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.