CharlestonRef

2010-05-24T11:18:00.003-04:00

One thing is certain about investing: uncertainty. Morningstar Investment Research Center products teach and inform everyday investors on how to make money with mutual funds, individual stocks and other investment vehicles. Lets look at three parts of the database...

- Mutual Fund Analysis - Over 28,000 mutual funds are covered. The depth of each fund covered is different, with large funds tending to get more commentary and analysis whereas smaller funds just get numerical analysis on return on investments, fees, management tenure and track record to help you further your research.

- Company Stock Profiles - Over 7,500 individual stocks are covered mostly of larger companies. Much of the research on any company contains an investing thesis of the company, valuation and risk commentary, along with strategy, management and stewardship of resources overviews and analysis.

Training Center – Here you will find informative investing tutorials on topics such as what is a mutual fund, exchange traded fund or (ETF), why diversification is good, and how to use the diversification X-Ray tool. Morningstar usually offers a database training session on their website on the first Thursday of the Month.

Today's quest: find a mutual fund or stock you would like to invest in using this database and obtain research on it. To view this and other CCPL Research Tools, click here.

Recent Updates...

2010-02-05T14:14:00.013-05:00

Greetings. Much has transpired since the last blog post on December 1st. What follows is an updabe about new resource tools on the CCPL website, our text message service and some general musings on the Gale Apple all things IPhone library app. Note: photo comes from Apple.com

New Resources Tools.

CultureGrams and a NetLibrary Career E-Books Collection along with a coming soon resource called SmartSearch from DISCUS. We are also getting ready to roll out the Ingram Digitial Media product that will contain an opening collection of 500 plus downloadable audio books. On February 3rd, many attended training on the how this product works. We are anticipating a roll out coming out this Spring to very soon.

Text Message Service.

We have been offering text message service for the last two months. On average we get one to three text messages questions a day. Promotion has paid off. When we ran a banner ad promoting the service on the ccpl.org homepage use doubled. Time will tell how successful this will be. Harking back to when we first started email ref, it was normal to get a 100 to 150 emails a month. Currently we get about three times as many emails as we used to get ~6 or 7 years ago.

General Musings.

The Ipad may be a game changer. The Gale Iphone App (no library card required and authenication is based on your current geography) is now available. Computing devices in many ways are just getting easier to use and "just work" without much effort... If you have used the Gale Iphone App to access CCPL liscensed resource tools in the area, via wifi outside of a branch or on the 3g network, please email and let me know how it is going or place a comment on this blogpost.

New Service: Cell Phone Text Messaging Q/A

2009-12-01T20:11:00.010-05:00

Today, we started offering a cell phone text messaging question and answer service for any user. Main Reference library staff have practiced, are trained and standing by during normal main library operating hours to answer cell phone text messaging questions. We have also made available to the first two patrons who ask a question a free $5 Starbucks gift card. Text: askccpl (plus a question) to: 66746. Standard text messaging rates apply. A special thanks goes to Charleston Friends of the Library that have made this offering possible in paying for the text messaging software and service. See a demo here.

Text A Librarian Cell Phone Messaging is Coming Here...

2009-11-12T14:19:00.008-05:00

The ink is dry, and we are about to begin the process of adding cell phone text messaging via textalibrarian.com which works with the major cell phone carriers. We have been using the AOL hack of 265010 ccplhelp [What time to do you close?] hack. It works, but we have not been advertising the hack plus and not all cell phone systems work reportedly with this method. Well, we have some training to do and some prep work before rolling out the service, but I wanted to post this note just letting people know askccpl full cell phone SMS text messaging is on the way to CCPL. On yr mark gt set 4 celfne txt msgN..

Thoughts on Email Document Storage

2009-11-07T15:19:00.021-05:00

Do you have a mixed relationship with your email accounts? Currently, I do. I have a work email for work, one account for receiving newsletters, forms and online banking, promos and miscellaneous things. And finally, I have another account I use for correspondence among friends and people outside of work and in a pinch I'll pass along my work email account to those who need to contact me pronto for something during the work week... Email is a great way to store stuff, but at times I wonder...

What does email have to do with libraries you might ask? The positives. Email is cheaper to use, uses less resources and in many cases is easier to store and find content when in need. When your at a branch and don't have the cash at the time to print a document out, saving it in an email account is practical storage. Would you rather have a filing cabinet of documents/books taking up space or a thumb drive and a backup hard drive in a single drawer? For me, it is thumb drive/backup hard drive.

When finding content in blogs or resource tools databases, most of the sources have the email friendly format icons or links. However, it is so tempting to email yourself an article for that "I'll read it later" instead of reading it right then. Chances are, If I don't have time for it now, I won't take time to read something later especially when it comes to blog posts or content on the web.

I have to admire two people who have due to necessity gone the opposite direction by abandoning email. Ronald Knuth (computer programming genius) who in 1990 gave up email due to so many messages he was receiving. The second is Luis Suarez (IBM Knowledge Management) a leader who is weaning himself off of frivolous email. Both of these guys seem to be doing well professionally after abandoning or limiting their use of email.

For me, I'm not giving up email anytime soon. Email is to practical to store reminders, documents, create a history of things, communicate with co-workers, friends, learn about milestones in lives of close friends, but I'm also finding sometimes it is just best to pickup the phone. Maybe someday, I'll put me email account on perpetual "out of office" mode, but until then don't look for me to try this anytime soon -- I like email way to much in the proper amount/form.

Photo Credits
1) CC credit

2) http://www.flickr.com/photos/frozenchipmunk/ / CC BY 2.0

3) CC credit

What is in My Librarian Tool Kit?

2009-10-11T15:35:00.015-04:00

It is Sunday, a typical day of rest for most folks. But, I'm at work like many others working a service desk... The main thought of the blog post "What is in Your Librarian Tool Kit" by Jassmyn West got me thinking about mine. What follows are a few Sunday afternoon thoughts while at a service desk...

1) Patience.

Somedays, it is a lot of 'hand holding' such as helping people print documents. Today, it was how to change the font type, spacing, and sizing of text. The amount of traditional reference questions while on the face to face reference desk were limited to a book on costumes and the rules of basketball. There was also the inevitable: where is the bathroom and water fountain and several others...

2) Sense of What People Want.

It so much easier to help happy people, even when they are after something not easily findable. It is the grumpy ones that want "free money" and want it right now that are the challenge. Today, I was working with a patron helping her find info on halloween customes. Shortly into it, a second patron approached. I asked the second patron if he had quick question. This relatively quick two sentence conversation caused Patron one to retort. "That's not a quick question with a huff." I appologized and said I'll be with patron two in a few minutes... There is no way to keep everyone pracitically happy.

3) Sense of Understanding Information.

Thru practice, it takes me less to time formulate a search stragegy and find desired information or whether or not something is available. I would like to think it is an improved skill set of mine, but it also helps to have great resources available at my fingertips to draw upon.

4) Being Flexible.

Functionally, I spend more time on programs, outreach and giving talks then I did years ago and it is even approaching the time/intensity as one of my core work responsibilities. More outreach with less in-reach and staff development. My given priorities shift and change just like the goals of an organization. It pays to stay flexible. No one makes money as a buggy wip specialist any more or making card catalog cards on a large scale. Jobs change over time...

5) Applying What I Learn

Thank you Roy Tenant, Lorcan Dempsey, Stephen Abram, Jessamyn West and many others who blog about content taught at library conferences. Some of the most pracitical tips, tricks and tidbits come from talking shop with others around a meal about what is new in the library world at conferences. I'm so glad you guys take time to share your knowlege in blogs and other avenues....

Thankfully there are staff classes and occasionaly State Library training that comes to town. I'm having a blast learning about some open source library software and hope someday to develop a small home grown application I'm learning to write in a production environment. Lately, what I have been doing outside of work -- an exploratory library software project -- is keeping me challenged and inspired at work; and it has been a good sounding board by listening to the needs of people, and for me doing routine things like working service desks.

CharlestonRef is Branching Out on Twitter

2009-09-25T12:33:00.008-04:00

CharlestonRef is branching out to twitter. The feed is intended to cover electronic research tools news and tidbits with info about outages, new features, and short announcements that don't need a paragraph or more of explanation. I'm going to place referrals on the twitter feed to the charlestonref blog when such depth is required. What you will NOT find on twitter.com/charlestonref is what I ate for lunch or that some celebrity just made the cover of People magazine.

Also, I have done some housekeeping on this blog. No longer does the marquee say "Charleston Reference" it now says: "CharlestonRef" to match the URL. Some of the widgets, such as the MyPlugoo IM service, Flickr library image pools and others have been removed to reduce clutter. There will probably be a few more tweaks to the blog and twitter.com/charlestonref feed in the coming weekdays as time allows…

Ferguson's Career Guidance - Practical and Useful

2009-09-25T10:47:00.008-04:00

Ferguson's Career Guidance Center is a practical resource to help you find information about an occupation, getting or changing a job in that field and then excelling on the job. If your still trying to figure out what you want to do when you 'grow up' or are in the process of making career changes, SC Pathways website is probably the best product we have to help with that step. If, on the other hand, you know exactly what kind of work you want to do such as a job in the education or the medical field then Ferguson's Career Guidance Center is even a better resource.

The college section helps match up your education and abilities with the career you may be aiming for next in your life. There is information on picking a college, selecting your major, and setting goals to get there along with funding strategies for your education. The job hunting and workplace skills sections offer great advice. Many resources just provide sample cover letters and resumes, but this section goes into detail explaining what the purpose and reasons for using certain kinds of resumes and the overall goal explaining practical reasons and content that should be contained in a typical cover letter.

