Impossible to put into words all that I’ve learned through the MARVELous Invitational. I am so grateful to have had this opportunity and appreciate so much all the”behind the scenes” endeavors that went into making this possible for us. To sum up my experience I would have to say that although I have been a librarian for almost more years than I can count, although I am aware and do utilize various tutorials, although I attend workshops and conferences when possible, it has taken the blog requirement to really get me “up close and personal” with MARVEL. I guess I would call it a very badly needed refresher course! As a high school librarian I direct students to this site but I now have a much greater understanding (and ability to use) of the wealth of material available.
I guess I would say that my biggest discovery was actually seeing and subsequently investigating all these many resources. I am much more comfortable making work folders, setting up alerts, and locating the articles I need. The blog was a new experience as well. I think by going back to read all the participant blogs I’ll gain even greater insight. It really is incumbent on all of us in the library field to continue to educate our patrons about what is available to them at no cost. The value of this resource should have every patron in Maine signing the income tax check-up in support of public libraries come tax season!
There are several ways that I intend to promote this resource. Our school still has teachers who do not use this resource so in January l will send out an email and offer to host some one-on-one or small group trainings after school on any MARVEL aspect they select. (Hopefully there will not be too many interested in ValueLine!!). Than I would like to highlight a particular website each month, making a bulletin board on it with handouts of the tutorials and sample questions, etc. Finally I feel that as I’ve now completed my own personal refresher course on MARVEL, I’ll be quicker to seize opportunities to share it.
Thank you again for this fine opportunity.
It’s a good thing we are having a catch up week because between school and home responsibilities I am behind and discovered I had never posted a blog for week 3. I use Newspapers and Maine Newstand with students but realize that my ability to frame a good search need some brushing up! But here I go ….
For my search I decided to look for articles having to do with the deorganization efforts of the Piscataquis community, Atkinson. It took me awhile to figure out how to limit the search. My first searches brought up articles about the town as well as writings by indivduals with the last name of Atkinson. I experimented with a few other search requests and finally did unearth the material I was seeking. One things always leads to another so after I researched Atkinson (which has not yet deorganized!) I decided to see if there was additional information about Sir Harry Oakes, a native of Sangerville, ME and one of the few Maine citizens actually knighted. Since his death by murder in the 1940s remains a mystery, I created an alert on this subject.
I read several of the blogs posted by other MARVELous Maine explorers and commented on the blog by BulldogLib. It was harder to post a comment than I realized so perhaps I was not doing it correctly but eventually it did get on. When the Invitational is over I hope to have time to read many more of the other posts.
Participation on Maine Library Snapshot Week was such a positive experience. It really brings home all that the library does. I know in the highschool library my days vary from being incredibly busy to ones where it is way too quiet. By documenting the week and putting everything together, it brought home how much actually happens on many different fronts. I anxiously await the published account. One of the MARVEL teachings that happened was introducing a student to NOVELIST PLUS. The young lady was looking for another title similar to what she had just read. I showed her how to access the site, we typed in the name of the book that she had just finished, checked on read-alikes, and I signed her out with two other books. Of course I also shared that if any particular title intrigued her but was not in our collection, we could most likely borrow it through interlibrary loan. NOVELIST is definitely worth its weight in gold – for selection decisions, reader’s advisory, display ideas.
This has been an excellent exercise (as has been each and every one) in that it allows one to focus on some of the easy to overlook subject specific databases in the Ebsco Host “Family”. It was good to have attention drawn to Georef and Wildlife and Ecology studies Worldwide among others.
I decided to use each of these as well as MasterFilePremier and search for Kwajalein, an atoll in the Marshall Islands. There were 156 results of all kinds (newspapers, etc.) from these particular databases. The search was refined by adding “national defense” to Kwajalein in advanced search. This brought up four references that gave me a greater understanding as to why MIT sent my dad there on several occasions in the 1960’s. Missile testing on Kwajalein has held an important role in the development of defense strategy.
