Ferguson's Career Guidance - Practical and Useful

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.

Best Vacation Reads with Wilson Bibliographies

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 Universe - Worth A Second Look

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...

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

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

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

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 3 Picking a Specific Occupation

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

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.

The Job Hunting Resource Helps Statewide...

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.

Reference Universe - Need for Speed Answered...

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...

Reference USA - Spelling Check Feature

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.

Magill On Literature - Visual Search.

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

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.

Hathi Trust Ditigal Library - Great Ebooks Online

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

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

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

Stocked Photos for Use...

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.

Cuil, Is it Really a Cool Competitor to Google?

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.

Cool Graphics Tool

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;