Overall Ferguson's Career Guidance Center offers practical advice for career decision making and job finding in easy to use form of encyclopedias, written guides and personal examples in various videos and essays. This website is recommended for people who have a fairly good idea of their own career goals and kinds of work they want to do.

CCPL Resource Tools News...

2009-08-26T16:22:00.012-04:00

Value Line Research Center is now available to Charleston County Public Library (CCPL) card holders at home and at all branches. Previously, the product was only available at select branches. In the amount of time we have had the product, patrons have been using it at home for the first time and the response has been positive.

On the other hand, in the news category, the CCPL Books in Print database was not renewed. Gale has also lost the rights to add new issues of Consumer Reports and Consumer Reports Annual Buying guide to General OneFile and other sources.

Best Vacation Reads with Wilson Bibliographies

2009-07-24T09:28:00.008-04:00

I'm going on vacation and want to read a great book on the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1803-1806. Novelist Plus is available, but I decided to try out the old faithful of HW Wilson's Public Library Catalog. This resource is a staple or standard for many public library collection development folks. The reviews are great and generally only the best of the best make it into the catalog. It has been two years since the last time Wilson Web was profiled on this blog, and at the time I was sorting through a good Ronald Reagan biography to find and I did find a good one for a patron... We also have Wilson Web Access to the children's, junior high, and senior high core resource catalogs along with core public library fiction catalog. What will I be reading while on vacation in case your curious... David Mcullough's Bridge, Lewis and Clark Journals, and Undaunted Courage. I may not read all three, but at least I'll have some good selections. Enjoy your day...

Reference USA Website Re-Design

2009-07-15T09:02:00.007-04:00

The Reference USA long awaited website refresh is here. The search interface is streamlined and relatively easy to use. The speed of searching is vastly improved. There are issues on lingering on content thou. For example, my wife is still listed at her old apartment (with maden name) before we got married and that was over a year ago since she last lived there. Companies such as Collecta are not listed. However, I do have to give Reference USA a break since the entire company is based on the work at home model. I do kind of wonder if they do postal address updates otherwise my wife's old address would not be listed in the database... Okay, I'm picky on content, but I just wanted to point out what I picked up on. Bottom line, the search interface to Reference USA database is a big improvement.

Reference Universe - Worth A Second Look

2009-07-02T16:11:00.005-04:00

It is easy to overlook, but Reference Universe is vastly improved in content and searching. For example, a search on Irrigation was slow. Two years ago, this subject search allowed you enough time to 'go for a cup of coffee and come back to get results finally...' to now being WOW... I can say supercalifragilisticexpialidocious and get 10 citations on "irrigation" before getting to the "cious" part of the word -- Reference Universe is FAST.

There is a higher level of detail in Reference Universe then the regular ibistro catalog for hard to answer questions using print resources and it even has a few electronic resources we have access to.

Database content...
- 20,000 works from print and e-resource form with table of contents and index citations, 100's recently added just in June alone....
- Prominent publsher with the books in our collection from Gale, Greenwood, Springer and others..
- Patrons stumble upon seredipitous/useful facts to what they are looking for...

Keys to searching the database well...
- Use the browse searching if your unsure how to search. It functions similiar to catalog subject search.
- Use of phrase searching is the main way to use the databae.
- Use of "and" or "or" boolean searching in a strict sense does not work -- think phrase searching.

Things to watch for while searching...
- Each result should be checked for a title availability searching in Ibistro. Due to ISBN linking, format, and edition problems e-resources/books we do have in the collection say (prior editions) to links in database might not show up in Ibistro eventhough it is on the shelf or available online.
- AccessScience/GVRL direct full-text links within the database recently went down... we are hoping to restore these soon.
- If a title sounds to scholary for a public library, we probably don't have it -- try ILL or CofC if this is what the patron wants and it seems there is NO alternative for the needed info...

Database Updates: PowerSearch, RefUSA and others...

2009-05-29T14:08:00.010-04:00

Spring is gone, and Summer is here. There are a few new and upcoming changes to the Resource Tools listings on the ccpl.org website.

- PowerSearch is getting a website refresh, with much of the same standard search as norml with new window dressing. The PowerSearch trial version is currently the featured product on SC Discus.

- RefUSA is scheduled to get a website refresh this Summer with new user interface.

- Salem Press e-resources based on the Magill's Medical Guide and Milestone Documents in American History were added recently to the Resource Tools section of http://ccpl.org/ website as Salem History and Salem Health.

- Gale Virtual Reference Library (GVRL) books are being added with additional volumes such as Business Plans Handbook Volume 14, U*X*L Encyclopedia of World Mythology and others in the Gale liturature for Students series are coming.

Also, we are in the process of dropping a few electronic resource tools as well due to budgetary reasons in the coming months. As changes are about to happen, notes will be posted to this blog and in other places.

Career/Job Finding Process Ebooks

2009-05-26T17:03:00.010-04:00

Learning Express Library has a collection of ebooks covering career starter guides and the job finding process. A May 2007 Charlestonref blog post also provides a general product overview. There is a registration process after logging in initially; and this is so you can stop a test or activity and then pick it back up where you left off at a later point in time. Instructions for how to access the product and create a login are listed on the website for in library and home access use.

Once you have logged into the product, to access ebooks within the resource scroll down to the bottom portion of the screen. Keep in mind that you may need to scroll down on the page depending upon screen size. You will need to look for and select the link with an illustrated arrow pointing to: Ebooks: Browse our complete listing of ebooks. Once you have have clicked on the link, a search dialog box appears for entering your topical terms of interest. What follows are a sample of many of the ebooks within the resource tool.

Select Career Starter Ebooks:

Firefighter Administrative/Executive Assistant Career Starter, 2e, Computer Technician Career Starter, Cosmetology Career Starter, 2e, Cosmetology Licensing Exam, 2e, Culinary Arts Career Starter, Early Childhood/Teacher Career Starter,Hotel/Restaurant Career Starter, Paralegal Career Starter, 2e, Pharmacy Technician Career Starter, Practical Solutions to Everyday Work Problems, Teacher Career Starter, 2e, The Complete Professional, Visual Communication, Webmaster Career Starter, 2e, and others...

Select Job Finding Process Ebooks:

Goof Proof Interview, Goof Proof Resumes & Cover Letters, Great Interview, Great Resume, Job Interviews that Get You Hired, Resumes that Get You Hired, Search Smart and Get Ahead,Your Career, and others...

Profiling Business and Company Resource Center

2009-04-28T18:08:00.013-04:00

Business and Company Resource Center (BCRC), is deceptively full of little goodies and golden nuggets of business information. The accompanying screen shot of this blog post is to a snip-it view of the balance sheet of Blackbaud's financial year end of 12/31/2008. The resource contains publicly traded domestic and foreign companies with their line item balance sheet, income, and cash flow statements along with ratios. The dashboard sections contains the ability to compare various companies in a list side-by-side view for line by line comparisons.

Digging deeper, you can find mutual fund listings, commodity prices, bank rates, and other goodies as well in (BCRC). At this time, there is not an easy way to get to the financial dashboard section, but typically doing a public company name search and then looking for the financial data tabs this will do the trick. There is a weakness in currency of industry overviews, but in some fields that is not crucial to get the most recent industry data.

Historic stock prices in (BCRC), typically go back to 2001 which is good, but not back as far as Mergent or even as far as Yahoo Finance that goes all the way to the 1970s on certain companies. Overall, Business and Company Resource Center is a great source to take a look at and use just to see what is in the database if you have not looked business information in while.

Select Gale Databases add Great Text to Speech Tool

2009-03-28T12:44:00.001-04:00

Recently, Gale has added a text to speech feature in a few database such as Opposing Viewpoints Reference Center, ScienceResource Center and Kids Infobits. The feature is machine based text reading which is very impressive. Previously, machine text reading was choppy, lacked timely pauses and words blended together like picante hot sauce on chocolate ice cream - it was edible but not very tastey. The new technology is much better then the old text to machine voice. In places it is a little choppy, but overal it does an improved job pausing between periods, commas and other punctuation marks as words flow off the page much better.

The ability to download MP3 sound content is available; however, there is not a way to download a marked list, each story has to be downloaded manually. Patrons may find this sound feature useful at home or in branches with headphones and sound equiped PCs. Overall, it will be great when even more content goes to MP3 audio file format friendly. Such as listen to the Fodor's City Guides found in General OneFile while walking a city. The text to speach feature will also help those who are blind, visually impaired or just want get content on the go in audio format. Kudos to Gale for this text to speech feature enhancement...

This announcement comes via the DISCUS Listserv.

Job Hunting Resource - Part 4 Furthering Your Education

2009-03-26T09:38:00.005-04:00

This is the forth post in a series on Job Hunting and the South Carolina Pathways.org website. Previous posts on the topic are available in 1, 2 and 3. Are you looking at continuing your education in a degree or non-degree program? The Kuter “Considering Education or Training” section may help.

The education or training component covers degree and non degree programs for further areas of study you may want to consider. The schools profiled in detail are based on in person classroom settings or online throughout the United States, military installations and US territories. Various tabs such as “name and location”, “school and campus characteristics”, “programs and majors” and “admissions and costs” all allow a person to narrow there list of schools down by various criteria in one search list combined in a “see list” format.

Overall, the Kuter education component is very useful in considering furthering your education, tuition costs, application process and other preferences associated with selecting a school of your choice and desired education outcomes.

Job Hunting Resource - Part 3 Picking a Specific Occupation

2009-03-20T16:21:00.025-04:00

This is the third post in a series on Job Hunting and the South Carolina Pathways.org website. Previous posts on the topic are available in 1 and 2. This post covers the Occupation Sugesstion section of the website and the process of examing an indviduals interests, skills, abilities and values and then the survey tool suggests occupations based on those inclinations.

