Wrap up week!

For the final week of the Invitational, I took a look at EbscoHost Mobile.  I did not know that there was a way to get access to MARVEL databases on a handheld device.  Right now I'm at work and don't have time to investigate how this works exactly, but I'm putting it on my to-do list because I think it would be great to be able to access these resources on a tablet or cell phone.  I also looked at Windows on Maine, another database that was new to me (well, there are still quite a few databases in that category).  This looked like it would be a very useful database for teachers because of all the videos on a variety of topics.

For me, the biggest discovery of all of the MARVEL resources was Learning Express.  I had no idea that it contained practice tests for professional certification exams.  This is really useful for my patrons (nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists, allied health students, etc.).  I am going to show this database to my staff at the next staff meeting.  I am also going to show them EbscoHost eBook Collection.  Our library's website has a page which lists electronic resources available through the library and it has a link to the MARVEL databases.  I am going to break out some of the databases that I think are most useful to our patrons (LE, eBook, Academic Search Complete, ProQuest Newspapers).

This concludes my blogging for the Invitational.  Want to know why I named my blog "The Real Marvel"?  My middle (and birth) name is Marvel! 

EbscoHost and eBooks

I use Academic Search alot so I decided to look at Masterfile Premier.  Under publications, I looked for Birders World (I'm a birder).  It wasn't there.  Then, I looked for Yankee.  It was there but only in html; not as good as a pdf.  Finally I looked for Arizona Highways, one of my favorite magazines.  It wasn't there either.  If this database is designed specifically for public libraries, it struck out in my eyes.  Of course, these aren't really popular titles, I guess.

I did the basic search for foods containing zinc.  I put in "zinc foods" (without the quotation marks).  I found alot, so I limited to full text.  I took a look at the results and the fifth item looked good to me.  It was from the Saturday Evening Post and the indexing indicated "Food Sources of Zinc."  So I opened the pdf.  What a disappointment!  It was one short paragraph.  I went back and looked at the citation and clearly saw that it indicated the item was 1/4 page.  It's important to pay attention to details in this database.  I also discovered that the back button on the browser is not reliable and that it is better to click on "result list" or you can end up having to start over.

I think all the Ebsco databases are really rich resources but users need a bit of instruction in searching in order to be successful and efficient searchers.

I am totally bombing in my use of Ebsco e-books.  I tried searching consumer health and got all kinds of odd titles.  I could not find how to limit to key words.  Finally I noticed the small "field codes" link which enabled me to limit to title ( not key words).  I still didn't get much worthwhile.  Plus I kept pulling up Historical Dictionary of Taiwan (which I pulled up in several other searches).  I found only 1 good book for Constitution Day:  Representing Popular Sovereignty : The Constitution in American Political Culture.  I clicked on "use smart search to recommend related titles" and got 1 additional title: Natural Wonders of Tennessee : Exploring Wild and Scenic Places - huh?  I wonder what I'm doing wrong?

Searching on Oklahoma as a publisher was useful, however.  It pulled up lots of titles by the University of Oklahoma Press.  That would give the class lots of material on western history.  I tried putting Maine (nothing) and then New Hampshire (nothing) in as publishers.  Oh well.

LearningExpress - A Useful Resource

This is another database that I have never used.  At EMMC we do get occasional questions concerning practice guides for exams related to certification in various health care professions so this database has potential for our patrons.

I chose the Certified Medical Assistant Practice Exam 1 and did a few questions.  The exam seemed well-designed to me.  There was a good amount of information provided explaining why the choices were correct or not. 

I added the course, Business Writing: Write for Clarity to My Center and took a look at it.  The entire course was a good length and each section was fairly short so the reader wouldn't get bogged down reading the section.  There were a lot of examples of good business writing/poor business writing to show the reader how to distinguish between the two.  The course seemed like a good fit for the category of Workplace Skills and I would feel comfortable referring a patron to it.

I searched for "libraries" in the search box and found 4 e-books.  I took a look at "Research & Writing Skills Success in 20 Minutes a Day."  This was a 2003 book, 141 pages long, and quite detailed about writing a research paper.  It seemed to me to be appropriate for a college-level student (but I'm out of my area here).  I would have liked a brief description of it somewhere in order to know a bit more before adding it to My Center (maybe there was one and I just missed it).  I don't know how many students would wade through this book.  Can you search it and just print out chapters?