The summer before last we had the opportunity to visit Antietam so that prompted my second research question. Remembering a particular battle monument I was curious as to what role Maine soldiers played in this battle. I had not realized that the leadership exhibited by Major Thomas W. Hyde guiding the 7th Maine Regiment led to his receipt of the Medal of Honor in 1891. The pdf of the article ‘Balaklva’ in An Antietam Cornfield” included photographs from as well as a map of the battlefield.
The number of periodicals indexed in the data base family is impressive. I was curious if Mother Earth News was included and it was. I have actually used the listing of indexed periodicals when making decisions as to what physical journals to keep in our library and for how long.
Ebsco eBooks was eye-opening. I have been concerned that my students are less and less interested in non-fiction but I believe directing them to this site may have positive results.
I searched Willa Cather and found 20 ebooks ranging from some of her well-known short stories to her classic novels (O Pioneers) to critical works in which she was featured. It was also neat to discover one poem, Grandmither, think not I forget, as I had never thought of her as a poet.
As far as students needing more material for Constitution Day, I would suggest that they first read the Constitution of the United States in its entirety and than look at some of the titles which further explain the implications of our Constitution. These could be: Freedom Not to Speak, Representing Popular Sovereignty:the Constitution on American Political Culture and Laws of Affirmative Action.
In checking the Publisher’s Box under Nebraska twenty titles came up all published by the University of Nebraska Press.
Feeling quite overwhelmed with so many invaluable resources at my fingertips.
Oh this site is quite incredible. I am excited to share it with our folks in guidance. What a help this will be to our students struggling with test taking, test prep, or just wanting to brush up on their skills.
I set up an account and decided to plunge right in and take the Culinary Arts Practice exam. Well, kudos to our students studying culinary arts! My forty years + in the kitchen yielded a score which, if revealed, would surely scare my husband and adult children who have previously praised my cooking ability. Let’s just say that my roasting and stewing skills are excellent (100) but my use of the appropriate culinary arts vocabulary and my ability to organize and run a large dining room are suspect (57). Oh but I did do well on proper food handling so my husband is safe for now. It was a neat but challenging exam. Since it was a long exam I appreciated the fact that I could leave it for a later return. It is nice to have instant feedback. For each mistake you made, the answer key gave you the correct answer alongside the incorrect one.
Next I added the course Workkeys Applied Mathematics Practice Test 1 to my center. What I noted here was that the answers were given you in such a way that you could clearly see what skills you would need to work on and what skills you were already pretty good at. Although this was a timed exam it did appear that there was an option to stop and later resume testing if one so wished.
I selected “grammar” as my search term and found lots of available material: 51 tests, 16 courses and 33 ebooks. Having just finished an exercise on MLA citation I than repeated my search with “citation ” as a search word. This brought up only an ebook titled Research and Writing Skills success in twenty minutes a day. This ebook included both a pre and post test and looks like a useful resource for our students.
While Learning Express is set up as a site to be used in a public library, I found that once I had set-up an account with password, I was able to open it from school and at home. Does this perhaps mean that our students can access this site here as well? I see it as having tremendous value in the school setting since area adult ed classes are generally offered in schools rather than public libraries. Adult ed students working on GEDs might be less intimidated by this site if their instructor could show it to them in the school setting. Past experience in the public library would indicate that some adult ed learners (or actually anyone that might use Learning Express) could be intimidated if they had to go to the public library.
Another wonderful site. I’ve visited it several times in the past few weeks and feel ready to comment now. Working all day in the public school makes access to the public library and Ancestry.com a bit more of a challenge than just calling up MARVEL from school or home but it is definitely worth the visit.
I started my search looking for my name before marriage. I thought that by including my birthdate and place of birth, it would pop right up but it did not. What I did discover, alas, was that I was not as unique a “Donna Dustin” as I’d thought though we all had a variety of middle initials. While not successful at finding my name, I did come across several references to my mom. I suspect that with a greater understanding of the mechanics of searching for birth records I should be able to find my own. I’ll try that on my next visit. When I searched for myself under my married name I came to references to both myself and my husband in different census records.
