Back to School: Help with Research

Earlier this week, I wrote about an online tool for student assignment management.  Today, I’m continuing the theme of online back to school resources with a description of the electronic databases available to library patrons throughout state.   These databases are incredibly useful for research.

They hold a mother lode of magazine and newspaper articles, online encyclopedia and other reference articles, photographs, primary sources and lots more.  Almost every kind of source your teacher demands, all available to you from your home, school or  library internet connection.  Start at OhioWebLibrary.org. Unless you’re using a library computer, you’ll need to use your library card (from any public library in Ohio) to make use of these databases.

While the first page looks a lot like Google, I’d suggest skipping that search box and picking out one or more specific databases to search in order to get more accurate and useful results.  Just click on the word “Resources” next to the search box.

For junior high students doing general research,  I’d suggest Kids Search or Student Research Center.  Searchasaurus looks a bit juvenile but returns very useful results for this age group.

For high school students, Student Research Center and Masterfile Premier are useful.  College students will find Academic Search Premier useful though their college or university library website will offer them a lot more options.

In addition, Ohio Web Library includes online encyclopedias and other reference works.  World Book Online and Oxford Reference Online are rich resources.  Check out the list for subject- specific databases too.

Most of the databases give you an option of searching Full-text articles only.  In most cases, you’ll want to check that box which you’ll find under “Limit your results”.  (You probably don’t want just a citation, you want the article itself).  Then just click “Search” and you’ll find a list of articles from lots of sources on your topic.  You may need to refine your search to locate exactly what you need.

If you have any questions about using any of these databases, don’t hesitate to give us a call at 440.933.7710.  We’ll be glad to help you find what you need.

Reference Gems # 1

This is the first in an occasional series on Reference Gems.  We have all these marvelous books in our Reference collection that don’t get much use, probably because our patrons don’t notice them over in Reference (and sometimes, truth to tell,  we staff forget to use them).  So I’m going to pull some of them out, shine them up a bit and show them off.

Today’s Gem is the Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2009.  This is the go-to-reference, complements of the U.S. Census Bureau, for all kinds of data regarding the U.S., it’s people, cities, towns, government bodies, economy and on and on.  If you’re writing a school paper,  a business plan, a letter to the editor, doing strategic planning for an organization, or just curious, this is the book you want to curl up with.  You’ll find out everything you want to know about U.S. population (age, sex, race, states, metropolitan areas, cities, mobility, immigration, ancestry, language, marital status, religion),  births, deaths, marriages and divorces, health, employment,  educational attainment, crime rates, government finances, national security, the labor force, income, poverty, wealth, prices, business, agriculture, utilities, transportation, etc., etc., etc., etc.  Lots and lots of stats that together form a remarkably useful portrait of our country and the factual basis you need for the argument you’re making.

We also have a copy of State and Metropolitan Area Data Book: 2006, the latest issue available.  This brings some of the data down to Ohio and the Cleveland-Metropolitan-Akron statistical area (and others around the country).  For both books, the data is drawn from a wide variety of public and private sources and some data is more recent than other data.  All of it is the most recent as of publication.

A limited set  of this data at the American Factfinder website.  The Avon Lake page is here.  Unfortunately, the information at this level is from 2000.

The Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2009 and the State and Metropolitan Area Data Book are found in our Reference collection at R317.3.   You’re welcome to look through the collection yourself, or ask any librarian at the Reference desk for assistance.  We’re here to help you find the information you need!

Check This Out — Behind The Scenes

What do people do in Technical Services, anyway?

By the way, the “Sticker Lady”, Cheryl Harmon (pictured), is retiring this week after 10 years of service to our Library.  Thanks Cheryl!

Learwood Eighth Graders Are the Best!

Once again this year, we had a great time with the eighth grade class from Learwood Middle School! Over three hundred of Avon Lake’s finest young people came through the Library on August 28 to learn about Library resources and services.  They are immediately putting to work much of what they learned on their Washington D.C. Monuments project.

