Cool stuff I don't have time to read

I found the following on my Twitter and Facebook feeds, but I just don't have time at the moment to read through them, though I want to. (info overload!):

• 20+ Free Online Libraries- nice list of cool resources I already know about. I should probably add the links to my delicious feed.
• Massive List of MOOC Resources, Lit and Literati- an awesome webliography of articles pertaining to Massive Open Online Courses
• a blog post with embedded slides on being an Educator Curator
• Creative resources for educators: Sparky Teaching
• I found this page through a link that I decided not to add to the list. It is the Transforming Libraries site of the ALA, specifically the page of a list of blogs I should add to my radar: Blogs to Watch

Picture books and Drugs

Today's interesting information need was by a student writing a research paper on the drugs in children's literature. The patron had already read Go Ask Alice, which was the teen read, and was now looking for a picture book that was a story and not a children's reference on how drugs affect the family. At first I found books dealing with alcoholism:

• Daddy Doesn't Have to Be a Giant Anymore by Thomas Jane Resh
• My Dad Loves Me, My Dad has a Disease by Claudia Black
• Think of Wind by Catherine Mercury

but the patron responded that she needed a book on drugs. (Honestly, the request was for "drugs", which is what I searched on, and last I checked alcohol is a drug, but whatever. I can be snarky here. At work, I sweetly responded, hard drugs?) A look on Good Reads brought up Latawnya the Naughty Horse Two (either horrible or hilarious, depending on your take of the author's writing skill) and so I took a look at amazon and found:

• My Big Sister Takes Drugs by Judith Vigna
• The House that Crack Built by Clark Taylor
• An Elephant in the Living Room by Jill Hastings

I then searched for those titles in WorldCat to see what the subject headings are for it: (su= "Drug abuse") and (su= "Juvenile fiction.") The only problem is, searching this way opens the search to teen and children's fiction and my patron only wants picture books. Still, it is a handy way to get an exhaustive search. In the end, we found a book titled Bird by Zetta Elliott. I honestly have no idea how we stumbled across it (probably on amazon), because in WorldCat it is listed under the subject heading "Drug abuse -- Fiction." and "Drug abuse -- Juvenile poetry."

Tools for Working the Adult Reference/ Reader's Advisory Desk

This past week has been the week of the research paper at the public library. All these middle, high school and college students coming in (the latter I suspect attend the local community colleges, which nonetheless have libraries and better database subscriptions than we do). But I love research! I'm so glad I get to do it with my public library patrons.

Today's college research student wanted authoritative resources on religion in the 1700-early 1800s in the colonial united states. I was looking under religion-United States-18th century as a subject heading. My supervisor spontaneously suggested Daily Life in Colonial America (Lucent library of historical eras) which has a subject heading of United States -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775. This makes sense as religion was a part of Colonial cultural life whereas "religion- united states - 18th century" may be more about the history and evolution of religion in that era. Not sure what exactly the researcher really wanted, but she seemed to walk away happy.

Her second request was for books about the values and morals of modern families versus traditional families. Well, I started asking for a bit of clarification by what she meant by traditional (nuclear? christian?) and what she meant by modern (same sex parents? divorced parents? blended families?) and she said she hadn't figured it out yet. My supervisor happened to be next to me and he suggested she do a little reading on the broad subject in order to get an idea on how to define her terms and narrow her topic down. She felt overwhelmed, but I explained that it was all part and partial of the whole experience of selecting a topic and writing a paper.

My sup then sneaked up behind me and slid the following two books on my desk for my perusal and professional development:

• 10,000 Ideas for term papers, projects, reports and speeches by Lamm, K. 1998 - This book lists ideas under broad topic areas (ex. Foreign Policy (broad topic), "Compare reconstruction policies of the United States in Japan and in Germany after World War II." (specific topic)) Helpful symbols indicate those topics on which there should be plenty of source material, which will need prior specialized knowledge, which topics will need to be broadened or narrowed, etc. Just ideas are listed here, no other resources. 808.02 LAM
• 100 More Research Topic Guides for Students by McDougald, D. 1999 - This book pairs ideas with extra information, such as a general description, call numbers and subject headings to search for books that will provide source material, as well as suggestions for specific titles, periodicals and indexes to search, internet sites, videos, organizations, etc as well as related topics. (Very awesome and helpful, but only if your topic idea is listed, still, it helps to see how the info may be organized.) Reference 025.524 MCD

Finally, my supervisor placed in my hands the DEWEY Decimal Classification 11th Abridged Edition, which is found on the ready reference shelf. As I didn't take a traditional cataloging class, this is most helpful to just see how the subjects are grouped. I especially like to reference the relative index which lists the broad subjects alphabetically and lists the sub-topics, then shows the dewey numbers, which could be all over the place. The Central branch has the LOC subject headings and I would love to own a copy of that, but it's a multi-volume set and always being updated, so I guess I just wait until I'm rich.