I next decided to search for my maternal grandmother. She died in 1923 leaving eight children including my then six year old mother. I had no trouble finding her in the census records for Piscataquis County, Maine both before and after her marriage. The 1920 census report was particularly touching as I read the names and ages of the children and knew that in three years they would grieve the loss of their mother. Another item of interest, and something I know which challenges genealogists, is that when I pulled up my grandmother’s marriage certificate, her name was given as Hallie B. Sweet, but census records, family heritage and her cemetery inscription name her Hattie B. Sweet. I also learned that Hattie’s parents, my maternal great-grandparents, originally came from New Hampshire. While I may never find an answer, I would be curious to know why they left their native state to settle in central Maine. I am saddened that I no longer have my mom or any aunts and uncles to help me answer this question. It is easy to see why genealogical research can be a fascinating hobby.
My search under “Photos and Maps” with Maine as the keyword brought up many interesting photographs of Maine individuals but I was unable to make any direct connections.
Ancestry.com is an invaluable resource. Earlier this year one of our English teachers was lamenting that this site is not available through schools. She had hoped to engage her students in some sort of genealogical quest but instead referred them to their local public libraries to complete the assignment.
This is such a great site! I use it frequently with my high school students so I’m fairly familiar with it but eager to see what else might be there to explore. This site has evolved considerably since it first appeared on MARVEL. I decided to start my exploration of series with the Private series by Kate Brian. The “Private” books are not new but seem to return to popularity every few years so I was curious as to how many were out there, fourteen in all! I looked at the series in all views and decided to print off an annotated copy for my student, and then a simple list copy for the series book I keep here in the library. One thing for sure, high schoolers and upper elementary students as well, really enjoy reading series. What interested me was when I sorted the series by popularity, the list came out with book 8 first, followed by 1, 6, 5, 3, 9 and so forth. The most recent books were actually the least popular.
Having a suggestion box with author read-alikes is such a boon. So many times students/patrons tell you how much they enjoyed a particular author and wish they knew others who wrote in a similar fashion…..and this answers that question. I think we all appreciate our role as “reader advisors” but, for me at least, its hard to keep each author distinct in my mind. I like to print off these similar author lists for my students and than direct them to the books that we own and assure them that we can interlibrary loan for ones we do not have. I have also printed off some of these lists to put into a display….like I loved Hunger Games, what can I read next?
I like the word “robust”. What an apt description for this database. I find myself referring to some of the many bibliographies as a means to check my collection development, to see which titles are missing from a donated series that might or might not be concluded, to print up lists to use in displays….on and on. I think you can use the lists with appropriate checkmarks to alert patrons to the particular titles already in your collection. I used some of the book discussion guides when I had a Mainely Girls reading club, now I print them off for teachers. As we continue to make progress implementing Common Core, lists pertinent to this will be useful when making purchasing decisions for curriculum development. The blog posts are just plain fun to read! I especially appreciated a recent one by Duncan Smith, a self-described “recovering English major” for that describes me too.
Well, off to read blogs from fellow MARVELights…..
Wow, I never expected to admit that I found reading medical articles more comprehensible than some of those encountered in Business Resources….but I certainly did! In fact studying this site reminded me a bit of the few months I helped out in our local hospital’s library. You start to read from one medical journal and diagnose yourself (and others) with this illness or that and than you just keep going. The one video I planned to watch in the Medline Plus section turned into eight and so on. It ‘s quite an amazing site.
Initially I was stunned by the number of magazines and journals related to health that are available here. Although wee do not have a great call for medical information here in the high school from the students themselves, I can see that this aspect of MARVEL would be most useful to others in our school community and needs publicity.
Serving a teen age population brought to mind the disease “mononucleosis” so that is what I searched. The article I read “Infectious mononucleosis: Teen version” was very easy to understand, and also helpful in its layout. I did find that there were some articles on Parkinson’s disease which were quite difficult to read but others more useful for the layman. There seemed to be a bit more information about mono at the Medline Plus site including a photograph of the sore throat one might experience with mono.
