Since we are under a thick blanket of snow at the moment, I can't help looking back at summer pictures. This was one of the hottest days of the year....I don't remember the temperature, but it was close to unbearable. We went to Palisades State Park near Sioux Falls, SD. It is such a beautiful place, and very out of the way. There weren't many other people there at all. There were so many beautiful things to see here; this image is one of my favorites.

Leaves, #2

After taking the first group of pictures, I noticed how different the leaves looked when the sun was on them. Since the sky was overcast when I took the first pictures, I decided I needed more pictures and went back when the sun was out to get some more. I love the dramatic lighting on these.

Autumn is here

Well, life has definitely happened since my last post, and my goal of having a new picture up every week has most definitely not been met. But I am finally at least trying to get back at it!

This interesting white leaves have been attracting my attention for a few weeks now. They are gold on one side and solid white on the other.....they look like they have been spray painted, but that is how they were on the tree. I don't know much about trees, and so I don't know what kind of tree this comes from, but I just had to get some pictures of them. I was walking by them on my way into work every day and finally on my day off I showed up with my camera to get some pictures. I am most fascinated with the way the veins and textures show up so well against the white.

Now that the South Dakota Library Challenge is over, I plan to use this blog for what I originally intended: a place to showcase my art and photography. Right now, I'm in graduate school so I don't have a lot of time to create new pieces, but I have lots of existing work so I will start with that. I hope that in doing this blog I will be able to share some of my work with people who appreciate it, and also give me motivation to keep producing new work, to keep it a priority in mylife.

This photograph of a flower was taken at McCrory Gardens in Brookings, SD. It is one of my favorites because of the way the sun lights it up. This was a beautiful day for taking pictures, hot with nice bright sun. Sometimes bright sun like that makes photography more difficult because of the harsh shadows, but in this case it had a lovely effect. I love the way you can see the veins in the petals, and the petal appear to be tissue thin and so fragile. This is one that I really like more and more every time I see it, and I hope others who see it enjoy it as well.

South Dakota Library Challenge week 10

Well, this is the final week of the Library Challenge, the wrap-up! I learned a ton of new things. I think my biggest discovery was Archive Grid. I didn't even know that such a thing existed, and I love the thought of being able to find the location of really important papers that could be helpful with research. Someday when we get our own archives organized I would love to see our items added to it. Seems like a lot of places have papers that could be very useful to someone somewhere, if only that person knew they existed.
One of the other things I really enjoyed learning about was some of the "extras" on some of the sites. Most of the sites I had used before, but only the basic functions. I liked CAMIO's ability to make your own gallery of images and do comparisons. I liked the photos and maps features of several of the sites, and the foreign language feature was a plus when available. I also liked the sites that had lots of links to more information, and that would sort the information into type for you so you didn't need to look at types that didn't work for your research needs.
I will enjoy knowing more about all of these resources, so I can help the students answer their questions and do their research better. One of the biggest challenges these days is "weeding out" the irrelevant information to avoid overload. I think all of these resources have great features that allow that much better than a general Google search or similar search.