The assessment tool is divided into various segments
- from preference assessments in part 1 and by education level
- Previous skills from previous jobs
- Various self rated abilities you have.

The self assessment also involves ranking your own skill levels at such functions as public speaking, problem solving and numerous other areas. Each area, you self rate your skill level as being above average, average and below average. A list of occupations will come up that rank highly in your own interests, skills/abilities and values as illustrated above.

The second graphic is just a sample of a few of the occupations that generally my survey assessment matched me up with... All I feel are fairly accurate, I do have to chuckle that technical writing was listed. Technical Writing at times is a weakness of mine and I can't imagine myself doing that as a career. Blogging about database is helping to enhance that skill though...

Note: Graphics are available for viewing in an enlarged view by clicking on the image.

Job Hunting Resource - Part 2 SC Pathways Product

2009-03-20T11:29:00.012-04:00

This is part 2 in a series on South Carolina Pathways tool available to all South Carolina residents. Part 1 is below.

In concrete descriptive and measurable terms, it is useful to know what you like to do career wise based on your own personality traits and skills or just confirm that your in a field of work you enjoy. Part 1 of the assessment tool of SC Pathways involves answering a series of questions to help measure in definitive terms what your interests, skills, and work values are. The series of questions develops a greater measure of confidence in knowing that your personality can actually match up with your career choices based on thousands of others who have taken this assessment and found reliable results. This assessment assigns numerical scores for your personality interest based on the kind of work you may want to pursue.

Your interests are assigned scores for a cluster of various kinds of work with the ranges being: High Interest 75 - 100, Medium 25-74 and Low 0 - 24. For example, I love tinkering with technology and my Information Technology interest sore of 96 on the survey bears that out. Also on the flip side, I don't like public speaking, but I can do it as a large part of my college studies were in communications classes. My interests in that are a definitive low, a score of 4 points points that out, as a career. A significant number of people will score low in certain areas and that is normal. You can be excellent, really good or do an average job at something such as "Arts, Audio-Video Technology, and Communications" areas, but absolutely dislike doing it and say score 4 points in that category like me.

An interest assessment survey such as this can be really useful in changing or confirming that the career you may be in now or in the future fits your personality and interests well.

EBooks are Reaching a Tipping Point

2009-03-06T09:52:00.007-05:00

The eBook tipping point is coming. The tipping point is mass ebook adoption/usage. Bear with me for a moment. My wife still buys her music on CD's, but she starting to warm up to the idea of getting music over downloads instead of CDs. The tipping point is having to store the music, whereas I have reached that point where a music download takes up less space on my hard drive virtually then having to haul around the CD, case, and cover art and store the compact disk. My car has an Ipod adapter and able to play music/podcast in my car. My wife uses the CD player in her car and she won't give up cd's yet even though she has an ipod. The music experience is really no different whether it comes from the Ipod or from CD it still sounds about the same...

Same thing is applicable to books. If I and others, and this is the big if, can get the same touch and feel out of a book with the content in an electronic form there is nothing stopping me from switching over to books in electronic form. The benefits of not having to physically store the book and portability is what is driving the tipping point. Music formats have changed, think a-track, cassettes, dap (short-lived in the middle) and cd's now in similar quality to MP3's. Yes the drawbacks are hurdles, sharing materials, preserving digital rights to content, and ensuring providers are justly compensated. Technological change has served music well and it will work with ebooks. Only time will tell how...

I'm wondering if the tipping point, and making predictions about technology is a risky business? However, it is probably time to say 4 or 5 years from today book purchasing of content online will be definitely higher and maybe where the itunes market was in its' first few years. I know I'm willing to buy a cool ebook reader if it is practical, affordable and will improve my lifestyle freeing me up to do more with less stuff...

Bottom line, the following two articles via lisnews.org all occurring in the same month about Amazon selling ebooks to Iphone users and Barnes & Noble buying fictionwise ebook retailer are making me wonder. The time is short for the paper book being the only major format for the book. Long live the ebook... Both can coexist. Photo credit to: Wikipedia Commons

The Job Hunting Resource Helps Statewide...

2009-02-28T11:43:00.010-05:00

A new resource is available for South Carolina residents looking for a job change, wanting directional help in their job search or returning to the workplace after an abscence. The SC Pathways website, which is powered by Kuder skills assessment testing and paid for by various state agencies/organizations, for SC residents is available to adults, students of all ages and businesses for people to find jobs that interest them and businesses to find employees. In the next series of posts, I'm going to cover the four main components of the Kuder resource. Keep in mind this product does require a registration process that takes a few minutes. SC Pathways is available for just SC residents and residents of other states who have paid access to the the following:

Skills/Interests Assessments Section

Occupational Interests

Education or Training Considerations

Getting Ready for the Job Search

= Creating Resumes Online

= Finding Employers

Note: SCOIS at this time is not available as part of SC Pathways for adults, but is available to most students state wide through individual schools.

Literature Resources from Gale - More Ebooks Available Within

2009-02-19T15:07:00.013-05:00

Literature Resources from Gale now includes additional e-books that were previously just in Gale Virtual Reference Library. The purpose of Literature Resources from Gale is the ability to search simultaneously Literature Resource Center, Gale Virtual Reference Library, LitFinder, Twayne and Scribner Writers Series in one place.

Some of the e-books within Literature Resources from Gale include: Contemporary Novelists 7th ed, Contemporary Poets 7th ed, Drama for Students (vols. 1-25), Literary Movements for Students: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Literary Movements 2nd (vols. 1-2), Nonfiction Classics for Students: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Nonfiction Works , (vols 1-5) Novels for Students (Vols 1-28), Poetry for Students (Vols 1-29), Shakespeare for Students: Critical Interpretations of Shakespeare's Plays and Poetry , 2nd ed., (vols 1-3); and Short Stories for Students (Vols 1-26). Over time, additional ebook and other content is being added.

Reference Universe - Need for Speed Answered...

2009-01-16T12:04:00.006-05:00

Reference Universe in the past was a product you could go for a cup of coffee and still be waiting on search results... Recently, search result speed was greatly enhanced. The same general search strategies of using just one or two words in a phrase still works best and it will be nice to see possibly boolean searching become available some day. Bottom line, by far the faster retrieval time of search results is the best improvement to the database outside of content since we got it a couple of years ago or so...

Merry Christmas

2008-12-23T16:45:00.009-05:00

Merry Christmas! I'm taking a break from shop talk to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I'm also reflecting upon the year in the rear view mirror work wise and individually. On the individual side, I got married and overall had an interesting year of great events with marriage being the biggest. On the sad side, in Fall/Winter of 2008 the passing of Thomas Raines and former coworker Darryl Fraiser took place. It is my hope that 2009 will be a great year for you and your family. Enjoy this image, of Christmas tree where my wife and I spent part of our honeymoon in Vancouver, British Columbia at the Vancouver Museum of Art.

Reference USA - Spelling Check Feature

2008-12-16T15:05:00.008-05:00

Spelling a word correctly in a directory search is usually a key factor in the success or failure. Recently, I re-discovered the fuzzy spelling feature in the look-up option. Spelling "elecctrician" instead of electrician may still generate the needed grouping of businesses in many cases if the spelling is close enough. There is also the option of running the word into the Google spell check as well by just typing in the word or phrases and upon executing the searching looking for the Did you mean? link to appear with the hopefully correct spelling to appear.

Searching Fatigue Survey

2008-12-09T20:38:00.009-05:00

A recent EContent issue pulled from Autobytel, Inc. and Kelton Research(KR), in "The State of Search" provided by toeMarketer, Oct. 15, 2007 on searching fatigue. Time Spent on Single Online Information [Topic]

Search by U.S. Adult Broadband Users Before Experiencing Search Engine Fatigue,

2+ hours 65.4%
3+ hours 37.0%
7+ hours 5.0%
Rarely or NeverExperience 27.0%
Note: n = 1,001 ages 18-plus
* May 2007(% of respondents)

* Search fatigue is when users feel impatient or frustrated at not finding the exact relevant information they're looking for right away. Reference Link Cover Source Link

Magill On Literature - Visual Search.

2008-11-19T16:03:00.006-05:00

EBSCO has enhanced the search interface for Magill On Literature. The visual feature builds on a previous enhancements. There is a drill down menu that is very responsive and quick. It does take a little while to get used to, but you can still stick with the list of results in traditional form below the visual search screen.

Newsbank Gets Video Content

2008-11-18T12:17:00.005-05:00

Video content is now available on Newsbank. Sources vary such as large market CBS, NBC and ABC affiliate television stations to traditional Newswire sources providing video content such as the Strange News Broadcast from the Associated Press (AP) to Chiiki.tv specializing in Life and Leisure.

Composing Email.

2008-11-10T12:24:00.004-05:00

A few pithy thoughts from Jakob Nielson and useit.com and his 10/20/08 Alertbox on Transactional Email...

Good email that respects users' time and quickly tells them what they need to know can do wonders for your customer service reputation.

In general, you should write a message according to the users' priorities, starting with the information they're typically looking for.

..processing email is stressful. Users frequently told us that they were too busy to deal with certain email messages, and that they considered any fluff in messages a waste of time. When they check their email, users are typically dealing with multiple requests for their time — whether from their boss, colleagues, or family. People just want to be done with most email, and quickly move past anything that is not absolutely essential.

Jackob Nielsen also goes on to stress making subject lines relevant to users reduces the chances an email will get deleted in the process of pruning/deleting SPAM messages.

