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Bare Bones 101: A Basic Tutorial on Searching the Web: The University of South Carolina Beaufort

Bare Bones 101: A Basic Tutorial on Searching the Web: The University of South Carolina Beaufort.

bare bones 101: A basic tutorial on searching the web

"Trends, like horses, are easier to ride in the direction they are going. "              --Anonymous

INTRODUCTION
So, you're still getting those 1,670,000+ responses to your search queries on the Web, and you're still too busy to do anything about it, like reading the lengthy, and sometimes confusing, "help" screens to find out how to improve your searching techniques.

Look no further! Real help is here, in the USCB Library's BARE BONES Tutorial.

You can zip through these lessons in no time, any time. They are very short and succinct; each can be read in a few minutes. Feel free to jump in wherever you like, skip what you don't want to read, and come back whenever you need to.

The information contained in the following lessons is truly "bare bones," designed to get you started in the right direction with a minimum of time and effort. For more comprehensive and detailed help on searching the Web, consult our recommended list of sites in Lesson 20 at the end of this tutorial.

An excellent brief tutorial for Web searching.. it covers search engines; metasearching; subject directories; library gateways and specialized databases; most major search engines; and has a Spanish version, too.. enjoy!

Search TRLN - Triangle Research Libraries Network

Search TRLN - Triangle Research Libraries Network.

Search TRNL - Triangle Research Libraries Network

* About Search TRLN
Search TRLN provides a single search interface to the TRLN Libraries' Collections. Learn more about TRLN. Learn more about the Search TRLN Project.    

* Search & Request
Faculty, students, and staff of the TRLN institutions can request materials for expedited delivery from within the Search TRLN interface. Learn more about the TRLN Document Delivery Service.    

* Frequently Asked Questions
Quick facts about Search TRLN
Where can I learn more about TRLN Document Delivery?

Check out the news release for more on this innovative library network search interface and resource..
             TRLN Launches "Search TRLN"

ALA | Serving Non-English Speakers in U.S. Public Libraries

ALA | Serving Non-English Speakers in U.S. Public Libraries.

Serving Non-English Speakers in U.S. Public Libraries
2007 Analysis of Library Demographics, Services, and Programs

American Library Association (ALA) study provides new information about library services and programs developed for non-English speakers, including effectiveness of services, barriers to library use, most frequently used services and most success library programs by language served. Download the full report.

Key Findings | Implications | Background | Next Steps

For Drive-In Theaters, an Unexpected Revival : NPR

For Drive-In Theaters, an Unexpected Revival : NPR.

Movies For Drive-In Theaters, an Unexpected Revival
by Nancy Mullane
Listen Now [4 min 39 sec] add to playlist

All Things Considered, April 21, 2008 - In this era of video iPods and minivan DVD players, a renaissance in the drive-in movie business seems unlikely. But in the past decade, nearly 100 drive-in movie theaters have opened or re-opened.

One example of this trend: the Solano Drive-In Movie Theater in Concord, Calif. At 7 p.m., even before the manager opens the box office, there's already a line of cars waiting to get in. It's a bargain at $6.75 for an adult. Children under 11 are free.

Librarians' Internet Index: The Food Chain (NY Times)

Librarians' Internet Index: The Food Chain (NY Times).

The Food Chain
URL: http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/series/the_food_chain/

Description:
"Articles in this series will examine growing demands on, and changes in, the world's production of food." Some of the topics include rising food prices, the effect on agriculture of biofuels, drought, food shortages, costs of shipping groceries, and specific crops such as wheat, corn, and rice. Some articles require free registration for viewing. From The New York Times.

LII Topics: Agriculture, Economic Aspects, Food & Beverage, Industries

Publisher:
The New York Times Company

Cellphones That Could Save Your Life - Forbes.com

Cellphones That Could Save Your Life - Forbes.com.

In The Air
Cellphones That Could Save Your Life
Elizabeth Woyke, 05.02.08, 1:57 PM ET

When fierce storms hit California in early January, submerging streets and felling power lines, Steve Livingston was prepared. Armed with a text message alert from the San Mateo County Office of Emergency Services, he dodged the flood and made it home safely.

A few months earlier, when a surprise earthquake shook the region, Livingston, chief marketing officer of Sunnyvale, Calif.-based mobile transaction firm mBlox was in Los Angeles on a business trip. Alerted by a text message from the same service, he rushed to call his family back in Hillsborough, near San Mateo. "The pervasiveness of text messaging makes it one of the best ways to communicate to masses of people," he says.

Cellphones have long functioned as the front lines of emergency calling. As technology evolves and phones morph into ubiquitous, highly personal gadgets, they're becoming genuine safety devices, crammed with features designed to protect us from accidents and injury. Between flashlights, heart monitors, global positioning data and text message warnings, it's no exaggeration to say that cell phones can save lives.