South Dakota Library Challenge, Lesson 9

For lesson 9 we were looking at AncestryLibrary, HeritageQuest and Sanborn Maps.
I started with AncestryLibrary, looking up my own name. I tried looking under my maiden name, and found some public records with addresses and phone numbers of places I had lived. Under my married name I found my kids' birth records as well as more addresses and phone numbers where I had lived. Sort of a mini-history of my own life. Also popping up were plenty of relatives, as I did not do an "exact search" (well, I tried, but got no results!) so names similar to mine were coming up. Next I tried a search for my grandmother. I found her in the Social Security Death Index. I was kind of surprised that her social security number was right there. I'm hoping that there are some kind of safeguards in place to prevent use of the numbers of deceased people, since I also found her full obituary with all the other info you would need to steal identities. It had information even I didn't know (who knew her middle name was Leota? Not me!) and names of lots of relatives. This would be very useful for genealogy....it would be a good start for working your way back and back. I even found a census record from 1910 with my great-grandmother in it.
Next I looked in the Photos & Maps section of Ancestry Library. When I typed in South Dakota, all kinds of neat things came up. The Library of Congress had lots of photos, like one of the Corn Palace in 1909 when it was actually a corn palace. There were also family photos, professional baseball players from South Dakota (!), US School Yearbooks, and "General Photographs of the Bureau of Ships". Tons of great photos with lots of historical relevance.
When I tried Heritage Quest, I didn't have nearly as much luck. I searched for "Mayflower Descendants", wanting to see if they had one of the books about Mayflower Descendants in South Dakota, which my grandmother is in. No luck. I searched for Aberdeen, Watertown, and Brown County, all with no results. When I tried Brookings, I did get 6 results. 2 were actual histories of Brookings and the area, and the others were family histories by a Brookings author. I was kind of hoping to see more.
Sanborn Maps was interesting. I chose June 1912 for Aberdeen. We happen to have an original of this actual Sanborn Map in our library, so it was interesting to see what it looked like online compared to the real thing. Pretty similar, actually. I looked up the Ward Hotel, and it was there then as it still is now, but of course almost everything around it had changed. It was interesting to see how different everything is now....the one consistency throughout the town is the railroad.
These are all good resources, and would be especially useful to our upper-level history students, who every year have to choose a topic of local history interest and write a research paper. These sources could all be very helpful for that type of paper. They are also excellent for genealogy research. And if you wanted to find your own address from 1989, you can do that too!

South Dakota Library Challenge, Lesson 8

This week's lesson was about Learning Express Library. This site is a great source for test preparation and many other things. I actually used this site quite a bit last fall when I was preparing for my GRE test. There are many sample tests available and I gave them a good workout.
For today's lesson, I tried a practice test for the ACT English section. I only answered a few questions, so of course when I went to score it my score was dismal. It did inform me that my score indicated that I may need more practice for the test, and gave some suggestions for what I should do. I liked how it broke down the score and made it very easy to understand. (GRE scores are very difficult to make sense of, but the ACT was much easier!)
Next I went to the "Job search and interviews" section and chose a course on job interviews. This was a very useful course....it had loads of information. There was information on how to dress, how to make small talk, what type of questions there might be, and even how to follow up after the interview. This would be very useful for someone looking for a job.
I checked out the e-books section and was also very impressed. Lots of books about how to improve study and academic skills in general. I chose a book about "How to write great essays" and really liked the easy format. It was really nice to be able to scroll through the list of books and be able to choose one and view it immediately.
All of these tools are very useful, and I can see that they would be especially useful to someone who doesn't live very close to a library, since they are all accessible online. It is easy to set up an account, and easy to navigate around the site.

South Dakota Library Challenge, Lesson 7

Part 1: Archive Grid
I had never even heard of Archive Grid, so this was a good resource to learn more about. I looked up Sitting Bull, and found the little biography of Sitting Bull. It didn't give a lot of information, but it would be a good starting point to learn more. This link was actually a link to an artifact held by the Cornell University library, a card and envelope autographed by Sitting Bull. I liked the ability to find items in archives this way.
When I did my own search, I looked up Jack the Ripper, a strange little fascination of mine. I wasn't actually expecting to find anything, but I actually got 20 results. Some of them were from the collection of the papers of David Abrahamsen, who wrote an analysis of criminal minds, including Jack the Ripper. There was also a diary in one collection containing references to the Ripper murders. There were also papers in one archives of Cuthbert Druitt, cousin of Montague Druitt, a suspect of the crimes. There were papers of a man who had been a witness at the inquest of one of the Ripper victims. Several links were to movie-related collections, having to do with one of the "Jack the Ripper" films. I was really surprised to see all of these things come up. Some had very detailed lists of items in the collection. One would generally have to actually go to the archives to see the papers and use the information, but just knowing where to find it is a great start if you were deeply researching a certain topic.
Part 2: CAMIO
I did the Paul Revere search, and was pleased to see how many photos of his lovely silver work there were. Some were by Paul Revere and some by Paul Revere, Jr. I am not sure if those are both Paul Revere or if one was his son. There were also some works that popped up that were about Paul Revere, not by him, such as "The Ride of Paul Revere". Each item had a small photo that you could click on to see a bigger image and get more detail about the work.
When I searched under "Sioux", I got nice results as well. Lots of images of Native American artifacts and artwork. There was a wide variety of items.
For my own artist, I chose to search for Georgia O'Keeffe. This was a little difficult because I wasn't sure of the spelling of her name. I typed in Georgia O'Keefe, and got no results at all. Unlike some search engines, it did not come up with an alternative suggestion. I searched again under "Georgia" and this time got lots of results, mostly for Georgia O'Keeffe (Two f's! Who knew? After 4 semesters of art history, you'd think I would!). Once I had the correct spelling I could eliminate all of the non-relevant results.
Our library could use this resource in many ways, the main one being for the art students. I know when I was in school, the professor would assign us to copy a master's work, usually giving us several masters to choose from. It would be nice to be able to look each one up right there and do a comparison of their work to decide on the subject matter. There is also the ability to sort by medium (drawings, watercolor, photos, etc.) so if you're only looking for oil paintings it's sorted for you. You can also save them to favorites, and from there you can do side-by-side comparisons, view them in a slideshow, and move them around into whatever order you want. Very useful resource!

