TexShare Databases or What We Can Get for Cheap

I'm not quite sure how this works, but in the great state of Texas, the state library has a "cooperative program" that regional library systems, academic libraries, etc can participate in, in order to have access to more resources, such as databases. I have no idea if it is paid for by the state library through state taxes (such as income tax) or paid for by the individual libraries on a subscription basis.

Anyway, it's budget time and there's been a change up in the resources being offered. I'm not going to list here what we had before or what we are keeping, b/c it is outside the purpose of this post. The purpose of this post is simply to note that there were some webinars that came out of the new additions. And I attended two this morning. Below are the notes from the sessions.

• Full text PDFs
• 720 videos
• 1500 resources indexed, 
• including books which don't read like ebooks, but you can click through the chapters
• In Advanced search, you can limit by greater than/ less than <> page numbers to find more detailed artilces
• Sharing articles is difficult b/c the user needs to login w/ username & password; so they would need their home organization's proxy link. (Best would be to log into library account first and then try links?)

AND

• This resource is more for the home owner/ weekend warrior and not so much for contractors, etc. They feature things that the average home handy(wo)man should be able to do.
• Be sure to look through the A to Z topics to have an idea of what there is for people to use. Examples are: Treehouse plans, ideas for small spaces, tiling, etc.

I'm glad I took the webinars b/c the trainer pointed some things out that I wouldn't have noticed or possibly bothered to browse. They look like cool resources and definitely as the trainer said, something to look through that is curated and good quality when the library is closed and at 2 in the morning you just got to peel the wallpaper off the bathroom walls.

All Ebsco products have a link to the support, training and promotional materials at the bottom of the page. I got the above images from there.