Pew Internet: Writing, Technology and Teens

Pew Internet: Writing, Technology and Teens.

Reports: Family, Friends & Community
Writing, Technology and Teens 4/24/2008

Teens write a lot, but they do not think of their emails, instant and text messages as writing. This disconnect matters because teens believe good writing is an essential skill for success and that more writing instruction at school would help them.
View PDF of Report
View PDF of Questionnaire

The Parallel Information Universe - 5/1/2008 - Library Journal

The Parallel Information Universe - 5/1/2008 - Library Journal.

The Parallel Information Universe
What's out there and what it means for libraries
By Mike Eisenberg -- Library Journal, 5/1/2008

The Web 2.0 “buzz” starts with new technologies such as virtual worlds, cell phones and handheld devices that offer 24/7 web access, tagging, social networks, and blogs and brings together various web capabilities in unique combinations (known as “mashing”—such as maps that also include the latest real estate property assessments). But Web 2.0 is about much more than the technology—it's about a change in focus to participation, user control, sharing, openness, and networking.

Pulled together, these technologies are a “parallel information universe” next to our own universe. This parallel universe provides us with constant feedback, resources, monitoring, information, connections, education, and interaction. It can be individualized and personalized, and we can interact individually or collectively with it. The key for libraries is that this is a parallel information universe. Libraries—as institutions founded on meeting people's information needs—need to take the lead in this parallel information universe. Some libraries are diving in already, but the library world as a whole must engage with these developments and determine how we can use them to meet our users' information needs better.

Thoughtful, insightful.. where we are today snapshot.. a good think piece...

Congressional Research - Main - Home Page

Congressional Research - Main - Home Page.

Welcome to UC Berkeley Library's Congressional Research Tutorials

These tutorials show you how to find Congressional materials in the Library and on the Internet. The tutorials are Flash videos. They should start playing automatically when you click on any tutorial in the left-hand sidebar. If they don't, you may need to download the free Flash video player. If you have suggestions to improve these tutorials, or would like to see a tutorial on an aspect of Congressional research that we haven't covered yet, please write to us.

Excellent tutorial site.. kudos to the UC-Berkeley team for this effort...

Truth: Can You Handle It? - washingtonpost.com

Truth: Can You Handle It? - washingtonpost.com.

Truth: Can You Handle It?
Better Yet: Do You Know It When You See It?
By Monica Hesse, Washington Post Staff Writer, Sunday, April 27, 2008

How many legs does a dog have, if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg. -- Abraham Lincoln
* * * *
[*Note: Lincoln never said this. He liked a similar, more long-winded anecdote about a cow, but the dog version? Nope. Still, the quote is credited to Abe on some 11,000 different Web pages, including quote resources Brainy Quote and World of Quotes.

[Though not technically "true," the quote makes a nice start to this article about truth, being topical and brief, so if we want to go with truth-by-consensus (very popular now), we can go ahead and just say that he said it.

[Besides, by the time you finish this article, your brain might have tricked you into thinking that he did say it (more on that later), so let's just go ahead and leave it in. Okay?]

Moving on. Inhabitants of the Wiki-world, consider these random but related events, most of which pertain to the under-25 set, all of which occurred in the past six months: The launching of Cumul.us, a wiki-weather site in which users can collaboratively decide whether it is raining outside. The release of "True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society," Farhad Manjoo's exploration of the "cultural ascendancy of belief over fact." The addition of "collateral misinformation" to UrbanDictionary.com. The entry: "When someone alters a Wikipedia article to win a specific argument, anyone who reads the false article before the 'error' is corrected suffers from collateral misinformation." And a scholar at the Hoover Institution performed an experiment with totally unsurprising results: When 100 terms from U.S. history books were entered into Google, the topics' Wikipedia articles were the first hits 87 times.

A cautionary tale.. they say a civilization that doesn't know what's true will repeat the past and collapse.. or that's what history tells us.. I don't know if that's true, or not.. I just composed it here.. I didn't do any fact-checking, or consult any "authoritative" sources before writing it.. Let's leave Truth in the eye, mind, and research of the "beholder," or True Wiki Believer.. The TWB: something to embrace, or fear?

The whole matter reminds me of when my Mother would tell me, "If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you follow them?" She used to win a lot of arguments, um, discussions with me, that way.. smart woman...

Nude Vacations: No Shoes, No Shirt, No Worries - New York Times

Nude Vacations: No Shoes, No Shirt, No Worries - New York Times.