We put them through ten stations to learn about using the catalog, electronic resources, the Reference department, etc.  They seemed to soak it up!  We sure learned a lot and had a blast with them.  We look forward to seeing more of these sharp young people in the Library.

How to Hack Your Library

 

This is one of those I wish I had written that blog post posts.  Jeff Scott, director of public library in Casa Grande, Arizona wrote a great post last September entitled “10 Ways to Hack Your Local Library.”  Almost all of it works just as well at Avon Lake Public Library. 

Learn how to get the most out of your library by following the link above.  The few differences:

#5. We don’t have any groups who get longer check-out periods, though our loan period for almost all materials is 21 days, a week longer than Casa Grande.  We would be happy though for you to join the Friends of the Avon Lake Public Library.  Annual dues are $10 for an individual, $15 for a family.  Your dues and the fundraising activities of the Friends provide for speakers and other program costs here at the Library.

#6. We provide 512mb flash drives (with a lanyard) for $5; 1 gig drives for $10 and headphones for $1.50.  These are all sold at cost for the benefit of our patrons.

#7. In addition to Jeff’s reasons for returning books on time, let me add another: the books and other items are here to be shared by the entire community.  When you return an item late, chances are one of your neighbors is waiting to get ahold of it.  Practice the Golden Rule; return your books on time.

#8. To protect your privacy, we don’t keep track of books or other things you’ve borrowed and returned as long as there is not an outstanding fine on the item.  If you want to keep track of what you’ve read, let me suggest LibraryThing.  This social networking tool is much more fun than a mere list of books.  You can keep track of anything about the book you want to remember, write reviews, exchange book lists and find out what people who liked your favorite books also read and loved.

#9. Libraries in Ohio just got a new interface for our shared databases called OWL, Ohio Web Library. These databases are chock-ful of articles and reference materials that put Google to shame.  And without tricky paid-for results to mislead you.  If you’d like a personalized tour of what can be found in OWL or some help doing research in these amazing databases, just stop by the Reference Desk or even call us at 440.933.8128 x 248 and make an appointment with Deb or Cindy.

#10. Jeff says all of these services are free. That’s both true and untrue.  These services are all provided by taxpayers and managed to provide the best possible services for everyone in the community. You’ve already paid for it, why not use it?

Please let us know how we can serve you better!

Learning about Dewey

More Learwood Pictures

I’ve been asked to post some pictures of the Learwood students here at the library Thursday afternoon, so here’s some young people in the YA Stop.  It seems this software doesn’t let me post more than one picture per post, so I’ll follow up with a second one.

Another great group of Learwood eighth graders

 Here they’re learning about library cards and about borrowing (and returning) materials.

Learwood Eighth Graders Are OK!

A group of Learwood students learn how to use the Ebsco databases to find articles for their research.

We had a terrific time with the eighth graders of Learwood School today. We’re all a little horse but happy. We had two sessions each with about 135 students divided into groups of twelve or thirteen. We put them through a circuit with stations to learn about using our catalog, our reference services, two of our electronic databases, the Dewey Decimal system, circulation, even how we receive and process books before putting them out on the shelves.

They were bright, friendly and fun! We really enjoyed having them here and learned from them.  And we hope we’ll see much more of them in the year ahead and through their school careers. Hopefully, they like us (almost) as much as we like them!

Thanks to the teachers and volunteers who brought them to us and shepherded them around and to the Friends of the Library who provided cookies and juice to all.

Eighth Graders Everywhere!

We are psyched! Tomorrow 270 eighth graders from Learwood School descend on us to learn how to use the library for research. They are about to prepare a major research project on Washington D.C. and we’re going to show them how to do the research part of the project.

We’ve got 10 stations set up across the library and we’ll move students between them. We’re covering everything from Dewey to electronic databases to encyclopedias and altases to refreshments (brain fuel, we hope!). Our young adult department computers will be reserved for a demonstration most of the morning and early afternoon.

There will be beautiful, energetic teenagers all over the library but not much quiet. We’re prepared. We’re energized. We’ve got our shushers turned to the off position. Bring ‘em on!