Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Thing #17 - ELM Productivity Tools

I am very familiar with ELM, the Electric Library for Minnesota. I use the ELM provided databases daily in my work. I like the idea that ELM makes so many resources available to all Minnesotans - I realize that it requires access to a computer and the Internet, which many may not have at home. However, the public library provides free Internet access to all Minnesotans.

After performing a search on youth smoking, I created a search alert - had it e-mailed to me, rather than an RSS feed.

I also created a web page via Academic Search Premier on Best Books (pictures of the Top Ten books in our Media Center with links to the author's official website) - I didn't finish it, but this is something I could easily do at a later time. I had never looked at this option before - I didn't even know it was an option. What a great tool for teachers and Media Specialists to use to collaborate on resources for student projects.

Loved the option to e-mail search results to another person that I tested in ProQuest - this is a super easy way to get information to teachers when I do research for them. I sent an article entitled, "An Unmanageable Circle of Friends; Social-Networking Web Sites Inundate Us With Connections, and That Can Be Alienating." I loved the irony in the title!

Anway, lots of good things here. It is good to be forced to really look around these databases - to do more that simple and advanced searching. Teachers don't have time to do this - so it is good when we have more things in our bag of "tricks" to suggest to them to make their lives easier and to help them help kids to be more effective researchers!

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