The end is here!

I managed to get back to the challenge and by the deadline. I thought I would end late as I started late but.......
Visiting "WorldCat" was neat. There are a lot of libraries that carry the book I was looking for-"Last of the Mohicans". There are 1200 books at other libraries-wow! Which lead me to the author. James Fenimore Cooper also wrote "Leatherstocking Tales" and 2474 books were available with the number one library to have it at Augustana College in SD. Just listing Cooper as author led to 110,443 hits with Aberdeen Alexander Mitchell Library having it. The number one author under Cooper was Susan Cooper and there 110,443 books out of 153,557 matches. This site lists all the ways to get to the book, author, and library easily. I wish I had played with this resource sooner. I actually learned computers when you wrote the program and used a lot math. Now there is an endless amount of information out there.
The wrap up is here. I used a few of the newpaper resources, even though they are no longer active, and found old related items to my topic. I typed in war memorial and had 120 hits on the Capital Journal with 27 of the articles from 2010-obits and the Honor flight.
I requested a State Library card last week and have not received it so I could not use the LexisNexis Congressional resource. When I receive the card I will play around there.
My biggest discovery was World Book. I know the paper version of encyclopedias are not used much but all the info is there, just electronically. My biggest hope is that all the school systems are using the resources for research. Our library does not get used by the high school kids a lot for research because of the school offering time in the day to use the computers and the school is giving out computers.
I keep passing the word the library is available for free to everyone by word of mouth, the local news channel, and articles in the local paper. I am even working with the new administration at the local high school. I now have the help of the library board also passing the word. It seems baby steps work the best. My first baby step will be making sure everyone knows about Learning Express. Thanks for having me challenge myself and the librarian.

WorldCat to be continued

I went through the tutorial on WorldCat, got onto the site, stepped away to answer a question about the other computer, and lost the site (the computer updated and logged me off). With library hours closing, my time was done. I now need to go back and try again. My impressions of this resource will come later.

Looking for family history

Since our Library has had Internet access we have had patrons using the three sites on the State Library page for research. One lady has her own access to Ancestry but still comes into the libray to use our site because the other two resources are there.
Soooo, one day the librarian and myself sat down and looked up each others history and had lots of success. The only resource we found not helpful with our family was Sanborn maps because we moved here after we were married and were not familiar with the lay of the land. The patrons who are from the area for three or four generations have used the maps a lot. All in all the three geneology resources are the most used in the library. Of course, when the internet was down, we had people wanting the sites. They came back later.
The librarian liked Ancestry over Heritage because there seemed to be more info on Ancestry. The search was limited on Heritage for the info she wanted. I think this will be the number one used site in our area because of all the geneology hounds.

Learning Express Library

I knew you could do practice tests for ACT, GED, etc. but to have them all in the same place is great. I know of two high school juniors who actually used this recource last year and had great success with it. Finding the other 5 learning centers there is a bonus. The job search and workplace skills had a grammer test. Finding out your punctuation skills need improvement is good, especially if you actually need to write resumes. My problem is commas. Taking a social studies test for the GED was better, of the five questions there was only 1 wrong. Better grade! The ebook I picked was GRE testing. It did not take long to download and most of the book was compiled of preperation. Relaxing before the test was mentioned quite a bit. Relaxing is always great!
I have been working with the local high school to make sure all the kids know this resource available to everyone. If they cannot make time at school they need to come to the library.
The job resume aspect is a plus as well. Kids need to work at 16 so they have money in the rural community. The best example is: cars are needed for transportation and money is needed for the car. All our rural kids learn this right away as walking and public transportation is not an option.

ArchiveGrid

Working with some of the electronic resources with history and art is not my strong suit due to lack of time but it gets you interested when you find out what is all out there for the searching. Looking up Sitting Bull led me to info I knew but also some I did not and it was only a summary. If you want to go into more research the archivist is listed along with other subject matter related to him. I tried entering some our local history but found no results. But, finding Elizabeth Custer was great. In our South Dakota collection we have a copy of her book, "Boots and Saddles". We had a search request made last summer for this book. With ArchiveGrid I found out she wrote two other books about her prairie life and defended her husband's reputation to the end. You never here about the negative reputation after the man dies but some must never forget.

Camio

Doing the searches from the exercise had results. There are a lot of examples Paul Revere's silversmith talents and portraits of him and his wife. Looking at 63 works of Sioux artifacts and clothing, it is amazing that so much is saved when the world is so modern and filled with technology. Having the date, type of work, creator and museum held info can lead on a deeper search as to what else the museum holds from that time period.
Looking for Harvey Dunn, a South Dakota artist, was zero finds but we know he painted because the painting hangs in our library. With Norman Rockwell there was six works listed and the museums received them as gifts in 1992 and 1995. I learned a new fact about Rockwell-how the museum received the paintings. I did not realize the large museums did not have to purchase the art displayed.
I looked up the Statue of Liberty and found 18 works, some with political cartoons and some of the statue on the shore. I added 4 to my favorites list and then saved them to a file. I will try to use them on my blog. I have not mastered the art of adding items to a web page, we have not advanced that far in our library. I will try this when we do.