Summer isn’t the end of student research in the library— it’s just the beginning, for incoming Freshman at least. If you are teaching this summer I invite you to get a jump start on introducing your students to all of the resources we have available to them for their research projects. There’s never a better time than during the height of the summer heat to get students primed on how to use the library catalog, online databases and Noodle Tools. Nancy Figel will be available for the first summer session, and I will be here the second session to assist your students with book selection, and to guide them through their projects.
Speaking of Noodle Tools, early this summer Noodle Tools will be undergoing a much-needed makeover. Here are a few highlights of some of the new and student-friendly features including: being able to change a source type (change a citation from Magazine to Newspaper for example), content type (say changing an Editorial to an Interview) and changing a publication medium (from Website to Online Database).
| These are massive improvements as students before had to cancel out the citation they were working on and start over if they needed to change any of these aspects—which caused a great deal of anger and frustration. Another feature sure to please students, as many have asked about this in the past, is the ability to cut and paste a citation from a source directly into their work cited page. This will be a timesaver for students as they won’t have to type out an entire citation if there is already one at the bottom of their article. Teachers will like the ability of students to archive a source in their citations. Now the article will be affixed to the citation for easy viewing and reviewing. There will also be a better note card layout. Now the direct quotation and paraphrase boxes will be side by side making it easier to read from left to right—no more scrolling up and down. This will make paraphrasing a little less taxing as students can look at their direct quote as they restate it in the paraphrase box. But enough from me, check out the Noodle Tools trailer for yourself: http://www.noodletools.com/software/demo2012/ | After their phenomenal trial run back in March, the three new databases: Opposing Viewpoints, U.S. History in Context and World History in Context will make their grand debut on July 1. Their home will be under the Gale Books tab under the Library link on the homepage. To all of the teachers who allowed the librarians to show these resources to your classes, I can’t thank you enough. Witnessing your students interact with these databases was invaluable to the decision to purchase them for our school.
We are in the middle of a trial run of Science. This online database has Science Magazine articles in full text. These articles can be used for Science, Health, English and any other classes who wish to research topics in: medicine, health, science, the environment and psychology. If you haven’t already done so, take a spin around Science and see what it can do for your classes. If you like what you see in Science, it just might become a permanent member of the library family.
Angie Tomcik |