No Shoes, No Shirt, No Worries
By MICHELLE HIGGINS, Published: April 27, 2008

WHEN Larry Massa says he likes to travel light, he means it. No need for a jacket and tie at dinner, a pristine set of tennis whites when he hits the court, or even a bathrobe to wear when heading from his hotel room to the pool or the spa.

For when Mr. Massa, 74, a retired Navy commander and computer science engineer from Virginia Beach, and his wife, Darlene, go on vacation, they do it in the nude. “If you haven’t tried it, there’s no way I can tell you what a fun thing it is, what an added dimension to a vacation it can be” said Mr. Massa, who has been taking “clothing-optional” vacations since 2001 and whose most recent trip was to an all-nude resort in Mexico. “I’ll never forget the day,” said Mr. Massa, recalling the couple’s first nudist vacation at a Caribbean resort. “The place was full. We went to the far end of the pool and Dar said, ‘I’m going to take my top off.’ I thought I’m not going to wear these stupid swim trunks in the pool. So I jumped in naked. She looked down at me and dropped her bottoms and we never looked back.”

Forbes.com Best of the Web: Literary Blogs

Forbes.com Best of the Web: Literary Blogs.

Literary Blogs

Much like political blogs, literary blogs have made pseudo-celebrities of their creators while offering alternatives to the mainstream press. Their breathless late-night posts--part literary gossip, part book club chatter, part critical rant--discuss the books that aren't reviewed in The New York Times. The result? While they're not going to rival Oprah's Book Club, independent voices with names such as Bookslut are having an impact on the way books are talked about and sold like never before. Many have been successful enough to launch their own Webzines to boot. -- Brooke Watkins

   

Read our Review for:		Visit:
GalleyCat		www.mediabistro.com/galleycat
Blog of a Bookslut		www.bookslut.com/blog
Elegant Variation		marksarvas.blogs.com/elegvar
Literary Saloon		www.complete-review.com/saloon
Maud Newton		maudnewton.com/blog
Litblog Co-op		lbc.typepad.com/blog
Old Hag		www.theoldhag.com
Readerville		www.readerville.com

Library Opens Main Reading Room to 16-Year-Old Researchers - The Library Today (Library of Congress)

Library Opens Main Reading Room to 16-Year-Old Researchers - The Library Today (Library of Congress).

News from the Library of Congress
Press contact: Matt Raymond (202) 707-0020
Public contact: Victoria C. Hill (202) 707-5530

April 23, 2008
Library of Congress Opens Main Reading Room to Researchers Age 16 and Older

The Library of Congress today announced that the minimum age for use of the Main Reading Room to access the Library’s physical collections for research purposes has been lowered to 16. The previous requirement was that researchers be above high school age.

"The Library of Congress is always looking for ways to create new lifelong learners, to expand access to knowledge and to spark the creativity of future generations," said Librarian of Congress James H. Billington.

"We want people of all ages to be aware of the almost limitless resources that are available in libraries, including their de facto national library, especially at a time when the amount of information online still represents only a tiny fraction of the sum total of human knowledge."

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are more than 8 million 16- and 17-year-olds living in the United States.

Protecting Your Nest Egg In a Volatile Market

Protecting Your Nest Egg In a Volatile Market.

Don’t Panic: Protecting Your Nest Egg in a Volatile Market
By Carole Fleck, April 8, 2008 - AARP Bulletin Today

Stocks are tumbling. Home values are plunging. Consumer prices are rising. Family budgets and savings plans are shrinking.

As Americans confront an economy in turmoil, financial planners say older investors should concentrate on preserving their retirement nest egg and reducing volatility in their portfolio.

And the most important message, say financial planners: Don't panic. Don't do anything drastic.

To weather the downturn, the AARP Bulletin Today asked five financial experts for their advice for (1) boomers in their 50s with a decade or more remaining in the workforce, (2) workers nearing retirement and (3) retirees living on a fixed income. Though the advisers’ views vary, they all agree that diversified holdings and a solid financial plan—savings, pensions and Social Security—are crucial for a comfortable retirement. Here are some tips tailored for you...

Some good tips here, to weather this current recession and financial turmoil...

Hemingway Stylesheet: The Kansas City Star

Hemingway Stylesheet: The Kansas City Star. [PDF]

This facsimile of The Star Copy Style sheet is one of the most often-requested pieces of memorabilia relating to the history of The Kansas City Star. This is the document that Ernest Hemingway would have been given during his tenure writing police and emergency-room items at The Star in 1917 and 1918. Hemingway later remarked to a reporter that the admonitions in this style sheet were the best rules I ever learned in the business of writing.
...
Please visit our comprehensive website about Hemingway in Kansas City and Hemingway at 100, located at http://www.kcstar.com/hemingway/

A Chat with NYC's Coolest Culinary Librarian - IgoUgo

A Chat with NYC's Coolest Culinary Librarian - IgoUgo.