I'm going to show my staff this resource because of the practice exams for certification.  I think the courses and ebooks are probably less useful for our setting.

My favorite database so far!

I've never used Ancestry Library before and I am not a genealogy person.  I come from a very small family and my brother and I are the end of the line. For some reason, first cousins twice removed, etc. don't make any sense to me and no matter how many times this is explained it does not stick.   But AL blew me away!  I wish I could have searched this years ago when my parents and the one grandparent who I knew were still alive. 

When I searched for my name, I retrieved 1,629,616 postings.  I wonder why it asks you to put in your middle name and then only searches on the middle initial?  That seems to result in a lot of false drops.  When I added my birth year, the hits were narrowed to 566,396.  Adding more details keeps winnowing down the number of hits.   I did find 2 records which had my name and address correct but had my birth date wrong, not sure why.  Wish I had a more unique name!

I searched for my paternal grandmother in the census and found her in 1920 and 1940.  She was the only grandparent who was alive during my lifetime.  In the 1920 census, my dad was listed as 1 year and 10 months old.  His sister was a teenager (she died of alcoholism and my grandmother never said her name again) and there was another woman (age 21 and from Canada) listed.  I think she might have been a servant; I can't read what is listed in the column that would be the occupation.  I knew they had servants but to see it like this in the census listing was fascinating.

I used the advanced search feature to search for "Maine" and restrict to "photos and maps."  This was the only way I could find to do this; I did not see a tab.  I got over a million hits.  I pressed the "r" key to refine and added Carlton Wood, my grandfather-in-law, and got 7,284.  There were some cool photos, some from the Camden High School yearbook (he was principal there in the 50s and I am doing this assignment right now in the Camden Public Library). 

All in all, I think this is an amazing database and the only drawback is that one cannot search it from home.

Consumer Health - Proceed with Caution!

Finally, MY area!  Here are my thoughts on Health Source - Consumer.  It's a good idea to ask people to take a look at the list of publications because they are ALL OVER THE PLACE.  There are lots of pamphlets with outdated information and the sources are not the best (doitnow.org?).  I would much prefer users (both librarians and patrons) go to MedlinePlus for pamphlet info.  But there are also some great sources:  Harvard Mental Health Letter (and other Harvard pubs), Mayo Clinic consumer pubs, as well as  some EXTREMELY TECHNICAL full-text journals.   I did a subject search for parkinson's disease and the most recent full-text article is from Nutrition Reviews.  It is highly technical; here is a paragraph:

Mechanisms of action. Different mechanisms have been
proposed for the neuroprotective activity of EGCG in PD.
The study conducted by Levites et al. 75 was the first to
demonstrate the neuroprotective activity of both green
tea extract (0.5 and 1 mg/kg) and EGCG (2 and 10 mg/
kg) on MPTP-induced parkinsonism in animal models. It
is possible that the neuroprotective effects are mediated
by iron-chelating activities and free-radical-scavenging
activities possessed by the catechol group. Since green tea
catechins can pass through the blood-brain barrier, they
can act as both ROS scavengers and iron chelators to clear
the redox active ferrous iron deposited in the SN, reducing
the iron-induced oxidative stress that can lead to neuronal
death. Clearly, this is not appropriate for 99% of public library users.  It helps to limit to source type: magazine; then you will not get the scholarly articles.   Thank you so much for sending people to MedlinePlus for the second part of this assignment!  At the EMMC library, this is our top choice for consumer health questions.  This resource started out somewhat skimpy but has developed over the years into a robust source of trusted, authoritative, and understandable information.  It is much better than Health Source: Consumer for answering consumers' requests for information.  As you have pointed out via your questions, it is useful for current topics in the news, detailed information about drugs (side note: please do NOT refer people to the PDR), links to websites (all vetted by the National Library of Medicine) on health topics, diseases and conditions.  And the videos are amazing.  We get lots of questions by telephone, asking if we have a video of x procedure and we refer them to MedlinePlus.  Just make sure most folks know many of these videos are graphic and last for an hour.   FYI - it is also possible to get information about providers from MedlinePlus.  On the botton of the home screen, click on "Directories" and you will get a list of links to the various societies that credential physicians, hospitals, etc.  We also get this question alot at EMMC.

