Welcome back to school, everyone! We’ve got new books in the library (come see for yourself — there are far too many to list here!) and soon we’ll have new pages on this blog. Stay tuned!
Filed under: Updates & Reminders
September 16, 2008 • 2:48 pm 0
Your Classes, My Schedule, and Resources For This Year’s Election
I had a great time talking to Kandi Bennett’s health class about doing online research a couple weeks ago, and it’s been great to have the 5th grade come to the library for some library instruction. The 4th grade is scheduled to come in to learn a little bit about how we organize and find things in the library. If your idea of library research involves the card catalog and the Readers Guide to Periodical Literature, you might like to come see some of the amazing new things we can do. (Imagine searching for articles, putting them all in a folder, emailing them to yourself, and getting perfectly formatted citations for all of them in the style of your choice!)
If you’re interested in having your class come to the library or having me come to your class, that’s great, but please schedule with me ahead of time. Starting next week, I’m going to be traveling quite a bit for conferences and such. I’ll be gone September 25-29, October 1-3, October 9-12, and October 19-23. Also, I will be traveling to the other Park County libraries fairly regularly on Thursdays (or occasionally on other days) in order to do public and staff training.
A number of you may be doing or considering units on the Presidential elections. I have orders out for biographies of the major political party candidates, but they have not arrived yet. In the meantime, though, there are lots of other great resources available to you for learning more about the candidates, the issues, and the electoral process. Here, Q&A style, are some of the places to look online at parkcountylibary.org/research or in the library.
Who the heck are these people running for president, anyway?
Wilson Web has the complete run of Current Biography, which will give you some good general background information on the candidates.
So what are the issues in this campaign?
Try CQ Researcher, SIRS Researcher, and the Opposing Viewpoints Research Center for great coverage of issues and perspectives on the candidates.
Whoa, those sites are awfully text heavy for my primary grade students! Don’t you have something simpler?
Try Searchasaurus, Kids Search, or eLibrary Elementary.
Searching Hint: use the terms election 2008 to get material on this current election.
I really, really, really just want something that’s on paper.
The library subscribes to Time, U.S. News & World Report, the Billings Gazette, the Casper Star-Tribune, the Cody Enterprise, the Powell Tribune, and the Northern Wyoming Daily News. We keep the magazines for a year, the Cody and Powell papers for a month, and the other papers for a week or so.
Candidate so and so said thus and such. Is that really true?
Check out FactCheck.org. For voting records, try Project Vote Smart.
That’s enough for now! Happy researching!
Filed under: Online Research, Updates & Reminders
September 9, 2008 • 2:49 pm 0
Pop Quiz: Call Numbers, Searchasaurus, Google, and More
Greetings! Here’s a little pop quiz for a Tuesday morning:
- Do you know what all these call numbers mean and where to find them in the library? JE, ER, JI, J, YA, BIO, E 123.456, REF 123.456
- Can you construct a Google search that will tell you what information the FDA website has on nicotine addiction from 2000 to 2003?
- Do you know how to use all the resources at parkcountylibrary.org/research?
If you answered no to any of these questions, perhaps it’s time to schedule a time for some library instruction! I am always happy to do classroom visits or to have classes come to the library to learn some of this stuff, and I can also meet with you individually if you would like some one-on-one instruction. The examples above are just a very few of the things I can teach you. Whether it’s editing an entry on Wikipedia, tracking a bill through Congress on THOMAS, or finding historical photographs for a history lesson, the library is here to help you out. And, of course, we have books! More about them in the next post!
Filed under: Updates & Reminders
August 26, 2008 • 2:25 pm 0
Welcome and Some Reminders
As those of you who’ve been around know, I occasionally send out a little news about the library via email. To new people, welcome! I hope you’ve all had a chance to make your way down here and get a library card.
We have all kinds of great new books coming into the library, and I’ve written some of them up in the next post. I hope they will be helpful to you as class materials or supplements to the kinds of topics you are covering. I’ll update you on more titles when they arrive. And, of course, we have electronic resources galore (including databases designed especially for students and teachers), which you can find online at www.parkcountylibrary.org/research.
Finally, a note about library privileges. It is our goal to have every student able to check out books. As you probably know, free access to a variety of materials at libraries is the key predictor of reading ability and reading success. Because we are a taxpayer funded public institution, however, we are also charged with being good stewards of the resources we provide (translation: we need to get our books back). If a student has long overdue materials and large fines, we will sometimes tell them they need to take care of these before they can check out. We are usually willing to waive fines if we can just get the books back. Students can also “read away fines”—30 minutes of reading will get $1 taken off your fines. If a student has lost a book, we will need to charge a replacement fee, but, again, if money is a problem, we can usually work out some kind of deal. Please come talk to us and we’ll see what we can figure out!
Filed under: Updates & Reminders
