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.