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.