Hathi Trust Ditigal Library - Great Ebooks Online

2008-11-08T14:55:00.008-05:00

The Hathi Trust provides a combined collection of public domain/content restricted titles from primarily academic libraries in ebook form online. According to the Hathi website on November 8th, 2008, there are approximately 353,000 titles like Charleston Furniture 1700-1825 which are publicly available online, while approximately an additional 2 million are online with digital rights management restrictions. The Hathi Trust now has a beta ebook search website.

Daily Life America and Daily Life Online Updates

2008-10-21T17:39:00.009-04:00

Daily Life America and Daily Life Online websites were recently enhanced. Text is bigger in the menu options on the intial landing pages, but once past those pages, the websites both remain about the same. It would be nice if Greenwood provided cross searching on Daily Life America to also cover

My Mother's Garden Film - Wed Oct 22nd 7PM Main Library

2008-10-20T16:31:00.009-04:00

My Mother's Garden (reviews)

Wednesday, October 22, 7:00 PM - 8:30 PM Main Library

Join us for a documentary film about a woman whose hoarding disorder has entered a dangerous and life threatening stage. Please note that this documentary has adult language and is not suitable for all audiences. A film discussion follows hosted by Stressed.Pressed.Messed professional organizer Madeleine DeNitto. Additional resources: Children of Hoarders, National Study Group Chronic Disorganization, other CCPL resources within catalog such as Burried in Treasures

Editing PDF Documents - in OpenOffice 3

2008-10-20T15:49:00.010-04:00

Acrobat Reader .pdf files are notoriusly difficult to edit when not in form enabled format or lacking the resources to buy software to edit these files. Open Office 3.0 has recently added a feature to edit .pdf documents in the most recent major upgrade in an additional SUN PDF Import Extenstion. I have yet to test it out on a patron computer or on a Mac OS X, for folks who are filling out forms that are not form enabled in a .pdf version, but wonder if others have found much luck with it??... Apparently, it uses the graphics editor as the engine to do the editing of .pdf doments... Here is a link to the feature listed on the Open Office 3.o web page. Originally found on Unbuntu Forum.

Charleston Walking Tour On IPhone

2008-10-14T17:49:00.006-04:00

Charleston walking tours in a generic sense may be taking a large leap forward in technology with the Charleston City Slickers product. In reading an Apple News Release and another article, I was amazed to learn that the IPhone based product verifies places of importance by GPS while walking down Charleston streets. A person can also reportedly see additional images online of historic sites and read up on locations in history by taking a guided or unguided walking tour over the IPhone. If you have taken this Iphone app for a spin downtown on the tour please let me know your thoughts on it :) PS. I had been on vacation, busy and doing other things so I have not posted to the blog in a while.

WorldCat - Review in Charleston Advisor

2008-09-17T12:13:00.006-04:00

Worldcat.org is such a practical database for Inter Library Loan checks and other big picture book, DVDs, CDs and periodical searches. There is a great review via Resource Shelf to the Charleston Advisor. The full text of the article is available in article form in Eprints. The Jeffrey Beall review covers such things as the periodical component of the database covering ~20 million articles. There is also other interesting tidbits in the review and it is worth looking at even as a refresher on what is in the database.

Book Review: Punching In...

2008-09-13T14:13:00.008-04:00

Puching In: the Unauthorized Adventures of a Front-Line Employee by Alex Frankel is a great read. His stories as a customer and employee at Starbucks, Enterprise Car Rental, UPS, Gap and an Apple Store were rather informative as to how people are molded to fit corporate culture/image yet retain some individualism. The nature of who an individual is and how they fit based on character traits (sometimes widely different, but yet unified in delivering good customer service) into a business culture/image was informative.

His chapter on working at an Apple Store was the most useful to me. While getting training at Apple he covers a sales techniques of positioning, permission (asking customer to reveal needs) and probing (asking for more info to ensure satisfaction) in the sales process, but most importantly getting to know the customer's needs and then selling. Overall, this is a great book with a fresh perspective of working customer service jobs.

Powerless Camp a Library Conference Proposal

2008-09-09T19:29:00.007-04:00

Library conferences are expensive, but worth it like the Summer American Library Association Conference or the less expensive SCLA Conference. I have not been to either in some time, but that is another story... The mix of a new proposed library based PowerlessCamp has me interested and curious. A library conference in the forest without electricity seems inspiring to me. No PowerPoint, no laptops (literally bring it and get it thrown into the fire one persons teases), no overheads, no dazling vendor exhibition halls filled with glitz but an unpluged library conference in the heart of nature covering technology with a fresh perspective and the opportunity to learn and share tech ideas... Various folks have posts on the Code4Lib listserve as I initially found out about it from Roy Tennant's blog. A website has already been setup exploring the idea at PowerlessCamp.org.

Mygazines.com Profiled.

2008-08-18T15:47:00.009-04:00

Lifehacker has a story on Mygazines.com. The website has scanned printed pages of very popular magazines freely available online in a graphically pleasing format. There is no telling how long the website will be up, as publshers are seeking to stop alleged copyright infringement according to Yahoo News. Magazines such as Domino, Fine Homebuilding, Martha Stewart Living and other titles are coming up on Mygazines.

Yahoo! Drops Boolean Features

2008-08-17T14:19:00.009-04:00

Yahoo! no longer supports AND and NOT search operators. Here is more from a recent Online article about the change...

"Yahoo! has dropped support for full Boolean queries. While it was never perfect when processing nested Boolean, it generally worked. Now the NOT and AND operators are gone. The OR operator still works. Since AND is the default, it is not always needed. The NOT operator can be replaced with the minus sign before a term, but nesting with parentheses fails, especially for a search like (term1 AND term2) OR (term3 AND term4). Live Search is now the only major search engine with full Boolean support.

Source: Notess, Greg R. "Search engine update.(Google Inc.)(Yahoo! Inc.)." Online 32.4 (July-August 2008): 13

Stocked Photos for Use...

2008-08-06T13:56:00.005-04:00

Digital Image Magazine has a blog post that lists 25 free image galleries online. This resource comes via blog posts from Phil Bradley's Internet Search Blog and Sara Houghton-Jan LibrarianinBlack blog. The images and websites are rather impressive from the Digital Image Magazine. My favorite thus far comes from ImageBase which has the embedded image in this article post of a book. The link to the original Digital Image Magazine post is here.

Gale Literature Resource Center Updates...

2008-08-06T11:08:00.005-04:00

Gale recently updated the Literature Resource Center (LRC) interface. The interface looks closer to PowerSearch with tabbed results and other nicely defined limiters such as peer reviewed sources, primary sources, work overviews and others by kind of documents in an easy to find and use check box system. Overall, the enhancements are really nice. When you get time take a look at the new features or view the guided tour in PowerPoint.

Making the Most of Opportunties...

2008-08-05T17:41:00.012-04:00

Stan Garfield's Weekly Knowledge Management HP blog has a fascinating take on business maxims for individuals and as an extension communities. He posits "What advice do you have for leaders?" with three main maxims and one in particular that caught my attention being:

"Maxim #2: Three Rights
1. Do what is right – logically, financially, morally, ethically, and environmentally – with decency, integrity, and fairness
2. Do it the right way – honestly, accurately, correctly, and completely – with good effort, resulting in high quality, and meeting all commitments
3. Do it right away – don’t procrastinate, make excuses, or avoid what is unpleasant – the sooner you start, the better."

For full post click here.

Criminal History Searches...

2008-08-05T15:41:00.005-04:00

The SC State Law Enforcement division does criminal background checks for a fee. Today, I stumbled upon criminal searches.com which is free, although not comprehensive, it provides traffic convictions in many jurisdictions, like failure to use a seat belt to serious felony offenses in various locations, but the database is far from complete and various concerns about data usage, privacy, and errors of omission are possible. When looking for famous folks with criminal convictions, I did find a few, but many did not come up that I would have anticipated... Overall, although not comprehensive, it is a website that does not charge for initial around the country searching for individual criminal convictions. The ability to plug in a street address and then look for residents at that address for criminal convictions can be problematic as data may not always match up correctly. This is a tool for use with wide spread cautions.

Cuil, Is it Really a Cool Competitor to Google?

2008-07-30T15:25:00.005-04:00

Yesterday, I looked at the new search engine called Cuil. After reading a few comments, I tried it out. My first search was on "home organization". The 6th link or so went to a very neat looking graphic of an organized garage and although the descriptive wording seemed disjointed I clicked it. I SHOULD have looked at the URL of something like giga.bot.50 that went to a web page I would not want to have shown to my mother. Overall, the look and feel of the results screen, a very large set of indexed websites, thumbnail images, and other features are noticeably different then the Google or Yahoo default search pages as Cuil may one day be a formidable alternative to Google . When you get time, give it Cuil a try, although use caution.

Charleston Reference Turns 2 Years Old

2008-07-22T16:36:00.003-04:00

Charlestonref is now 2 years old. July 20th, 2006 was the first post and it was on moving text from the web to MS Word documents. From that initial post, a lot has changed... Posts tend to be shorter, the topics mainly cover electronic resources, freely available websites and the occasional outreach event. It is hard to say what this blog will look like in the next two years, but one thing is certain it will not be the same. Happy Birthday Charlestonref - Steven S.

Magill On Literature Gets an Update...

2008-07-18T08:56:00.003-04:00

The Magill on Literature resource tool has recently been updated with some search enhancements. Some of the new features as listed on the website include:

A new simpler basic searching screen
The ability to preview an article or image by mouseover
New result list
New detail display
New search history capability
Enhanced personalization features
New organization of limiters and expanders
New search modes including SmartText
URLs that can be bookmarked.

