Final Week

So we've come to the end of the discovery. I think when I went into this I thought I knew quite a bit about Marvel because I use it with students fairly regularly. What surprised me the most was how much I didn't really know about Marvel after all. The Hobby and Crafts Reference center really surprised me. I had never bothered to look at it so I was really amazed by the scope of the resources. The fact that people can get actual patterns and instructions was great. I shared that resource specifically with two teachers, one of whom teaches a fiber and fabrics class at my school and the other who teaches a lot of hands-on classes. Another area I had never spent much time looking at was the health resources. It was a surprise to see how user friendly so much of that is, since I'd shied away from anything but the Health Source Consumer Edition because in the past I'd felt like it was just too technical to be useful to non-health care providers. I like Medline plus. 

One search feature I'd never used before is the visual search. I'm not really a visual person so I wasn't sure if I liked it or not. I decided after some trial and error that it has potential and works well to organize results that can seem overwhelming. I think I will use the visual search when working with students who seem to need better organization.

The business resources were another area I don't use regularly. It was a great surprise to have a need for  that right after the lesson on it. I had a teacher having her class start a project where they have to create and market a product. She wanted some articles on starting a business and marketing ideas. I was able to find some resources for her.

I think one of my struggles in my current job is getting people at school to use Marvel. I have talked at staff meetings about it and demonstrated some things, mostly the Student Research Center. I have now shared some of the new resources I learned about with specific teachers in hopes that they will begin to use it. I teach research lessons to students and demonstrate certain things, but until teachers expect students to use articles from Marvel databases in their research I will continue to struggle. One of my goals is to push that expectation and keep showing teachers as well as students how easy it is to use Marvel and what great articles and information they can find. 

EbscoHost

So this is the one part of Marvel I feel like I'm pretty comfortable with. I use it fairly regularly with students and to find articles when teachers ask me for things for their classes. I was surprised that you didn't mention using MAS Ultra School Edition as well as Middle Search Plus for school since this says it's for high school students, which I frequently point out to students. I don't often search for only scholarly reviewed articles, but do have good success finding articles for teachers to use with students for non-fiction reading when paired with English reading or to support teaching in history or science class.
When I looked at the publications list I searched for Consumer Reports and found it in both Academic Search Complete, which surprised me and MasterFile Premier, which was where I expected to find it.
I like being able to use this to research appliances I want to buy since I no longer have a subscription to Consumer Reports.

Ebsco ebooks

I have not ever explored this, so I was excited to see what is available. I was a bit disappointed in the children's and young adult fiction since when you click on that category there are only two books listed. This seems like it's not worth even having the category. Then when I looked at the children's and YA non-fiction I was more disappointed. There aren't  very many books and the copyright dates are more than 10 years old, so I wouldn't recommend them to anybody for research purposes. For instance  Asia and Our Postal System both with a 1999 copyright need to be weeded, not read. Then I tried a couple of different searches, including feminism and flappers. I came up with a book on the abortion debate, agin with a 1998 copyright. I think that if I am going to use this resource with students I'll mostly recommend it for history topics and make sure that students pay attention to copyright dates when using books found here. I do like the way the book displays and is navigated, but I'm not sure how much I'll use this resource.

LearningExpress

I tried reading comprehension tests for high school. I was impressed with the test and it's scoring. This would be worth using for students to practice for SAT's and other standardized tests. It's also a good test for teachers to use to assess students' abilities and areas of need. 

I chose to look at the course about interviews. It provided some good basic instructions for going to an interview and tips to pay attention to. I particularly like the section on common job interview questions. I think this would be a good resource to recommend to people and encourage them to use as practice for interviews. 

When I searched for Nursing Assistant I got a number of results. The e-book results were an odd mix of things that didn't seem to apply in any way. I did, however, get a health occupations entrance exam book with practice tests and self assessment tools. 

I had never even heard of Learning Express before this. I really think there is a lot there for schools to be able to use with their students as well as for teachers to use to help identify students' needs. I wish that we had access to this at school and that it wasn't just a public library resource. 

I do think the job search part of this is also a very powerful tool to be able to offer patrons.

Ancestry.com

This seems like a very powerful resource. I didn't sign up for a free tutorial because that seemed to involve a call to customer service which I didn't want to do. I did wish I had an opportunity to explore this database so I need to plan some time in a public library in order to do that. The tutorial was direct and to the point, but without access to the resource really did little for me. It was interesting to see the potential places it searches for information.

