What to read next

There is a resource in GALILEO that can serve as your personal readers advisory board - Book Index with Reviews.

What makes Book Index with Reviews different from NoveList (see 4th of July blog)?

"Book Index with Reviews (BIR) helps you find information on the books you want and need to read. BIR is a cooperative effort between NoveList, EBSCO Publishing and Baker & Taylor. Parts of Novelist are in BIR."

Several ways to search- use Basic Search or Advanced Search, if you know what you're looking for. There is a bar across the top of the page for browsing with New Releases, Forthcoming, Authors, Titles, Subjects.

Read the reviews which can give you a clue on whether you want to read the entire book! (yes, you can quit reading a book if it doesn't grab you- unless it's been assigned for a class....)

I read Joan Bauer's "Thwonk" this week- Ms. Bauer has a wonderful way of describing life as a teenager without lowering herself to the least common denominator-see what the reviews in BIR say about this title. (On the right hand side of the screen there is a jump to link for Reviews)

If you want to see which library has this title- check World Cat (see August 8 blog)

The password for home use of GALILEO is available to the citizens of Georgia from your librarian. Some resources noted in this BLOG are only available to NMTC patrons.

Where do they come from?

It took 90 minutes to drive from Acworth to Roswell on Wednesday morning. Thousands of folks in their cars driving down I-75 and then on I-285. Do they do this every day?

Check out the most comprehensive demographic data for the United States at The US Census Bureau site http://www.census.gov/. There is a link in GALILEO that will connect you to the Census Bureau.

Go to area profile on the far left of the screen in the census site
....Select Georgia
.......Select the county you're interested in
...........look at "Mean Travel Time" (that's a statistical term for the middle- half drive more, half drive less).

How long does it take you to get to work?

The password for home use of GALILEO is available to the citizens of Georgia from your librarian. Some resources noted in this BLOG are only available to NMTC patrons.

We have a winner!

In order to encourage students to pre-pay the Instructional and Technology fee, the Student Leadership Council (SLC) is sponsoring two drawings:

· The first drawing is for a $50 Wal-Mart gift card. Students pre-paying their Instructional and Technology fee this week (Aug 15-19) will be eligible for this drawing on Friday August 19 after 4PM.
· There will be two winners in the second drawing on Friday Sept 2. The prize for each of the Sept 2 winners will be a $25 Target gift card.

Students paying the Instructional and Technology fee by the fee payment deadline of Noon on Friday, September 2nd, will be eligible for the Sept 2 drawing. (Students paying their fee the week of Aug 15-19 will be eligible for both drawings.)

Pay those fees and automatically be eligible for the drawings!

Elvis has left the building

Elvis died in 1977 on August the 16th. Fans are still very interested in Elvis - his life and his music.

A search in GALILEO using these databases revealed:

• Academic Search Premier (atEbscoHost) pulled up 899 full text documents- three as recent as August 2005
• Research Library at ProQuest pulled up 670 full text documents
• Lexis Nexis pulled up 125 just in the past 6 months- what could they be writing about?

If Elvis is your King of Rock and Roll - check out the articles gathered in Ebscohost, ProQuest and LexisNexis for one more bit of information to amaze your friends!

The password for home use of GALILEO is available to the citizens of Georgia from your librarian. Some resources noted in this BLOG are only available to NMTC patrons.

Start your engines!

Well, at least go see your advisor....

• Today starts the official week of advisement for Fall quarter
• Next Monday starts early registration for Fall quarter
• Fall quarter begins October 4

Don't forget-
every registered student must pay the $35 technology fee before Sept 2

• This fee is mandated by the state, not NMTC
• This fee is not covered by HOPE
• Every technical college will be collecting the fee

$35 a quarter is pretty cheap for an education. The HOPE Grant covers tuition. The HOPE Grant has a book allowance. Bring your check book or cash to pay the technology fee.

The password for home use of GALILEO is available to the citizens of Georgia from your librarian. Some resources noted in this BLOG are only available to NMTC patrons.

How much is that doggie in the window?

Have you started playing the "I remember when it only cost....?" game.
The game can be played by almost any age group.

Do you need a resource to jog your memory of what something cost?
In our reference collection, we have The Value of a Dollar 1860-2004, 3rd edition.

It's interesting to flip through and note what has increased (and sometimes decreased) in cost. There are charts and graphs for income and expenses (food basket- in 1905 beef steaks cost 13.64 cents a pound in Atlanta; education- Harvard was only $150 a year in 1911).

Get those statistics for when you start playing the "I remember when it only cost..." game.


The password for home use of GALILEO is available to the citizens of Georgia from your librarian. Some resources noted in this BLOG are only available to NMTC patrons.

Archives USA

Faculty regularly ask students to use "primary sources" for an assignment. Where does one locate "primary sources"?

There is a resource on GALILEO that will tell you who has collected "primary sources" for a given topic:

ArchivesUSA® is a current directory of 5,550 repositories and 149,218 collections of primary source material housed across the United States. Powerfully integrated with detailed subject indexing, this research tool is a central collection of descriptive archival information.

