NoveList Plus
I really love NoveList Plus! At the college library we don't do too much with popular fiction, so it comes in handy for the occasional reader's advisory question we do have. I also sub in a public library, so I have used NLP many times in my job there. Usually it involves series or readalikes. I searched for my favorite character Kay Scarpetta and easily got all of the books by Patricia Cornwell in order of publication. I created an alert to when the next book comes out and also sent myself an email of the citations for the entire series. This is very useful for patrons by phone I'm sure. For read alikes, I learned about Kathy Reichs, Carl Hiaasen, and Lynda LaPlante, none of which I have read. For collection development, seeing the entire list of works by an author I know is popular is very helpful. I can then see if we have it, or if it is available in the MaineCat system, and if not, then perhaps we should add it to our collection. I also searched for a book I am currently reading, The Art Forger by Shapiro and was very interested in the Lists & Articles section which brought up an article by Joyce Saricks. I also found alot to read on my favorite subject, art forgery and art theft.

Full disclosure...I am a crafter...in fact in my previous career I was a professional weaver for the textile industry. I love to do needlepoint and am a novice knitter. Hobbies and Crafts Reference Center was new to me. I have to be honest...I did not like it. I love craft books and magazines and have Googled things such as quilt patterns or a video on a knitting stitch, BUT what I like and need are colorful photos! That is where I get inspiration and information.

When I tried this database, I was immediately frustrated. I mean blood pressure going up frustrated. So I search for knitting/ Scarves and got 833 rsults. But how do I know if I want the Chattahoochee Scarf? I have to open the file and wait for the pdf to download just to see what it look like. Why is there not a Quick View option? And that search window...so basic! I learned from Help that I can use tags for searchable fields such as SU and AU but who can figure that out? Certainly not the average public library patron. And if a student were to use this for actual research, most of these publications are also in other Ebsco products such as Master File, with it's complete searching functions. An browsing...don't get me started. How can you browse arts and crafts without images?

So, my academic library, which does not subscribe to any craft magazines, might be able to use it to supplement or general interest areas, but for me...

TWO THUMBS DOWN!

This week I watched the tutorial "Maine Resources in Marvel". My search was on Cynthia Dill, with my interest being what's the latest from her campaign. The basic search for Cynthia Dill brought up 890 results, with the first item being from 2005. The results were ranked by relevance. Detailed view showed me 20 items at a time, with CD hilited whenever used in the text. But I wanted the latest news, so I was able to sort by Pub date, with most recent first, giving me a current item. Another search for Cynthia Dill and finances retrieved 116 hits and when I further defined the search to include ad campaign, I got 37 hits. Some of these were not as relevant to CD, but did cover ad campaigns and finances of all the candidates which was relevant to my interest in how her finances for ad campaigns stack up to the other candidates.

I created an alert for this topic and could definetly see SMCC students using this also, especially in a current event or political science class. Agai, I don't think they would create a workspace just for newspapers, as they need to cite a variety of sources. As a instructor, however, I could see using it.

IN PQ Newsstand, I see that other standalone newspapers are Christian Science Monitor, NYT, Maine, WSJ, and Washingtom Post. These are also included in a general PQ Newsstand search.

I have not shown anyone how to use Marvel specifically, as we usually direct students to Ebsco or Proquest which are listed seperately on SMCC's list under Find Articles. Mostly, when a student asks for last's week NYT, I would then direct them to use PQ. Especially if they are trying to photocopy and have to make all those crazy folds to get it on the machine....

I wonder if there are any other academic libarians participating in Marvelous Maine? I think our needs are different from other libraries. I will try to find someone to comment with.

I did my study of the Britannica Academic Edition. I wanted something global for a current event so I chose "Euro-zone debt crisis". This was a great topic and I found a long list of results. I noticed that on the right side I could see brief summaries; clicking on the title brought up the full article. The left side many features. I especially liked the images. Sometimes I find it hard to navigate through databases, but the Britannica was intuitive and easy to use. On the left side, I found links to journal articles, as well as web links. This is important for the college student since they usually have to cite several different types of sources.

Article history was interesting: I could see all the updates the author has made, important for currency requirements. The contributor info especially interested me. Who actually writes for the Britannica? Well I assumed at least a PhD in a topic, but NO...this author has a BA and is a staff copy editor for the Britannica. This astounded me. Could I write for the Britannica? And why is this any better than Wikipedia, forbidden in academic research?

I created a workspace for myself and played around with it. While I liked it for my research conducted only in BAE, I don't think our college students would use it. As I said before, they need to use many sources and would probably email or print their findings. They would like the citation guide at the bottom of the article. I think this would be a great starting point for college students, instead of Wikipedia or Google, but they would have to go on to other databases, websites, and books to complete their research.

My first challenge was to find the introductory tutorials on the MSL website, since I was not using the link in the email. The link is not under About, Getting  Started, or FAQ. It’s not under Public. It’s not under Libraries. I search for Introduction to Marvel in the search window, which brings up a link to http://www.maine.gov/msl/libs/pr/marvel/  but when I go back to the MSL home page, it still takes me a long time to find it again. Eventually I find this path:

Libraries/ Advocacy/ Marketing and Programming /Marvel Resources…

I assume this is not meant for the public to use? The tutorials themselves were pretty elementary for me. What I do want to know more about however, is OneSearch.

By finding the tutorials under Advocacy and Marketing, I did also find all sorts of pdfs and docs that could be used to hand out to patrons for educational purposes. I see now that a link to the tutorials could also be put in a patron accessible place on the library home page. Most patrons would probably not be using the MSL site.

Hello all you Marvelous Mainers! I hope I set this blog up correctly.