Net Library

This was a fun search to do, spent way to much time on it! The first search I did was on Mount Everest. I just did a keyword search and got a lot of results that had the word Mount Everest in it but didn't deal with Mount Everest. I did find some books that looked very interesting and upon inspection, loved the pictures and information I was able to find. 2. the fitness search I cam across a book called ultimate new York Body Plan by David Kirsch, which was a good book it had exercises with pictures and descriptions. 3. My last search I found a lot of books of western history I found a lot of books on the indians, Lewis and Clark and general history books. Very facinating! This would be great for research papers, and reports. Also I had a patron in mind who loves history who has trouble reading because of failing eyesight. This probably would work for him, because he can enlarge the print, since it is web based, to a size that he is able to read. I plan on mentioning this to him next time I see him!

WorldCat

I have skipped the Netlibrary chapter because I am having some technical difficulties, but will return as soon as it is up and running. I have used WorldCat in the past for ordering books and obtaining MARC records, but I never realized that there were other databases that you could search through!I also never saw before that you could cite your book through WorldCat. It will give you 5 versions of citations. I appreciate that when you search the SD libraries come up first and then the neighboring ones. That really helps in trying to keep material as close to in-state as possible without extra searching.Also having some full text articles in OAIster was nice, although I tried a couple of searches and had trouble getting exactly what I was looking for.

Gale Virtual Reference

I selected the Gale encyclopedia of Medicine and searched for Polycythemia. I found the information in here much easier to understand for a non-professional than the search I did in ProQuest. It was very easy to use and I can see the medical books being used a lot. Also kids needing to do papers would have a great resource here.

I used the same search term, Polcythemia, and had a few more options than I did in the first search. It was very nice to see the listen feature for non-readers, although I wouldn't want to listen to that voice very long!

There is a lot of neat stuff in Gale, if a person would just take the time to investigate it a little.

Proquest

I actually did two searches, one was on polycythemia, which is a blood disorder, and I found the articles on that were all way over my head! I didn't know a lot of the medical terminology so I switched and did a search on wind generators, There were 89 articles and they ranged anywhere from policy, types of generators, new designs, and practicality. I found these articles much more user friendly. When I did a search through publication, I tried librarian and found 4 publications, mostly related to schools, I then tried public libraries, and found 1 publication. They all were interesting reading. I am really glad they have the full article button or you could really waste some time going through articles. I was really amazed at how many periodicals are in proquest, you could have a lot of fun browsing through some of those periodicals!

SIRS Discoverer and Researcher

When I looked up Lindsy Vonn on SIRS Discoverer, I found 6 articles, 3 had pictures, and they all had a moderate reading level. Discoverer was easy to navigate. I liked that from a glance you could see if there were pictures, activites and reading levels in the article before you even opened it. The articles were recent and relevant.

When I looked in Country facts for Bahamas. I found a map and picture of the flag. They also offered teacher resources, facts, population, geography and weather, economy, government, and history. The database features are nice, they have lots of information and can help with reports and research, or even some fun fictional articles!

On SIRS Researcher I picked abortion for the leading issue. It had a lot of good information and artlicles, along with timelines, charts, statistics, and pros and cons.
Under the curriculum pathfinders, each heading had a wide variety of sub headings to narrow your seach. There was a lot of information under each sub heading and there were some interactive articles that were fun!