South Dakota Library Challenge Lesson 6

Lesson 6 was about WorldCat, the catalog where you can find just about any book in any library in the world. I chose to search for "The Hobbit" by J.R.R. Tolkien. I got 179 results. This was not too surprising since there's been so many different versions of that book over the years. The top result was a more recent illustrated version, held by 934 libraries. When I clicked on the link to the libraries, it listed all the libraries that have it. The top library was the Brookings Public Library. I liked how the details listed everything, such as size and number of pages, and even showed a photo of the front cover. This would be a great way to make sure you have found the exact book you are looking for. The LC call number was PN6727.D586. It also listed the Dewey call number, 741.5. When I clicked on the author link, it showed a list of his other books, such as the Silmarillion, Lord of the Rings, and the Book of Lost Tales. This would be really nice if you found you liked a particular author and wanted to see a comprehensive listing of that author's books. The subject field was kind of odd for this particular book, listing the subjects as "Middle-Earth" and "Hobbits", both of which are unique to Tolkien's books, so when I clicked on that link I got a listing of Tolkien's other books. If I had chosen a different title, perhaps one about a serial killer, I imagine the subject link would have taken me to other books about serial killers.
When I searched the OAIster database for "South Dakota", I got a listing of articles. I chose "Observations on Bats at Badlands National Park". The best thing about this database is it is all full text, so when you click on the link, it gives you the option to download the article. Once downloaded, it can be printed or just read right on the computer. The article I chose was also text searchable....I don't know if they all are, but it is a great feature. It would enable you to find out right away if the article had particular information. For example, if you were only interested in vampire bats, you could type that into the search and see if the article contained anything on that subject. This is a very useful tool for wading through large amounts of information quickly to weed out the irrelevant.

South Dakota Library Challenge, Lesson 5

This lesson was about NetLibrary. This is another resource that I have used occasionally but not extensively. For me it has been a great place to check out "how-to" books, since sometimes you just need one little thing and don't want to buy the whole book just to find out one small thing. In this case, I looked up The Complete Idiot's Guide to Sewing. What I like about NetLibrary is that you feel like you are really seeing the actual book, pictures and all. This is important since sometimes articles and such that you find online don't include the pictures. Sometimes that doesn't matter, but in the case of how-to books it really can make a difference. I really enjoy the fact that you can search by chapter and by page, or you can just flip through the book one page at a time. So far I haven't ever had it happen that someone else was using a book I wanted to use. Don't know if it's just because that doesn't happen often or if I just pick unpopular subjects! Either way, it is nice to just be able to look through a book quickly to find a small piece of information you need. Several times as I've been learning to sew I've used this site for the how-to books, when I come across a term in a pattern that makes no sense to me (pattern instructions assume lots of previous knowledge that I just didn't have!)
Next I went to look up books on the Constitution. This was a little tougher. When I just typed in the word "constitution" I got 5,782 results, many of which didn't seem to have much to do with the Constitution. I searched "United States Constitution" and that narrowed it down to 2,734 results, which seemed much more relevant. When I went to the advanced search button and looked up "United States Constitution" in the subject line, my results were even more relevant. I found several books right away that looked good:
Almost a Miracle: the American Victory in the War of Independence
Law in the U.S.
The American Republic: Constitution, Tendencies and Destiny
For the third portion, I went to the advanced search and typed in "Oklahoma" in the publisher field. Many of these looked like they would do nicely for the topic of Western history. Obviously not all of them would work, as not every book published in Oklahoma would be about history, but narrowing it down to the correct region to begin with seemed like a good start. Of the first page of 15 results, there were 7 books that I thought would definitely be worth a look on the topic of Western history. (it found 81 books total.) Another thing that I like about NetLibrary: the results can be sorted by newest, oldest, rank, title and author, and the site also lists related searches on the side so you can get ideas for different searches if you need more results.

