able to handle it.
Another choice in "Choose a Volume" was biographies. This was another favorite part for me. If you want to know more about just one person involved in WW II, you can easily find their biography here.
When I went into the next assignment of putting a search term in the search box, I drew a blank, so decided to look up the Huck Finn assignment. I noticed in the side bar to the left there was a topic of banned books, which led to censorship. I spent some time looking through the articles there.
Next, I wanted to try something medical, so I chose "diabetes diet". I found a lot of information about symptoms of diabetes, types of diabetes, treatments for diabetes, but I wasn't finding anything I really was wanting to know. It wasn't getting specific enough for what I thought I wanted to know, which is good foods and bad foods and portion sizes. I'll have to do some more searching.
Now I'm off to see what others found in their Gale Virtual Reference Library search. And to try to catch up!!
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Challenge 4 - ProQuest
Sorry I haven't been on for a few weeks. I've been having fun with the 6th - 8th graders doing Pro vs Con from SIRS Reseacher on the issue of cell phones in schools. I didn't know I could get kids so excited about debating!!
On ProQuest I did a basic search for Common Core Standards. I wasn't overly impressed with what was coming up. Then I did the Advanced Search and searched by relevance. Much better!! There were a lot of current articles about Common Core Standards that helped me to understand it better.
On the Publications tab, I started just lookng to see what publications there were to see if I was interested in any. There were more than I thought! So then I just picked Publisher's Weekly and looked to see what was offered. I liked that I could look at the Children's Book Reviews this way. Most of the time I don't get to see the magazine we get at the library, so now I will remember to look here!
I also looked up Instructor Magazine. We used to get it at the library but don't anymore. I am glad to see I can research it here and find articles to give me ideas. I missed not getting it anymore at the library.
This is one site I will continue to go through on my spare time (Ha, Ha, What's that??!) to look up not just professional articles but personal articles of interest.
On ProQuest I did a basic search for Common Core Standards. I wasn't overly impressed with what was coming up. Then I did the Advanced Search and searched by relevance. Much better!! There were a lot of current articles about Common Core Standards that helped me to understand it better.
On the Publications tab, I started just lookng to see what publications there were to see if I was interested in any. There were more than I thought! So then I just picked Publisher's Weekly and looked to see what was offered. I liked that I could look at the Children's Book Reviews this way. Most of the time I don't get to see the magazine we get at the library, so now I will remember to look here!
I also looked up Instructor Magazine. We used to get it at the library but don't anymore. I am glad to see I can research it here and find articles to give me ideas. I missed not getting it anymore at the library.
This is one site I will continue to go through on my spare time (Ha, Ha, What's that??!) to look up not just professional articles but personal articles of interest.
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