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.