Thinking about Business

I think I should stop leaving these assignments for the end of the work day.  But it's too late now...

Business Source Complete looks like any of the other Ebsco databases in MARVEL and I'm pretty familiar with them.  The search for FM radio brought up a lot of information.  It's interesting that you can find market research reports which are usually (I thought) hard to find, at least for free.  But these are old, 2004 and earlier and some aren't really what I would call market research.  The articles under the type of "product review" are good, also. 

I tried the visual search option and, perhaps because of my age and comfort zone, did not like it too much.  I'd like to know what others thought (and their ages!).

Using EconLit for the various searches, I learned that the SmartText option helps to garner a few extra citations when you aren't coming up with much.  This got a few additional citations when searching for small business and the EPA.  This database is much more academically or scholarly oriented; it includes dissertations, research articles, working papers.  I would want to be careful about who I recommended it to.

I can see how the Regional Business News would be a useful database.  I searched for Apple and found 30,000+ items, most of them from the news wires.  Then I searched for the Jackson Laboratory and found 27 items.  It was interesting in that about one-third were obits for people who were on the JKL board.  I wouldn't have thought of that.  But this search picked up a lot about the lab and what's happening with it, not only in ME, but also in FL and CT, areas where expansion is/was in the works or is being considered.

Value Line:  I was, at one time, the "business librarian" at Fogler and I remember the gazillions of questions from the business students about Value Line.  So I'm always amazed that we have access to it via MARVEL.  It is an amazing resource and worth learning...when you have a lot of time... I used the public library version and think this could be quite confusing to someone who had never seen the print version.  I looked at the 4 pdfs listed for this week and I found some of them confusing.  The index lists page numbers for companies, but I couldn't find all of those pages in the pdfs.  Then I did a search by putting Tim Hortons in the search box and found a number of articles.  In the first one, I clicked on the stock symbol to get the one-page summary of financial data.  On the article, there was a button offering the full research report; however, clicking on it led to a request for a full subscription at a cost of $598.  I assume the academic version of Value Line would let you have the full report.

All in all, I'm glad I don't have to navigate and understand Value Line.  I think I would assign one person the job of delving into this database and refer all questions to him/her. 

I use the Wall Street Journal quite a bit because administrators often hear about a story in the WSJ and want the full text.  It is another huge benefit of MARVEL to my library.  I limited the search on small business and health care reform to health care policy because I think owners of small businesses would be interested in reading about how the ACA is going to affect them.  Then I changed the display so that the most recent articles (rather than relevancy) were listed first and there were a number of useful items.  Someone could set an an alert so that new articles on this topic would be emailed to them each week/month/whatever.  I'm late in getting to this assignment so I know that Obama won the election, but if I had done it when it came out, the election would not have happened yet and the alert would be even more meaningful.

Phew...this was a LONG assignment!

Novelist Deserves a Plus, Novelist Plus Not so Much

First off, I'm the director of a hospital library and we don't buy fiction so I did a lot of this assignment using nonfiction authors and titles.  Thus, my assessment of the Novelist databases.

For the initial part of  the assignment, I searched for "Jane Rizzoli" and could definitely see how using the view option would help when showing this database to patrons.  I liked the "grid" view where the patron basically sees the book jackets and some minimal information.  This would make browsing a long list easier, not to mention printing.

For the second part, using the David Baldacci example, I thought the "Read-Alikes from NoveList" feature was great.  I love the way it gives you so much detailed information and really helps you decide which author and title is the best book for you.  If your library doesn't have the book the patron was looking for when they came into the library, I would think you should be able to find a successful substitution using this database.  It's like having a million brains at your fingertips. 

Next, I spent time exploring Novelist Plus from my perspective (although I will say in almost 20 years I have never encountered anyone who has come into my library and said, "I've read Susan Love's Breast Book," can you recommend something else?")  I put in a few well-known popular medical writers (Susan Love, Andrew Weil, Atul Gawande) and either did not find much for read-alikes or found the read-alikes to be a bit off.  They seemed to be mainly selected based on genre more than anything else and there was nowhere near the detail of the fiction entries.  Then I started trying some older fiction from my youth (Monkey Wrench Gang, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) and those had, IMHO, iffy read-alikes as well.  I wonder what others think?

