I'm glad we have a week to make up missed assignments. I did this assignment over a week ago and brought my notes to the library to type up my blog entry. I then ended up taking 3 days off and being so busy doing catchup on the day I was here that I never got the entry done!!
I looked at a couple of the databases included in EbscoHost. In MasterFile Premier, I was amazed at the number of publications that were listed. I searched for and found Sports Illustrated for Kids, National Geographic, and National Geographic for Kids, among the other popular and also very obscure publications listed. We subscribe to National Geographic for the library but I could still picture this additional source being useful for patrons who are working at home or need to be able to easily cite a reference. I tried listening to a few of the articles in National Geographic for kids but the sound kept freezing.
In the basic search box I searched for Cushing's Disease because it was referenced in a book I am editing. One of the articles that came up was a very nice brief explanation that I found helpful. I also did the search for foods with zinc in them and was able to find some sources that listed foods that contained zinc although none of them were specific to just that topic. One of the other bloggers did a search for digital literacy and I think I'll check that out later since I missed the meeting in Ellsworth today and will have to wait for the webinar in January.
I was surprised to find eBooks in the Marvel database. I searched a couple of different topics. Under Psychology I picked a book on Depression and under Fiction I ended up reading all of "Pigeonholed in the Land of Penguins: A Tale of Seeing Beyond Stereotypes" which was great! What I didn't like was the layout of either book and the fact that the zoom feature didn't hold from page to page. I did get a kick out of the fact that I was reading the pigeonholed book so fast that I got the following message "Your usage pattern is consistent with a robot or automated tool designed to navigate through a book completely, and is inconsistent with a typical human reader." I had to complete a CAPTCHA in order to continue with the book.
I found two books that might be appropriate for a Constitution Day related search
"Abraham Lincoln, Constitutionalism, and Equal Rights During the Civil War Era" and
"Constitution in Congress: The Federalist Period 1789-1801
When I did the Western history search I found a couple of resources:
under the detailed subject index "West (U.S.) - description and travel" I found "Overland Journey from New York to San Francisco in the Summer of 1859" and
under the detailed subject index "Overland journeys to the Pacific" I found "Mountains we Have Crossed: Diaries and Letters of the Oregon Mission, 1838.
I really like the detailed subject index when it comes to narrowing down selections.
I find the EbscoHost databases to be one of the more potentially confusing places to search for information - there is so much there that it is sometimes difficult to know where to start. It's definitely a place where practice can help a lot to improve searching skills. I was very impressed by the number of popular publications included and the fact that eBooks can also be found there. I will definitely be mentioning that to patrons in further discussions of Marvel.
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