Useful websites in our catalog

Did you know you can access a lot of useful reference websites directly from our catalog? Bob provided me with the following list of reference sources whose websites are available from our catalog. Thanks Bob!

United States Senate
US Courts: The Federal Judiciary
Basic Facts about Trademarks
The World Factbook
United States Code
The White House
United States House of Representatives
Vital Statistics of the United States - we discarded the print and will now rely on the electronic version for this reference!
The Library of Congress
Dictionary of Occupational Titles Index
Agricultural Statistics Database
Digest of Education Statistics
Constitution
Official Congressional Directory
National Center for Health Statistics
Reports of the Surgeon General
Where to write for vital records
National Transportation Statistics
Bureau of Labor Statistics
National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine
MedlinePlus
USA.gov
US Securities and Exchange Commission
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
The Consumer Action Website: Federal Citizen Information Center
GPO Access - a service of the US Government Printing Office
Consumer.gov - your resource for consumer information from the federal government
Recalls.gov - your online resource for recalls
Travel.state.gov
Federal Reserve Bulletin
The Federal Register
MapMachine

-Megan

InformationLiteracy.org

There is a website www.informationliteracy.org that has compiled IL lesson plans for all age groups. There a few well designed lessons for first year college students that offer interesting ideas for making lessons more student-centered. One in particular uses playing cards to demonstrate how using AND or OR will change your search results - it sounds kind of fun!

There is also a tool called BuILder - to create web-based lessons which in my undergrad days were called "webquests". I created a short lesson to teach the Periodical Locator just to see how it works. Click here if you want to check it out. The program is a bit clunky to use and it took me about 3 hours to develop this one lesson, but I like the idea behind it. It's the kind of thing you could use to break up a long lesson of lecture by giving the students something to learn on their own. There is probably opportunity to create similar lessons using NetOp features - I just haven't figured them all out yet! I'll keep you posted.

The site also has a section of Teaching Ideas, which are not fully developed lessons but brief ideas for instruction.

-Megan

YouTube videos for instruction

Below are some links to videos on YouTube that offer instruction for information literacy related topics. I will continue to add posts with more links like these as I find more videos and instruction tools. You'll notice the labels for this post - future posts will use the same labels so you will be able to search for all posts related to these topics.

Research Minutes - Cornell U. - this is the video I have used. (0:90)

Scholarly vs. Popular Journals - University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (3:09)

Scholarly vs. Popular Periodicals - Vanderbilt University (3:11)

How to search JSTOR - posted by JSTORSupport - how to search for articles and print or download them - a bit slow moving. (3:49)

How to browse JSTOR - posted by JSTORSupport - demonstrates how to find a known article in JSTOR when you have an article citation or journal name. (2:39)

-Megan

Britannica succumbing to Wiki-pressure?

This will be something to keep our eye on...apparently Britannica is discussing bringing its online content into the Web 2.0 realm, although not quite to the extent of something like Wikipedia. Not many details have surfaced yet, but it looks like there will be some new features added to the Britannica website (not necessarily the database).

More Microsoft Word Tips

Check here for 8 tools in Microsoft Word that you may not have known about including shrinking documents and a translating tool.
-Megan

Acquisitions Budget

This Thursday we will be discussing the book budget for the 2009 fiscal year. The total amount that we have to spend is $110,000.

The computer science book collection "Safari" ($7,100) will come out of the Library Automation Budget and so will not affect the book budget. However, there will not be an allocation for CIS this year.

Megan would like to combine some of the business allocations to increase flexibility.
The Reference budget will probably decrease with the elimination of some big-ticket Gale publications.

I will put together a first-draft budget for Thursday's meeting but if you have any suggestions that I can incorporate, please let me know.

Bob 5-10-08

Computer Availability Map

The library at Georgia Tech provides a map of available computers "on a screen that is visible to students waiting in line." Imagine working at a library that regularly has a line of students waiting for computers! Of course - doesn't it seem as though they are tying up a usable screen to provide this service? Perhaps there's a detail missing. Anyway, I thought it was quite nifty and if you watch it for a bit you can see people logging on and off as the computers change from green to red. Also imagine never again having to say "there are computers upstairs, and a whole classroom in the back!"
-Megan