Never thought I'd use this database!

I've never been crafty.  My mother didn't have a sewing machine and I was traumatized by home ec in junior high school.  However, I discovered that I LOVE the Hobbies and Crafts Reference Center.  What a surprise!

I'm a birder, I keep a life list of sorts.  I never go on a trip without my binoculars.  So, of course, I looked at Bird Watching, under Outdoors and Nature.  Needless to say, the EMMC library doesn't subscribe to any of these journals, nor do I.  So it's good to know I can read them here.  There were 50 projects and I'm not inspired to do any of them.  I'm not sure "serious" birders are necessarily the type to do projects (birdhouse switch plate covers?  whimsical garden shower curtain?).

But all was not in vain.  I switched to Cooking, specifically vegetarian, and discovered my favorite magazine, Cooking Light.  I stopped subscribing about 5 years ago in a fit of frugality.  Woo hoo!  I quickly found and saved some great recipes.  Now, I'm a convert.

One thing I don't like about this  (and all of the Ebsco databases in Marvel) is that when you email articles to yourself, they arrive 1 article per email.  I wish they could come all attached to one email.  I looked in the help to see if this was something that could be modified but I don't think it can.  Also, the help section says you can do a "visual search" and has a screen shot but this option does not show up in our database.  Too bad, I wanted to use it in the Bird Watching sub-category.

What's New(s)

This lesson is about Maine Newstand which I have never used.  I do mention the Proquest Newspapers (general) database to med students and new providers because they are coming to Bangor from other parts of the country and I think that maybe they might want to read their local newspaper while they are here.  I also use it as an opportunity to point out MARVEL as a resource.

I did a basic search on Alan White (my husband) because he had a book published this past summer and there have been a few local events and I wondered if any newspapers had picked them up.  The search pulled up 2899 items, 99% of which were what we in the info business call "false drops," nothing to do with my Alan White.  The problem was that I needed to be able to do a phrase search.  So I went into the search tips and discovered that I should search "Alan White."  That worked much better. But there are quite a few Alan Whites (a number of whom appear to be criminals) and no mention of the book.  I did another search on Hosmer Pond in Camden (of interest to me) and saved it.  I discovered that articles can easily be translated into other languages.  Also, when you click for the entire article you get full-text, not pdf which is often not good enough for patrons, at least in my setting.  I don't see any way to search for images.  I tried searching Eastern Maine Medical Center strike and looking for images and couldn't find any and I know there were several in the BDN.  I must be doing something wrong.

I haven't had any occasion to show patrons how to use MARVEL this week.  But, if any of the consultants should read this, I want to say that I think the tutorials on the MSL website are great!  I talked about them at our staff meeting this week and sent out the link to all my staff. 

All Hail Britannica

I searched for "Obamacare" and it mapped to Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).   Very good.  The initial screen showed only the Encyclopedia entries (not what the Discovery exercise indicated).  I clicked on the Articles tab and got to the articles, then saw the 3 sections as described.  I opened one of the articles but could not find any display of citation style choices.  It's a good thing I don't have to write a paper.  Once I was inside the article content, there was no way back except the browser back button.  Only after going back, could I get to a screen displaying the Academic edition logo.

Not too impressed with this database but I think that is to be expected. 

I have created a workspace and will play around with it.  I could use this to create a fancy handout.  I'll see what I can do.

Now I see I could use the workspace to work on a project.  It would be useful for a collaboration.  I'd like to see an example of this. 

Playing with the design

                                                                                  Here I am hard at work on the MMI assignment. I'm practicing adding an image.  It's easy, but making it fit into the overall design seems to be the hard part. And the word wrap does really funky things! Looks "right" when composing but not when "live."



Why is this blog called The Real Marvel?

Maybe I'll use one of the Marvel databases to "uncover" the answer to this question (of course, I already know it).

Have never posted in a blog before so I can't wait to see what this looks like.  Just peaked and it's kinda boring.