When I did a search for Georgia, 64 sites came up as locations of "primary source" material.
The record notes phone numbers, addresses, web links, and materials collected.

The password for home use of GALILEO is available to the citizens of Georgia from your librarian. Some resources noted in this BLOG are only available to NMTC patrons.

A thousand words

We're becoming a pictographic society- a picture being worth a thousand words (Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 17th edition, pg 851-4, notes the quote is a misattributed Chinese proverb).

To accomodate those who would rather watch the movie rather than read the book (and yes, sometimes I'd rather watch the movie- it can be quicker to get the storyline through a movie- though not all movies follow the printed versions storyline....) we have purchased a TV/DVD combo for patron use. We already had three TV/VCR combos in the library.

The videos/DVD's owned by North Metro are noted in the NMTC card catalog at http://libcat.northmetrotech.edu/scripts/websafari.exe.

Most of our videos are checked out to the program areas but Faculty have been known to loan videos to a student for review purposes.

Scirus

We added Scirus to GALILEO for North Metro students because Scirus is the most comprehensive science-specific search engine on the Internet. Driven by the latest search engine technology, Scirus searches over 200 million science-specific Web pages, enabling you to quickly:

...Pinpoint scientific, scholarly, technical and medical data on the Web.
...Find the latest reports, peer-reviewed articles, patents, pre prints and journals that other search engines miss.
...Offer unique functionalities designed for scientists and researchers

See what Scirus finds when you search for the phrase "Space Shuttle" then compare the results to a search on Google.

You can get to Scirus through the web by using http://www.scirus.com/srsapp/

Advisement

Next week, faculty will be advising current students in preparation for early registration for the fall quarter.

You can check out the school catalog (which is available on-line in PDF format) http://www.northmetrotech.edu/catalog.asp to get an idea of what you have to take to complete your program.

There are exemption tests for some of the core courses like Eng 101, Math 101 and SCT 100. Check with admissions to sign up and pay for the exemption tests.

Who has that book?

Your librarian can borrow materials for you through InterLibrary loan.
How does the librarian find out "who has that book"?

One resource the librarian checks is WorldCat.
You can check WorldCat yourself in GALILEO.
GALILEO
....Databases A to Z
......Jump to W
.........Select WorldCat
........Do your search and then click on the highlighted link for Libraries

What if you just want to browse a neighboring library's catalog- how would you find that particular catalog? Yes, you could do a Google search but you know I'm going to send you to GALILEO.

GALILEO has a link - Library Catalogs - just under the link for GALILEO Planet. Many libraries in Georgia are listed- academic libraries, private college libraries, public libraries and special libraries- let your fingers do the walking!

The password for home use of GALILEO is available from your local librarian. The resources noted for North Metro Technical College may not be available through your local public library.

Changes are a coming!

Many Georgia librarians met Friday in Athens for the GOLD/GALILEO conference.

Lots of fun references to "Gold being in them thar hills" (you can read about Georgia's Gold rush in The New Georgia Encyclopedia: " By late 1829 north Georgia, known at the time as the Cherokee Nation, was flooded by thousands of prospectors lusting for gold. Niles' Register reported in the spring of 1830 that there were four thousand miners working along Yahoola Creek alone.")

Something that is coming to GALILEO is a search tool that will search through the databases in GALILEO so you don't have to go to each one. This feature will be available in the next year.

Now that's a gold nuggett worth waiting for!

You can get to the New Georgia Encyclopedia through GALILEO or through NGE's own web link http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Home.jsp

Dog-days are coming

No, this isn't a reference to the dog cloning in Korea.
You can read about that scientific process in LexisNexis.

The dog-days I'm referring to are the Dog-Days of August. Where in the world did that phrase come from?

I looked in the Oxford English Dictionary On-line (yes, it's in GALILEO).
I found this definition:

1. The days about the time of the heliacal rising of the Dog-star; noted from ancient times as the hottest and most unwholesome period of the year. They have been variously calculated, as depending on the greater dog-star (Sirius) or the lesser dog-star (Procyon); on the heliacal, or (by some in modern times) the cosmical rising of either of these (both of which also differ in different latitudes); and as preceding, following, or both preceding and following, one of these epochs; and their duration has been variously reckoned at from 30 to 54 days. In the latitude of Greenwich, the cosmical rising of Procyon now takes place about July 27, that of Sirius about Aug. 11; in Mediterranean latitudes, the former is somewhat later, the latter earlier. The heliacal rising is some days later than the cosmical; and all the phenomena now take place later in the year than in ancient times, owing to the precession of the equinoxes. Thus very different dates have been assigned for the dog-days, their beginning ranging from July 3 to Aug. 15. In current almanacs they are said to begin July 3 and end Aug. 11 (i.e. to be the 40 days preceding the cosmical rising of Sirius).

So be prepared for hot and sticky and unpleasant!

