New in the Teen Health and Wellness database

Happy New Year from the Rosen Online team! 

We hope you're beginning 2011 in good health and wellness. 2010 was a banner year for Rosen Online. We updated and expanded Teen Health & Wellness to include:

• Instant translation into over 50 languages, including Spanish and French
• Videos throughout, including student-created PSAs
• Over 50 new articles
• Social bookmarking and RSS feeds
• Site optimized for smartphones
• New promotional and outreach tools⎯redesigned posters, bookmarks, and access cards

The "It's Your Cause" Video Challenge begins in February! Looking for the perfect project for your students? Consider having them create public service announcements (PSAs) focusing on an issue about which they're passionate. Their PSAs could become part of Teen Health & Wellness and their message heard by teens around the world! For more information, visit teenhealthandwellness.com/static/videochallenge.


If you need help logging in to any database please ask the library staff!

Periodical Records Added to Catalog

Yesterday, while the Mock Senate was taking place in the Library's Main Room, I decided to upload some of the MARC cataloging records for magazines and journals from EBSCOhost to our library catalog (home access/school access). It's turned out to be a more exhilarating and complicated process than I had anticipated.

I had already uploaded the records from Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center (a Gale product which we've had for a number of years). There weren't very many of them since I had only downloaded those for periodicals with full text. I was able to quickly check the records to make sure they were compatible with ones already in the catalog.

I had downloaded the records from the Advanced Placement Source database the previous week and they were just waiting on my desktop to be uploaded to the catalog. I knew there were thousands of them because I had looked at the lists which EBSCO makes available from its website. I was concerned that they not overwhelm the approximately 35,000 records in my catalog. About 30,000 of those records are for books, the rest are for audiovisual items, websites, other electronic resources, print periodicals, pamphlet files, maps, etc.

Anyway I decided to take the plunge and went through the fairly simple process of importing the records into the catalog. In the end I believe just over 2,000 record were added to the catalog through this process. In the long run I think this is a great addition to the catalog because each record has a link which lead directly to the particular periodical in the Advanced Placement Source database. In other words, if I want to see Atlantic Monthly, I just click on the link which says "Available on EBSCOhost" and I'm instantly taken to a list of all the issues available (back to 1985).

Now, of course, most of the periodicals imported into the catalog are a good deal more esoteric than Atlantic Monthly. How about the IBM journal of research and development? Or The International journal of African historical studies or APMIS acta pathologica, microbiologica et immunologica Scandinavica?

My next task is to go in a clean up the records, many of which come with multilingual subject headings and other anomalous fields. I started editing an alphabetical list and was able to get through the As, the Bs and most of the Cs, by end of today. In the long run I think this will really enhance the usefulness of the OPAC by giving access to such resources as seventeen law reviews, scores of scientific and medical research journals, dozens of literary journals, and many other periodicals published all across the world. This access should enhance our application for the International Baccalaureate program and help our Advanced Placement and other students find good, reliable, accessible sources of information for all the creative research projects their teachers challenge them with every day.

Teaching Students about Subscription Databases

I had a great experience yesterday involving one of our best teachers.

Bob Winkler teaches English at Redwood and has brought his students to the library many times over the years. Though Bob has a reputation as being cautious in relying too much on technology for teaching and learning, he has really started to see how our subscription databases can help in his classes.

Bob has three 10th grade English classes (not honors) who are reading Macbeth and he wanted them to find a "real" piece of literary criticism about the play to use as they were reading and develop a deeper understanding of the play from what another author had to say about it. There are about 80 students in the three classes.

Previously they had read Oedipus Rex and he had given them pre-selected critical essays from Twentieth Century Interpretations of Oedipus Rex and another book of essays about Sophocles in general which the library had in its collections. This was to introduce them to the type of work they would later be finding on their own. Many of the students were able to use ideas they had gleaned from the essays in a Socratic discussion they had following the reading of the play.

Bob saw the next step as having students find and use critical essays on their own.
He developed an assignment that gave me the chance to show students how to search three of the library subscription databases: EBSCO's AP Source, ProQuest Learning: Literature, and Questia. Each of these requires slightly different approaches and gives quite different results.

Over about forty minutes the students and I we were able to explore in pretty great depth some search strategies, ways of saving information, setting up individual accounts, and so forth.

Following my presentation, Bob immediately took each class to an open computer lab and had them start setting up their accounts and searching on their own. From the on-going feedback I've gotten from him and some his students, they have been very successful in finding the kind of material he wants them to use. He's going to send me a list of the essays they have used and we will follow this assignment up with an intensive on the proper citing of sources.

Among many things I admire about Bob is his attitude toward collaboration. We both retain a certain humility about what we do and can provide to students. He is the expert on using the texts to help students better understand what they are reading, I am able to help them find the texts they need to accomplish that task.

And to top it off he sent me a thank-you note! I want to thank Bob publicly for making my job rewarding and giving his students a great classroom experience which they really do appreciate.

Welcome to All Redwood Parents

Welcome new parents and welcome back veteran parents.

LIBRARY WEB SITE
The Bessie Chin Library would like especially to welcome parents new to the school community to take a close look at the library's Web site (http://rhsweb.org/library) which provides 24/7 access to many resources for you and your children. Even though you may not be able to come to the library during the school day, the online resources are always available. Starting with the library catalog (click on "Catalog Home Access") you will be able to peruse the rich resources of the Redwood library. The library has over 35,000 cataloged items, including books, magazines, websites, pamphlet files, videos, and audio books.

LIBRARY SUBSCRIPTION DATABASES
The library also subscribes to a rich collection of online resources which are accessed from the home page. Click on the link which says DATABASE PASSWORDS and enter the password when prompted. (Obtain the password from library staff or your kids). That will bring you to a page which has all of the user IDs and passwords listed.

The library's main magazine and newspaper database is provided by EBSCO, which also provides access to NoveList, Advanced Placement Source, TopicSearch, and professional educational journals. We subscribe to two online encyclopedias, Encyclopaedia Britannica Online Academic Edition and World Book Online Reference Center, and many other reference e-books through Oxford Reference Online Premium and the Gale Virtual Reference Library (through InfoTrac).

OTHER ONLINE RESOURCES
The library subscribes to the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and several magazines which have online editions. The access information is listed on the library's Periodicals Page.
Another very rich database for students is Questia, "the first online library that provides … access to the world's largest online collection of books and journal articles in the humanities and social sciences, plus magazine and newspaper articles." This year each student will have individual access to Questia via a personal ID and password. Students will be informed of their login information as soon as it’s available from Questia. Take the time to check out all the databases available from the library's Web site.

LIBRARY LEAVES BLOG
This Web log will provide the latest in library news.
This summer I went to an international school library conference in Taipei, Taiwan and posted several articles with photos about the conference, school libraries in Taiwan and other interesting experiences. Come back often.

VOLUNTEERING IN THE LIBRARY
We encourage parents who have time to volunteer in the library. Last year we had about fifteen parent volunteers who were able to give a couple hours every week or so. Volunteers perform a variety of tasks and we couldn't run the excellent program we do here at Redwood without their help. We have parents who help with book processing (covering, stamping, typing labels, etc.), filing books and other materials, looking up web pages and adding them to our online catalog, clipping articles from newspapers, magazines and the internet, and more. To see the variety of tasks our volunteers performed last year go to the library Volunteer Page. We'd love to have you join them and look forward to seeing all of you on Back-to-School Night.