Health Source

There seem to be a wide range of popular and medical titles in the publications list. I was surprised to see Ladies' Home Journal among the titles available since I wouldn't think about that as a health source.

I searched for Osteogenesis Imperfecta which is a fairly rare disease. I found several general articles which were quite easy to understand. There were articles from professional medial journals which were more technical, so less useful to the average person. I do like that there was a mix of both professional and more accessible types or sources.

The main page for Medline plus is very appealing. I remember having used it years ago and only a medical person would have wanted to use it. The links and news are all about smoking, diabetes and weight loss which are certainly mainstream topics. I like the way the links are set up with tabs for various populations and then topics that might be of interest to certain groups rather than a general population. When I clicked on women and then weight control there was quite a bit of basic useful information. It was definitely written for the average person just looking for some basics.

The "Drugs and Supplements" search also seems to be useful. It gives good readable information about the drug you search. It seems like it would be a good place to suggest to patrons who have questions about medications they are on.

Doing a search for osteogenesis imperfecta on Medline also yields a number of results. Much of the information here is also fairly readable and understandable by the average person.

The videos certainly provide plenty of options to watch surgeries and procedures. I'm not sure if I'd want to sit through an entire video of whatever procedure or surgery I'd be about to have, but I think some people might like to see that.

I like Medline. I feel like it's a bit more user friendly that Health Source Consumer Edition but I think Health Source has the potential for more in depth information. I guess I would recommend either or both to a patron depending on the individual and their needs.

Business Resources

When I searched FM radio the majority of the results I got were trade journals. Since I really don't know anything about the subject, or ways to better modify what somebody might be looking for it didn't seem too productive. I do like the visual search, but I had some trouble with it. When I tried it the other day it worked well, but this morning it wasn't coming up with any results at first. Then the visual search "button" wasn't clickable. I reloaded the page and tried again and got results. I don't particularly like the first view you get, with the "columns" display style because I find it hard to scan the results. When I change it to the "block" display style I like that. I like that you can sort results either by subject or publication, which might be useful to help organize and see options for articles. I had never explored the visual search at all and after seeing it here decided to then try it on some other databases. I really like the potential of this option for use with students. I wonder if they might like to use it better because it seems like it might make the results more "user friendly." I am definitely going to try it next week with a class I will be working with.

When I do a very general search for small business owners resources on EconLit I get what seems to be some useful information. There are a variety of subjects that might be helpful such as new firms,  startups and taxes. I did get quite a bit of older information, but once I switched to visual search option and then filtered my results by date it seemed like I had some relevant and potentially useful information.
I had a bit of a hard time finding information on small businesses and the Environmental Protection Agency. If I put the EPA in quotes it didn't come up with anything. I did get some results using some other search terms and combinations.
Finally, with a search for tax policy and small businesses I did get some very specific and direct results that seem to be useful for a small business owner.

I picked JC Penney for my national business to search. I got information about company performance mostly from newspaper sources. When I searched Shaw's I got again primarily newspaper results, with some TV and radio transcripts as well. The articles had a bit more variety including stories on layoffs, advertising campaigns and health benefits for workers. I tried a couple of Maine trucking companies and got either nothing or very few results. I did get an article on Dysarts about their support for a child literacy program which was kind of nice to see.

Value Line Research Center is not a database I will find myself using or showing others how to use very often. I think if I had any background in investments I might find it useful so I will certainly keep it  in mind, but I found myself being bored and overwhelmed by the amount of information. I did find it interesting to read the report on Amazon and how the stocks seem to be rebounding.

For the Wall Street Journal search the first results I got were more about health care in general. When I sorted the results by date instead of relevance it was actually less useful because the articles were all over the place about topics. I thought the suggestions about health insurance and health care expenditures would probably be much more useful for the average small business owner.
In general I like the ability to create alerts about my topic so that I can get current articles as they appear rather than having to keep going back in and searching the database to see what is new.

I absolutely love Novelist for basic things like figuring out which book is next in a series. It's a quick way to be able to direct students to the correct title when they want to know "which one comes next." The view sort feature is nice also because I can get a description of the book quickly so I can tell them what it's about.
The Read-alike feature is also very helpful. Students always want recommendations for something like what they've just finished. It's hard to keep coming up with something especially when it's an author I don't really know. I like being able to have a description of the author's style and then a list of other authors who are similar and why. It also helps to be able to have recommendations for similar titles when a student has favorite book and wants something else to read. It might also be a way to give students books that otherwise might go overlooked or I might not think about because they've been on the shelf for a while.