Every citizen of Georgia can get the password to use GALILEO at home from their librarian. The resources mentioned in this blog are available through the NMTC portion of GALILEO and may not be available with the public library password.

Georgia College 411

Another resource in GALILEO (and available straight from the web at http://gacollege411.org/)-

GACollege411 is sponsored by the Georgia Student Finance Commission .

• Take practice tests for the SAT, ACT, and the GRE
• Compare the higher education institutions in Georgia by size, cost, number of students
• Create a free account which allows you to keep track of what you need to do to get into college - (perfect for 6th graders through 9th graders to let them see what they need to do!).
• Discover what education it takes to do your dream job
• Find out what jobs are in high demand in Georgia

The coming soon section promises to be of great value to all students. You'll be able to request and send transcripts as well as apply to a college in Georgia.

Ships for Victory

What a magnificent new resource in GALILEO.

Ships for Victory
From the collection . . .
J.A. Jones Construction Company and Liberty Ships in Brunswick, Georgia

The online collection consists of eighty-four black-and-white photographs from the J.A. Jones Construction Company collection at the Brunswick-Glynn County Library that depict the company’s World War II cargo ship building activities in its Brunswick, Georgia shipyard from 1943 to 1945. The images document the life cycle of the Liberty and Knot ships built in Brunswick: from keel-laying and hull construction to christening and launch. Construction techniques are visible in many of the photographs, and several images feature the shipyard’s male and female laborers and management staff. In addition, the launch photographs feature ship sponsors and other dignitaries. Of particular note is a series of photographs depicting Christmas Day, 1944, when the shipyard workers volunteered to work through the holiday, donating their time-and-a-half pay as a Christmas gift to the nation.

Go to GALILEO
......Select the tab Databases A to Z
..........Jump to S
..............Ships for Victory

The password to use GALILEO at home is available to every citizen of Georgia from their Librarian.

First Day of School

Can it be? Yes, in some parts of the country, school is beginning today for K-12.
In Georgia, Cherokee County started the new school year today.

According to Chase's 2005 Calendar of Events- August is both "Children's Eye Health and Safety Month" and "Children's Vision and Learning Month".

Getting a child's vision checked before school starts is very important. Most information is processed through our eyes- if a child can't see clearly, they won't learn as quickly!

Eye doctors are everywhere (Target, Sears, For Eyes, Pearle Vision, etc)- it's not difficult to find an optometrist to check your child's eyesight!

Chase's 2005 Calendar of Events can be found in the Reference section of the library.

Internet sites in GALILEO

We are able to add program specific web sites to GALILEO. This makes GALILEO - with the link to our card catalog, the databases that come with GALILEO- a one stop location for finding information that will support the learning that is going on in each program!

We just added two sites to GALILEO for the Allied Health programs (the two sites will be visible on Saturday).

• The CDC Wonder <http://wonder.cdc.gov/> provides a single point of access to a wide variety of reports and numeric public health data.
• The National Health Information Center <http://www.health.gov/nhic/> NHIC puts health professionals and consumers who have health questions in touch with those organizations that are best able to provide answers.

Both these sites will benefit our nursing students as they look for ways to help patients!

You can get the password to use GALILEO at home from your local library in Georgia!

Georgia History

Do you ever wonder what happened in Georgia history?
Would you like to read about the event from the perspective of someone who lived through it?

Georgia Historic Books on GALILEO has 80 titles that might help you understand life in Georgia prior to 1950.

The Georgia Historic Books database contains full-text, fully searchable books related to Georgia's history and culture. Most are from the 19th to early 20th century and focus on Georgia history, biography, and literature.

Yes, you get tha password to use GALILEO at home from your librarian if you're a resident of the state of Georgia.

Advertising- some things never change

Do you want to look at advertising posters from the 1700's?
Just to see how the public was informed?

GALILEO
.... select Digital Library of Georgia (Databases A-Z or the Georgia tab)
........Browse by Topic (left hand side of the screen)
............Select Transportation (don't ask me why these are in Transportation)
.................Jump to H
......................Scroll to Historical Broadsides

"Over 2,100 broadsides from the 1740s through the 1980s that depict life, politics, and religion in Georgia and the country as a whole. Many of the Georgia-related broadsides advertise events at the University of Georgia."

An interesting place to compare current trends in advertising with what worked in the past.

Citizens of Georgia can get the password to use GALILEO at home from their librarian.

EbscoHost

I Attended a workshop on using EbscoHost to the fullest!

You can create a free account at Sign in to MyEbscoHost. This allows you to save your searches, have alerts sent to you when new information for your search has been added to Ebsco and to have journals and magazines e-mailed to you when they are added to Ebsco. The alerts are so convenient!

The Academic libraries have Academic Search Premier.
The Public libraries have MasterFile Premier.
Both databases offer over 2000 magazines and journals.

All these resources are paid for with your Georgia tax dollars!

Georgia residents can get the password to use GALILEO at home from your librarian!