Week 3 Newspapers and Maine Newstand

It always takes a while to get back to work and caught up after a week of vacation.  I was happy to see that many bloggers are behind.  Hopefully next week I will have time to do two lessons.

Stephanie your tutorials are very informative and easy to understand.  They need to be available to the public.  Many of the patrons that I help with MARVEL are adult students.  Once I show them the resources and get them started they want to explore on their own.  Your tutorials would help them learn without the embarrassment of  asking for more help.

I searched for Winslow Homer.  I would love to have the time to go see the new exhibit in Portland and then tour his studio.  Right now I have to settle for reading about it.  In the basic search I got 9449 results searching Winslow Homer.  In the advanced search by limiting my results to one year I had 58 results.  I ordered the articles with the newest ones first and found several interesting artilces that I had not read yet.  I was not able to set an "Alert" but I did save my search.  If I find the time I will go back and try the alert again.

I have used this data base many times and find if very useful.  The obituary section is wonderful and many parons are amazed that you can search all Maine papers or the many papers in ProQuest at the same time.  Quickly finding an obituary or showing someone how easy it is to use this tool is one of the "magic tricks" of being a librarian.

I spent some time yesterday reading blogs.  It was fun to see what everyone is doing and read about their experiences.  I liked leaning about the earthquake - I missed it while I was on vacation.  I had some trouble commenting, but that was not knowing enough about blogging.  I am learning.

I am amazed by the number of non-traditional students from the Penquis Higher Education Center that come to the library looking for journals.  Many of them are not comfortable using a data base so it can be a frustating process for both teacher and learner.  The more I learn the easier it is for me to help others.