Activity 12: History Day Help

REMINDER: when a patron comes up to you and asks for help with a History Day topic, make sure the patron has an active library account AND a pin number set up in order to access our databases from outside and to check out materials. (good advice)

1. Find out what National History Day is. 
http://www.history.com/shows/classroom/videos/national-history-day-history-of-nhd#national-history-day-history-of-nhd



2. Find out what the theme for History Day 2015 is.
3. Find some of the topics the Minnesota Historical Society suggests students work on.
4. Find where you will direct students to look for information on History Day in SPPL?
Blogging Exercise:
1. Explain your experience working on the tasks.

Looking at History Center for information on Roy Wilkins I found background information, historical documents, articles, a media clip and journal articles.  I think this can be a good source of some primary materials and background information. Also on the Teen page History Day Help there are some good links to not only the History Database, but also online repositories like the Library of Congress, National Archives, Minnesota Video Vault (tpt). I think these are good resources to share with students along with checking our catalog for print resources. Another resource that we don't link to directly (you can get to it through Other Online Databases and Websites and then Books and Literature and then E-Books) is HathiTrust Digital Library which offers a great wealth of digitized titles (government documents, etc) from libraries around the world. The only thing I don't like about HathiTrust is that I find it difficult to search at times.

2. Explain how you would apply it with History Day 2015?

I would/will hope to keep this information in my brain and to make sure the students are aware of these resources and at least point them out to the student/s and if there is time and desire on the student/s' part we could look at some of the resources together to try to see what they can find on their topic. Both the U of M and MHS have good information on how to organize one's search and presentation.

3. After performing the tasks, do you feel better prepared to help patrons out with History Day?
Yes, it is always good to have a reminder of what is available.



 

Activity 11: Search Engines Beyond Google:

I tried Bing and it seems pretty good. It does certainly have similarities to Google, but I like the sub-categories, reminds me a little of how Yahoo used to look. Under "More" there is a travel section, a translator and Explore Bing which has spotlights on timely information like Halloween and Elections (both coming up) and other topics depending on what time of year it is and then features of Bing.

 



I tried this search engine. It seems interesting..definitely less clutter and ads..and I guess it is good that it doesn't search your personal info..sometimes the ads/info gathered from data mining are interesting, but in general I suppose it is better if it doesn't do this. The searching seems pretty good. It does talk about instant answers and ways of searching, but I don't see how you get instant answers..I thought it would be something you click on.

I tried Ask and it definitely does have a lot of trivia questions, which are interesting..but I wonder what sources are being used to answer it and whether it is usually accurate. The one about Christopher Columbus and who funded his voyage matched what I had heard so that seems accurate...

 

RecipeBridge.com does have access to a lot of recipes..I guess it could be handy if you really want all of your recipes in one place? Maybe if you're very interested in food and cooking? Otherwise I think just searching the internet works well too.

 

I just tried  Momondo which seems interesting. I don't know whether Kayak being an "indepdently run" subsidiary of Priceline is bad..hard to say. I haven't really used either site before. But I did do a search on aurora borealis under "inspiration" and came up a list of the best places to see it so that's cool.  

 

At home I sometimes use www.goodsearch.com because I like the idea of donations being made to a charity of your choice. I used to use www.dogpile.com, but then I think I just ended up joining the Google bandwagon at work.