Cool Graphics Tool

2008-07-16T15:32:00.002-04:00

Need a cool image set? Try Multicolr Search Lab. RSS4LIB has a neat really post on what is being done at Multicolr Search Lab with image searching of like colors on Flicker and a fee based 3 million photo images archive. The art speaks for itself... Direct link to displayed image is:
http://labs.ideeinc.com/multicolr/#colors=ffffff,20394a,fefc55;

New: Gale Virtual Reference Library Ebooks

2008-07-16T11:22:00.005-04:00

Recently, new e-books were added to our Gale Virtual Reference Library set. These are available individually by subject and by All A-Z listings individually on the website. Take time to browse the table of contents. Each of these e-books have something unique to offer...

African American Almanac - African American history, society and culture.
Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography - Collection of narrative and brief biographies of individual scientists.
Everyday Finance: Economics, Personal Money Management and Entrepreneurship.
Gale Encyclopedia of Diets - covering dieting concepts, historical approaches and public health.
Gale Encyclopedia of Mental Health - covers 150 mental disorders with entries concerning identification and treatment.

Daily Life America: Focus on the US

2008-07-16T10:49:00.006-04:00

Daily Life America explores the activities and influences of our landscape and culture over time primarily here in America. The resource covers topics such as world war II "victory gardens" and the impact on daily life. The cultural influences such as Germans bringing the tradition of Oktoberfests or natives from Holland celebrating tulip festivals and such practical things as wooden shoes for dirty farm work. We have had Daily Life Online for a while, but the titles from Daily Life America adds to our list of resources greatly. If you want to search both simultaneously, use Daily Life Online.

Historical Newspapers - Treasured Sources...

2008-07-16T10:03:00.005-04:00

America's Historical Newspaper is a great source for original primary source materials. There are wonderful primary source articles covering the titanic sinking, civil war, world war I, and all the way back to 1690. Overall, this resource is rather solid. Keep in mind that the text is scanned so if you search for genealogical information on say the family name of "Volkman" you may get some results centered on "workman" instead. My favorite part of this resource, for example, was reading an article about the Chicago World Series Championship season back in 1908. One game was called due to darkness in the 12th inning. This resource tool was recently added to the website.

Six Sigma and Lean Borrowing a Page from Industry...

2008-07-15T09:13:00.008-04:00

Yesterday, a friend of mine started 2 weeks of six sigma/lean manufacturing training. From that I thought, maybe I should look at this too, other than reading two books covering Jack Welch's/GE's use of the methodologies a few years ago, I found some applications to these approaches for public libraries and how we deliver our resource tools.

Six Sigma work, by general definition is approximately or less than "3.4 defects per 1 million opportunties for defect" Source: Wikipedia.org (yes I took the easy road instead of a more vetted source). Six sigma is also primarily a process to identify the most frequently occuring or big problems and work to solve those first, with specialized and skilled teams, then each additional item with the most amount of occurences or problems is then tackled. Ultimately striving for 0 customer seen defects.

The lean manufacturing is, quoting again from Wikipedia out of convenience, "is the optimal way of producing goods through the removal of waste and implementing flow, as opposed to batch and queue. " I did kinda sorta have an ah ha moment this morning when reading a quote from Barbara Wheat and Chuck Mills book Leaning into six sigma "If you go and make everything a Six Sigma problem, you're going to constipate your system and waste a lot of resources." MMM, food for thought.

PowerSearch: Mapped Results with One Search Feature

2008-07-12T12:27:00.006-04:00

Visual graphic groupings with text can make subject searching easier. The PowerSearch resource has recently added a feature called One Search which provides visual mapping of results. When doing a One Search with say the terms "'clothes washer'", "dryer" and "evaluations" the following map appeared. Mapping is not a speedy feature, but the extra 10 seconds on waiting for the graphics can be worth the wait. Give it a try sometime. This new enhancement was picked up by reading a recent DISCUS-L post

User Generated Posts on Encyclopaedia Brittanica

2008-07-08T18:15:00.004-04:00

Encyclopaedia Britannica is experimenting with user generated posts on its' website. In reading the Library Link of the Day website, I found a link to a Wired Magzine article and the Britannica blog post on their beta user generated content at http://www.britannica.com/bps/home. So far, I could not find the beta product content anywhere on the Public Library Edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica. That does not say someday it might be adding content just like the On Demand 5 product. This appears to be a work in progress. Note: graphics credit to Britannica Blog Post

Friday Funny or Deep Thought?

2008-06-27T16:53:00.006-04:00

This afternoon, I got kind of a chuckle when reading What books have changed your life? as a reader poll question on Lifehacker.com. The comments were serious to humorous, but the one that truly caught my attention was by blazzedshaggy stating "The ones that keep me warm when I burn them!". No, I'm not advocating a book burning or a 'scan everything' and throw the books away model, but I'm just posting this out of a humorous moment. Enjoy your Friday.

Federated Search Writing Contest: the $500 Question

2008-06-25T09:15:00.008-04:00

Roy Tennant recently posted a blog entry on the $500 writing contest for "an essay that describes the landscape of federated search in 10 years." If you are so inclined, you might want to kick the tires or have an entry in the contest as your submission can have up to 1,500 words. If you want to make a submission or read the rules additional information is available at:

http://federatedsearchblog.com/category/contest/.

My initial thoughts are more historic then futuristic. Where has federated searching been in the last 10 years? Well, without revealing my own thoughts on the mater yet, I'm still trying to figure where it has been to make predictions about the future. I'm not sure yet if I will even attempt to adequately answer the question or make predictions yet, but I do say it has given me some good 'food for thought' and possibly an interesting challenge if not for entertainment value. What do you think federated search will look like in 10 years?

Live Seach Books : to Fade Away..

2008-05-24T10:19:00.004-04:00

Microsoft on Friday announced their Live Search Books project will close and fade into regular search engine content in a blog post. Other than Google Book s, Open Content Alliance, Project Guttenberg and some libraries in which free book content is going online there are just a handful of expensive large scale book scanning projects going on. There is still others in the pay for ebooks marketplace being Ebook Mall, Amazon, Overdrive, and some others in specialty niches like Safari Books. It is interesting just watching what is going on with such products as Kindle. Overall, I'm disappointed that Live Search Books project financially did not work well for Microsoft and that it is being discontinued soon.

Wilson Catalogs - A Charming Update...

2008-05-19T15:45:00.005-04:00

A Wilson Catalogs database update recently took place and new features were added such as the ability to check the Ibistro catalog and view cover art on many recent books via Amazon.com. One of the newer features include a thesaurus search that can show terms in alternative or similar terms form such as water being: drinking water, water supply and others. In practical terms, Wilson Catalogs is a great resource for when you want to find a well reviewed book on a topic in which there are tons of resources to choose from such as a biography on Abraham Lincoln. The resource covers materials that are more likely to be circulating and not in narrowly defined criteria for inclusion such as the American Reference Books Annual (ARBA) database.

Scribed : another Document Presentation Website

2008-05-15T14:45:00.012-04:00

Today, I used scribd.com for saving a short insturction set on stoping MS Outlook Web Access based email spam and was impressed with speed of the online presentation resource. It allows for a variety of document formats being powerpoint, word, excel, and pdf documents in a flickr like display. Unfortunately the website slideshare has rather slow download times, and I have switched to scribd for faster download times and noticeably quick uploading of files as well. Does anyone have comments to add about Scribd or Slideshare? Any thoughts?

Stopping the SPAM in MS Outlook Web Access

2008-05-15T09:36:00.009-04:00

MS Outlook Web Access Spam Block Trick - Upload a doc

Okay, I have had it. Ever since my first email account, way back in '89 or '90 with WNIN free local bulletin board service or B.B.S (with a Bitnet email address), I have been comfortable dealing with SPAM as just a fact of life. Well, my need of a shorter attention span, and less of a tolerance for spam is building up as lately I have been focusing on working with efficiency. Finally, I took time to read a help screen and learned something: how to block domains and specific email addresses in MS Outlook Web Access. I tested out the domain block on Yahoo and promptly blocked an email from myself. My personal email Yahoo email address got the: your email has been rejected by Steven Schwengel. Hopefully, I did not on accident reject legitimate email from Yahoo! users who sent me an email -- sorry honey (my Fiance got it too).

Step 1. Login and select [Goto Options]
Step 2. Under Privacy and Junk E-mail Prevention, select the Filter Junk E-mail check box.
Step 3. Select Manage Junk E-mail Lists
Step 4. The Manage Junk Email Lists selection of block senders can include addresses or domains like @yahoo.com.
Step 5. Click Add to enter in an address to block.
Step 6. Enter in domain name or email address to block.
Step 7. Click [OK] and then [Save and Close] to retain.

Britannica Online Public Library Edition: New Content

2008-05-13T15:51:00.005-04:00

Britannica has some new content. In reading the April 15th, 2008 Booklist Spring Database Update article it lists a new quotation source and a gateway to classics within Brita nni ca Public Library edition. The amount of quotes "4000 ... from both historical and contemporary men and women" is not particular overwhelming or the "225 works by 140 [classic] authors", but both are a nice additional add - link to source. On an unrelated matter, I found fascinating news stories from major sources like the NY Times and BBC. If you like Yahoo.com featured articles, chances you make like the smaller amount of profiled news stories and recently updated articles on the Britannica public library edition. It is nice every once in a while to just think about the trusty on-standby encyclopedias.

SIRSI SchoolRooms - Available from Catalog.

2008-05-08T14:00:00.006-04:00

SIRSI School Rooms is available to South Carolina public library patrons as part of DISCUS and here. Look in the upper right hand corner of the catalog for the link. Outside of the slick glossy subject articles, there is a cool feature being the abiltiy to cross search a handful of non-Gale databases such as Encyclopedia Americana, New Book of Knowledge and Sirs Discoverer and Knowledge Source. The bottom line is that the cross search feature is nifty, and overall SC SIRSI School Rooms is primarily a resource designed young kids.

Diversifying Portfolios with Morningstar X-Ray

2008-05-07T14:10:00.004-04:00

| View | Upload your own

In most cases, it is a good idea to diversify your investment money for retirement and other endeavors. If you have all your investment money in say technology stocks, and it goes bad, your financial future may be bleak unless you have money in a variety of investments. One such tool to help make diversifcation of investment decisions is the Morningstar X-Ray Tool. To use this tool, take a look at he following slidecast.

Step 1. Go to Morningstar website at: http://www.morningstar.com.
Step 2. Either SIGN UP or LOG IN for free to use X-Ray tool.
Step 3. Select Portfolio tab.
Step 4. In drop down Portfolio Manager menu, select Instant X-Ray sm.
Step 5. Enter in mutual fund or stock market ticker symbols plus dollar holding value.
Step 6. After entering values, click {Show Instant X-Ray} for report.
Other investment tools and resources are provided and listed on the www.ccpl.org website.

SlideShare and Flicker Update

2008-05-06T16:07:00.005-04:00

A Thursday cool websites update on Slideshare and Flickr. For those of you who may be unware of what SlideShare is, the resource provides hosting for MS PowerPoint slides or PDF's in a presentation format with the ability to add sound. One library who has used slideshare is the City of Casa Grande Public Library with database slideshare overviews. What I like about slideshare, pending a fast Internet download time, is that you can speed up the sections or slow slides down based upon your own interest in a presentation. I could also find some Library 2.0 conference presentations as well on the website. The second little update is that flicker.com now has short movie clips up to 90 seconds in length that can be uploaded or viewed. In trying out the video sections this afternoon, at times clips would seem to just stall out (maybe a download speed issue). Overall, content in Slideshare or Flickr can be really useful.

Springshare makes Database Content Interesting Again

2008-04-27T15:41:00.009-04:00

Few people like to search for information, whereas most people just want to find and use. Yesterday, while working in the our call center, I stumbled upon reading a Computers in Library 2008 Conference blog post on rss4lib.com for a Springshare product called LibGuides and found myself impressed with Temple University's Web Guides use of the product.

LibGuides has the 'human element' with patron tagging, comments, clearly identified online help buttons with IM or email, and each page has a peronality with each editor profiled and such a good job of making the page look 'friendly' and easy to use. Libguides, seems to clearly present and differentiate sources by kind and subject by standard templates when implemented well without adding to much chaos, confusions, and complexity of the SIRSI rooms product in just comparing a few SIRSI Rooms Sites linked at the Memphis Public Library blog here, here, and here. Bottom line, the Libguides product seems substantially better at providing online user content guides for patrons.

Possible 'Second Life' Application Practical for Libraries

2008-04-22T12:34:00.020-04:00

There is only so much technology that is frankly practical. But today, I was impressed with the insights of a new Apple Computer patent filing story on MacNN. The concept is built around the community shopping experience. I know you may be thinking what does online shopping have to do with public libraries and databases? Bare with me for a few moments for the analogy...

You walk into a box store, say Wal-Mart to compare the latest offering of digital cameras (two people recently where I work bought digital cameras) and then in the process of talking with others who are buying digital cameras find out their thoughts on say camera A over camera B. This does not happen often in the current online world of catalogs, pictures, and written reviews.

Whereas a handful of people, potentially numerous others looking at digital cameras online simultaneously in a 'second life' online library environment, are able to share insights in real time say for example (Ralph tells Sarah a 5 mega pixels is usually enough quality for an 8.5 by 11 inch photograph done well). Sometimes, there is comfort in knowing others who are looking for similar feature sets just to say hi, share in their decision making process, and find comfort in others making the same decision: buying a digital camera.

How is this model a potential application to public libraries besides shopping? One potential is the creation of a storefront of rooms, say if your interested in science you can hang out your avatar in the science room. The library component comes in where content in databases from magazine articles, books, audiobooks, music, and visual materials on topics of interest is available for use on the storefront. Then people can leave stickies, messages, and other notes on content that is sent passively and actively to users (hey, come and view the abstract of a paper on topic x or y).

We already have library content in traditional online public access catalogs and databases in online form. The difficulty in making library content visually appealing, digital rights management practical, and practically useful to a community of users.

As for community creation and utility, one thought is that users will find other users who are interested in specific areas, just like those shopping in the Apple model and can in one sense, draw upon serendipity or off topic discussions to generate new ideas and be feed a stream of the latest research in a subject.

In all practicalness such a 'second life' library product that will be the 'standard' say '900 pound gorilla' in the room so to speak will probably be developed by specialized libraries. In general, special libraries tend to be narrower in collecting subject areas, with greater depth in content, and collaboration is important as this pool of libraries and users is more likely to have the time and funds to do such an endeavor as a practical 'second life' library community.

April Events: Tuesday Board Games Nights and Collecting or Hoarding Outreach

2008-04-21T10:40:00.006-04:00

It is not often I cover outreach events on the blog, but today I am going to. First, during the month of April we have been having a board games outreach on Tuesdays 6:30 to 8:30 in Reference and Children's areas at the Main Library. As a result of the outreach, a photo was taken and we received an honorable mention in the NLW - Day in the Life of SC Libraries Photo Contest 2008 Flickr contest. Mr. John Elerbe has also allowed his private collection of board games to go on display in the Main Library. On April 14th, Madeleine Denitto of Stressed.Pressed.Messed and Ronnie Classen - Assistant Fire Chief of the City Charleston Fire Department presented a program entitled Collecting or Hoarding as other pictures were taken for the contest and it was a very informative outreach. It is not often I have two outreach events back to back, but it worked out well. Also, a special thanks goes to Michel Hammes who took the honorable mention photo.

Books & Authors is Replacing What Do I Read Next?

2008-04-21T10:11:00.006-04:00

The Books & Authors database will be replacing the What Do I Read Next? resource as part of the SC DISCUS initiative. The announcment was made recently and is on the SC-DISCUS listserve. The Books & Authors database is a dramatic enhancement in navigation and searchability in comparison to the older resource.

Screencasts of Database on SC Discuss

2008-04-21T09:43:00.006-04:00

Screen cast tutorials of databases are being placed on the SC Discus website. The first one covers the LitFinder database with emphasis on Spanish Language Poetry. It will be interesting to see how many additonal screencasts go up on the various database. I'm not sure how effective it will be for patrons (as most folks will be using computers without sound), but will be of primay use for staff.

Sports Illustrated has 53 Years of Issues Online

2008-04-04T16:38:00.005-04:00

Sport Illustrated Vault has 53 years worth of the Sports Illustrated (SI) magazine issues currently available online for free. The content comes in various formats in articles, magazine covers, video clips and galleries. In reading BeSpacific, I stumbled onto the SI website this afternoon. I found what I was looking for being Ron Santo's picture on the cover of a June 30th, 1969 issue of SI and Ryne Sandberg making the cover in 1992. By the way, the Chicago Cubs baseball team is facing a rather long draught of not winning the world series: 100 years and counting.

Novelist gets Enhancements

2008-03-24T16:39:00.007-04:00

Fiction reading suggestions and recommendations database Novelist recently underwent some enhancements. The following list of updated features comes directly from the EBSCO website:

A single search bar at the homepage allows you to enter author, title, key word, descriptive word or series name.

You can also enter Boolean phrases and search tags.

Search results that not only retrieve all of the book titles that meet the criteria for the search you entered, but also retrieve a list of all of our feature content that meet the search criteria. All of the content at the Result List is tabbed so there is a tab for books, a tab for Author Read-alikes, a tab for Awards, a tab for Book Discussion Guides and so on.

An information rich homepage that puts all of our content right at your fingertips. You can browse to all of your favorite feature content (BookTalks, Recommended Reads reading lists, Author Read-alikes and more).

A completely revamped Readers' Advisory section on the NoveList homepage, which includes professional resources for you, as an individual, and for the staff at your library to improve RA skills.

Expanded Result Lists that include book jacket images, links to feature content, a link to your library's catalog and more. We know that when you are busy, you want as much data at the search results page as possible. However, our book record is as robust as ever with links to related authors, related content and reviews.

Periodicals and E-Book Availability via PowerSearch

2008-03-18T17:49:00.007-04:00

Looking for an elusive title or just want to browse a magazine online? The publication search within PowerSearch can combine the majority of the Gale periodical and ebook databases. The general databases such as Academic OneFile or General Reference Center and General OneFile are within the currently 17 available cross searchable databases while 14 are not. There are other sources within Research Tools such as Newsbank with a list of popular magazines not included within any of Gale databases and depending upon the type of popular magazine needed Newsbank is worth looking at. The Publication search is also good at finding EIU Country Reports or Fodor's travel guides based on cities or regions. Bottom line, publication search within PowerSearch is a great and practical tool to use.

Book Review Index - Search by Format type Easily

2008-03-18T17:33:00.000-04:00

Audiobooks, ebooks, periodicals and book reviews by format type just got easier to find with Book Review Index Online. In many cases, it is a real pain to find a review based on the format of the title in formal review sources. Amazon is great for mass market or niche titles and sometimes format can run over various editions, but for expensive reference materials, Book Review Index Online is great to have for standard review sources. There is the annoying factor though that the results page is in index form, but it is an improvement from having to just guess on the format type of an article title or go through several entries that are not in the desired format. Bottom line, Book Review Index is a great sources for finding reviews on titles by format so much quicker than before.

6 Keys to a Satisfied Reference Customer Experience

2008-03-03T14:36:00.010-05:00

Okay, I'm not going to sound like a 2 AM infomercial specialist on creating satisfied customers. However, the latest issue of Reference User Services Quarterly has a fascinating article on virtual reference key traits that are more likely to generate satisfied users of reference services. The study was based on formal application of RUSA and IFLA service standards... The formal title, and link to the full text of the of the article is "Effects of Librarians' Behavioral Performance on User Satisfaction in Chat Reference Services."

The following are bullet points pulled directly from the article. "Chat reference services were perceived to be more satistifying to the patrons when librarians:

* used patron's name during the reference interview;
* communicated more receptively and listened more carefully;
* search with or for the patron;
* provided pointers;
* asked the patron whether the question was completely answered; and
* asked the patron to come back if they needed further assistance."

If you want to predict how likely a user is going to feel satisfied by service received what follows are some statisically measured and tested behaviors straight from the article that for patrons are good indicators of higher level of satisfcation based primarly on the "RUSA Guidelines for Behavioral Performance of Reference and Information Services Providers" of a higher level of satisfied user.

* answered? - asking patrons if their questions had been completely answered
* offering pointers - for example offering pointers, detailed search paths, URL's and names of resources to find the answer;
* come back - encouraging patrons to return if they have further questions;
* searching - searching with or for patrons by explaining search strategies and sequences and reformulating search strategies;
* listening - receptive and cordial listening.

American Decades (1900-1999)

2008-02-27T16:10:00.007-05:00

American Decades and American Decades Primary Sources are 10 volume reference print and ebook resources covering American society and major historical events. Ebook versions are available in the Gale Virtual Reference Library. Both sets provide general decade overviews and major items of note in the: Arts, Business and Economy, Education, Fashion and Design, Government and Politics, Law and Justice, Lifestyles and Social Trends, Media, Religion, Science/Technolgy and Sports. Both versions have table of contents and back of the book indexes available. Keyword and text searching is available in the ebook version found in the Gale Virtual Reference Library.

1920's sample topics from the Primary Sources set includes: Advertising for the 1926 Studebacker from American Motorist- The 1929 Metropolis of Tomorrow essay by Hugh Ferriss on large cities- Futuristic House Plans such as "4D House" Fuller, R. Buckminster. "4D House (1928)." In the archives of the Buckminster Fuller Institute. - Letter to Calvin Coolidge about installment plan buying (1926) and how this financing impacts small business owners.- Images from Life magazine and the 1928 book Our Dancing Daughters of couples doing the "Charleston" dance.- 1929 NY Times Newspaper article about 7 Gangsters killed by rival gang firing squad.

Science Resource Center

2008-02-22T17:19:00.007-05:00

Science Resource Center is a database that can capture the mind and imagination of even those who don't follow all the intricacies of science. Generally speaking the book and many magazine sources in the resource center will provide explanations in practical terms. And when even a term is in doubt, the Meriiam Websters Collegiate Dictionary usually does the trick in explaining a science term. There is also the Cengage Gale Science Glossary, which at first glance seems to provide basic to advanced science terms, but not a whole lot of content yet in the glossary. Overall my impressions of this database are positive, I'm so glad we have this part of the DISCUS package, and content does not seem overwhelming to those who are not well versed in Science.

Databases in the News...

2008-02-06T16:15:00.000-05:00

Greetings. It has been a while since my last post, but I wanted to say that there are more database overviews coming to this blog as there are new products on the website and one at the Main library. What is exciting are several things that are currently available now on http://www.ccpl.org/ . Amanda has already blogged about the new Small Business Resource Center and Demographics Now. There are some of the new DISCUS databases that I have already blogged about being: Nursing Resource Center, Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center, Educator's Reference Center and an update to History Resource Center: US.

In the next few days, I hope to post content on History Resource Center: World, Book Review Index Online, Science Resource Center, and the new WestLaw database available at Main -- which is rather a time saving resource for finding content and in many situations would not be available in the library in print form. With three database trials still going on, it may be a few more days before the next blog post goes up again. - Steven S.

History Resource Center : US Update Worth the Wait

2008-02-06T15:10:00.000-05:00

The History Resource Center : US database update was worth the wait. The database is a much improved with better chonology searching, ability to limit search to specific reference titles in a prominent fashion. The window dressing of the database is engaging as it is elegant, but yet reasonably easy to use. Maybe I had not noticed it before, but the research guide explaining the difference between primary and secondary sources is explained in very practical terms. Overall, this is a great update to the database.

Educator's Reference Center

2008-01-15T12:08:00.000-05:00

With over 1,100 education related periodicals, and of that half of the Education Resource Information Center (ERIC) database journals in full-text, the Educator's Reference Center is very practical for those needing the latest research and development in Education. In looking at this database, there is also a few book like content sources such as Great Thinkers of the World and links to the ERIC database documents previously found in microfilm only format. Some of periodicals in the database include: Education Week, Instructor, Teacher Magazine, Young Children and several discipline specific education periodicals. Overall, Educator’s Reference Center has actual full-text content in periodical sources not found freely on the ERIC database. For additional information read ERIC : An Education Resource Information Center Database.

Nursing Resource Center

2008-01-10T16:46:00.000-05:00

Behavior Management, Behavior Management: Overactivity/ Inattention and Behavior Management: Self-Harm may seem like excess wordy searches, but in the Nursing Intervention Classication (NIC) system these groupings may generate exactly what you or a patron is looking for in the new DISCUS Nursing Resource Center database coming soon.

There are three formal terminology or classification systems used in the Nursing Resource Center database. These three classification systems in which information is grouped by are the Nursing Diagnosis& Definintions (NADA-1), Nursing Intervention (NIC) and Nursing Outcomes (NOC) . If all these terms or classification systems seem intimidating, you still have the option to search by Gale Subject, Keyword, and Entire Document by text word although without the above term system you might miss something important.

Overall, this database is geared to nursing practicioners areas with periodicals and reference texts covering nursing. Note: when the new databases become available on http://www.ccpl.org/ website, I'll update the links.

Opposing Viewpoints : DISCUS DB Coming Soon

2008-01-10T12:46:00.000-05:00

Topics of "hot button" interests that range from abortion, euthanasia, same sex marriage, war and war crimes to some that have been debated for centuries such as capital punishment are in the Opposing Viewpoints database which is coming soon. The resource provides a variety of source materials from Gale, Greenhaven Press and Macmillan Reference. Other content such as magazine articles, some primary sources, viewpoints, statistics, and websites are included. For students, the ability to limit content by basic, intermediate and advanced level audiences is also available. Overall, this is a great source for students writing speeches, comparison papers, and those who want broad overviews on topics with a variety of opinions.

Encyclopedias : When Just Enough Will Do...

2008-01-08T15:28:00.000-05:00

It is interesting how many things are buried in Online Encyclopedias... Encyclopaedia Britannica has sections covering notable quotations, a world atlas, compare countries and the recently added gateway to the classics section. Grolier's has content for the elementary, middle, and upper middle school student with an animals compenent content added in the last year or so. Bottom line, Grolier's which is great for young adults and Encyclopaedia Britannica which has the greatest depth and breadth of sources are two excellent starting points when just enough will do on a wide variety of topics.

America's Newspapers is Newsbank with Updates.

2008-01-08T14:44:00.000-05:00

Newsbank recently got an upgrade and a name change that was made on the ccpl.org website to America's Newspapers. The sources for the most part remain the same with the addition of web sources. Keep in mind that newspapers of record (Chicago Tribue, LA Times, San Franciso Chronicle and the Washington Post) are available in-library only while the other sources are home access available. The create e-mail alert service was not working as far as I could tell at this time, but it is still a great source. Overall, these enhancements have added additional value to the database.

Google Books as Reference Tool

2007-12-21T16:31:00.000-05:00

When Reference Universe, the CCPL Catalog, and other CCPL Research Tools are not working and Inter Library Loan is not an option because of time Google Book's vast collection of scanned library books is a great source for the obscure and hard to find information on specific topics. Google Book's is particularly useful when patrons are required to find monograph sources on topics we may not heavily collect in such as hippotherapy in great depth or say primary sources on Marie Antoinette's wedding (two that I could find). Sometimes, it requires doing a screen capture and then printing that captured screen. Bottom line, when used within reason, Google Book is another great tool in the tool shed so to speak. More posts on this topic are forthcoming...

Greenwood Daily Life Online: A Spin Down Memory Lane...

2007-11-29T10:33:00.000-05:00

What is the origin of the lollipop or rotisserie chicken? Was apartment living feasible for most folks in ancient Rome? Greenwood Daily Life Online (basic) covers food, clothing, shelter and the social aspects of daily life involving education, family time, holidays, music/dance, politics and economics, recreation, religion and myths.... Topics such as science and/or the influences of religion over time are also included. In order to get a good idea of what is and what is not in the database, take a look at the Greenwood Daily Life Online (basic) database title list and primary documents to get a feel for the database. Bottom Line, there is great daily life in history content within this database.

Post & Courier - 2000 to Recent Issues Available

2007-11-26T11:53:00.000-05:00

The Post & Courier content backfiles from Jan 5th, 2000 to recent issues are now working again in the Custom Newspapers and PowerSearch databases. Earlier this Summer, large chunks of issues dissappeared leaving a handful of days worth of content out of 365 days a year for years such as 2003. Typically, a person will find about 30 or so articles depending on if it was a busy or slow newsday, in each issue of the newspaper with a local or regional focus with feature articles. Most of the recent issue content was not affected over the Summer and Fall by this gap in content. Keep in mind that individuals also have index coverage of the Post & Courier (1994 to current) , including a death index, with the Post & Courier Index that is maintained by the Charleston County Public Library This database not require a library card or in branch only use. Bottom line, you can once again access Charleston and regional area news coverage with backfiles for Post & Courier content again within Custom Newspapers/PowerSearch databases from Jan 5th 2000 to recent issues in full text.

