Firstsearch

I did the SD search in OAIster and looked at the first title, Sweet Clover in Great Plains Farming. It was available in full text, but it took me about a minute find how to increse the size. I then clicked on the search link and found that they had some nicely structured boolean and proximity searches.

Worldcat

I did a title phrase search on Time Enough for Love, the first listing showed that 846 libraries worldwide hold the book. It also showed that my library holds the book. When I went into the record the first library on the list was my library (zwa). Looking at the record it gives the discriptor as Science Fiction and lists a Dewey call number of 813/.5/4. I clicked on the link "Find Items About" and came up with some interesting things about Heinlein that I did not know.

I like the way it shows the titles that my library owns. The one dowside from a user view is that it does not have a consolidated view of the titles. For example one of his books we own, but not the original so it did not show on the first listing that we owned the title. I had to go to the 5th page to find that we own it.

Harper Collins

Here is what some publishers and authors are saying: http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/harpercollins-sets-26-checkout-cap-on-its-library-e-books/

NetLibrary

I did a search on flu and came up with two results:

• Elder: The Amazing Healing Benefits of Elder, the Premier Herbal Remedy for Colds and Flu
• 77 Ways to Beat Colds and Flu

Neither of them made me well. :(

After playing around doing different types of searches on Constitution Day and getting either nothing or way too much I decided to do a keyword search on United States Constitution. I came up with 14 hits, two of which were audio books. All of the 14 would be good books on the subject, but if the student were more interested in the forming and the people involved the two audio books would be what I recommend. The books are:

• James Madison and the Struggle for the Bill of Rights by Labunski, Richard E
• Summer of 1787: the Men Who Invented the Constitution by Stewart, David O.

I then moved on to the Western history part of the assignment. After putting only Nebraska in the publisher box on the advanced search page and nothing in any of the other boxes I got 88 hits many of which were good, but... So I tried adding Western history to the keyword surch and got zip. Next I tried adding just western and got only 3 hits, all of them were good but I knew many were missing. When I tried using western in the subject field I got only 2 of the three I had in the keyword search. I then tried adding Western history as a full text search and go 70. Still alot of faults hits. I then picked one of the better general titles and looked at the "Details" where I clicked on all of the subject links listed for the book. I got a message telling me that no books matched that subject and to check my spelling. At this point I am not a happy camper! The book I was doing this with was:From Fort Laramie to Wounded Knee: In the West That Was I then checked another title and found that the subject links worked. Enough!

GVR Using Basic Search

I tried searching on "foods with zink" and got nothing except a suggestion to check my spelling. :( So I tried "foods with zinc" and got the same not helpful result. I suspect a HS student or normal adult off the street would give up at this point. I then tried "zinc in food" and got the same result. I then did zinc in food without the quotes and got 4 hits. The first on the list talked about the types of foods that are good sources of zinc. (Liver -- yum!)

I next did a search on "literary criticism of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" and got results that were of no help. Nexted I did a subject search on Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and came up with 4 results, 3 of which were literary chriticisms. The fourth was a good overview of slavery that would help a student working on that topic.

GVR By Book

Time to get caught up on this project. I have been sick and distracted with the OverDrive project. (not sick of OD, just really sick for the past week.)

I looked at an article titled "El Niño and La Niña" in  The Gale Encyclopedia of Science. I choose this article because we were talking with the State Climatologist this week and I wanted to get a better understanding of what he was talking about. I was impressed with the scope of the article. I did not realize that there was an actual difference in the ocean levels.

Proquest

I searched for "artificial intellagence" and was impressed that it came back and asked if I meant artificial intelligence. That is a nice feature for people like me who can't spell. :) I continued on looking for information about Jeopardy and Watson. After I found an article I used the box on the right to limit my search to AI and neural networks. I ended up with 529 hits with 8 being from 2011. I was impressed.

When I went looking in other peoples blogs the first one I went to was CHS READS. When I saw that they had looked something up in Booklist I decided to go take a look at Booklist myself. While looking at the "Publication Information" I noticed the tip that they had at the bottom that you could limit to just one publication by using the 

PMID (ProQuest Media Identifier) in your search. For example: mystery and pmid(27576). Doing this search you get 12077 results with the first ones being from the February 1, 2011 issue. This can be useful!

SIRS Researcher

I looked at same-sex marriage and found the articles to be for the most part balanced. I noticed that most of the material was from newspapers and went looking for other sources. I did find some listed but was a bit disapointed that even though one of the sources talked about what the Cathloic Bishops published explaining their stand on the issue that there was not a link or even the text of their statement.

I then went looking at the pathfinders. Which evenutally led me to a piece about Tycho Brahe. I found the short piece to be a good overview of his life.

SIRS Discover

Interesting how some of the articles are mostly fluff and others have lots of information in them. I looked at rattlesnakes for this exersize because when I was a kid living in NM we used to go out to catch them. One article talked about how the venom was being used in cancer research. It would have been a good article except for the fact that the only thing they told you was that the venom was being used in cancer research because it has a similar way of attacking cells and noting more.

The other article gave good discriptions of rattlers and talked alot about the different types. In fact it included a fair amout of information about the different types and their ranges. The fact that it gave a listing of the different types would be very helpful for a kid doing a report. It also had a good picture.

Learning Express and What I Learned

I chose to look at the eBooks because I have "played" with LE many times when showing it to people. The first thing that I learned happened because I was lazy. I did not want to get out of my recliner to go get my dayplanner to find my login password so I tried creating a new one from home. It worked! (When did this change and how did I miss it?) I will now change the link on our website so LE is not listed under the group that a person has to create an account for while in the library.