As far as going to Medline Plus, topics in the news included gene mutations which might lead to Alzheimer’s; disparities among the women who do and do not develop breast cancer ; and heart attack survival rates in hospitals. I was particularly interested in that since my mother went into heart arrest while in the hospital after suffering a heart attack.
The information I read about Crestor reminded me of the paper received from the pharmacy at each prescription renewal: why is this medicine prescribed, how it should be used, what side effects may accompany use of this medicine, precautions to observe while taking the medicine, and what to do in an emergency. The layout was comprehensible. Would this information work for a library in lieu of having a current PDR?
As stated at the beginning I intended to watch one Interactive Health video and found myself watching eight. They were straightforward and clear. I think most patrons would find them helpful and informative. The use of drawn figures rather than photographs seems to make them a little less real than seeing a person undergoing this or that. Whoops, I just happened onto to the surgery videos. This time they were all too real, being film from actual operations, and I opted not to watch.
I’ll confess to really being up a wall studying Value Line and the Wall Street Journal. I was able to get on the Research Center for Academic Libraries and looked over the various links. I typed in Ford Motor Company, Starbucks and one other company without any results….until I realized that I was querying industries and not companies. I did get some recent (August 2012) information about Starbucks but as one who does not follow stocks but does enjoy a very good cup of coffee, it was indeed Greek to me. I’ll need to go back and check if there was a “full research report” for Starbucks but exited out before I’d looked for it. I am sure that if I had a better understanding of the financial world I would find this resource invaluable but truthfully it just seemed confusing. I went to a help button and it appeared as though there would be accessible information on how to better understand Value Line.
Using the advanced search features I used the Wall Street Journal database to find articles on small business and health care. I appreciate that this is a huge problem since many small companies find the cost of providing good insurance coverage for their small number of employees simply prohibitive. I noted that the results came out with my search terms highlighted and not in chronological order. I think a small business person would be most interested in articles that describe how a company was able to meet the insurance needs of their employees and still be profitable.
I did read about how to add a Widget to a home page in order to quickly open a ProQuest search box. It sounds like a good idea but I would personally need to understand this better before implementing.
Studying the Business Resources as part of the MARVELous Invitational has been great. I probably would not have explored this area without incentive. I know that I will need to go back here many times to really be able to use this resource well.
It was a good thing that I practiced with the Visual search when I was studying Business Source Complete because I certainly needed it for this exercise. I used it when searching for items that pertain to both tax policy and small business. When I initially searched this subject I located some articles but I really needed to see a visual representation of what I’d focused on to have it make sense. Once I had a visual to look at it was not difficult to separate out the articles most useful.
What I noticed in my search for small business owners was how many “article linkers” came up rather than pdf texts of entire articles. I think it was something like twelve out of fourteen. That tells me that we need our patrons to understand that links do not preclude them from obtaining the information they need but do provide a greater challenge. While I usually am able to successfully move from a link to the complete text of an article, I am not always successful, or it takes me much longer than I’d anticipated. I would think this would be generally true for any librarian without a direct link to a large library.
I played around with different subject headings to find a connection between the Environmental Protection Agency and small businesses. EPA itself was not recognized but when I typed out the full name there were 466 references. I finally settled on Environmental Protection Agency [and] effect [and] business to locate ten articles. This was a good reminder that a quick search does not always yield the anticipated results.
I was pretty excited by the Hobbies and crafts data base, especially once I learned how to create a folder. That definitely makes it much easier to manage the neat things found on the site. I had to stay late at school this past Tuesday so when I returned to close up the library, I realized that it was time for the adult ed. rug hooking class. Eureka!! Wouldn’t the ladies in that class be excited to learn about MARVEL and the hobbies data base. So I shared my enthusiasm with them and showed them how they too could access MARVEL from home or local library. It was neat to move from exploring this site doing the MARVEL Invitational to now sharing it.
dstrachan2012 