Farewell print EB

A fellow librarian shared this link to an article about Encyclopedia Britannica.

Fingers flipping through pages while the eyes scan the columns, till what you're searching for pops out, can be quicker for the researcher trained in using print. A digital search requires that you spell what you're looking for accurately. I would hold races between students and myself to find infornation. I'd use print, they'd use digital. Invariably, I won. Not that I'm smarter but if you can't spell, you can't find digitally.


We do subscribe to the online edition of Encyclopedia Britannica. Just this week, I noted I couldn't easily find what I was looking for in the database. We don't have a print set of the Encyclopedia Britannica in our collection for me to compare the ease of finding the information.  We do have a circulating set of World Book. I was able to find 'daylight savings time' in the D volume. Sometimes the print encyclopedia is just what you need for quick answers.


-kss

Springing about

We set the clock ahead one hour so there's 'more' daylight at the end of our day. Why do we do this? How is it 'helpful'?

My initial search in our collection turned up nothing. In a second search, I limited my search to electronic books and selected a random electronic book. A search within the Ebsco electronic book collection pulled up computer books that made reference to Day Light Savings Time in the text. . This is something I tell English literature students to do when searching for information on a single poem. Sometimes information on a particular topic doesn't rate an entire book but is mentioned within a book on a different subject. Anyway, it wasn't the history of Day Light Savings time.

GALILEO has multiple resources I thought might help. My favorite quick answer place did have enough information : daylight-saving time - Credo Reference Topic (click on the continue reading link).

My search in Encyclopedia Britannica did not pull up an article but when I clicked on Standard Time, within that article was a link to Daylight Savings Time. The article was short but informative. I wonder why it didn't come up in the initial search?

The source that had the most information (with resources noted) was Wikipedia. Yes, the bane of instructors existence had the most complete information with sources. Because I have loaded the GALILEO Toolbar, there were purple Find It buttons next to articles that can be found in GALILEO.

I found  answers in 'authoritative' resources but I found the most detail in Wikipedia.

-kss

CTC students may get the current passwords by logging into our catalog, selecting My Account, and then selecting Off Campus Access.

Do you feel OK?

Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition provides over 500 scholarly full-text journals focusing on nursing, allied health fields, and many medical disciplines. Patient education sheets from the Lexi-PAL Drug Guide are also included.

I went looking for the 'Patient education sheets from the Lexi-PAL Drug Guide'. A simple search for 'patient education sheets' turned up a plethora of articles, none that met my preconceived notion on what a 'patient education sheet' would look like. When I read the words, 'patient education sheets', I think of a pdf, a single sheet handout with illustrations.

The publications link in Health Source lets me search by title, by clicking on the first letter of the title, and by scrolling through the whole list. I selected the letter L, then looked for  Lexi-Pal Drug Guide. There are two issues of the Drug Guide. The results do not match my preconceived notion. The 'patient education sheet' is an html view of an article on the drug. It seems clear and informative. It requires scrolling through multiple screens.

I wonder why they refer to it as a 'patient education sheet'?

-kss

CTC students can get the current password to GALILEO by logging into My Account in the Library catalog and looking at the Off Campus Access link.

Did you vote?

Super Tuesday. Georgia is part of the big primary day. Please do think about your vote and what it may mean to you in the long run.



-kss

Leaping about

An odd day, it only appears on the calendar every four years. Where can I find the how and why we have this extra day?

A scroll through GALILEO turned up an Ebsco science database and Salem Science. I figured one of them might have information about the added day. Neither had the facts I was looking for on 'leap year'.

Encyclopedia Britannica did have an article with facts and suggested resources. It didn't 'feel' like there was enough information.

The best resource for 'leap year' facts has been Credo Reference with articles from an Astronomy reference, a literature reference, and several dictionaries. Credo Reference gave me just what I wanted to know.



-kss

CTC students may get the passwords to all CTC resources by logging into the Find Books My Account and selecting the Off Campus Access link.

