World Cat and More FirstSearch Indexes

The World Cat is where librarians catalog books. Here you can find where a book that you are looking for is located. I did a "Title Phrase" search for "3 Cups of Tea" as this is a book that is required reading at SDSU. 12 records were found. When I clicked the #1 item, I learned that this title is at 2144 different libraries worldwide. The top listed library is Augustana College. The call number listed is LC2330 or Dewey 371.822/09549 When clicking on the author, you can find other books or recordings of books written by the author. You can click on related subjects to find additional books that may be of interest to the reader. You may also read abstract of book, learn the language it is written, publication information and description including numbers of pages and illustration as well as size of book.

Other databases are available such as Ebooks, ERIC, MEDLINE, WorldAlmanac, and OAIster to name a few. The latter is a full text database that I browsed to see what I could find when searching "South Dakota" with the subject phrase option. 145 records were found. Thinking back to teaching South Dakota unit to fourth graders I went back to search option and added keyword "history". This narrowed the records found to 4 which included Dorthie Hall, History of Greater Sage-grouse in the Dakotas, Dakota Territory, and United States Historical Election Returns; South Dakota Elections 1889-1968. These included maps and manuscripts. Unfortunately as I followed the links, only 1 worked. On the other hand the World Almanac produced many good resources. There was a great article on American Indian Languages. On other databases I found additional resources.

Net Library

The Net Library provides a wealth of non-fiction books with the latest ones copyrighted in 2006. These ebooks are full text books that one can read online. To explore the site, I typed in "keyboarding". 188 ebooks were identified. The cover of the books are pictured as well as information on how the books relate to what you searched and the copyright date. The ebooks found covered many aspects of keyboarding such as ergonomics, mutliple intelligences, disabilities, secretaries, and dictionary for tech shorthand/acronyms. By adding one additional word and searching "keyboarding class" the search was narrowed to 46 ebooks that are closely related to the specific field I will be teaching. As I browsed through the results I found what appears to be some great resources.

Next I searched "Constitutional Day" which resulted in 1004 ebooks. If you search "Constitution" over 5000 ebooks surface. The Federalist (Cliff Notes), Constitution of the Confederate States, A Companion to the United States Constitution and It's Admendments are a few titles that could e used to expand student resources. One could also find to consitutions of other countries to compare and contrastwith that if the US. There are many resources on the US Constitution, Declaration ofIndependence and the Bill of Rights.

The final search I conducted was on "Nebraska" to see what I could find for a "Western history unit". Over 3000 ebooks were found using the "full text" option. When searching "keyword" option, the search was narrowed to 90 books. To narrow search further using the keyword option, I searched "Nebraska and Wounded Knee" to see what I could find related to Wounded Knee at Nebraska" and found 4 resources available. So the more specific the words you use, you can find ebooks geared for exactly what you are looking.