Posts tagged research

When I was working through grad school to get my library science degree, I sometimes had to use social media like YouTube videos and blog posts in my assignments.  Though I’m usually good at citing sources, I found that even with my handy APA guide I often found it a difficult and laborious process to properly cite social media sources.

Luckily for current students, there is a great guide to help them with their citations.  TeachBytes has created an awesome and easy to use infographic that explains how to cite social media resources in MLA and APA style.  How handy is this?

When science fair season hits, Science Buddies is one of my favorite resources to help students get through the process.  Science Buddies is a public charity organization dedicated to helping students of all ages and abilities gain scientific knowledge.

To accomplish that goal, they have created a really great site that provides students with science project ideas (narrowed down by subject, cost of materials, difficulty, and time needed to complete), guides to the scientific method and project design and implementation, information about careers in the sciences, and an Ask an Expert section for kids to get help from somebody in the field.

Last week when I was monitoring the virtual reference desk, I was helping a young student who needed to find out some facts about worm anatomy to prep for a dissection.  Lo and behold, the University of Illinois has created this gem, The Adventures of Herman the Worm, which answered all of the questions that my student had on the subject.

Squirmin’ Herman is a friendly cartoon worm fellow who will help educate you about the many intricacies of the earthworm’s life.  Through a series of interactive links, you can discover worm anatomy, history, eating habits, behavior, and habitats.  The site is colorful and very easy to use, and the illustrations and simple facts will be good for students of many ages.

Since April is National Poetry Month, today’s resource celebrates that!  I was just introduced to the American Academy of Poets website at a literary criticism training workshop, and I was smitten at once.  

This website is a great big smorgasbord of information about poets and their works, and you can navigate around in a number of different ways, searching by poem, poet, line, and more.  Some of the resources available on the site include lesson plans, interviews, and audio and video files.  Better still—it has a section specifically for teens that has a lot of poems that teen readers have rated and recommended.

You really can’t go wrong here, and it’s a very well designed site with tons of great info and lovely poems.  Just remember that you likely won’t find much information about poetry that is not American in origin!

Today’s resource is ArtCyclopedia, a website chock full of information pertaining to the art world.

The site is easy to navigate, giving users the option of searching by artist, artwork, museum, time period, or style.  Once a search is conducted, a ton of content about your topic is delivered to you via links to outside sources that contain images, gallery display information, journal articles, books, and multimedia.

I like using this site for students who have art projects or who simply want to know more about a particular artist or their works.  The links that the search tool provides are generally quite reputable and get users started off in the right direction.  Plus, it’s a lot of fun to browse if you’re an art-lover!

A common assignment that I help students with at the library is the classic report-about-an-animal.  Usually, the student has to find sources to teach them all about their animal of choice so they can inform their classmates about its habitat, appearance, etc.

My favorite website for this kind of information is Animal Diversity Web, which I swear I must use several times a month.  The site is run by the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology and it is packed with pretty much anything you’d ever want to know about any animal.

ADW is quick and easy to use: just type the species you’re researching into the search bar and a set of results will come up.  Once you find the link to your animal, you’ll be presented with a wealth of information about it: photographs, geographic range, habitat, behavior, lifespan, physical description, conservation status, reproduction, economic importance, eating habits, interesting facts, and a set of reputable references if you seek further information.  How cool is that?

I love ADW and sometimes just browse through the site to see what weird animals I can learn about in my spare time.  Check it out!

Today, I’d like to feature a public library resource called virtual reference.  In Maryland, where I work, this service is called AskUsNow, but it’s available under other names all over the United States and even in the United Kingdom.

24 hours a day, 7 days a week, you can log onto VR through your local library’s webpage and get connected with a reference librarian who can assist you with any questions you might have.  VR librarians are able to help with homework questions, research, ebook downloads, navigating the library catalog, internet searches, and more, and they are trained to provide fast service and reputable sources.

In the past 10 years, Maryland’s AskUsNow providers have answered 376,000 questions!  The next time you need research help, even in the middle of the night, check your library’s page to see if you can get connected too.

In my work as a public services librarian, there are three subjects that are difficult to help customers with: legal, health, and taxes.  This is because, as non-experts, librarians are legally not allowed to give patrons advice in these matters.  What we can do, though, is direct our customers to reputable resources that might better be able to assist them with their problems.

When customers come to me with medical or drug-related questions, MedLine Plus is my go-to site 9 times out of 10.  It is a free website run by the National Institutes of Health and it has tons and tons of articles, definitions, and information.  Even better—it links you to other reputable sites if you’re in need of further information about a particular topic. 

As a quick example, if you do a search for “diabetes,” your results page gives you a brief overview of diabetes, allows you to refine your results by keyword or type, and gives links to articles from other sources like the National Library of Medicine and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Forget Googling your symptoms—you will find a lot more accuracy on this site and be armed with links to other good sources to help with what you need.

I am extremely happy to announce that a research paper that I have been working on with a coworker has been accepted to the 4^th International Conference on Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Libraries.  It takes place next spring and will mark my first-ever professional conference presentation.  I’m very excited to present my research, which involves analyzing and evaluating my library system’s outreach services.

The best part, though?

The QQML conference happens to take place in Limerick, Ireland.

Hello, vacation!