Activity 21-Newspapers

Blogging Exercise for This Activity

Search the Minnesota Newspapers database for a recent news event or a famous local name. Browse an issue of the Saint Paul Pioneer Press for any date in the last year. Try printing and/or emailing some articles.

I have used MN Newspapers quite a bit, but haven't used it lately and I'm glad I looked at it because I hadn't realized all the changes. I know there is a note about it at the end of the activity and a link to a video, but it's hard to watch videos when you are at the desk so I'm glad I looked at it. It's interesting to see the world reports and hot topics..I was a little confused by the USA-MN link-I thought this was a new newspaper, but it is a link to the MN newspapers covered by Newsbank. I didn't realize somehow that it links to some national magazines too. It is neat that you can now click on a year, month date, to pull up an issue...this is great as before you were limited to searching by keywords and dates and this graphic way of pulling up a date is a nice option.

Here's an article that I found. 'Wild' author Cheryl Strayed has deep, emotional roots in Minnesota; St. Paul Pioneer Press (MN); October 26, 2014

Find the New York Times for your birthday. What’s the headline? Is there any other interesting news? (Alternately, look up an important date in history and read the news as it happened.)

Well, I searched the date of my birth and then typed in "headline" and this is what I came up with. Hmmm...I don't know what to think of this. I can't tell which one is the main headline. I found a libguide on using Proquest New York Times and it talks about using "front page" to narrow down your search for headlines so that's what I did.  Here's the news about the Titanic.


Browse Chronicling America. Take a look at some newspapers from 100 years ago today.

Browse the Minnesota Digital Newspaper Hub for older state newspapers. Try browsing by county or using the map search features.

I like that you can see which issues there are for each county/city either by browsing or looking at the map. The text version of the paper seems hard to read, but if you click on print/view pdf then it gives you the option to enlarge which helps with being able to make the paper more legible.


Write a blog post about your experiences. See above. I think we have some good resources. It will take some more playing around to get used to and appreciate what there is and figure out how to work the quirks.

Thanks for this chance to learn and explore. Happy Holidays!

Here's an obituary from December 1970!

Activity 20: Wikipedia

Try It

You may already be familiar with Wikipedia as an information source, but try exploring some of the article elements a bit further. Start by looking up something that interests you. Look at the references linked at the bottom of the page – whether the article itself is complete and accurate or not, these references can be a good starting point for research elsewhere online.
Note the History and Talk tabs. These can be very interesting, particularly for controversial articles or subjects where there are strong opposing viewpoints, and you can see how the current version has been reached. In these sections, readers can suggest changes and argue their points. Take a look at the discussion for a few articles.
Explore further
Try editing a Wikipedia page. You don’t have to have an account, but setting one up allows you to participate in discussions more easily and actually allows you more anonymity (you can operate under a pseudonym with an account, but an anonymous edit will record your IP address).
Take a look at the Public Library of Science’s Ten Simple Rules for Editing Wikipedia before you get started, and use Wikipedia’s markup cheat sheet as a guide.
Do keep in mind that you’re not generally encouraged to edit information about your own organization, as it may present a conflict of interest.

Blogging Exercise for This Activity

What are your thoughts on Wikipedia as an information source? Do you think it is reliable? Does having the information on the history and talk pages available add to your understanding of page topics?

Hmmm..well, I remember at first being fairly skeptical about Wikipedia and then as I used it more it seemed fairly reliable due to all the citations that were used. It is interesting to read the article about the person who wrote the book about IBM and the Holocaust and his claims that his materials were edited out of Wikipedia articles and it is also interesting to read Wikipedia's article about Wikipedia itself and the claims that Wikipedia is inaccurate, biased, etc. Also to know more about Wikipedia's history and that its founders had a pornographic site before they started Wikipedia...it's all a little too much. I don't want to have to read who is posting and deleting what...I guess I will continue to take Wikipedia with a grain of salt and be a little more dubious than I had been. I accidentally created an account for Wikimedia which isn't the same as Wikipedia..wikipedia is still considering whether I can have an account and will see about sending me a password. I'm not holding my breath as I don't really want to edit a page, but am trying this as an academic/personal growth type of exercise. I looked at the history and talk pages and it is interesting to see comments and requests for edits..it does seem that most take this quite seriously..I don't see anything that looks nefarious, but who knows..there is so much to it that it seems endless and makes me feel tired....

Activity 19: Pinterest

Blogging Exercise for this Activity

Have you used Pinterest before? Well, I started looking at in a previous Disco Tech exercise. Here is me on Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/erinzolotukhinr/boards/ (Be sure to include a link to your Pinterest page in your blog post!)

 Heard of it?  Yes...What do you think? Fascinating yet frightening because it goes on and on and on and where/when/how do you stop....

 Do you see any potential public library uses? Sure...you could invite people to pin ideas for programs or favorite books? You can use it to gather your own research...

I did pin somethings on St. Paul Public Library's pinterest page and even created an education board...http://www.pinterest.com/stpaullibrary/

1. Create a free account for yourself in either Zoho Docs or Google Drive. (Hint: if you already have a Gmail account, you have a Google Drive account! Use your Gmail username and password to log in. Did this..used Google.
2. Explore the site you chose and its features by creating a test document (or two) in the word processing application. Feel free to be as creative as you want with fonts, bullets, and the like.

Optional Exercise #2: Try writing your blog entry in Zoho Writer or Google Docs and then using the “publish” feature to post it to your blog. (I didn't write my blog in Google Docs, but I embeded these images/survey from Google Docs..does that count?)

This is a drawing I created in Google Docs:
 

This is a survey form I created:

 

 
 
 
1. Create a blog post about your discoveries: How does the application you chose compare to other word processing software you’re familiar with? What features did you like or dislike the most? Can you think of any ways the application you chose would be useful to you?

Well, there's a lot you can do..it's kind of funny, you seem to have to dig for information..not a lot of instruction right off hand..but as you get into things it somehow starts to link to help sections, but not a lot of direct instruction to begin with..I have had surveys and docs sent through google docs where you can submit your information and comments and this does seem a good way of searching and not have lots of versions floating around. I am not an expert Microsoft Publisher user but I'm guessing you probably have more options with drawing/images then in Google Docs drawing. I wanted to tilt an image, but couldn't see how to do it as rotate wasn't really what I wanted to do.  Google Docs obviously, is good for Team work or work with groups.

Here below is my attempt to paste a Zoho doc into a blog post, but it didn't work so well. Not sure how to fix this. Help, please. I'm not a html expert reader, but it appears the embed code says scroll, no which I believe is computer speak for no scrolling. I tried to change the "no" to "yes"..perhaps I should have asked the assistance of Bethenny Frankel, but it wouldn't let me change anything.