I looked at the eBook Just In Time Geometry by Catherine V. Jeremkko. I choose the book because I was helping one of our "regulars" yesterday and found him a "Geometry for Dummies" book after exlplaining several things to him. I was not real happy with the book, but it was "it will do" solution. The next time I see him (tomorrow?) I will show him LE.

INteresting Stuff at Digital Book World

This blog post from TeleRead says some things librarians should really think about.

"The conference’s discussion of the role of libraries in that ecosystem was emblematic of the conference as a whole. In a question for Tuesday’s executive panel, Sarah Wendell of Smart Bitches/Trashy Books asked Macmillan US President Brian Napack why she was unable to borrow his books from libraries. His non-answer was that Macmillan was “hard at work trying to find a business model that will work for us”, and no, libraries had not “fallen by the wayside”. After the panel, Napack exited quickly; I’m betting it was not so that he could get back to the office and work on a library strategy.
Open Road Integrated Media CEO Jane Friedman disagreed firmly with Napack’s remarks. Her goal is to have all her books in libraries, because the library consumer is not the same as the book buying consumer. Someone downloading an ebook from a library is “only one step away from being a customer.”
The follow-up to this discussion came this afternoon, in a panel that Gonzalez called the session he was most proud of. Moderated by Library Journal’s Josh Hadro, the panel included both a librarian (New York Public Library Deputy Director Christopher Platt) and big 6 vice president (Random House Director of Account Marketing Ruth Liebmann), which doesn’t happen very often.
Platt explained the basics of how ebook lending works at NYPL, explaining that NYPL did a lot of work to familiarize patrons with the mechanics of ebook lending, and he pointed out that a patron interested in Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom (as an example) had to be told that its publisher was unwilling to allow library lending.
Liebmann pointed out that libraries have mechanisms to reach out to readers and promote a publisher’s materials, exactly the sort of engagement missing for most trade publishers. A library book does not compete with sales, a library book IS a sale. Libraries provide a revenue stream for publishers comparable to independent book sellers, and it’s a profitable one- libraries never return books the way bookstores do.
According to George Coe, President of the Library and Education Division of book distributor Baker & Taylor, the library market constitutes a total of $1.9 billion in the US. He pointed out that libraries could reach only 2% of the market at the very most for a popular book, and it was exactly the same for ebooks. His company was doing everything it could to protect the profitability of publishers that participated in their ebook program. Libraries customers are also easy on inventory- 98% of their purchases come within 18 month of a books publication.
But it was Overdrive’s Steve Potash who delivered the most powerful argument that libraries belong in the ebook ecosystem. The visibility that libraries give to ebooks is incredibly valuable. With the millions of page views the libraries were giving to ebooks, the publishers should be paying the libraries, not the other way around, according to Potash. It’s worth noting that no other provider of ebooks in libraries has nearly as high a publisher-world profile as Overdrive. Overdrive is playing an important role in getting publishers to think about libraries as a distribution channel, and Potash’s evangelical presence on the panel played well with the audience of publishers. He even gave them homework. “Go and try it yourself!” he urged. I hope they manage to do so."

Read the whole thing here to really know what Eric Hellman says

A Question for Publishers

I am working with OverDrive to setup my library to provide ebooks, eaudiobooks, and other einformation. While working with one of their techs I learned that because of contract restrictions imposed by some publishers only people who live in my funding area may download titles from those publishers. This sounds logical because a publisher does not want to sell (I emphasize the word sell) their product to a library (customer) and have the library (customer) put it out for the whole world. However, what the publisher has not thought about is that some of my customers (and therefor theirs) do not live within my "funding area." They pay me a fee equivalent to what I get in tax funding from the residents who do live in my funding area in order to use the library.

Now some publishers may say "so what". Here is the so what... That customer of mine is going to be upset! They are going to want to blame someone for not getting fair treatment. In order to not be the "bad guy" I am going to explain to them that it is because of the way the publisher requires that our contract be done that they cannot have what they want. I live next door to them and have watched over their children for years. My question to the publishers that write their contracts this way is; "Who are they going to be angry with?"

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http://www.pandigital.net/search.asp?Mode=Product&TypeID=43&ProductID=392

World Book Reference Center

I could swear that I looked at this the other night. I know I did because I remember doing a search on Ireland! But when I went into it tonight it was all different. Did they change it again??? Oh well!

Slower than s...! Still loading. Ah there it is. Interesting that they have a section called "Primary Sources" that leads to the typed text, taken from "Grants Of King Henry To The English Conquerors In Ireland." Readings in English History Drawn from the Original Sources: Intended to Illustrate a Short History of England. Boston: Ginn, 1935, 1922. This is for something that is supposted to have been written in the 1100's. Who changed the meaning of primary sources when I wasn't looking. Sigh!

Ignoring things like the above. The types of links on the left can be useful. Especially the timelines and the links to websites.

Help for Newbies from Bookbee Ebooks

Newbies | Bookbee Ebooks: " You really need to see this in full screen so click the link to the left. This gives a good overview of what you deal with when looking at eBook readers.

Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography

Here is a link to a site that may be of interest to people worrying about preserving digital works.

http://digital-scholarship.org/dcpb/dcpb.htm

The things they come up with

This is a real app! I don't think I want to use it, no telling what I would fall into. 

IMG_0614

IMG_0614
Originally uploaded by mmullin99

We have a group of local artists displaying their works on our art wall for the next two and a half months. The challenge was issued by Ralph Wamsher, a local photographer. Ralph provided a copy of an awesome picture that he took of an eagle in a snow storm and challenged a group of local artists to create something that the picture inspired. They were not to just try to reproduce the picture!

There are some really unique works in this show. And a range of artists that goes from some that have been in many shows over many years to one that this is the first time that she has had a work hung in public.

Electronic Resource Challenge 2011

I am signing up for the new State Library challenge for 2011. It may get me to post things about other things too. I may just do some posts about OverDrive.