The North Metro campus COL101 class was assigned Summer Hill School in Cartersville as their research topic. The Chattahoochee sports team is called the Blue Devils in honor of Summer Hill. When asked, several students happily admitted to using Google for their search. There are good resources online from The Summer Hill Project which has primary sources (newspaper articles) to the Georgia Interscholastic Association. A Living Stories video has been created and shown on PBS with more information.
When I looked in GALILEO I found a few things that could add pizazz to the story of Summer Hill.
In the Digital Library of Georgia I searched for Cartersville. 62 items were retrieved. The items I found most fascinating were the Sanborn Fire Insurance maps - in particular the 1916 map which showed the location of the Negro Public School (on sheet 8 ). Searching the Sanborn maps isn't for the faint of heart. You need to search Digital Library of Georgia then click on the map picture to bring up the map and other search features inside Sanborn (like an address search). As I stood in front of the class I had to quick try to remember how to find that particular section of the map. It's not as easy to navigate as I had hoped. Lots of clicking in and out, left and right arrows to actually see what is on the map.
Comparing the 1916 Sanborn map with the Google map for the current Summer Hill complex made for an interesting compare and contrast.
The other resource I used was NewsBank (provided by the Chattahoochee Technical College Library). I did a search in the Georgia News Sources, limited to Atlanta and Marietta. Several stories came up with Summer Hill in the articles. The obituaries for people who graduated from Summer Hill gave an insight to the people who lived in Cartersville.
A Google search can help get you started but don't forget to check GALILEO for information that cannot be found on the free web.
-kls
Friday, October 23, 2009
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Gadgets and more gadgets
Just some musings on the new Credo Reference Gadgets tool . . .
The gadgets tool will appear as a frame on the right side of the Firefox window. If the frame does not appear, you may need to click on the gadgets link in the top center of the Credo homepage.
Not all gadget options will appear on the frame initially. You may click on the + symbol to see what additional gadgets are available and add them to the frame.
Searching within the gadgets is rather straightforward. A search for a word under ‘define’ will take you to entries for that word. The location search appears to have some issues. A search for ‘Atlanta, GA’ did not take me to the desired articles. A search for ‘Atlanta’ did take me to the desired entries.
The conversions tool is a bit simple and compares laterally to similar tools on websites found through a search engine. The conversion answers appear in script below the tool itself and the display is a bit untidy in my opinion.
The quotations tool will take you to entries from quotations books related to the searched for person, as with a search for George Bush, which included both elder and younger. However, due to the slightly dated nature of the Credo materials, a search for Barack Obama through quotations yielded no hits.
The crossword tool allows you to look for a crossword answer. Enter the letters you have and place a ? in the stead of the letters you desire. The tool will pull up a list of suggested answers. There is a drop down list explanatory device that appears with this tool in the form of a question mark icon.
I tested the holidays tool by typing Sweden in the search bar. This took me to a list of entries for holidays that originated in Sweden, followed by entries for holidays associated in some way with Sweden.
A useful tool for ready reference. The image search may lead to students/others using copyrighted pictures in their presentations though. (Even though it is Wikipedia related, Wikicommons is a good source of public domain images.)
-JWF
Credo is available through GALILEO. The password to use GALILEO is available from your Georgia librarian.
The gadgets tool will appear as a frame on the right side of the Firefox window. If the frame does not appear, you may need to click on the gadgets link in the top center of the Credo homepage.
Not all gadget options will appear on the frame initially. You may click on the + symbol to see what additional gadgets are available and add them to the frame.
Searching within the gadgets is rather straightforward. A search for a word under ‘define’ will take you to entries for that word. The location search appears to have some issues. A search for ‘Atlanta, GA’ did not take me to the desired articles. A search for ‘Atlanta’ did take me to the desired entries.
The conversions tool is a bit simple and compares laterally to similar tools on websites found through a search engine. The conversion answers appear in script below the tool itself and the display is a bit untidy in my opinion.
The quotations tool will take you to entries from quotations books related to the searched for person, as with a search for George Bush, which included both elder and younger. However, due to the slightly dated nature of the Credo materials, a search for Barack Obama through quotations yielded no hits.
The crossword tool allows you to look for a crossword answer. Enter the letters you have and place a ? in the stead of the letters you desire. The tool will pull up a list of suggested answers. There is a drop down list explanatory device that appears with this tool in the form of a question mark icon.
I tested the holidays tool by typing Sweden in the search bar. This took me to a list of entries for holidays that originated in Sweden, followed by entries for holidays associated in some way with Sweden.
A useful tool for ready reference. The image search may lead to students/others using copyrighted pictures in their presentations though. (Even though it is Wikipedia related, Wikicommons is a good source of public domain images.)
-JWF
Credo is available through GALILEO. The password to use GALILEO is available from your Georgia librarian.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
