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.
Hi, Kathy! You did better than you thought! In fact, you did just fine! You are correct in that there aren't a lot of books for young people here. These titles were purchased to expand the non-fiction collection of public libraries and are mostly at the HS-adult level. The purpose of the Western History search was to show you some different ways to search and to point out that the University of Nebraska and University of Oklahoma have a number of good titles here about our region. Sorry I don't have a way to test this resource on a Mac. Can anyone else give this a try & comment? Sorry for your frustration, but you did better than you thought. Thanks for commenting--and for being honest. :)
ReplyDeleteBack with an answer for your Mac question, courtesy of Julie Erickson: eBooks can be read online in the eBook Viewer by clicking the eBook Full Text link in the Result list or Detailed Record.
ReplyDeleteNote: If you are using a Mac, you will need to install a PDF Browser plug-in in order to use the eBook Viewer.
Click to download the Schubert|it plug-in. (http://www.schubert-it.com/pluginpdf/)
I’m thinking this is the problem/solution/key.
Let us know if this works for you!