Monday, March 30, 2015

Wrap Up

1.  I never realized that there were that many places to find information about any subject in the world.

2.  I was especially interested in the information available about the medical field.  As we get older it is always wise to know what you are facing in the way of medical issues.  I know where to go for the research necessary to define what I have and how it will be treated.

Genealog -- Ancestry, HeritageQuest and Sanborn Naps

1.  Found a lot of info about myself, address, phone number,  marital status and my deceased husbands name.

2.  Found my maternal grandfather in the censes of 1920, 1930 and 1940.

3.  Saw pictures of the river.

4.  Looked up my husbands father and got the censes record from 1940 but found only Gregory County not Gregory City.

5.  Since Gregory was not listed I looked at Yankton and noted that there were still a lot of empty properties in town in 1916.

Friday, March 27, 2015

WorldCat and More

1.  There are lots of ways to ask for information, more than I would ever use but I am sure Librarians need several methods to reveal all the data they want.

2.  I chose to look for a book with the title "The Witness".  Since this was a key phase search for books I got 1,077 results for books with "The Witness" in the title.  These books are located in 2,442 libraries.  The library at the top of the list is "Augustana".

3.  I had to scroll awhile to find the class descriptor but I did and it is PS3552.R718.  I found that Sandra Brown has written a large number of books and Witness in the title is popular.  There were several other areas listed such as:  Descriptors, an Abstract and Geographic location of the plot.

Personally I don't think I would be an everyday user of this but if I wanted to find a library that had a book I wanted to read and I was out of town that would be a good place to look it up quickly.

Ebooks on EBSCO

1.  Looked for books about blood diseases.  Got alot of books that really didn't meet my exact requirement but found the "most relevant" area showed in those that were medicine oriented, which book really answered my questions.  There seemed to be alot of weeding you would have to do to make your query specific enough to avoid looking at all the extraneous data that will more than likely appear on your screen.

2.  Struggled with Constitution Day until I did a smart query and used the "Most Relevant" information box on the bottom line of that book's display section.  I found a specific reference to "Constitution Day" in "Representin Popular Sovereignty: The Constitution in American Political Culture" by Daniel Lessard Levin.  The "most revelant" are had an excerpt of a paragraph that told me Constitution Day is on 17th of September when the Constitution was signed by the last thirty-nine members of the Constitutional Convention.  Not that I didn't know that but it was always on my calendar but no one seems to really observe it very much.

3.  I found 88 results and the 10 that appeared on the screen were all published by the University of Nebraska press.

Gale Virtual Reference Library

1.  I went to the home page and clicked on the list of titles and picked "The Gale Encyclopidia of Medicine, 2011 Vol. 3".  I then went to the Index to find a specific area of interest and looked up Anemias just to see what was there.  Boy, I never realized how many different types of blood problems a person could have just to keep that blood "red".  The article included definitions of anemia types with descriptions of each along with how to treat or prevent the problem or that it was incurable.

2.  I went to the home page and put in the word "zinc".  The results were many and I picked out the one that discussed how you can be affected by a lack of zinc in your body.  The only sure way to get zinc (other than eating dirt where zinc is know to be) is to either take a supplement or eat meat.  So much for becoming a vegan.

3.  Looked at a couple of the other blogs but those people are still writing a lot more than I am so I really don't want to do that anymore.

Saturday, March 7, 2015

Proquest

I used Proquest to research a medical condition.  The number of articles I found was extremely large.  The rezsearchers were very detailed and the articles I reviewed had many details of the condition I looked up.  It appeared you could find out anything in the medical field if you asked your question correctly.

I looked at the "My Happy Place" blog and discovered that this person is doing much more detail in her blogs that I am.  I hope no one wants me to write a book on each of these lessons.

I looked at the publication list and asked to see magazines for seniors.  There are a multitude of magazines especially pointed toward the senior and those of us that are retired.  This is a resource that covers all types of publications and could be a gold mine of information and research.

Friday, March 6, 2015

SIRS Issues Researcher and Discoverer

SIRS Discover:

I looked up an Armadillos and discovered there are a lot of different types.  They are in Texas and the Spainards named them (hard shelled animal) and on several different places in the world.  They also showed pictures of all of them and there were so many I even forget already how many.  This sight would be very good for the younger kids to explore their favorite animal and also for homework about animals as well as all other subjects.

I also Looked up the USA in the Country Facts on the Database Features.  The list of information includes all those things a student needs to kinow about a country:  Language, Currency, Capital, Population, Region, Type of Government, Agriculture, Climate, Map, Flag and Major Events in History as well as Holidays.

The Country Facts gives you Continents and then you can look at the country in which you have interest.  This is a great resource for younger kids to do their homework.

The Maps of the World Database Feature helps in learning how our world is today and how is was yesterday.

Checked out maps of the world and what they looked like now.  Names of places have changed so much since I went to school and boy am I ancient.

SIRS Issues Researcher:

I checked out the issue on Abused Women and some of the data related to the Violence Against Women Act of 1994 and some of the statistics.  Also found some artilces about the high level of abuse of women by althelets and areas where artilces on domestic violence related to other areas could be found, not just althelets.

I checked out the curriculum pathfinder and looked at the list under science.  I found several items under Science and Society including Biodviversity.  It also listed History of Scientists and Tools for Research Guidance.

This would be a marvelous site to help kids with their homework.  Sure wish I have one like it when I was young.