South Dakota Library Challenge Lesson 4

For lesson 4, we are testing out Gale Virtual Reference Library. This resource has tons of great titles to browse. I chose "American Civil War Reference Library" from the list of available titles. This is basically an electronic version of a book. When I clicked on table of contents, it listed the individual chapters so I could choose one that looked interesting. First I clicked on "Civil War Timeline". This was a fantastic thing...it listed in order every single event of significance about the Civil War, including events leading up to and after the war. This would be very helpful if a student wanted to write a paper about the Civil War and was having trouble narrowing the subject down. In the chapter listing, there were also individual chapters on people who were influential in the war. I chose to look up Clara Barton. There was a really good biography of her, and on the left side were related searches listed to get more information. There were also citations provided for students writing papers, as well as links to other articles and a list of other books to get more information. This resource would be fantastic for students writing papers, or even someone just looking for a quick answer to a question such as "When was the Gettysburg Address delivered?"
For the next part of the exercise I used the "Basic Search" option at the top to look up information on Leonardo Da Vinci. I got a long list of articles about him. The great thing about this is that they were divided up into subjects, so I could choose which ones were relevant without having to look at each one individually. (Since Da Vinci was known as both artist and scientist, there was a wide variety of articles). This would be a good resource for looking up almost anything. If enough information is not found in the initial article, there are always links to more information.

South Dakota Library Challenge, Lesson 3

This lesson was about how to use Proquest. I have already used Proquest quite often, so this one was not too difficult. Since we are an academic library, one of our main functions is to help students find credible resources for research papers. Proquest is one of the main sources we turn to for that. One great thing about it is that you can set your search to full text only. This will pull up only sources for which the whole article is right there, rather than just a citation. Sometimes it broadens the search to open it up to non-full text articles, but in that case there is usually a bit of extra time involved in getting the article. For some reason our students like to wait until the last minute to do their research, and don't have time for that, so we use the "full text only" function to narrow it down.
In my search, I searched for information on eating disorders. I got 23,182 results. Just skimming down the list on the first few pages, it looked as if most of the articles were relevant to the topics (every once in a while something off the wall comes up!) and most were from medical journals. Also popping up was a list of related topics that could narrow down the subject further, such as "eating disorders and women" and "Eating disorders and teenagers". There were tabs at the top of the list of articles that could sort it into different source types, such as scholarly, magazines, trade publications, newspapers, reference and dissertations. Very handy feature there.
Next I searched the Publications section for journal about libraries. 24 results came up....who knew there were that many! I had only actually heard of one of them on the list. Lots of possibilities there. This would be a good feature for finding source material about a particular field of interest.

