Ebooks Available for Checkout from the LRC

Did you know that the LRC offers free eBooks to students and teachers?  We have books in a variety of subjects including classic fiction,  current fiction, and popular nonfiction titles. The LRC Digital Library can be accessed 24/7 from anywhere in the world by visiting the following link: http://dahs.lib.overdrive.com

How to check out an eBook from the DHS Digital Library

Go to the  Digital Library Website http://dahs.lib.overdrive.com/

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Diigo: Organizing Links and Making Lists

 

Do you have Information overload?

Do you find it difficult to organize all those cool links and multimedia sources you find online?

Diigo is a social bookmarking tool that allows you to bookmark, organize and save online material, and then share it with whomever you choose.  It helps educators and students track and organize information they plan to use in their projects and lessons. It’s a great curation and organizational tool for the entire learning community.

A  simple 7-minute overview shows you how to create bookmarks in Diigo.

Check out a few lists I’ve made to help me learn new applications:  Diigo Learn , Google Learn, and Mac Learn. Since I’m new to GAFE (Google Apps for Education) and Diigo,  I will refer back to these lists this summer when I have more time to watch the tutorials and read the articles.

Since sharing and working together is what 21st Century Learning is all about, I hope that the Diigo lists and links that we gather and share will create an opportunity for collaboration, curation, and organization- a librarian’s digital dream! 🙂

New Biographies in the LRC

         If you’re interested in reading about fascinating people in fascinating times, come check out the new, never-been-opened biographies in the library. Read about celebrity Justin Bieber, environmentalist Rachel Carson, composer Leonard Bernstein, President Barack Obama, and female aviator Beryl Markham. Check out the memoirs that include the life story of a woman who hiked, solo, on a 1800 km journey, a man who made his living as an artist, modern-age golfing heroes, a modern archeologist, and a South African writer of the independence era. Check out biographies to read about real people, with real challenges, who influenced the world.

How Google Search Works

Spiders helping us find the information that we need sounds somehow… poetic. 🙂 This short video helps us all understand how a Google search works.

EBSCOHost Basic Search: a Tutorial from the LRC Library

But Can’t I Just Google It?

Hello, students. I know that most of you use Google on a regular basis. So do I! I can’t imagine a world without the instant gratification of typing a phrase in the search bar and finding the answer to my question. Because you all love finding information by doing an Internet search, it can be hard to shift directions and use online databases.  You probably like performing a Google search because that’s what you’re familiar with,  that’s how you’ve found information for research in previous classes, and that’s how you find information in your daily, personal research. I, for example, do hundreds of internet searches each week  to find information. I can’t imagine my life without Google!  When it comes to professional or academic research, however, I  turn to databases.

Here’s why some of you might have trouble switching over to using databases in your research:

1. Database research takes time and effort to learn
2. GOOD research takes time (it’s not quick and easy!)
3. New databases are unfamiliar online environments
4. Previous teachers might not have required it.

So, why are are teachers asking you to use databases in their research?

Here’s why.

1.    Anyone can post anything on the web. There’s no sure way to ensure that your first hit when searching for info on “embryos” won’t be the post that a 3^rd grader in Australia did on his class blog. For scientific research, we want credible, timely information written by experts in the field. Databases have just that.

2.    University research requires that you know how to use online databases. In order to acquire research and information fluency, you will need to apply digital tools to gather and use information. This is necessary in order to be successful in college. Teachers would be doing you all a disservice if you left our school not knowing now to navigate, search, and research within online databases.

3.  Using a database uses time efficiently. If we were to do a google a search for, let’s say, “stem cell research”, we would get 120,000,000 hits. Who has enough time to sort through millions of webpages to find a credible site, especially when many of them are advertisements or business sites? Not me! I’d rather use a database that has a collection of articles written by experts in the field.

Finding information on an online databases might not be as “quick and easy” as conducting a familiar Google search. However, if you  give it time, you will most likely be rewarded with credible sources and the added benefit of using your time more efficiently.

Libraries: Expanding Print Text to the Digital World

The other day a student came into the library looking for a copy of a literary classic. I pulled a copy off the shelf, excited to get a requested book into the hands of a young reader. I couldn’t help but notice, however, the tiny print and the yellowed, discolored pages. I thought to myself, “I’d rather read this book on a clean computer screen.”

A lightbulb switched on in my bibliophile brain.

Many works in the public domain (no longer under copyright law) are freely distributed online. One site that has been invaluable for educators and students is Project Gutenberg, which offers more than 40,000 free ebooks for download in Kindle, epub, pdf, or html format.

The student happened to have her Macbook with her, so I showed her how search for the book at Project Gutenberg, highlight the html text, and copy it into a Word document to save on her computer. The entire book was on her laptop in less than a minute. When she opened the book on her laptop, her face lit up. She was happy to see that not only could she change the background color of the page, but she could also adjust the font size and text typography of the work, using the “highlight” and “comment” feature in Word to make notes as she read the book. She also noted how to decrease the light on the computer screen to make it easier on her eyes. Best of all? The book was hers to keep: no need to return it to the library.

Check out Project Gutenberg, which offers free, digital books that were previously published by bona fide publishers. Here you can find books by Dickens, Dumas, Oscar Wilde, Thoreau, Ibsen, Kipling, Agatha Christie, the Bronte sisters, Sophocles, The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (without illustrations, unfortunately), the Works of Edgar Allen Poe, the Complete Works of Shakespeare, and even the illustrated version of Beatrix Potter’s “The Tale of Peter Rabbit”.

When downloading ebooks, I suggest making a folder to keep your collection handy, easy-to find, and easy-to-manage. In addition, iPad/iPhone apps such as Kindle, Kobo, and iBooks allow some free ebooks to be read on hand-held devices. Kindle offers access across platforms such as iPod, iTouch, iPad, iPhone, Macs, Blackberries and Androids.

In the end, the yellowed paperback was put back on the shelf. It felt strange to encourage a student not to read a print copy of a library book. But since part of the mission of our library is to “promote the life-long habit of reading”, I couldn’t help but think that connecting our students to the wide array of online options is a way of preparing them for the world-wide trend of moving books from print to digital form. E-books don’t replace the traditional library collection of print books. Instead, they enrich the collection, adding a vibrant and dynamic way to encourage young readers to access books in an environment that they are comfortable navigating.

It behooves us all, especially those of us in love with the printed page of a hardbound book, to be open to new options. After all, our job isn’t to educate our students for our past, but to prepare them for their future. Like or not, digital books are not only future; they are the present.

“Why Our Future Depends on Libraries, Reading, and Daydreaming” by Neil Gaiman

“I worry that here in the 21st century people misunderstand what libraries are and the purpose of them. If you perceive a library as a shelf of books, it may seem antiquated or outdated in a world in which most, but not all, books in print exist digitally. But that is to miss the point fundamentally.

I think it has to do with nature of information. Information has value, and the right information has enormous value. For all of human history, we have lived in a time of information scarcity, and having the needed information was always important, and always worth something.” – Neil Gaiman

Read more in the The Guardian’s “Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming”