AncestryLibrary, HeritageQuest and Sanborn Maps

1. I searched my name in Ancestry Library and found a record for me from 1993 when I first moved to Sioux Falls.

2. I did a search on my grandparents and used the exact search at first without any luck. Once I did a more general search, I was able to bring up death records and such for them.

3. Searching the Photos and Maps brought up a list of hits from yearbooks, the Library of Congress and several other enitities with photo collections.

4. I searched census records in HeritageQuest and found when my great-grandfather arrived at Ellis Island.

5. Sanborn Maps are useful when seeing how a city grows. It also allows someone to research for things that may not exist any longer.

Learning Express

I think Learning Express is a great way for students to practice important tests such as the GRE and SAT and to practice skills. Some of the skills tests are self-paced and some tests are timed-either way its a great study experience and practice test site. I also like the ebooks- great for browsing quickly.

Camio

1. I did the search for Paul Revere and the results brought up 34 works. They were about the Revolutionary War hero and about the silverware company. The sidebar on the left also had suggestions in how to limit the search further. The images with each record were a nice size and I liked the data about creator and museum that each had.

2. A search for Sioux brought up 63 results about the artwork, beadwork, pipes..ect. Again, the left sidebar offered other limiting.

3. I found 120 results for Raphael. I could limit further by format of artwork, date, creator, or subject.

4. Students may be able to get background information on artists or at least view quickly pieces of work.

5. The favorites is a neat feature.

ArchiveGrid

1. The page starts with contact information from the institution that owns the discussed material. A brief biography of Sitting Bull follows in the Notes and Summaries- a list that the collection covers is also included.

2. I did a search on "Robert E Lee" and got several hundred hits. The first one was a guide to his papers which I clicked on. This took me to the University of Virginia "Virginia Heritage" page. I was given contact information for the Special Collections Department, a brief bio and a full container listing of the collection.

WorldCat, Firstsearch, and OAIster

Part I WorldCat and Firstsearch

Because I work in Interlibrary Loan, I think WorldCat is probably one of my favorite databases. It allows me to search for a title such as String Quartet in A flat Major Op. 105 and author Dvorak limiting it to musical score. It has alot of various limiters for more exact searching. The drop down menu box in advanced search allows searching by title, author, title phrase, author phrase, publisher, publication date, keyword, subject, accession number, ISBN, and ISSN to name a few. When a record for a book is pulled up in WorldCat, it links you to further information. By clicking the author's name, WorldCat will search for all books written by that author. On the WorldCat record, it is also possible to pull up all books by a specific publisher, or click the link to pull up other records by the same author and title. WorldCat allows users to search for books world-wide.

Part II OAIster

I did the subject phrase search on South Dakota and found an item title "Molt Migration by Giant Canadian Geese of Eastern South Dakota" which could be downloaded. I havent spent much time with this database but was impressed by it.