I found these resources in GALILEO
I selected Databases A-Z
I selected the first letter of the resource to find it it in GALILEO

Affirmative Action

What does affirmative action mean to you? A random survey showed fifty percent think of race, the civil rights movement and the sixties, when asked about affirmative action. The other fifty percent think of the 90's, gender, sports and Title IX. It seems to depend on the respondents age.

The random survey was inspired by Salem History which has two 'decades' books in the History database - the Forties and the Sixties. The section in the Sixties  on Affirmative Action begins :

The term “affirmative action” first appeared in the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, which required employers to engage in affirmative action, that is, to voluntarily rehire those who had been fired because they were union members and, in the future, to hire without regard to union membership rather than awaiting lawsuits to enforce the law.

The chapter goes on and refers to "1941 and 1943, after President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Orders 8802 and 9346, which mandated nondiscrimination by defense contractors, African Americans were hired in record numbers by contracting corporations in a voluntary effort to demonstrate compliance."

Salem History notes sources for this chapter -

For a history of the earliest uses of affirmative action, see Frank W. Andritzky and Joseph G. Andritzky’s “Affirmative Action: The Original Meaning,” Lincoln Law Review (1987), and William B. Gould’s Black Workers in White Unions (1977). Criticisms of affirmative action are expressed in Nathan Glazer’s Affirmative Discrimination (1975) and Stephen L. Carter’s Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby (1991). A pro-affirmative action view is presented in Gertrude Ezorsky’s Racism and Justice: The Case for Affirmative Action (1991) and Susan Sturm and Lani Guinier’s “The Future of Affirmative Action: Reclaiming the Innovative Ideal,” California Law Review (1996).

Based on the resources used, I wonder if the union issues had to do with African Americans? I hunted around GALILEO searching in WestLaw, Legal Collection, ProQuest, &  Ebsco for Affirmative Action: The Original Meaning. The 1987 reference is too old for the databases we have access to. A search in Google Scholar noted more sources that have cited the 1987 article. A search in World Cat for the Lincoln Law Review revealed I could request a copy of the article through inter-library loan.


Wandering around looking for answers to my own questions can be entertaining.

-kss

What does the picture say?

Historic Architecture and Landscapes of Georgia: The Hubert Bond Owens and John Linley Image Collections at the Owens Library, a joint project between the College of Environment and Design, University of Georgia and the Digital Library of Georgia, contains 1500 images of important and representative architectural sites and landscapes in the state with an emphasis on Athens and Middle Georgia.

The intriguing part of this database is the Teacher Resources (on the left side, 4th link). How do you take the pictures, which are nice but still are just pictures of places I haven't been and have no connection with, and use them as a learning tool? This article, Creating Place Based Classroom Resources suggested that photographs:

Rather than serving merely as illustrations, the visual materials in each lesson are documents that help students achieve the lesson’s objectives. Because analyzing and extracting information from visuals are not necessarily skills students have developed, new lessons now include a Photograph Analysis Worksheet. The worksheet directs students to describe a photo after looking at it briefly and then again after careful examination. They might be surprised at the information they can gather, or at least surmise, about when and where the photo was taken, the reason the photo was taken, etc. Appropriate for analyzing both historical and modern photographs, the worksheet helps students learn how to “read” visual materials.

A picture is worth a thousand words. You do need to know how to read those 'words'. Use the resources available through the Digital Library of Georgia and GALILEO to expand your 'vocabulary'.

-kss

Our view is limited

From our door we see  the wooden wall that separates us from the construction. We hear pounding, sawing , and voices.  We can see workers moving through the doorway carrying debris out. It is a limited view.

A walk outside provides a view through the spaces that have been cut out for spacious windows. We can  see the open space that used to be an auditorium.  The plans we've seen, show the area lined with tables and chairs. The front entry is beginning to take shape. There will be a curved cover over the glass entry. The outdoor patio area  will be a welcoming space.

The contractors have made great progress since October. Rumor has it construction will be complete by April. I haven't heard when in April - just April!

The view from the library will change.

-kss