Library Challenge, Lesson 2

For this lesson, we are looking at SIRS Discoverer and SIRS Issues Researcher. I started in Discoverer, looking up an animal. I chose to look up hamsters. When I typed "hamster" into the search box, I came up with a long list of articles. Many were about care and feeding of pet hamsters. No pictures popped up immediately, but soon I figured out that the articles with the camera icon beside them were the ones that had pictures. The other icons by the articles were also very handy--they listed whether an article was fiction or nonfiction, and even the difficulty level. This would be very useful when helping a student find what they are looking for, as you can immediately weed out the things that don't have relevance, or are at the wrong difficulty level.
In the database features on the right hand side, I chose a country (Iceland) to see what kind of information I would get. There was a map and a flag on the right side, and the rest was information about Iceland. It listed population, climate/weather, economy, government and history. Very good overview. Next in the database features I selected a map. I went to "US Historical Maps" and was amazed at how many there were to choose from. After going through several pages of possibilities, I settled on a map called "States that never were". This was a great map even just for amusement. (It would of course also be useful for a history paper).It showed states that had been proposed but never come to be. I was really enjoying some of the names, such as "Chicasawria" and "Sagada-Hock". Probably a good thing that they never came to be. From the database features, I next chose to see "Photos". This would be a very useful tool if you were specifically looking for photos. I searched hamsters again, and came up with a few photos, including an interesting one of a wild hamster burrow, which I have never seen before. I was surprised by how few photos there were, so I searched horses to see what I would get, and this time got pages and pages of results. The best thing about the photos is that it listed them by subject (Such as "Wild horse" or "horse and carriage") so you could pick the specific type of photo you were looking for.
In SIRS Issues Researcher, I chose Global Warming as the topic to research. The first thing that came up was a topic overview, which gave a nice summary of the topic. At the top of the page it also had a "Pro/Con" section, which showed articles from both sides (sort of "Global Warming is a hoax" vs. "We're all killing the planet!") It also had a statistics button to click on to get statistics that would be useful to help support your point of view. There was a timeline showing relevant dates on the topic, and an enormous list of articles. These could be sorted by info type: news, magazines, reference, etc. There were also links to related issues.
In the "Curriculum Pathfinders" section, I chose "fine arts", then "Visual arts" and from there "painting". I got a list of relevant articles. At the top I could narrow it down further by choosing a more specific area. I chose "Impressionism", and was presented with another list of relevant articles. I liked how the list offered brief summaries of the articles so the researcher could get an idea of whether it was what was needed. This proved to be a really good resource, and could be narrowed down specifically or left more broad.

South Dakota Library Challenge, Lesson 1

I actually originally started this blog to talk about my artwork, but somehow that never happened! I've been far too busy to make any decent art lately, so I guess I had nothing to comment on. Now I've accepted the South Dakota State Library's Library Challenge, and will be using this blog to discuss what I've learned.

Lesson 1a--World Book school edition
I tried the different sections of the World Book school edition. First, I looked up guinea pigs in the World Book Kids. (Can't help it, I love guinea pigs.) There was a picture of guinea pigs, and a short informative article. The article gave the basics about guinea pigs, mostly focusing on domestic guinea pigs and describing how people keep them as pets. The article did mention that guinea pigs are also found in the wild.
In the World Book Student section, I also searched guinea pigs. It came up with the same photo, but the article was quite a bit longer. It gave much more detail about care and breeding....this would be very useful for someone considering getting one as a pet. It also mentioned that they are sometimes hunted in the wild for food, and that they are commonly used in research. I am wondering if this was left out in the younger kids' version for fear it might be upsetting to small children, or if it was just to save space because it was not considered essential information. Anyway, a nice long article with lots of good information.
In the World Book Advanced section, I searched for information about Australia. This search revealed an enormous amount of information. World Book sorts it all out kindly for the researcher. On the left, it listed different sources of information such as encyclopedia articles, e-books, maps, tables, sounds, videos, reports, research guides and web sites. This enables you to choose a certain type of information. On the right it listed primary sources. The center was a long article that can be printed, e-mailed or saved. When I clicked to the Australia page, it had articles broken down in sections: intro, people, ways of life, the arts, the land, climate, animals & plants, and economy. This would be excellent for someone writing a research paper...you could focus on a specific area of study, and even pick and choose the types of sources you would like to use. A very valuable resource.
In World Book Discover, I looked up American Government. There were plenty of articles to choose from, and for non-english speakers, there is even a translate option with many languages to choose from.