A Chat with NYC's Coolest Culinary Librarian
Posted on March 31, 2008 in Features

Who boasts the best menu in New York? Our vote goes to Rebecca Federman, keeper of the New York Public Library’s culinary collection. The passionate bibliographer—and writer of Cooked Books—talks to IgoUgo about her fascinating job and favorite tables.

IgoUgo: What comprises your work at the New York Public Library, and what are the best parts of your position there?
Rebecca Federman: My official title is Social Sciences Bibliographer, which means I order books and keep on top of trends and publications within the social sciences: women's studies, political science, history, etc. But I also spend a lot of time working with the Library's culinary collection, both the cookbooks and the historic restaurant menu collection. That's one of my favorite aspects of the job: reading through menus from the mid-19th century to the present, helping researchers, and meeting people. It's a job where one wears a lot of hats and is never bored. I like that.

Book Lovers Ask, What’s Seattle’s Secret? - New York Times

Book Lovers Ask, What’s Seattle’s Secret? - New York Times.

Book Lovers Ask, What’s Seattle’s Secret?
By JULIE BICK, Published: March 9, 2008

Seattle - TEN years ago, Nancy Pearl started a program for public libraries here that she hoped would get adults excited about literature. It was called, “If All of Seattle Read the Same Book.” Free copies of “The Sweet Hereafter,” a novel about a tragic school bus accident, were distributed to individuals and book clubs. Posters encouraged people to read the book and discuss it at library-sponsored events.

The novel became the top-selling book in the area. But Ms. Pearl’s program received little national attention despite its success. “We just weren’t on the map then,” Ms. Pearl, who is a librarian, said.

Today, her name is familiar to book lovers from coast to coast. She attracted attention in 2003, when she published “Book Lust,” a guide to must-read books. A few years later, a sequel to that book coincided with her promotion to national book commentator on National Public Radio.

Web Sites Let Bibliophiles Share Books Virtually : NPR

Web Sites Let Bibliophiles Share Books Virtually : NPR.

Books
Web Sites Let Bibliophiles Share Books Virtually
by Martha Woodroof Listen Now [4 min 32 sec]

“People tend to define themselves by their books, and they love to show off their book collections at home. ... I think book social networks act as an extension of that.”
--Sean Flannagan, Deeplinking.net

All Things Considered, March 20, 2008
Bookish people may not be known for their social skills, but a crop of social-networking Web sites aimed at bibliophiles are allowing readers to connect with the page — and with each other — in a brand new "virtual" environment.

Think of it as Facebook or MySpace for people who'd rather browse in a book shop than go to a party. Book-centered sites like LibraryThing, Goodreads, Shelfari, aNobii and BookJetty, among others, allow readers to keep track of books they have read or books they want to read or buy — and see what others are reading and recommending.

Algorithms Are Terrific. But to Search Smarter, Find a Person.

Algorithms Are Terrific. But to Search Smarter, Find a Person..

Algorithms Are Terrific. But to Search Smarter, Find a Person.
By Brendan I. Koerner Email 03.24.08 | 6:00 PM
Illustration: James Victore

When he returned home from a long day at the office, Jeremy Brosowsky would glance ruefully at his coffee table. It was always covered with magazines he knew he'd never crack open. "The Economist just ended up being a $100-a-year paperweight," says Brosowsky, founder of the now-defunct Washington Business Forward magazine. In 2006, Brosowsky realized that his "coffee table problem" wasn't confined to meatspace. He was similarly unable to keep track of all the information that poured into his RSS reader, to say nothing of the online versions of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and dozens of other publications. Brosowsky wished he had a way to manage the deluge and zero in on the few must-read articles. His solution was to create Brijit, a Washington, DC-based startup launched in late 2007 that produces 100-word abstracts of both online and offline content. Every day, Brijit publishes around 125 concise summaries of newspaper and magazine articles, as well as audio and video programs, rating each on a scale of 0 ("actively avoid") to 3 ("a must read") so readers can decide whether it's worth their time to click through. "What we've created with Brijit is your well-read friend," says Brosowsky, whose eight employees sift through more than 100 sources, from AARP the Magazine to XXL.

TIME Magazine Archives - TIME Archives - TIME Magazine Back Issues

TIME Magazine Archives - TIME Archives - TIME Magazine Back Issues.

TIME Magazine Archives

Left, screenshot, TIME Magazine Archives

This wonderful historical archive from TIME magazine contains covers, articles, and excerpts from articles from 1923 to the present.. well-organized, with covers, and has some featured collections.. enjoy!