ERIC: an Education Resource Information Center Database

2007-11-21T14:07:00.000-05:00

ERIC Education Resource Information Center database is very practical and useful resource in a variety of education and related subject areas. For example, I was able to find lesson plans on teaching English as a second language in a large business or for industry. The advanced search is rather useful in limiting results to full text or by audience levels as well. If you are student or just wanting to learn the fundamentals of premium database searching this an excellent resource that provides search aids including a thesarus. Bottom line, the ERIC database has great education related content with 1.2+ million bibliographic records that are well indexed, abstracted, and in many cases full-text documents.

Savy Search tips for Super Web Searchers

2007-11-21T13:18:00.000-05:00

Want to move beyond just text word searching in search engines? John Satter has authored a wonderful blog post on getting more out of Google, MSN and Yahoo on search engine optimization. His post focuses on searching text found in specific locations, web addresses, relationships of other websites, filetypes of data and an assundry of other features. It is well worth your time. Cool, but maybe not all that practical features like Google Math are not included. Bottom line, you will probably find something useful from The ultimate guide to advanced searching within Yahoo, Google and MSN blog post. Originally found via Lifehacker.

Health And Wellness Resource Center : New Redesign & Features

2007-11-21T10:34:00.001-05:00

Health and Wellness Resource Center has a database has a new design. The layout has also increased useablitiy and navigation. You can now type in a symptoms in a matching dialog box and get select articles in 2007 - PDR (Phsycians Desk Reference) Family Guide to Prescriptions Drugs on possible over the counter drugs, herbal remedies and medicines prescribed by a physician. Keep in mind that the sources within this database are generally geared to those students on a 10th grade reading level or higher with some on an 8th grade level. Overall, the enhancements make this database easier to use and find content.

STAT-USA : Business Database at Main Library

2007-11-20T18:55:00.000-05:00

STAT-USA is one of a few databases with Main only access for CCPL users. This database covers economics and trade primarily in two parts.
(1) State of the Nation has economic indicator data to specific sectors like: housing and construction; employment; manufacturing and industry; monetary statistics; economic policy and productivity. As a side note, you may find Federal Reserve Board (FRB) speeches entertaining to read. :) (2) Globus & NTDB component has country overviews; economic data; export/import stats and potential international trade leads.

Bottom line, much of the same or similiar content is available buried in various government websites; however, this database does maintain unique content not found elsewhere online.

DISCUS Announcement 7 New Databases...

2007-11-19T15:24:00.000-05:00

7 new databases for public and school district libraries, according to Amy Durenberg of the SC State Library, will be available in January 2008. These resources are: Opposing ViewPoints Resource Center, Science Resource Center, History Resource Center: World, LitFinder (Already Available to CCPL cardholders and users at branches), Educator's Reference Complete, Book Review Index Online Plus, Small Business Resource Center, and Nursing Resource Center. Information on how to access the trial login site and a thank you note to those who took time to provide evaluations to the DISCUS Database Assessment Team is now available in a listserv posting.

SC Procurement Contracts & Proposal System Changes

2007-11-15T16:26:00.000-05:00

South Carolina Business Opportunities (twice weekly publication) is now available for free and without charge or need to enter a password. The resource lists proposed contracts that the state is seeking bids. There is also a new process for online bidding and contractors registering as an excerpt on the website states

"On November 5, 2007, the State of South Carolina will 'go live' with a new procurement system under the South Carolina Enterprise Information System (SCEIS) sponsorship... [Online functions include:] 1. viewing and responding to current Materials Management Office (MMO) and Information Technology Management Office (ITMO) procurements,2. managing your company's account information, and 3. accessing other collaborative functions, such as online bidding."

Additional Links:
Chief Procurment Officers for Goods and Services and Construction

Morningstar Mutual Funds

2007-11-15T12:51:00.000-05:00

Morning Star Mutual Fund provides analyst opinions and research covering mutual funds. The resource provides investors with an overview of options in mutual funds, fund governance and management, historical profiles, performance, ratings and risk, portfolio analysis, and Morningstar's own take on a topic. The online version content is available in PDF form on Website. The product also covers select mutual funds with equities (stocks) in the US and abroad; and also bonds being taxable and municipal. The print and electronic editions of the Morningstar Mutual Fund product is available at Dorchester, John’s Island, Main, Otranto, Mt Pleasant and St Andrews.

CQ Researcher Update

2007-11-05T14:46:00.000-05:00

Congressional Quarterly Researcher database is getting a new version of the current website. The content is pretty much the same as there are new features. According to the Congressional Quarterly Reseacher revised website beta announcement these new features will include: "an option for users to comment on a particular [researcher] article, the ability to print and email part or all of a report, an 'In the News' archive for easy reference, roll-over footnote displays within articles, and a number of new design enhancements". The database is available in web form to in-library and home access users with a library card.

Library, Information and Technology Abstracts

2007-10-23T16:31:00.000-04:00

Library, Information and Technology Abstracts is a great *free* resource from EBSCO. When you need to find content on specific library topics this source indexes and abstracts more than 690+ periodicals, books, research reports and proceedings. This can be a treasured source for finding those much needed tips on how to do something or to locate great examples buried in some library publication. Keep in mind, that if you are after a specific publication not in the collection the option to request the title via Inter Library Loan is available.

Security Solutions: Protecting a Home or Small Business Computer and Network

2007-10-18T08:46:00.000-04:00

On Wednesday October 24th, 7:00 to 8:00 PM at the Main Library Auditorium Jamey Mellis of Software Solutions and Designs Inc will be presenting on wireless PC set-ups, data backup, sypware removal and network security. Jamey is overviewing and providing information on these general topics. He will introduce various kinds of technology solutions to secure your PC and network.

Research Tools with End User Input

2007-10-04T11:38:00.000-04:00

The list of sources in which users generate content is extensive, but in the library world it is a rather short list and it is growing. Recently 'old world' databases with traditional publishing roots such as Mitchell1 OnDemand5 (available at the Main Library) are now accepting user generated content. User generated content is still a novelty in the library world, but hopefully over time beneficial user generated database content will find its' way into the library database world. One such library who has embraced this possibility and made it an experimental yet functional reality is the Ann Arbor District Library which has a wonderful catalog in which users can add terms to books, dvds, and other forms of content in old school catalog cards with notes overlayed on traditional catalog content as shown on this post in the graphic above.

Comparing Countries - Encyclopaedia Britannica & SIRS Discoverer

2007-09-24T15:29:00.000-04:00

Encyclopaedia Britannica now provides the ability to compare side-by-side 2 countries in baseline observation form such as population, land size, people, economy; government and society; and in expandable form cultural life, history and Britannica's best website content links. There are other navigation and select content features that have been added since the last posting on country and culture information. As for Sirs Discover, one additional item that was not mentioned in the previous blog post is that there is a SIRS Discoverer Culture Facts publication in online form. For example, the country of Angola gets converage in the make up of the people, daily life, language, food, dress, arts and music, religion; holidays traditions, & folklore; and along with fun facts. Bottom line, Encyclopaedia Britannica and SIRS Discoverer are great sources for country and cultural information and with the amount of questions asked about countries and culture figured it was worthy to revisit this topic.

NY Times Archives Free - (1851-1922)

2007-09-19T10:13:00.000-04:00

The New York Times has unleashed their historic collection of Newspaper content (1851 - 1922) and (1987 to Present) for free. Some content from (1923 - 1986) will continue as fee based content. One thing I have learned about technology and content, it is hard to make predictions... Today, is one of those days where just the right amount of yeast goes in to the dough to make wonderful bread. Apparently the NY Times has figured it is easier to make money from advistisers (and more of it) then to charge indviduals for historic content by subscription or pay as you read and go content. I would encourage you to kick the tires on the NY Times website. As a side note, If you know of other historic newspapers online for free, please add these as a comment...

NY Times Announcement 9/1/8/07

NewsPaper Content For Free websites...
http://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/

Fodor's Travel Guide Content on General OneFile

2007-09-12T14:25:00.000-04:00

Fodor's Travel Guide content is now available online in General OneFile database. The publication date on all Fodor's titles in the database currently is January 1, 2007. You are more likely to find in the database say Fodor's Charleston then Fodor's South. When thinking travel, choose specific locations instead of broad regions for example Fodor's London instead of Fodor's England. As for content type, much of the Fodor's guides are without graphics or images with the exception of some maps. In looking at a handful of guides in print, not many of the print versions have much if any photography, graphics, or images in general except on the cover or introductory content. Overall, it is great to have such respectable travel guides like Fodor's in this database.

Access Science DB Gets New Platform

2007-08-18T10:15:00.000-04:00

Access Science, published by Mc-Graw Hill, has a newly redesigned their website. As part of the redesign announcement, included was a product description that is worthy in revisiting again on this blog as an fyi. Content in the database is primarily from (click the Read More link for the rest of this article):

"
* Over 8,500 online articles the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science & Technology 10th edition, from over 5,000 contributors, including 36 Nobel Prize winners
* Research Updates from the McGraw-Hill Yearbooks of Science & Technology
* 110,000+ definitions from the McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific and Technical Terms;
* 15,000 illustrations and graphics, and bibliographies containing more than 28,000 literature citations;
* Biographies of 2,000 well-known scientists from the Hutchinson Dictionary of Scientific Biography®
* The latest news in science and technology from Science News® and ScienCentral® videos
* And much more.
"