Monday, March 17, 2014

Wrapping it up!

This week, we are to respond to what we've learned and how we are going to use this information in the future.  E-mail works the best where I receive the e-newsletter and updates on trainings. It was great to have the opportunity to visit all the databases with a more in-depth look.  Some databases I'm pretty familiar with but others like Mango and Chilton - I have not taken a look at before.  Students grades K-6 visit the library and take library skills classes. During the month of January, students visit these databases and do a scavenger hunt, then report on two of the most interested websites.  Still this only skims the surface.  I also have had the State Library Staff visit our school and show our entire staff these resources; I have gone to classroom to teach high school history students how to use some of the databases to research and cite resources for projects/assignments; and continue to email staff and public patrons of the access to these great resources.  I plan to write up an article for our local paper on these resources available to everyone. Thanks to the State Library Staff for this opportunity and continued guidance to have resources where little libraries like ourselves could not afford access to these databases.  I look forward to the other trainings that are found via Internet when I don't have the time or funds to travel to workshops and trainings; this was great as it went at the professional's pace. Thanks again!

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Ancestry Library/Heritage Quest/Sanborn Maps

Our task this week is to look up info on Ancestry Library.  First I need to find my name, there was 220 results. There was only one that was me on the first page.  Second, we are to find a grandparent.  I did find some info that did match and the it was neat to see his name on the census with his signature.  The third task, we are to look in pictures and South Dakota - the results is many, many, yearbooks. I placed my name and 305 results were found, but none were accurate because I lived my first 30 plus years in another state.

Heritage Quest - I looked on Persi archives South Carolina, Civil War and Cemeteries and 43 items were found.

Sandborn Maps is a really fun historical site that you can find maps about towns like Sturgis in the past on Oct. 1885.  Its interesting to see how towns have grown and developed.  This site shows a birds eye-view of towns and the streets; then how the town develops over the years.

Thursday, March 6, 2014

Camio

Camio is a great site for finding and research the arts from costumes, clothing to art paintings.  I showed this site to some of our high school students who are taking art class.  A response that I heard was "this is cool!" and "Thanks, for showing this to me".  Just go to the State Library website and take a look at all the databases.

World CAT

We use World CAT many times to help patrons find information or resources.  If I can't find a specific resources on my shelf, I resort to this site.  It's advanced and the site show many resources in different formats.  Our task this week is to find - Snowmobile Racing  in advanced search then phrase search which was more specific. Phrases such as snowmobiling fatality report or many articles on the racing event in the Black Hills.  I choose to look at the fatality one first - the resource is from Wisconsin and the info is not as a current as I hoped to find.  The next resource I chose was the snowmobiling event in the Black Hills.  I found out that a Bombardier is a manufacturer of Ski-Doo Snowmobiles.  The author is Jerry Sanders and there is only one library that has this resource and only one resource listed and is from the State Library.

Within World Cat is a drop down box to find other databases within this database.  I looked up on a database called OAIster info on Motorcycle Racing.  There were 259 resources found.