Election LibGuide

I am not politically inclined, so I am forever in debt to my much more knowledgeable coworkers when it comes to the matter, and kudos to Linda (and other contributors), because this guide is outrageously helpful and comprehensive. It makes me at least 95% confident I can answer a question or find the right answer. (Without this guide that percentage is maybe around 20.) So that is a definite increase! I got 100 on the quiz. Wahoo! I hope others are loving this beneficial resource, too.

Critical Past

This is pretty darn cool. When I first started browsing, using the timeline, I thought it was strange I couldn't search by keyword or topic, but of course you can, if you use the big brilliant search box. It's also really enjoyable that when you search something broad (WWI), it will break it down by decade/nationality/origin, etc. so you can make it pretty specific. Whats also enjoyable is that its all legitimate (it gives you an archives # and everything is well documented/sourced) so I'd feel better showing this to a school kid than, say, You Tube. Very glad to learn about this. I'm familiar with foodsafety - I had it posted on the Cooking and Nutrition LibGuide during the egg scare.

New OPAC

Spiffy! I kind of dislike that the default is to search Marmot and not MCPLD. I think that has the strong potential to mislead patrons. But I do like that it's called Western Colorado catalog because that is about 1,000 times more intuitive. There's a lot more that I do like, too. I like how easy it is to separate formats - I like how sortable it is with the right sidebar. (Publication date ranges? Very cool.) . I love the suggestions. I like that reviews are on the screen. I was one who always, always went to "More About This Item" to read them, which opens another window, etc. and this is much easier. I don't like that it is more difficult (maybe to just me?) to see where the copies are alllll the way at the bottom of the screen. I like that once I request one item, I only have to enter my info once and it automatically logs me in and next time I just have to click on request and it knows. I also like you can select a collection--children's is separated. Overall I enjoy it a great deal!

Today's Front Pages!

I started to realize Webolution was entirely getting away from me. Most of the time I looked at the tasks and even did them and just never got around to blogging about them and I don't know where the time has gone. So by now, I have to kind of re-look anyway, since I don't recall my original thoughts. But I suppose that is twice the learning. Today's Front Pages is a very cool tool. I like that it's international. I like the Map feature. I like that it links you directly to that paper's website. I can think of a few instances where this could have been helpful. (I had a patron looking for the French newspapers write up on a tennis match, and this would have made it less difficult than it was, which was more difficult than it should have been in the first place.) So it is helpful in that it can pinpoint a few big papers per region and link you to them. Do I see value in the "big picture" of viewing just the front page of all these papers? Eh. Not really. Sure, it's cool, but not super informative. I mean, the headlines in Maryland don't really interest me all that much. Overall, its a potentially helpful resource to keep in the helpful resource file in my head.

Free Ebooks

Thanks for compiling such an easy to remember, easy to use list of these resources! I had *heard* and *read* about these sites, but never visited/practiced with them. So I'm glad for the chance. I visited Project Gutenberg first and successfully downloaded A Tale of Two Cities. I then went to Many Books, and I concur, this was my favorite. The layout was great, browsing or searching was easy. I went to subjects and found cookery. Funnily enough, I hadn't really ever thought before about cookbooks as ebooks. But what a fantastic idea. So I downloaded The Allison Vegetarian Cookbook, published in 1915. (I didn't know there WERE vegetarians in 1915.) I was very highly amused. The first introduction paragraph:

"This book is written with the object of laying before the public a cookery book which will be useful not only to vegetarians, but also to flesh eaters, who are often at a loss for recipes for non-flesh dishes. Nowadays, most people admit that "too much meat is eaten"; but when the housewife tries to put before her family or friends a meal in which meat is to be conspicuous by its absence, she is often at a loss how to set about it."

"Non-flesh dishes" I also like the insinuation that only "housewives" cook. I dig it. Maybe I will make some of his non-flesh suggestions. I was going to mock some of the recipe titles here, but they actually look really good!

Anyway. I knew Google Books had the ones you could read directly in your browser, but I hadn't ever downloaded them as epub, and it was good to know about that as a possibility. I successfully downloaded The Secret Garden.

A great task! Now if only I can successfully make a cheese souffle...

Optimal Resume

I was able to watch the demonstration of Optimal Resume from their rep with Nancy T and immediatley thought it would be a crazy beneficial tool for our patrons. It does an incredible assortment of tasks, seems pretty intuitive, and keeps things well organized. I'm demonstrating Optimal Resume for our Job Series classes currently. So far the reaction (the class of 4) has been mixed. The more comfortable folks are with basic computer skills, the more comfortable they'll be with this, but I suppose that goes for any computer application. At any rate, I had to get very cozy with Optimal Resume, and there's so much to explore. I like that help, examples, samples and tips are always very readily available, but you're also easily able to create everything yourself. It gives you any amount of guidance that you need. And once you use one function, all the rest are very similarly organized, so it makes it easy to learn. Hopefully people will get comfortable with this great tool!

Print Friendly

Being friends with printers is good. Not friendly printers are a big, darn hair-pulling hassle. We teach folks all about print preview here in our computer classes, so I felt pretty familiar and comfortable with that, but its pretty amazing how long something so seemingly short can actually be. Its a pretty "green" habit as far as the colors of habits go. Printer-friendly, I hadn't used before though. I thought it was easy, efficient, and...well...friendly. I liked you can just check "remove pictures" and just click on whatever you wanted removed and wa-laa. Being able to download it as PDF or email are also nice options. I'll be sure to keep this in mind!

Learn-a-Test

Oh my goodness, it's the last work day in February. Best complete February's Webolution task, lest I feel like an out-of-whack slacker. I love Learn A Test. Honestly. I turn to it a lot a lot a lot. I have learned that I would, in my current state and without any further study, probably completely fail the US Citizenship test. That depresses me. It makes me feel like I am not smarter than a 5th grader. I point people to this whenever they ask about GED materials, because typically the most recent guides are checked out. But some other fun instances in which I didn't think Learn-A-Test would apply but it DID are: the truck driver's test--CDL. It's in there! Also, there was a woman in just the other day who was looking for books on the cosmetician/beautician exam. A) I did not know there was such a thing. B) We did not have a book, but another Marmot library did. C) Just for fun I was like "Let's try Learn-A-Test!", and ta-da. Beautician exam in there. She was VERY happy. Its a powerful thing. I guess my ode to Learn-a-Test is over now. It never ceases to amaze me.

Welcome Back Webolution

Yay for the return of Webolution. For once, I am ahead of the Webolution game. I took it upon myself to complete this task independently about a week and a half ago. Because we all know how fun it is to have great products that we feel like a total idiot describing. I read through the FAQ's, which were pretty easy to follow, and I downloaded the Digital Editions. Downloading a book was REMARKABLY easy. And fast. And, as pro-print and anti-electronic-books as I've been forever--I imagined it to be cold and weird and unfamiliar and pretty unpleasant--I was happily surprised. It was so easy to use and read! I thought everything about it was pretty darn intuitive. I like how organized and simple the Digital Editions is, I liked how easy it was to move around in the book and how customizable you could make your viewing. I could see how this is actually super beneficial technology for super on-the-go people. (I still don't think I'd want to be reading my future kids their future bedtime stories off a screen though. Also, I don't think I am an "on-the-go" person.) I digress. This is all great. And I don't feel like an idiot describing it to people. I was impressed with how current a lot of the titles are, although not so impressed with overall number, but still. It's very cool. I do not own and have not tried/witnessed actual downloading of the book onto a device, but. I imagine it goes seamlessly. Does anyone have an e-reader?